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Re: Could Golden Gate Bridge even get built today?
Author: Roger E
Date: 01-09-2010 - 09:11
pdxrailtransit Wrote:
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> At what exact point in America's history did we
> decide to cease being a great nation?
You guys are a miopic on this one. It began right after WWII, probably in the early 50's. At that time we were truly #1 in just about everything, health care, manufacturing, heavy industry, electronics, you name it -- we did it better and we did it right. The first to go were the great steel mills, textiles, and shoes, then followed by RAILROADS, electronics, cameras, and dozens of other products. By the late 60's, we ceased to be an industrial nation and became a nation of consumers. Did anyone ever even notice that Kodak, once a big name in film and household cameras, never even started into the digital age? Ditto for Poloroid. Zenith was still making hand-wired TV sets a decade into printed circuit boards, and when was the last time you saw an RCA TV?? I remember back in the 70's it was truly hard for me Trains Magazine. Every article was bad news, from train-offs to bankrupcies. An article on Mingo Junction left me really downtrodden -- the R/W was so bad it looked like something out of Africa. The MILW was experiencing derailments of standing cars. And I think it was the MILW that even had a VP of Wrecks. It wasn't fun to be railfan back then.
No one noticed the decline in health care either, from #2 or so to into the mid-40's for every medical statistic you can think of, and they fight health care reform. I'm a PROUD American retired in Italy and want to visit my son in San Jose. I get free (and VERY good) medical care here, yet have to buy insurance to travel to to medical waistland of the US. I have only Medicare A -- the rest is a joke. Get real, and get MODERN.
There are only a few things left that America excels at today -- FREIGHT RAILROADS, the military, food production, and microchips. Pretty much everything else is almost third world, including AMTRAK. No one, absolutely no one, notices the slide ino oblivion. By Trains mags own account, for every box exported at LA-Long Beach, 3 boxes are imports. Why is that? Except for grain, we have nothing anybody wants to buy anymore! We can't even make decent cars. I'm sorry, but it's a sad story.
-------------------------------------------------------
> At what exact point in America's history did we
> decide to cease being a great nation?
You guys are a miopic on this one. It began right after WWII, probably in the early 50's. At that time we were truly #1 in just about everything, health care, manufacturing, heavy industry, electronics, you name it -- we did it better and we did it right. The first to go were the great steel mills, textiles, and shoes, then followed by RAILROADS, electronics, cameras, and dozens of other products. By the late 60's, we ceased to be an industrial nation and became a nation of consumers. Did anyone ever even notice that Kodak, once a big name in film and household cameras, never even started into the digital age? Ditto for Poloroid. Zenith was still making hand-wired TV sets a decade into printed circuit boards, and when was the last time you saw an RCA TV?? I remember back in the 70's it was truly hard for me Trains Magazine. Every article was bad news, from train-offs to bankrupcies. An article on Mingo Junction left me really downtrodden -- the R/W was so bad it looked like something out of Africa. The MILW was experiencing derailments of standing cars. And I think it was the MILW that even had a VP of Wrecks. It wasn't fun to be railfan back then.
No one noticed the decline in health care either, from #2 or so to into the mid-40's for every medical statistic you can think of, and they fight health care reform. I'm a PROUD American retired in Italy and want to visit my son in San Jose. I get free (and VERY good) medical care here, yet have to buy insurance to travel to to medical waistland of the US. I have only Medicare A -- the rest is a joke. Get real, and get MODERN.
There are only a few things left that America excels at today -- FREIGHT RAILROADS, the military, food production, and microchips. Pretty much everything else is almost third world, including AMTRAK. No one, absolutely no one, notices the slide ino oblivion. By Trains mags own account, for every box exported at LA-Long Beach, 3 boxes are imports. Why is that? Except for grain, we have nothing anybody wants to buy anymore! We can't even make decent cars. I'm sorry, but it's a sad story.
