FT lunch with Cornel West

I have come to quite like these FT lunch pieces. This time around is Cornel West.

I was entertained to learn that he thinks Obama is a corporate tool and disappointed that he does not see the important difference between worrying about inequality and worrying about poverty. It seems to me that the left's current preoccupation with the one percent, with unionized (and over-compensated) government workers and with university students are all drawing effort and attention away from helping actual poor people. Someone also needs to tell West that "deregulation of markets" is often a boon to the poor and a bane to the corporations.  Perhaps he has flown in an airplane recently? Still, it is always useful and interesting to learn how intelligent people with different priors and information sets think about things.

I did not know that West was leaving Princeton. Interesting, that. It makes him seem more serious somehow.