here we go
okay
okay Janet could you tell me what your thoughts are
well i think the idea of public uh health services is a good one i think that we all
um perhaps have a civic duty but i don't know as though it should be uh and i don't know if this uh was my interpretation was that perhaps it should be uh like a forced thing
um i think it should all be voluntary as it is now but um i do agree that i think it is a good thing because i don't know how else a lot of these um things could happen if they didn't have the volunteers to do it
yeah they uh
um the example they gave was like the Peace Corps
um-hum
uh
i'm not so sure if i i agree with that
see uh
back in Roosevelt's administration they had the CCC camps
um-hum
and i don't know about down in your area but
like up here they built bridges and they built uh uh waterways leading from reservoirs to reservoirs to get to the city
um-hum
in fact in my area it's it's kind of a rural area and it's and the waterways are still in place you know they're uh they're beautiful they're all stone walled
and
it it just leads from the reservoirs way up in the hills and it just leads down into other reservoirs some of the bridges are still standing too i mean some of them need repair now
um-hum
but because of
the recession back then or the depression whatever you want to call it
uh there was a lot of people out of work so the government brought them in i mean they they performed a a public service
uh-huh
but yet they were paid for it too
well that's true and of course there was the need there and they didn't have any other resource and and uh i guess it it served it's purpose
right
right is that what it was meant to do but as you say they were paid and i'm not all that familiar with the Peace Corps although i have friends who have family members that are in it and um
um they generally go abroad and and uh serve but they don't get a salary and they give up uh X number of years of their lives to do this
right
yeah but they must get some compensation somewhere
um
i know some people that just came back from South America and uh they they are degreed and once they got their degrees they're a married couple and they went off they got uh some they got some compensation but it wasn't a whole lot
uh was was it like a sabbatical
yeah more like a sabbatical i would imagine and uh i guess a lot of it was a learning experience for them i i imagine it takes just different kinds of people
yeah
and now they're uh back in school so maybe they're people in the beginning that just want to
be in a constant learning environment i i don't know
uh yeah like yeah
but uh
yeah i think i think we need it in this country
yes i i agree i so much so many of our things are going outside the country to benefit other nations and okay that's fine but what about here
right we're uh
you know
you know we're supposedly on the leading edge of technology which uh that can be disputed i guess by a number of other countries
um i do now that our rapid transit system uh is in terrible shape i mean most areas of the country we don't have anything
um-hum
where overseas uh they do their rail lines their their uh
their subways are in much better condition than ours
if we put
if we put a force to work in this country building
a network of rapid transit systems you know just from say outlying districts of downtown especially California where the i saw a program on uh PBS last night they're saying the average
um-hum
the average speed on the California freeways now in southern California is thirty six miles an hour and it's roughly
uh a two hour wait to get from the outskirts of downtown
um-hum
and they figure by five years the average speed is going to be eleven miles an hour
i'll be
that's that's atrocious
you know maybe we've um got a turn around here maybe in the beginning we thought it wasn't such a good idea but perhaps if we instrumented it here in the US
rather than taking all that manpower out of the US and providing a service for people to join here and do some good we could come up with some of those things
we have we have a lot of people that are in college and we have a lot of people that for one reason or another that that can't get into college either they can't afford it or or perhaps they don't have the abilities
um-hum
that's all more manpower and and one of the ways where we're we were coping with that was they were going into the military and they were getting a semblance of an education
right
now the military's laying off
um-hum
uh i think there should be mandatory that people that are not in school should at least get into some kind of a career program i mean they can help build the United States back up
that's uh that's a good thought now see i hadn't thought about it that way my first uh thought was when they mentioned that was to people who go abroad and do service abroad
and perhaps there might be as you say more of an effort here needed
yeah
and we've done
we've sent
people abroad and the people that do go abroad are are usually
um
college educated
yes that's true
they're taking the knowledge that we have and bringing it with them which is which is fine because
in the long run if we educate those people and we build up their economy they're going to want to buy products that we make
um-hum
so but i don't know if that if that is really taken place like the Philippines with the the massive corruption in there i mean a few people got it and the rest of didn't
yes
the Middle East same thing a few people got it and and the rest of them don't so in theory if you build up their economies and help these people yes it can work
but the corruption at the top i think limits that
i agree it doesn't always work that way the way it was intended and then the people change in this country too and not and are not able to see it through our administration changes also
yeah
so
yeah i'm kind of uh a dreamer i guess i still i still believe in
we could put this country back to work we could bring the steel mills back in we could we could build our own rails we could we could create all kinds of jobs
um-hum
if we just had the incentive like
um
i'm not sure who started the national
highway system you know the the freeways
um-hum
i don't know if it was if it was if it was Johnson or Kennedy or sometime before them the way they decided that yes we're going to have uh i guess we've got some of the best roads in the world
we could do that too i mean we could we could get a national program
Kennedy had a national program to land uh a man on the moon
um-hum
and we did it
so i i think if we if we put our minds to it we can do just about anything we want yeah sounds like i'm on a soapbox
i i think i'm inclined
but it's been interesting it's been an interesting soapbox
so
yeah there's i just i just remember how it used to be and it seems like that
um-hum
everything's just deteriorating you know you you can't go anywhere without waiting in line you can't um
now i thought that was just a sign of the times we're all stressed out that's what they're trying to tell us that that we now get upset because we have to wait in line or wait in traffic but in in reality there's so much more traffic and so many more lines and
really like you say something needs to be done about that too
yeah it just seems to be a waste of time
um-hum
i mean it takes it takes longer and longer to get back and forth to work
um-hum
we're adding to the pollution in the in the world whether that's creating the greenhouse effect or not whether it is or not uh it's still being debated
apparently uh if we could get like we were discussing some people involved in this country like they want to be involved in other countries maybe we could do some some real good here
you know and not take so long to do it
yeah
i think it could happen
it could the the main thing is um
like you said earlier in the conversation
if we make it a mandate and say you have to do it then we're going to create all kinds of problems
that's very true
but i don't see why we can't say that i don't see why we can't you know you contribute well
you don't go to school well spend two years doing something
or put these people that are in prison
you know
we have a welfare system that
is defeating itself because they get more money from welfare than they can working at
ordinary jobs
that's very true
so what's the incentive for them to go to work
yes exactly
the prison population right that's there's i don't know how many millions of people now are incarcerated
um-hum
which is uh which is a huge drain on society
um-hum
what do you do with those people
and supposedly we're uh reeducating them and putting them back out in the public so give them some public service
yeah but are we really doing that educating i i suppose some
i don't know i i suppose to somebody's way of thinking we are but um i know that when they do get out the majority of them aren't able to find jobs are they or get back into society because they have that stigmatism
no
that's right and as much as you say yes you know i've paid my debt to society and all that it's still there
um-hum
and they're going to be apprehensive and if you had to choose between one or the other
you know you wouldn't you just wouldn't look at those people
that's very true if you had uh uh a public health organization in the US that took and say a lot of the
