Lincoln Chafee has launched his Democratic presidential bid with at least one interesting proposal: he wants the US to go metric.
Speaking to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer he outlined a series of plans to make America “internationalist as a country”. He explained:
“Let’s be bold — let’s join the rest of the world and go metric… This is just one piece, as I said, of becoming internationalist as a country and getting away from that unilateralist approach, that muscular approach to the world, that I don’t think is working in our best interests.”
He added that it would be “good for our economy, bottom line”. There are huge monetary costs to switching, granted, but he explained that “the economic benefits that would come in would surpass those costs of putting up new signs and the like.”
There are, of course, plenty of other compelling reasons why a shift to the metric system would be a good idea: it’s simple, powerful, consistent — and used pretty much the world over. You might not agree with his other policies — which include “reinvigorating” the UN’s role in defeating ISIS among other things — but over metric, he’s on the button. [CNN]
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