Update on "What a difference 100 years makes"

An update of my take on a posting to CEN-TAPEDE my friend David Ingram's tax news letter - with my comments added:

It is almost the end of 2008

The Year is 1906 -- one hundred years ago.
Here are some of the CANADIAN statistics for the Year 1906:

The average life expectancy in Canada was 47 years.
Today we live longer but time goes by faster
2008: where have the past 2 (58) years gone?

Only 14 percent of the homes in Canada had a bathtub.
Today, only 14% of homes have at least one clean bathtub - the rest have 2 showers and a tub that has the kids' soccer uniforms soaking in it
2008: The kids have left home - so the tub downstairs hasn't been used in a couple of years - I'm afraid to visit it.

Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
Today 100% of homes have a phone somewhere - usually tucked down between the cushions of the couch or
in with the dirty socks in the laundry
2008: Many homes have no phone - but everyone who lives there, including the cat and dog, have a cell phone. Every one needs a different charger and all the chargers are plugged in all the time, heating the house.

A three-minute call from Montreal to Toronto cost eleven dollars.
Today your phone line from the computer was re-routed via Minsk and your bill for surfing the web
is $11,000
2008: your computer is no longer connected to the phone line - your computer IS your phone, and some kid with a bluetooth box just set your calling to route via Minsk again.

There were only 8,000 cars in the U.S. and Canada, and only 144 miles of paved roads.
That gives an average of 95' of road per car - today in rush hour the average is down to 35' per car
2008: Your car is now a "two-four" - shorter than my Honda Goldwing - the road-per-car ratio has not gotten any better but you feel like you have more room around you. You lost your car in a standard parking space last week.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
Today the average speed in rush hour in Vancouver is 9 mph
2008: rush hour is no longer 2 hours like you remember it, it now lasts from 5:30AM to 8:30PM - and the speed is still 9 mph

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!
According to Wikipedia the CN tower in Toronto is the tallest free standing structure but there are 28 other categories to
confuse kids with today
2008: Dubai has gotten taller - and the question has gotten muddier. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_tallest_structures

The average wage in Canada was 22 cents per hour.
The average take-home pay today seems like it is about the same. Note that income tax was installed as a "Temporary Measure" in 1917 to finance the First Wold War. I guess the war is still on.
2008: Afghanistan, need I say more?

The average Canadian worker made between $200 and $400 per year.
The average Canadian worker in 2003 took home something close to $30,000 after tax but I note
that a category "No earner" in all kinds of families took home between $15,000 and $23,000 that year too.
2008: seems we're heading back to the $200-$400/year - can anyone spell "melt-down"?

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2,000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
In 2000, an Accountant averaged $52,000 http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/general/postsec/openingdoors/occupations/finanacc.html#b
According to http://www.ada.org/ada/prod/survey/faq.asp a dentist was $175,000 in 2002
And http://www.faqfarm.com/Q/What's_the_average_salary_of_a_veterinarian_in_Canada says a vet earned between $37,000 and $49,000 in their first two years of practice.
The engineer got $70,500 in 2000

So... David - it is a good thing you didn't persue being a vet :)

2008: I think David sometimes wishes he'd become a vet

More than 95 percent of all births in Canada took place at home.
Only 1% of births took place at home last year and
Less than 50% of pregnancies were caused at home (ok, I make that one up :)
2008: fiction presages reality

Ninety percent of all Canadian doctors had no college education.
Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as "substandard."
Today we don't have enough doctors because the government controls the schools (and immigration,) and has not put enough into them to keep up with demand.
2008: still not enough doctors/nurses - and we're being accused of stealing them from third-world countries - even if we only use them as cab drivers.

Sugar cost four cents a pound.
Today in the USA there is a 150% tariff on sugar (in Canada it is 8%) but the real kicker is that the raw price is only around $0.12/lb (US) in 2005 before tariff. Aspartame had not been invented. Today Aspartame accounts for something in excess of 25% of soft drink sweetener.
2008: we're starting to turn sugar-producing plants into methanol - price of sugar can only go up

Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
The farmer today gets less than $0.17/dozen for their eggs. The rest is eaten up by the distribution channel.
See http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:yV15hiCY5JwJ:statistics.defra.gov.uk/esg/reports/eggreport.pdf+economics+of+egg+production&hl=en
where in one case the net margin for a (2003) bird that laid 279 eggs/year was (Brittish pounds)1.16 on a gross of just over 0.16/dozen
2008:

Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
And a cup of coffee was $0.05
Today it is somewhere between $5 and $30/lb as beans, and the farmers still don't earn enough to live
http://www.natcath.com/NCR_Online/archives/020703/020703a.htm

You'll love the article at http://www.cockeyed.com/inside/coffee/coffee.html where they found that this gives about 25
16oz cups at between $1.50 and $3.00 each or $37.50-$87.50 per pound and more than double that if you go for Starbucks
because they get 8 cups of coffee from each cup of beans instead of the normal 10/1 that the instructions on the Folgers label made.

Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo (but not yogurt).
Who knows what they put into that stuff? http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/4266/shampoo.html - at least I can
pronounce "eggs" and "borax"

Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.
Now we take doctors, nurses, and other professionals and make them drive taxi because the bureaucracy ignores their training.

Five leading causes of death were:

1. Pneumonia and influenza
2006 - Cancer

2. Tuberculosis
2006 - Heart disease

3. Diarrhoea
2006 - "Cerebrovascular diseases" (Stroke)

4. Heart disease
2006 - "Chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases and allied conditions" (Heart disease)

5. Stroke
2006 - "Unintentional injuries" (accident)
We're not changing the diseases much it seems - just giving them longer names :)

The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30!!!
Now it is somewhere near 1/2 million (478434 in 2000)

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea had not been invented yet.
The transporter beam, universal pantograph and time machine have not been invented yet

There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.
There was no greeting card industry. Today it is a $5 Billion + business.

Two out of every 10 Canadian adults could not read or write.
in 1996, 50% of Canadian Aboriginals could not work well with words or numbers. In 1906 they were not counted.

Only 6 percent of all Canadians had graduated from high school.
http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/050202/d050202b.htm says something between 46% and 81% of students graduated depending on what part of Canada (Northwest Territories was lowest) but universities continue to complain that these graduates don't have the literacy skills necessary to enter their institutions.

Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. Back then pharmacist said, "Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health."
Television treats sex and nudity as "forbidden" subjects but allows almost unlimited portrayal of violence and death - same with computer games.

Eighteen percent of households in Canada had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.
Today, most domestics are doctors and nurses from overseas who can't get a posting to our overtaxed health care system.

And (says David), I forwarded this from someone else without typing it myself, and sent it to you in a matter of seconds!
And I found the rebuttals to the points in a matter of minutes without getting up from my chair except to get some more coffee.

What a difference a century makes!
and it just seems like yesterday that I had to stoke coal into my computer to get it to do anything useful. Now I use them as heaters in my house because, as a home-office businessman it makes my heat tax deductible. The problem is that as time goes by, they are getting more efficient and I'll have to go back to real heaters soon. Oh for the days of tubes again :)

Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years!
My home office has a set of book shelves with my research literature taking up better than 80% - They are the works of Asimov, Heinlein, Clark, Gibson (Spider) Robinson, and other visionaries. It is truly amazing how many of their visions have come to pass, either finding their way into our daily lives or on the threshold of doing so. These include robotic housekeepers (Heinlein - The door into summer), The World Wide Web/Cyberspace (Willian Gibson - Neuromancer), self-aware computers (Heinlein - various and Asimov - various), and nano-technology ( could not find the "first" one but there are lots of writers who have used it)
I'm trying to imagine - and so are others. It's getting more difficult because the pace of change is speeding up and fiction is becoming fact.

I guess we'll just have to live long enough to find out eh? :)