Tom Perkins, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist, made a terrible mistake by comparing criticism of rich Americans – the “1 per cent” – to the Kristallnacht attack on Jews in Germany in 1938. Mr Perkins, co-founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, has since apologised.

He ought not to eulogise millionaires, let alone invoke the Nazis, but to focus on those who deserve a defence: employees of Google and other technology companies who commute to Silicon Valley on company buses from the city of San Francisco. His outburst was partly prompted by demonstrations in the city against the “technogeek” migrants.

Pete Seeger, the singer who died this week, was a fervent supporter of California’s migrant workers – he met Woody Guthrie at a “Grapes of Wrath”[??] benefit concert in 1940. But today’s migrants are more likely to have degrees than to pick crops –30 per cent of immigrants to advanced economies between 2000 and 2010 had tertiary qualifications.