The Difference Between 1953 and 2020

Currently I am reading a 1200 page book on Richard Nixon who was the only president to be forced to resign because he was soon going to be impeached over the infamous Watergate scandal. It is an exhaustive biography written by Conrad Black who is the newspaper mogul who spent some time in an American jail after being convicted of fraud.

He owned a lot of newspapers at one time so putting his time to good use he wrote this book while he spent the time in jail. It is a great book that really is a great history lesson to anyone who is interested in 20th century history of which I am.

Anyway let me get to the point of this post quickly. While Nixon was serving as vice-president under Dwight D. Eisenhower who was inaugurated as the 34th president in January of 1953 the United States began to rebuild after a brutal World War 2 with a massive road construction plan that would make car travel easy to go from one state to the next and from coast to coast. America and it's love affair with the car was rising. Cars became more reliable to drive over longer distances. The advent of the drive-in theatre and remember those A & W car drive-ins when you would park the car and yell in the speaker beside with your order and a girl on roller skates would deliver the meal to you? Yabba Dabba Doo!! Flintstones remember?

Then motels opened up so now you can check in at the office and they told you which unit was yours and you would drive right up to it and park in that parking space reserved for you the occupant. No elevators, no hassle, just unload the suitcases and there was your room right there. Maybe located right on the beach or beside the local attraction you were going to. Yes those were fun days and Eisenhower knew that the American public would love it and spend their money in the country. Then of course relatively speaking taking into account salaries were a lot lower then but so was the gas. Those were different days and the economy grew leaps and bounds making America a huge economic power. That was the automobile industry. Eisenhower spent a lot of money but it worked and not a cent was wasted.

Move forward to 2020 right now. We have a debt that equals that or more than our debt was after the Second World War here in Canada. Not much better in the US but will leave them out of this because I want to talk about Canada in particular.

Our premier Ford of Ontario announced a 2.6 Billion Dollar investment in roads and infrastructure. He wants to widen our already huge super highways.

Now Doug Ford means well but he is living in the 1950's. Not once did I hear anything about green technology. The electric cars once he was elected the rebate for buying one was terminated. He has given no incentive for home owners, who seem to have an endless amount of credit, to make any effort to make their houses clean energy efficient. No talk of solar panels, wind energy, or any other useful clean energy that could  save the homeowner in the long run lots of money on energy bills as well as help clean the environment.

Instead it is the same old same old. If the premiers and the Prime Minister haven't noticed by now the office towers in Toronto because of the pandemic are going to remain empty. People who have now been working at home for the past 4 months have adapted nicely. So what do you think is going to happen. Companies will just continue along this path and save on rent, parking , commute ( oh yeah that is what the highways were for), insurance, sick pay if someone catches the virus and oh yes no one will be able to spread it to others if they are working from home either.

People will no longer have to work in the city because it is close to work anymore. So there will be an exodus to the suburbs and beyond. So why concentrate on widening the highways? If people are encouraged to work from home then why live where the housing is astronomical? All people will need is WiFi. Then of course working from home they will probably be able to claim expenses like phone and internet to name a few.

Meetings will be done over Zoom now. No masks needed.

We have an opportunity to shape the future but as long as we have old thinking we will find ourselves like we were before the pandemic. A resource based country who relies on oil. That's it. In 5- 10 years from now we will look back and say we made a paradigm shift that put us ahead of others or we will be languishing far behind still trying to build pipelines that have been in the works for years to sell oil to others who will not even need it anymore because their technology and innovation kept up with the new green world. All you have to do is look at the countries who already are moving ahead.

What about encouraging people by making a bicycle lane network throughout the city like Amsterdam so people can feel safe riding their bikes. You can put people to work at that just as easy as the endless widening of the highways which all they do while in construction is make traffic even more unbearable and pollution even greater as their engines are sitting in idle.

I think this is our one chance. Our youth want the world to be a cleaner place. If you keep thinking old you will keep the old and lose the young.

Look at the trends. It is right in front of us. Think out of the box. The year is 2020 not 1953. The drive in A & Ws  are long gone.

Someone has to wake up before it is too late!