It cannot, in particular, accept the welfare state as a more efficient way to do the public's business, in medicine, transport, and housing, than ways based on selling soap. Blinded by their own belief in the superiority of business, guided by simplistic cliches, public servants drawn from the private realm tend to be bad servants of the public. Yet with a wave of the fairy's electoral wand in Florida, Dad's tired men will become the global economy's new masters. Their reappearance is particularly chilling because global capitalism looks set for another hard landing. The big boom of the 1990s was largely fuelled by the technological revolution and a worldwide demand for consumer goods.
Technology is now in a post-revolutionary phase and consumer demand is no longer pent up.
In the States, both inflation and labour costs are rising. The bond markets have become credit averse and the stock markets are down, particularly the new-economy Nasdaq market. It is not a pretty picture, but it needn't spell disaster. The landing needs to be managed. For that, however, you need good managers.