Charlie Rose

doodahdaze  05/01/2010 06:55 AM Report

Boomberg is an elitist. He'll continue to whisper sweet nothings for you as long he continues to get his lawn cut for nearly free. He may be a fine mayor of Jew York City (so they say) (quite frankly, I think he's taking credit for Giuliani's work) (just like the TYPICAL POLITICIAN he really is) , but he would be a DISASTROUS President of the USA. .. He's an elitist punk. Stay in your beloved new york city and hobnob with your condensating bich friends in the "Capital Markets". Make sure they get ALL the services they need, so they don't take their 'talents' overseas; or to Atlanta. LOL

eeo  04/23/2009 03:37 PM Report

Really frustrating show. All three guests talked about the program as if its ground breaking and revolutionary-instead, it is finally addressing issues that have already been in effect in the Bay Area, the Pacific Northwest and Chicago (not to mention many other international cities). But, they may be right in marketing it this way since New Yorkers only seem to get behind things that validate their feelings of being unique and trendsetting. Someone said that NYC will be the Silicon Valley this coming decade. I can't imagine this would be so since it is the Bay Area's culture and mindset (not to mention Stanford) that facilitates the Silicon Vally.

REMant  04/23/2009 02:47 PM Report

I think cleaning up the cities a very fine idea indeed, but, as the mayor eventually pointed out, there is really nothing new in this program. It has all been done elsewhere for a couple decades. I am not sure tho that painting roofs white overall is a good idea, despite what scientists have been saying about it, again for quite a long time now, because the reflected energy has to go somewhere. And the color of roof materials is only part of the reflectivity equation. Cities do absorb more than their share of sunlight and retain it, creating demand for cooling in the summer, etc, tho of course, reducing demand for heating in the winter. More trees seems to me a better idea. However, none of it addresses the problems that cities pose in the first place.

Ppl started migrating in large numbers to Northern European cities like London and Paris in Middle Ages as the land could no longer sustain them, and the problem became so acute in England that a statute was passed Queen Elizabeth's reign to send them back. It was population growth, yes, but it was also - looking at it from another perspective - a lack of competition, which was provided in turn by the growth of what has been termed possessive individualism, ie, private property. The competition forced economies, including, of course, better technologies, but at the same time it has sustained an ever larger population. Despite the problems inherent in concentration, this is would likely have been okay, but the process became subverted by financial manipulations that began a vicious cycle of decay.

There's a so-called virtuous cycle of increasing productivity and decreasing price, the money supply as a result remaining steady or contracting, but also a vicious cycle in which production decreases and prices rise, and this happens when efforts are made to not cut prices and trim inefficiencies, but to increase money, the result increasing the income and wealth disparity. As it proceeds fewer and fewer ppl can afford what is made, and less and less is, as a consequence, made. The more goods an economy has, the less money it needs, and vice versa. More money invariably means more poverty, not more wealth.

Cities, IMHO, are just like the car cos Bloomberg decries, dealing with a higher margin, but ever shrinking mkt. As they become more expensive to live in ppl still needing to work there are forced outward to cheaper land and this creates the transportation system air pollution and the runoff that pollutes our rivers, bays and estuaries. Some ppl tho argue that this can be overcome by still more economic growth, but if so, it must be growth sustainable by increased efficiency, and that I would argue requires a more equitable distribution of wealth and the application of individual intelligence, not more mergers, managers and regimentation.

Many things do, tho, at this time, at least, escape privatization, and thus what welfare economics calls externalities go uncompensated both on the negative side, for example air and water pollution, and on positive side, such as public health, and these are legitimate public concerns. But the process of economizing has been subverted by easy money to such an extent that overuse imperils the planet, leaving no choice but to regulate it, regulate public life, or go to war. And it seems to me the present moment provides an exceptional opportunity.

esantoro  04/23/2009 01:28 PM Report

Bloomberg's Freudian Slip: Government needs to provide "a safety net [people] can fall through."

Bush is gone. Long live Bush.