Economist Brad DeLong

hoists from his own archives:

We wish that we lived in a United States that recognized that the welfare of each of our children depends on the welfare of one another's children. In 2030 our now five-year-old will be forty, our now two-year-old will be thirty-seven. We will spare no expense of energy or money to give them the best upbringing we can. But there is one thing that we wish we could give them, but that we cannot buy or do by ourselves: we wish that the others who will be forty or thirty-seven in 2030, and who will make up the America in which our children will live next century, have schools to teach them to read and parents with the financial resources to raise them to adulthood. Our children will be richer and happier if they live in an America where others are rich, happy, and highly-skilled than if they live in an America where others are poor, frustrated, and semi-literate.

It is not that we are unusually public spirited. It is just that when we look at our children we understand where our self-interest truly lies.

So we are looking for a political movement that will dare to say that it is in each of our self-interest to pay a little bit more in taxes, and have us all invest in everything that the next generation now growing up will need--in science, in infrastructure, in health and education, and most urgently in the one-quarter of the nation's children whose households fall below the poverty line.

Why is it so hard to find one?