I grew up back in the days when many more people read books...there were used book stores everywhere...men sometimes carried a paperback book stuck in their back pocket...but that's not to say that everyone read a lot...but there was more reading in general...and one reason why we read more was that television was just not as good as it is today...

and reading does develop a certain sort of intelligence that is important and is very useful...I saw my own youthful reading and its good effects in the computer science classes that I passed and where 80% of the class just could not do the work...intelligence counts....when you spend your youth reading books for hours a time, year in and year out, your brain grows "smart muscles"...and that makes it easier to focus on difficult problems...

I saw a lack of that sort of intelligence when I worked for a large government agency and when people lacking in that sort of intelligence made a huge mess of designing the business processes for that agency...intelligence counts...

society at large and especially those at the top pretend that intelligence no longer matters...but they are wrong...