I got banned from Twitter.
I don’t know why. It’s not like I did anything to get banned. Not recently. The last tweet I made was one pimping a book review I wrote. It’s the most passive and unengaged in the political wars you could hope to be. Just read a book.
What.
The biggest single change I’ve noticed after starting the BBB diet is how annoyed I am when I have to eat.
I’m usually pretty excited in the morning to have breakfast, but I’ve been dreading it mostly. It’s a huge hassle to make food that’s pretty enough to photograph (that’s the point of that…
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. […] We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
“
| — | Sir Karl Popper |
Shorter Steve Kellmeyer: If it’s traditional to burn heretical books, it must be okay to burn the Quran.
That brings me to a central issue that has been completely absent from the current debate. As our new economy emerges, a new way of life and a new geography of living and working must come into being as well. We didn’t finally emerge from the Great Depression until the rise of the suburbs in the 1950s, which fuelled demand not just for single-family homes but for the cars, refrigerators, washer-driers, TVs, and stereo systems that were coming off the assembly lines. Home ownership provided a powerful form of geographic Keynsianism.
But that system has reached the end of its useful life. It has led to overinvestment in housing, autos, and energy and contributed to the crises we are trying so hard to extricate ourselves from today. It’s also no longer an engine of economic growth. With the rise of a globalized economy, many if not most of the products that filled those suburban homes are made abroad. Home ownership worked well for a nation whose workers had secure, long-term jobs. But now it impedes the flexibility of a labor market that requires people to move around. My own research shows that the most innovative, most productive, and most highly skilled regions have rates of homeownership of 55-to-60 percent, while those where homeownership exceeds 75 or 80 percent are economically distressed.
Federal policy needs to encourage less home ownership and a greater density of development, along with the construction of smaller and more low-energy houses—not just because this is a greener way of life (which it is), but because it’s required to free up capital that can be invested in the skill development, technology development, and economic structures that the economy of the future requires. That means eliminating the mortgage interest tax deduction along with other massive federal subsidies for the secondary mortgage market, as well as other massive subsidies for road construction and infrastructure that undergird sprawling, economically inefficient, utterly wasteful suburban and exurban development. I am not advocating that we become a nation of renters, but the balance of homeownership should tilt back from its current level of 66 percent to perhaps 60 or even 55 percent.
Instead of further encouraging the growth of an auto-housing-suburban complex, the government should promote those forces that are subtly causing the shift away from it. Chief among these are the creation of inter-connected mega-regions, like the Boston-Washington corridor and the Char-lanta region (Atlanta, Charlotte, and Raleigh Durham) and ten or so more across the United States. Concentration and clustering are the underlying motor forces of real economic development. As Jane Jacobs identified and the Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Lucas later formalized, clustering speeds the transmission of new ideas, increases the underlying productivity of people and firms, and generates the diversity required for new ideas to fertilize and turn into new innovations and new industries.
In fact, the key to understanding America’s historic ability to respond to great economic crises lies in what economic geographers call the “spatial fix”—the creation of new development patterns, new ways of living and working, and new economic landscapes that simultaneously expand space and intensify our use of it. Our rebound after the panic of 1873 and long downturn was forged by the transition from an agricultural nation to an urban-industrial one organized around great cities. Our recovery from the Great Depression saw the rise of massive metropolitan complexes of cities and suburbs, which again intensified and expanded our use of space. Renewed prosperity hinges on the rise of yet another even more massive and more intensive geographic pattern—the mega-region. These new geographic entities are larger than the sum of their parts; they not only produce but consume, spurring further demand.
Infrastructure is key to powering spatial fixes. The railroads and streetcar, cable car, and subway systems speeded the movement of people, goods, and ideas in the late 19th century; the development of a massive auto-dependent highway system powered growth after the Great Depression and World War II. It’s now time to invest in infrastructure that can undergird another round of growth and development. Part of that is surely a better and faster information highway. But the real fix must extend beyond the cyber-economy to our physical development patterns—the landscape of the real economy.
That means high-speed rail, which is the only infrastructure fix that promises to speed the velocity of moving people, goods, and ideas while also expanding and intensifying our development patterns. If the government is truly looking for a shovel-ready infrastructure project to invest in that will create short-term jobs across the country while laying a foundation for lasting prosperity, high-speed rail works perfectly. It is central to the redevelopment of cities and the growth of mega-regions and will do more than anything to wean us from our dependency on cars. High-speed rail may be our best hope for revitalizing the once-great industrial cities of the Great Lakes. By connecting declining places to thriving ones—Milwaukee and Detroit to Chicago, Buffalo to Toronto—it will greatly expand the economic options and opportunities available to their residents. And by providing the connective fibers within and between America’s emerging mega-regions, it will allow them to function as truly integrated economic units.
I just want to say that this day’s batch of letters is one of the worst that I’ve ever seen in the AJC. All of them are completely and irredeemably awful.
First, we have the amnesiac who claims that the bad economy is ALL OBAMMIE’S FAULT!!!1!!!11! Forgetting, like many Americans, that the bailouts and such began under Bush, he then proceeds to Did Not Do the Research territory when he claims that Obama started out with 5% unemployment. Sadly, No. For anyone who doesn’t want to click the link, basically it says that the unemployment percentage in January 2009 (i.e., at his inauguration) was 8.5%. The last time it was around 5% was in January 2008. Also, a Chappaquiddick joke? Really? Couldn’t come up with something more recent, like, say, something about O.J.?
The second is probably the worst of them all. Firstly, the author “debunks” the statement that we have a “zombie economy” by claiming that if we had a zombie economy, we would look like one of those Commynist countries. Also, we would be genocidal, like them Commies in Russia and Cambodia. Secondly, he argues that we don’t need no stinkin’ living wage because different people have different ideas of how to live. And no, I’m not kidding. That’s his argument. And finally, we get the Worst Economic Advice Ever, aka the Republican economic boilerplate of “cut regulations and taxes and the economy will blossom like a thousand flowers”.
In third place, we have probably the easiest one of them all, if only because it’s reeealy reeealy short. Of course, the author manages to cram in enough stupidity to make Albert Einstein drool. He wrote this masterpiece of idiocy in response to an op-ed from earlier in the week by basically, your average middle class guy. Hard-working, decorated Vietnam vet who lost his job and had to take on a much worse job, then lost even that job. The nincompoop who wrote the reply sagely suggested that Mr. Bouchard “spend more time pounding the pavement and looking for a job than writing ‘poor me’ essays”. Conveniently ignoring a) that Bouchard said that he had already applied for 1,200 jobs since losing his previous job, b) so far as I know, this was Bouchard’s first “poor me” essay, and c) someone who has taken that kind of a pounding has every right to a little “poor me”. But the solution is pure genius, really. Just do the exact thing he’s already doing. Give this man a Nobel Prize in Being Smart!
And last, but certainly not least, we have what appears to be a grumpy old guy from the Depression era grumping about people applying for public housing even though they were already living with relatives. Because people lived with their relatives in the Great Depression, and it was good enough for them, so it should be good enough for these no-good spoiled brats. Without even considering the possibiltiy that living with one’s relatives might possibly strain the relatives? People did that during the Great Depression because they had no damn choice and because there was no real government safety net. The first federally-funded public housing project went up in 1936. Oddly enough, it was Techwood Homes, here in Atlanta.
Sorry I went on so long, but I needed to get this off my chest.
