Ramblings

Children –

Okay, I’m not a parent … maybe I’d see things differently if I was (I doubt it, but many things are possible). I do understand the need to protect children in certain situations. Sometimes I think that people take it too far and it becomes harmful … particularly when parents turn to the government to not only protect their kid, but everyone’s children.

Recently I heard tell of a school system banning the game dodgeball because it was ‘dangerous’

Okay … I’ll admit that children playing dodgeball occasionally get injured. I can recall bloody noses, scraped knees and hands, and sprained ankles and wrists. Not exactly life threatening injuries to be sure … and certainly nothing I’d consider ‘dangerous’ … unless of course they’re using steel balls or shot-puts or something.

So … what’s the ‘danger’ that we’re trying to protect these kids from? I don’t have the story in front of me, and I’m just going on gut feelings here, but I’d guess that we’re protecting them from competition, rejection, humiliation, and failure. And that’s what’s dangerous….

In adult life they will have to deal with all of those things … and they need to learn to deal with them early. You can’t protect them from failure … doing so stifles learning by limiting the things that they can learn from.

Now, of course, dodgeball is not the only source of these lessons and I’m not saying that eliminating dodgeball is going to turn kids into fat little pansies that can’t cope with adult life … but the more you protect them from these aspects of growing up the more likely you are to have an adult that can’t cope with them on their own.

Then again … these types of people keep the government happy because once they can’t turn to mommy and daddy anymore they start turning to the government to take care of them … to make sure that they have health care … to make sure that they can get a job paying more than the job is worth through minimum wage laws, etc.

Economy –

I listened to a political candidate today bash their conservative opponent saying ‘what about the economy?’

Yeah? What about it? The DOW today broke the 12,000 mark for the first time ever and though it closed under the 12,000 mark it is still making records regularly. The amount of people invested in the stock markets (and thus benefiting from this bull market) is higher than ever. New home starts (a measure of economic stability and individual prosperity) are up in many areas. Retail prices are down, while average household income is up. Manufacturing indexes are up … in short the economy is looking good. Interest rates are up which isn’t so good if you’re trying to borrow money (though it’s great if you’re earning interest on money), but then again interest rates are always lowest when the economy is the worst.

Now, I’m speaking in general … it’s possible that the area in question has some economic issues that aren’t reflected in the above indexes and indicators … several areas around the country are having housing busts at the moment because builders have ‘over built’ the growth, and/or prices have inflated too quickly over the last few years and the market is regulating (meaning people that bought at the high point in the bubble are probably going to have to wait it out to get their money back out of their houses.) … these are all normal cycles in most areas and it’s unlikely that government intervention is needed or desirable in most of these cases.

The fact of the matter is that over the last several years the economy in this country has been growing and improving … but certain political candidates not only refuse to see it, but continue to try and paint the economy as failing … playing on the fact that the average voter doesn’t know enough about economics to understand what’s really going on.