Providing people with a basic income is gaining ascendancy as a way to help those in need. It鈥檚 direct 鈥 just give people cash 鈥 and empowering: People can spend the money as they see fit. But it鈥檚 also controversial.
The world鈥檚 maritime nightmare is over: The Suez Canal is unplugged. The container ship that blocked the waterway for six days was refloated on Monday. People on the internet can stop suggesting weird ways to free the Ever Given, or using it as a metaphor for other immobile problems of our times.
But here鈥檚 a last comment on Suez news: You know who might have had something interesting to say about it, if he hadn鈥檛 been born 212 years ago?聽
Abraham Lincoln. Really.
Honest Abe was a riverboat man in his youth. Once he stranded a flatboat on a mill dam on the Sangamon River in Illinois. , unloading cargo and drilling a hole in the bow to let water in the boat drain out.
As he rose in law and politics he remained interested in transportation issues. In 1848, after election to Congress, he was traveling home from Washington when his boat hung on a sandbar. He watched intently as the crew pushed empty barrels and boxes under the boat, floating it off the bar.
Impressed, he thought of developing an apparatus to do this job. Eventually he and a Springfield mechanic built a model of his invention, which involved rudimentary air bags along a ship鈥檚 side, raised and lowered from mast-like poles.
Lincoln successfully patented his idea in 1849. He remains the only president with a patent. Maybe that鈥檚 what U.S. democracy needs: more chief executives who have literally thought about how to float voters鈥 boats.