America: still the cool kid on the block

2012.01.04

If you’ve follow the news over the last 2 to 20 years, you’d notice the US has a few housekeeping issues. Folks can prattle on about the various ways we’re hurting, but in short, we’ve discovered a consumption based economy is prone to bubbles and isn’t sustainable without a real economy to back it up. Apparently, when we were flipping homes and making crazy money from questionable financial machinations, the money that we saw coming in from seemingly nowhere collapsed – much like the inevitable plummet of Wile E. Coyote after noticing he’d been running for some time in mid air.

OK, so we weren’t solvent. Apparently farming out every single manufacturing job in the country to mainland China has come with some cost, chiefly a $245 Billion trade defecit.

And we can’t expect the government to fix issues like these anytime soon because they’re embroiled in their own fruitless efforts to fix our national balance sheet. Kinda like everyone else, the nation has racked up some hefty credit card bills. And, you know when a family has money problems, it causes fights. Congress can’t pass anything bipartisan anymore, so it gestures and threatens and filibusters. About the only thing they were able to work together on in the past 10 years is blowing all the cash that helped drive up our debt in the first place.

So we can’t expect to leave High School and make a living on an assembly line any more. America needs to train for tomorrow’s jobs, right? Except, if you take just a passing look, you’ll notice our public Education system is up sh-t’s creek also. Any number of documentaries (see Waiting for Superman – it made me cry) will show you that we don’t produce Engineers and Architects like we used to. But, those are what tomorrow’s economy demands. If we can’t even improve on dropout rates from the nation’s high schools, we don’t stand a chance when 30 years down the road the demand for high tech employees doubles or triples.

Overall, if you look at how the US is doing versus other countries that we’ve traditionally look at condescendingly in the past, we’re not doing so hot. We put the space race on hold – no more Nasa flights to the moon, and a mission to Mars is now left to Science Fiction writers. Since we’ve shipped all the factory jobs overseas, Engineering shops are slowly following, and if you continue the trend, next to go are the corporate offices. Like it or not, we’re a take hike away from accelerating that trend.

Silver Lining

All this to say, it feels like our prospects in the US aren’t looking great for the next fifty years. So if the economy is feeling hollow with no great future, I think the one thing we can always turn to – which continues to be true through good times and bad – is that America is still the cool kid on the block.

Half of China’s wealthiest would rather live in the US. We’re an open society; Jersey Shore proves this fact. Where else in the world would something so hideous have a chance to exist? Sure, Finland has great students, but I’ll bet they all want XBoxes and iPhones. And I bet you if I played Black-Eyed Peas in Brazil, people would recognize the song from a commercial and have the same response as we do in America (shameful, mild enjoyment). You know how suburban kids either look like Justin Bieber or Jay-Z wannabes? Same goes for German kids.

You may not have great odds at equipping your family with a great education or jobs in the US, but if they make it out of college, we’ve oodles of venture capitalists to fund all of their hair-brained schemes. Part of why we mourned so much for Steve Jobs is because we treasure his sort of ballsy, driven creativity that builds American empires like Apple. America takes risks and sometimes wins big.

If we can find away to fix our balance sheets, economy, educational system, retirement system and government – or at least delay the pain and let our children deal with our mess – America’s fabric makes it an awesome place for influence to start from. We may not always find a way to profit from it, but the US is still a global center for “cool”. Hopefully its value holds up.

The value of toys

2012.01.01

As a parent that’s gone through several holidays and birthday cycles, you quickly realize most toys are junk in gift wrapping. You almost know going in to it that half of the toys you give to the average American kid are going to get about a days-worth of attention before they become toy box filler to the child. In our house, it ends up in the “Goodwill” bin.

Part of this makes sense because of how kids work; You can’t expect a child (or even teenager) to share equal attention among 5-10 toys for any length of time. The other part is that some toys are junk from the get-go. They were junk when they were designed. And if it weren’t for the box and their commercials, the toy would be a complete waste of injection-molded Chinese plastic.

God Bless you, Apple Alphabet toy.This is where I have to pay homage to the toys that got it right, and were a lasting member of our kids’ arsenal. MVP goes to the Apple Alphabet toy we got our 1 yr-old son two Christmases ago. It was the simplest toy, but it taught both the alphabet, letter sounds, and even provided animals that start with those letters, including a guessing game that asks to identify the described animal.

My son picked up all the letter sounds really quickly from the toy – I want to say he was a little over a year old. He played with this toy on road trips, on the go, alone in his room, and of course with myself and my wife as well. Best $15 we spent that Christmas.

Legos are of course the next best toy you’ll ever get a child. Our kids are finally old enough for the normal-sized bricks, so we got them a starter set, and they’ve been steadily gravitating to them all week. I was hooked on Legos for years – probably from 5 through 11. My friend and I would spend hours building competing spaceships, race cars, fortresses, and anything else we could come up with. The big thing to do back then was also trade the good pieces – joints, swivels, doors and other rare Lego goods. I just hope our kids get into them as much as I was growing up. It’s a lot of quality, creative time.

Sticking with the classics, Play-Doh has been a great past-time for the kids this year, though they have no respect for fresh doh or clean colors. If I give them green and pink, we’re likely have have a marbled clump of pink and green dough sitting out on the table when they’re done, containers left scattered open. Still, give them a plastic knife and some colored clay, and they’re hooked.

Finally, Pop-It Beads were a huge hit with my 5 year-old daughter. Recently she received these for her fifth birthday, and she spend probably spent a combined 20 hours so far just coming up with endless configurations of bracelets, jewelry, and odd knick-knacks. They’re like Legos with a twist for girls, and frankly they’re awesome. I could tell Elena right now we’re going to start building necklaces with the “pop beads” and she’ll respond with excitement almost every time.

Outside of books, that seems to be it. Everything else gets fair play, like my son’s Hot Wheels cars he carries with him wherever he goes, but the rest of the toys get passing interest. Which I’m fine with. Would definitely prefer to draw their attention to writing and reading at this age then spending hours on Mommy’s Android tablet. Don’t get me wrong, that happens, just prefer to reserve it for really crappy weather days.

Here’s hoping your toy picks work out. Odds are, they didn’t, but if they do, spread the word. Good toys are hard to find.