The decline and fall of the white working-class American family

From Kay S. Hymowitz's review of Charles Murray's new book on the decline of white society in America published at City Journal.

"In short," says Hymowitz, "America has become a segregated, caste society, with a born elite and an equally hereditary underclass. A libertarian, Murray believes these facts add up to an argument for limited government. The welfare state has sapped America’s civic energy in places like Fishtown, leaving a population of disengaged, untrusting slackers. It has also diminished upper-class confidence: the well-to-do dare not suggest they have a recipe for the good life. 'The underpinning of the welfare state,'  Murray writes, 'is that, at bottom, human beings are not really responsible for the things they do.' ”

It takes a lot of nerve to write stuff like this these days but I suppose someone has to.

Urban renewal schemes don't work that well outside the classroom

This is news to some. Professors, think-tank geeks, and newspaper editorial boards come up with grand schemes to revitalize declining or dead urban core cities. The local and state politicos try and carry them out (with the attendant corruption, cronyism, waste, fraud, and incompetence) and then act surprised when the whole scheme fails to deliver. We shouldn't really be all that shocked says this piece in City Journal; the record for such programs being largely wastes of effort and resources has been there all along.

The Internet will eventually kill public schools

Boy that would be nice.

Black women can't find enough decent black men to get married to

And so they don't get married at all. So says John McWhorter in this City Journal article. If they're so determined to marry black men or not at all then I suppose it serves them right. Too bad all the same though. If you choose by skin color alone then I guess you should be prepared to suffer the consequences of such a choice.

Sign of the times: California’s multi-billion-dollar bullet-train boondoggle was predictable—and predicted.

This blurb I've linked to here is about the proposed high-speed rain line between LA and SF but it could really be about anywhere in the US where the concept is being floated. I have no idea what causes the fixation the elites have with high-speed trains. They're very expensive, high-maintenance, and take forever to build. There are much cheaper alternatives that just get swept aside too. Go figure?