Barack Obama was born to a mother who fled from living in a corrupt America, and a father who was an ideological third-worlder. Both parents tended to picture American capitalism as an unjust system and a major cause of the larger world's poverty, backwardness and suffering.

So it is no surprise that Obama has presented himself as the president with the lowest opinion of business of any in our history, and the most persistent fomenter of class warfare, between the fat-cat with his private jet and the poor youngster on the street who just wants modest funds to cover his college tuition. Every chance he gets, Obama launches into "tax cuts for the rich" and the too-heavy burdens of widows and poor children. He portrays the rich and the poor as natural enemies.

But that isn't the way it is in America. The overwhelming experience of most Americans is of "moving up" through the income brackets. Many if not most of those who enjoy high salaries today remember when they were still poor. Americans do not value the ideal of income equality nearly as much as polls show Europeans do. They value opportunity much, much more.

In Europe, it seems to an American, a comparatively high proportion of the Continent's business elites have their roots in the old landowning class — aristocratic, privileged, with significant inherited wealth and position. Those of Europe's working class do not tend to see themselves or their children as potentially among the leaders of business. Americans do, however, which is why they have so marginal an awareness of "class".