If you needed one more reason to hate Millenials, you can apparently blame them for the likely sale of Lakeshore Golf Course to the Oshkosh Corporation. In an interview with us at WOSH Radio yesterday, Greater Oshkosh Economic Development Corporation CEO Jason White said that Lakeshore is the only option in the city because the company needs an “impressive location to compete for today’s best and brightest talent”. Apparently, today’s young workers can’t get anything done unless their office overlooks some water–and there are green spaces to walk around in during lunch.
Thinking about White’s comments made me consider the visit I made to the Kennedy Space Center back in March. That is where the all-time best and brightest talent did the work for NASA that initially got us into space and eventually to the Moon and back. And they did it while working in a god-forsaken, mosquito-infested swamp. They worked in square, concrete buildings that had very small windows–or no windows at all–because there was a fear that Soviet spies would be able to see what was going on from the outside. Now despite these “harsh” conditions, those workers still managed to achieve things that today’s “best and brightest” don’t even attempt.
Without the Fox River, Oshkosh wouldn’t even exist. Entire industries depended on the river from its founding. But not to gaze upon while taking a break from accounting work–but rather because the river served a utilitarian purpose. It was the easiest way to get the lumber from the Northwoods to the sawmills here in town. When it became faster and cheaper to transport that wood by rail or truck, the mills no longer had to sit along the river–leaving behind their blighted properties for us–the modern taxpayers–to clean up.
But now, folks just can’t get their work done without a pretty view outside the window. Sometimes I wonder how I even get these Two Cents done every day when all I can see is Walmart.
