They're Coming for Your Lawn Mower

Paul Krugman — surprise! — has joined the Left’s War on Suburbia:

Yet in one important respect booming Atlanta looks just like Detroit gone bust: both are places where the American dream seems to be dying, where the children of the poor have great difficulty climbing the economic ladder. In fact, upward social mobility — the extent to which children manage to achieve a higher socioeconomic status than their parents — is even lower in Atlanta than it is in Detroit. And it’s far lower in both cities than it is in, say, Boston or San Francisco, even though these cities have much slower growth than Atlanta.

So what’s the matter with Atlanta? A new study suggests that the city may just be too spread out, so that job opportunities are literally out of reach for people stranded in the wrong neighborhoods. Sprawl may be killing Horatio Alger.

It’s a real theme on the left. The suburbs destroy the environment, the suburbs destroy community, the suburbs destroy upward mobility…

Of course, it’s all a sham. Middle class values are easy to learn, and not that hard to practice. Graduate high school, get a job, get married, buy a house, have kids — and in that order. Of course, the Blue big cities have destroyed their schools, ObamaCare has stunted the starter job market, progressivism shuns marriage, the bubble has put homeownership out of reach, and welfare has allowed babies to make babies for generations now.

But it’s somehow all the fault of suburbia.

Riiiiiiiiight.

Fact is, the suburbs are the closest thing we have left to the farms and ranches of old, where every home is a castle.

Better to squeeze people back into the cities the Democrats ruined, where they can be more effectively controlled.