Stuck in the 20th Century
A while ago I wrote this post about how the United States is falling behind even developing countries like China and India in building high-speed rail. Today the New York Times carries a story about an agreement the Chinese government has signed with the State of California and General Electric to build a high speed rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
Some 150 years ago, U. S. railroads imported thousands of chinese laborers to help build the railroads across America’s west, including the first transcontinental railroad. These railroads were built with American technology and Chinese labor.
Now the position is reversed. China will be providing the technology and the engineering; we’ll be providing the labor. It’s a sad state of affairs.
Some real leadership from the Federal Government would kickstart the construction of a high-speed rail network in this country. With high-speed rail, we’d reduce our petroleum demand by moving a lot of travel from airplanes to more efficient rail. We’d create lots of jobs and there would be enough domestic demand to support home-grown technology.
Want to see this happen? Write your congressman…Democrat, Republican, Green, Whig, Tory…they should all support this.
“Now the position is reversed. China will be providing the technology and the engineering; we’ll be providing the labor. It’s a sad state of affairs.”
why is that sad? do you think the Chinese were sad when they had to go into dirty old shit mines carrying barrels of dynamite only to be blown up while they were still inside? no, they were probably happy to be mostly free and to have opportunities. they took advantage of what they had and were probably thankful to have anything at all. clearly the Americans did not and that’s why the situation is reversed. It’s unfortunate that people in this country might actually have to work for things but the chinks and nearly every other country has done it for centuries so it’s not as bad as it seems.