If You Read Three Books A Day

When I Was In High School In The '50s You Were Supposed To Be An Elvis Presley, A James Dean, A Marlon Brando Or A Kingston Trio Type In A Button-down Shirt Headed For The Fraternities At Stanford Or Cal.

Environmental Regulation Looked Like It Was Going To Be Under Serious Attack, And They Were Giving All Of Those Speeches About Getting Government Off People's Backs.

When Emily Dickinson's Poems Were Published In The 1890s, They Were A Best-seller; The First Book Of Her Poems Went Through Eleven Editions Of A Print Run Of About 400. So The First Print Run Out Of Boston For A First Book Of Poems Was 400 For A Country That Had Fifty Million People In It. Now A First Print Run For A First Book Is Maybe 2,000? So That's A Five-time Increase In The Expectation Of Readership. Probably The Audience Is Almost Exactly The Same Size As It Was In 1900, If You Just Took That One Example.

It's Clear That There Has To Be Some Play Between The Vitality Of Invention In Economic Life And Some Regulation Of It, And In Some Ways The Great Ideological Wars Of The 20th Century That Cost So Many Lives Had To Do With Whether To Have Managed Economies Directed By Government Or Economies Directed By The Free Movement Of Capital, Which Is Only Partially Subject To Government Regulation.

In California We Froze Property Taxes, School Size Increased, Test Scores Declined, And There Was A Massive Middle-class White Flight To Private Schools. We're Turning Into Victorian England At A Very Rapid Rate.