Word: Incompetence in high places

Mainly Macro -Simon Kuper, in a brilliant article in the Financial Times, has an interesting explanation for this epidemic of incompetence [in America and England]. He writes how leaders like Macmillan, George HW Bush or Clement Attlee had their formative experiences in fighting WWII, while Lyndon B Johnson, Bill Clinton, and John Major had a visceral experience: of poverty. They knew in their bones that government mattered. He goes on

“But both countries have now fallen into the hands of well-off baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964 - the luckiest members of the luckiest generation in history. These people had no formative experiences, only TV shows. They never expected anything awful or unknown to happen. They went into politics mostly for kicks.”