Like Winston, I tend to see democracy as the least bad form of government rather than the best.

Somehow I can't see MOMA or the Met backing bags and moving to Kansas City.

When they were building the NYC subway, they decided for a flat fair (this was in the early 20th century before WWI) because they knew that the center would quickly become the abode of the rich or upper-middle classes and the poorer inhabitants would relocate to the outer edges where rents were lower. The still needed to get to their jobs so it was decided to keep the fair the same regardless of distance travelled.

I think that if companies move to places like Austin or Provo than places like Austin and Provo are going to start having the same cost of living problems that New York and San Francisco have. Part of the reason why Austin, Provo, St. Louis (which is actually a very charming) have decent costs of living are the less than stellar economies.

I had a friend from high school who went to school at Washington University and got a job in Kansas City afterwords. He never really adjusted to the culture of Kansas City. When I visited him during my cross-country job, he thought that people got married to young in Kansas City and felt the cultural life needed improvement.

But are there enough jobs in the places you lived? Companies prefer to put their offices in certain metro locations. Nothing is going to make Silicon Valley move itself to Wyoming. The upper and middle income employees of these companies need services so poor people are attracted to these expensive metro areas because of the jobs in providing services. Even if housing is affordable, people still need some sort of work to pay for it.

I think that there is a lot of research that shows that a person's early employment experience is formative. People whose early employment takes place during prosperity and they make decent or good money do better in life than those who have to struggle through out their careers. So I think that a lot of people in my generation are going to be less well-off than their parents economically and socially. Evidence already shows that people my age have less in assets and savings than our parents did at our age.

I think the American scenario is worse than whats happening in Paris. The public housing in Paris isn't all that great but at least the French government is aware that government intervention is necessary in order to provide affordable housing for the poor. The French welfare state is also a lot more generous than the American one by leaps and bounds and the Parisian suburbs are better connected to each other and Paris by the RER system.

There isn't much in adequate or affordable housing for the poor in the cities or the suburbs, our suburbs are much more car dependent than the ones in European cities, and our welfare state a lot less generous.

When my mom was in high school, she had to memorize the entire periodic table for tests in chemistry. Decades latter, my brother and I attended the same high school. They stopped making students memorize the entire periodic table on the grounds that if real chemists just look up the information when they need to than why should we inflict the pain of memorization on high school students who probably won't become chemists.

This wasn't necessarily a cop out to make things easier. If you give access to things like the periodic table you can actually make tests harder because students don't have to worry about memorizing it.

No, not really. There is a new book on the history of Florida that makes it clear that the the Bourbons didn't like giving poor whites free land anymore than they did free slaves.

No, not really. There is a new book on the history of Florida that makes it clear that the the Bourbons didn't like giving poor whites free land anymore than they did free slaves.

The Homestead Act was never applied in Florida because the Bourbon Democrats that ran Florida after Reconstruction ended didn't want to give land to anybody for free.

The Homestead Act was never applied in Florida because the Bourbon Democrats that ran Florida after Reconstruction ended didn't want to give land to anybody for free.

Eisenhower and the Rockefeller Republicans were the remnants of the Progressive movement that remained within the Republican Party rather than migrate over to the Democratic Party. During the Progressive era, liberals and advocates for reform were to be found in both parties. The conservative victories within the GOP during the 1920s and the Depression caused many of the liberal Republicans to join the Democratic Party but they were still a presence in the GOP. LaGuardia was more liberal than many Democratic Party members but he was a member of the GOP during the 1920s and the Depression. The battle over Civil Rights is what caused the final demise of the moderate to liberal GOP members.

Every social issue is economic in some way and requires some economic intervention.

British and other European conservatives were able to make peace or even propose welfare state legislation because of the tradition of "noblesse oblige" amoung the European aristocracy. Your right, I think that Bismarck was mainly acting out of cyncism rather than paternalism but there was a strong paternalistic element to German politics. When Berlin was rapidly expanding during the 19th century, the Prussian government made of the most vigorous responses to the problems of urban housing for the working class out of any European government.

This tradition of paternalism never really existed in the United States. American conservatives fought against any sort of reform as socialsitic since the Gilded Age. They fought against the 8-hour day, union rights, social security, and universal healthcare.

And given it away free or very cheap.

What I'm trying to say is that the tolerance of British and European conservatives for the welfare state has deeper roots than recent history. It goes back to at least the 19th century with Bismarck's bread and butter laws and to Disraeli's One Nation Toryism/Tory Democracy. European conservatism always envisioned a more organic, communal society than American conservatism.

The first European to institute modern welfare state type laws was Otto Von Bismarck. Part of this was a misplaced hope that the German Working Class would stop voting for the Social Democratic Party and become less radical if some form of welfare state was existence. The other part was based on a belief that allowing the poor and working classes to whether the vagrancies of life without assistance is simply unrealistic and didn't reflect the more communal but hierarchical vision of society that European conservatives had.

This type of conservatism never developed in the United States. American conservatism has been fiercely against any type of welfare state and government regulation of the economy since the late 19th century. The ethos of American conservatism was always fiercely individualistic.

I agree with your overall sentiment but every economy has a lot of low-skil but very necessary heavy labor to perform and needs somebody to do it. Nearly every American citizen avoids the farm labor and other food industry jobs that most non-documented aliens do. Even the out of work factory workers avoid jobs like slaughter-house work. Even if slaughter-house work paid decent wages and provided benefits, I can't imagine that most former or would be factory workers would take those jobs. Same goes with any sort of field hand work. Other developed countries with more robust labor unions and welfare states have similar struggles finding people to work in similar jobs and resort to guess laborers who end up as long term residents.

I'm not so sure that the fact that rising stars like Rubio are working intensely on immigration reform matters that much to the Republican base, who are very opposed to it. I think that most Republican Senators and Congresspeople are going to defer to their base rather than Rubio's political ambitions.

My sentiments are in line with New Dealer's sentiments, I think that the immigration reform is going to either be filibustered in the Senate or defeated in the House. Which is immensely frustrating because amnesty for undocumented aliens is desperately needed for the sake of justice and efficiency. I work with immigrants for a living so I also have a professional interest in this.

My personal opinions of the proposals are that its the best we could expect. The provisional resident status is deeply stupid and inefficient. Undocumented aliens should be given permanent residency right away and allowed to naturalize after the normal five years. There is simply no need to make them go through a ten-year limbo out of quixotic need to inflict some sort of penalty on them for entering illegally. Its useless and the monetary penalty is enough. Its an expected shame that the right to petition for spouses is not to be extended to same sex-couples.

I'm sure it was a good source of entetainment for the entire admissions office, maybe even the entire faculty, for days.

I'm sure it was a good source of entetainment for the entire admissions office, maybe even the entire faculty, for days.

This is true of all education including home-schooling. Every type of schooling teaches a particular type of socialization. The British public schools like Eton taught their norms like the stiff upper lip. Finishing schols designed to turn out proper ladies have their norms that they impart on students. So do Evangelical home-schools or Ultra-Orthodox Yeshivas. If your defining this as thought control than all education that involves one person teaching another is thought control.