ABSTRACT
West European countries are amazed when the United States decides—as it did in 1950—to expand its industrial output by 25 % in the ensuing five years in order to bear the burdens of defence and of aid to foreigners. The kind of education which parents are able or willing to give, or accent, or birth, or membership in privileged groupings, or demeanour due to social status and upbringing, plays a bigger part in deciding a European's social—and to a smaller extent his or her economic—status than in deciding that of an American. A significant result emerges from the combination of fluidity in American society with the comparative lack of ‘aristocratic’ and other values of a cultural elite. The outcome is that the greater American social fluidity, mobility, and pace of life the greater energy and initiative are directed in a greater degree towards the production and acquisition of more and more material marks of achievement, of success, or of distinction.
