January 23, 2026
We were winging our way across the Pacific to Auckland on a Boeing 787-9. Flying at 520 mph at an altitude of 38,000 feet. I still find the fact that you can cross the globe like that and in 16 hours fly from Texas to New Zealand. Whatever the plane, it’s a miracle.
I’ve never really lost my appreciation for things like that. I think it is the result of living long enough to be able to think back on what things were like when I was a child, to see the progress made. One runs the risk of geriatric reminiscing, wherein you see the past through gossamer and rose-colored glasses. But for me it is a decidedly mixed bag, nostalgia musing.
Nonetheless, I find that younger people do not have the same appreciation, just as when I was a kid, I’m sure I didn’t for the years preceding my own generation.
In part, this fuels the kind of restless unhappiness many people have. I think it goes well beyond wealthy envy. More like expectations are continually raised. But in that, failure should be put within the context of the simple fact that the bar is so much higher today, that what might be thought of as unacceptable would have been considered a miracle in years past.
Some examples.
Someone decided that the way to sell more kids shoes was to X-ray the kid’s feet whenever they came in for shoes.
For context, I was born in 1949 so let’s call that a 1950’s thing. I don’t know when that hideous practice finally stopped, but I can clearly remember sliding my feet into the slots and seeing my foot bones inside the shoes I was trying on, illuminated by a small screen facing upward. In those ignorant Eisenhower years, State of the Art was misnomered…they should have called it State of the Supremely Stupid. But it is true. No clue as to what the fallout has been from that.
Cars of course did not have seat belts. It was felt that a sharp metal steering wheel could effectively stop you from flying through the front window, but just in case, the front window was the back-up. This was a holdover from racing wherein it was believed that your chances of surviving a crash at LeMans were greater being thrown from the car than being caught in it…gasoline tanks inevitably exploded.
Cancer was effectively a death sentence. Today, many/most cancers are either cured or turn into long-term management issues. To be sure, cancer is lethal but does not hold the automatic sense of finality we felt back in the day.
Perhaps pancreatic is the most common exception but even there, progress is being made.
Sudden heart attack was much more common than today.
Pollution was rampant…everything pretty much got dumped into the water…a lake, a river, a stream…anything that would carry it away, out of sight.
Ground water saturated with chemicals created the terrible infections at places like Love Canal:
Between 1942 and 1953, Hooker Chemical Company (later Occidental Chemical Corporation) dumped approximately 21,800 tons of toxic chemical waste into an abandoned canal. The waste included dangerous substances like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxin, and pesticides. The site was then covered with soil and sold to the Niagara Falls Board of Education in 1953, after which homes and an elementary school were built directly on top of it.
There was no permanent press, everything had to be ironed. Bumpers routinely rusted off cars, and polio victims spent their lives in iron lungs.
Life expectancy when I was in Kindergarten was 70 years, today it is 80 years and 90 is no longer remarkable.
Everyone smoked cigarettes and they were advertised in some cases as good for you.
Now some of these things, like ironing a shirt, are minor inconveniences. Others as in health care, life and death. I am reminded that the health care the average person today gets is infinitely better than the King or Queen of England had at any time up to as recently as 10 years ago. And the health care you get at Urgent Care (which is where some people get their care) is infinitely better than anything in the past as well.
I developed a film of scar tissue on the retina of my left eye a few years ago. A surgeon went in and microscopically peeled off the scar tissue and restored my sight. In the past, I would simply have gone blind.
I think we do well to remember these things. I know I get cranky when, for example, the plane arrives late. But at moments like that, I should remember that I’m blessed to live in a time when they fly a plane thousands of miles to get me there, even later.
To the extent expectations are raised, there is a point where it flips over into entitlement and in my view, that’s an increasingly problem. More and more conversation and airtime about what the government ought to be providing. People now expect a lot in their lives.
This has raised new issues such as a Universal Basic Income. Everyone who doesn’t earn their money gets a stipend. At first blush, we all recoil from that. But increasingly it seems to me that technology and most especially now Artificial Intelligence is creating a new kind of need.
In the past, safety nets (welfare, whatever you want to call them) were considered something that went to people who should have been working but were just lazy or whatever. You get it.
But now, what do we do with a highly educated person who is willing to work but who cannot find a job? The kid who keeps his or her nose clean, works hard, lives a healthy life, goes to college, gets the degree in computer science or whatever…and then can’t find a job.
We can’t label them deadbeats. So, there is no convenient “out” for you and me. Does society then demand they take whatever work they can get? Or does society provide a safety net, with the new twist…you get a check even if you are not disabled or in some other way unable to work.
This is an issue not going to go away. If anything, it will become front and center. Perhaps the election in New York City is an early warning bell?
The problem, of course, is that there is nothing good about it. We already reel from budget deficits everywhere we look (which will be the haunting issue within the next five years). Even California, wealthy California, is now printing red ink. We all know why, but the real question is…what will be done about it? And more, what can be done about it?
I don’t really despair about all of this. The country always seems to find a way to muddle through to a better place. But I do confess the headwinds are stronger now and the wind seems to gust from time to time as a reminder.
We used to X-ray children’s feet to sell them shoes. We’ve made a lot of progress since then, but with progress has come complications we could not have foreseen in years past.
Until they shouldered their way into our lives.
Thoughts, questions, or reflections? I’d love to hear them. You can reach me anytime at anthony@workingprofit.com
