Core Value

In this passage from Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? ©2011, Jeanette Winterson laments her former support of Reagan and Thatcher:

I did not realize that when money becomes the core value, then education drives towards utility or that the life of the mind will not be counted as a good unless it produces measurable results. That public services will no longer be important. That an alternative life to getting and spending will become very difficult as cheap housing disappears. That when communities are destroyed only misery and intolerance are left.

And that's pretty much where we are.

People don't go to school to make themselves better people, they go to make themselves better employees.  People who get a degree in arts can look forward to ridicule and a life of poverty.  Any program dedicated to the public good is derided as (hack, spit) "socialism."  People are working multiple jobs to afford a share of a hovel.  Intolerance is on the rise, spurred on by narcissism and an overstimulated sense of self-preservation.

But hey, the stock market is trending upwards, so Yay, Us!