Stranded in Suburbia (NYT, Krugman Have A Message For Suburbia)

New York Times ^ | 19 May 2008 | Paul Krugman

[hinckley buzzard]

...Americans will face increasingly strong incentives to start living like Europeans — maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives.

Sounds like he's looking forward to it.

He is. But when he says "Americans" he means us, not Him and his friends. They wouldn't be caught dead living this way.

[hinckley buzzard]

Berlin is a city of trains, buses and bikes

One of my favorite parts of visiting Berlin was the flocks of Mercedes Benz taxis.

[HoosierHawk]

But when he says "Americans" he means us, not Him and his friends.

Absolutely!!!

[TruthConquers]

And the truth behind the whole thing is that what the liberals really love is the idea of a $6 a gallon tax on gasoline that they can spend and redistribute as they see fit.

THAT is why the dems stop any attempt to drill for oil.

They WANT to tax us out of our cars, and into apartment complexes.

They have been building them like crazy here in SoCal the last few years of the housing boom.

WAKE UP, America!!!

[Clemenza]

a pleasant, middle-class neighborhood consisting mainly of four- or five-story apartment buildings, with easy access to public transit and plenty of local shopping.

Sounds like Queens from 1928-1965.

[Clemenza]

No. Krug, like Clemenza, lives in the Princeton, NJ area, which is suburban, has OK transportation to NYC (if you can get one of the express trains, the locals are torture), and limited bus service that serves to ferry the hired help up from Trenton.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Apartments? As in, nobody owns their home? Doesn't sound middle class the way I know it.

"Apartment" is European for "condominium" - Krugman is being condescending. They are owned, it's just that Europe never had the fetish that Americans have for bringing the farm to town with them in the form of a lawn, so living in higher buildings was always an acceptable and even desired aspect of city living.

[okie01]

Meanwhile, "Krugman, his wife and two cats make their home in the Princeton, NJ area".

I don't believe that's a guarded reference to Newark or Camden...

[Clemenza]

As mentioned earlier, I too live in the Princeton area, and Krugman probably gets in his car to do his shopping at the strip malls on Route 1 like everyone else around here.

[okie01]

Sharing the neighborhood with a smarmy little weasel can’t be good for the property values...

[Clemenza]

Princeton is the Smugness capital of New Jersey (with Montclair running a close second), which naturally spills next door into Lawrenceville, where I live. Neighbors have had their Obama signs up for months, and there are three people in a two block radius who have "War is Not the Answer" lawn signs.

Other than that (and the property taxes and gun laws), it is a nice place to live.

[I_Like_Spam]

Krugman’s all wet. America isn’t Europe and won’t be.

The consumption of oil and gas will go down, without Americans giving up their individual homes and acreage.

I guess this gentleman has never heard of telecommuting or internet shopping or cyberschool, or the decentralization of American life. He seems to be stuck in the past where thousands worked at River Rouge or the Homestead Works or gigantic office buildings downtown.

Communal type living is clearly more appealing to leftists, makes it easier to keep government involved in people’s lives, but it ain’t coming back if it was ever totally here in the first place.