More Americans are out of work than ever before. J.C. Penney, the go-to store of my youth, filed for bankruptcy. Many temporary closed businesses will never open again. Our government showers companies with funds not backed by gold hoping that newly created money will help keep people employed. Good people, out of a job and with car and house payments due, get their groceries at food banks.
Our country is in a mess, but I’ve danced to this tune before.
Herbert Hoover was president the year I was born. My parents were homeless, living in a tent helping prune pecan trees. By the time I was 4 years old, Franklin Roosevelt was a new president trying to improve lives of Americans using New Deal tricks to feed starving people. His make-work projects built roads, brought electricity to rural areas, stabilized eroding land, developed national parks and generally improved our environment.
Roosevelt’s plan provided government jobs that get money to the people, improve our land and groom our country to become a world leader. We have a chance to once again lead the world, if we engage the American people in a common goal that will strengthen our ability to serve the planet, not just the U.S.A.
Adopting the metric system (changing pounds to kilos, yards to meters) is one obvious move that would involve people of all ages and re-establish our United States as a world leader. All countries except the U.S., Liberia and Myanmar have adopted or sanctioned the the metric system.
This move would provide employment to millions of Americans in all walks of life. It would make life easier by doing away with plug-in converters and two sets of tools. Eventually it would improve our international relations, strengthen our country and make living in a global economy easier.
In the short run, there would be resistance. Fifty years ago my family and I spent a year in Australia. They were in the process of switching from the British system to the metric system. Between 1970 and 1988, imperial units were withdrawn from general legal use and replaced with SI Metric units. Most of the road signs and price tags in retail stores were, for several years, in both British and metric units.
When we first arrived, political leaders and scientists I worked with thought adopting the metric system was the right thing to do. Australia would benefit from it. The bushmen and most laborers were strongly against the move. A year later, most people had accepted the fact that adopting the metric system was a good move.
Seven years later we spent another year in Australia. Most Australians were extremely proud of improvements the switch to the metric system had brought them. More than once I had colleagues who had studied in the U.S. suggest that unless we Yanks joined the rest of the world our role as world leader was questionable.
An American switch to the metric system has been considered, but not seriously, for several decades. The time has come. Millions of Americans are out of work. Thousands of companies are failing. Taxpayer money is going to companies rather than people. Our leaders seem to understand that changes are needed, but they have not been able to come up with something that would benefit every person in the long run.
Changing to the metric system can do it. In the short run there will be some objection to giving up the greenback or changing a football field from yards to meters. But funding a change now can help people and companies become world leaders again. It could change our schools and our companies. It will affect every American, and will benefit every state.
Adopting the metric system is a move we should have made years ago. If we are to lead the world we should all measure things the same way. A move to the metric system would benefit Americans and help keep us a world leader. Instead of giving money to businesses and corporations we need government programs similar to Roosevelt’s that will help every American.
Joining the rest of the world in the way we measure things is a good start.
Thad Box
Thad Box is professor emeritus in the Quinney College of Natural Resources at Utah State University, serving as dean of the college from 1970 to 1990.