Mr. Hodgson. Umair is a provocateur — not a statistician, so I don’t waste my time on his numbers. I made a mistake in posting that example. Of course, we cannot afford a trauma center within reach of every inch of land in the country. I also agree that medical science has come a very long way. Neuroscience, organ transplants, dental implants, laser eye surgery, vaccines, pharmaceuticals, prosthetics, etc. are unbelievably advanced.
Nonetheless, our lives today look just about the same as they did 100 years ago. Sure, we have more people, bigger houses, new styles, taller buildings, and cool electronic and medical devices, but not much else has really changed. What held us back?
Perhaps, it is the designer in me; the visual type who can see what does not exist and sees too clearly what does exist. Simply put, the condition of American communities is no match for our achievements. They are as ugly as they are dysfunctional. For example, in rush hour traffic a horse and buggy is faster than a car.
- Austin, Texas (6 mph)
- Cincinnati, Ohio (9 mph)
- Los Angeles (8 mph)
- New York City (8 mph)
- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (8 mph)
What good is progress, when a $50,000. gas guzzling car can only go 8 mph? Quite literally, I’d get to work faster if I rode my horse. What could be wrong?
Right now, so many ships are parked in the ocean, it looks like a parking lot. Other countries are getting their goods to ports and loading them onto ships, but America can’t unload them and get them to stores and factories? What is wrong?
Over in China, electric trains travel 300–400 mph and connect all 23 provinces. Here in America, trains are still using diesel fuel and reach 150 mph, but our average train is still chugging along at 20 mph. 300 mph versus 20 mph. Hmm, what could be wrong?
Here in Kentucky, it rains year-round. We don’t even have sprinklers in our lush, green grass covered cemeteries. But America is still growing a whopping 40% of our table food in the desert. What the heck is wrong?
According to the Brookings Institute, nearly 24 million people — a little over 15% of the American workforce — are involved in military, public, and national service at the local, state and federal levels. Instead of fueling our economy, these people depend on workers to support them. I buy a roll of toilet paper and part of my sales tax pays the salaries, benefits and pensions of local government employees. There aren’t enough of them paying sales tax to support themselves, so WalMart clerks and fast food workers have to make up the difference. What is wrong here?
I could go on, but I’ll stop. To put it bluntly, the problem is our systems. Designed in the 1800s and 1900s America’s systems are decrepit and so dysfunctional, they make us dysfunctional people.
We need 21st century healthcare, education, legal, justice, policing, economic, housing, food, water, land-use and civic systems. Until then, we will remain, stuck in the past watching other countries zoom ahead.
