Charlie Rose

REMant  06/11/2012 11:03 AM Report

The US isn't half as jealous of its citizens as the UK is of its SUBJECTS. The rest of this falls into the same category of dim-wittedness and IMHO calls into question the status of Oxford education. Unless things have changed greatly in recent years, 32 resident billionaires or no, IMHO London remains the most overrated venue in the world, and, its Irish cousin aside, the UK the most overrated travel destination. I'll defer comment on the five-ring circus.

Glaeser's book contains such brilliant ideas as that we are better off living in cities, because we are therefore less likely to burn the woods down like Thoreau, which he got from Jane Jacobs, who, however ambivalent she was about city life, nevertheless knew which side her bread was buttered on. But it can be traced to arguments for garden apartments, still quite apparent in places like Germany, which never has had a very high regard for urbanity, nor any reason for it. People haven't flocked to cities because they are great places to live, free from oppression, the hackneyed liberal conceit, but because the rise of banking gave renewed life to a Court, which gained as it sucked life out of the country. History disputes this Whig fantasy at every turn, as does the huge literature on the decline of civil society. And the flight to the suburbs proves the rule. Nor does Glaeser discuss the farms, mines and factories necessary to sustain his palaces of sustainability. Tho he does claim cities supply the brains for such dumb oxen, who couldn't do without them. Furthermore that consumerism rather than productivity spawns their growth. The book is rubbish, no doubt intended to somehow support Keynes, but does provide a useful catalog of liberal shibboleths.