The Urban/Rural Divide

David Leonhardt follows up on this Tom Vilsack interview:

And Edward Glaeser, the Harvard economist and Economix contributor, writing in The Financial Times:

Some 18 percent of America’s output comes from its three largest metropolitan areas…
Too many tax policies also discriminate against cities. In the U.S., for example, home mortgage interest deduction bribes people to borrow as much as possible to bet on the gyrations of the housing market. Yet subsidized home ownership also discriminates against renting – which discourages high-density living and slows the supply of new rented housing for rich and poor alike. Tax codes that penalize productive urban regions, and encourage quiet lives in less productive areas, do little for growth.

The entire Vilsack interview — which is unusually blunt for a Q. & A. with a politician — is worth reading.

Again, there are a number of issues which should be addressed about the difference in perceptions between urban and rural dwellers.  I'll have to get to it later.