There is a man who is an Economist, and a writer and actor and a lot of other things I'm sure. His name is Ben Stein. Years ago he played the role of a teacher in a movie called Ferris Bueller's Day Off. This brought him some fame, possibly some fortune too. He did not, however, quit his day job.
As a result, while being an Economist, as was his father, Herbert Stein, and a son of a Historian Gertrude Himmelfarb; he continued to write and publish for magazines such as the American Spectator.
He also loved to act and wrote about this in his Spectator articles, Ben Stein's Diary. In fact, I just saw him, going strong, in a Murine ad last week.
Among his writing though, he wrote a very good book called, "How To Ruin Your Life". In this book, he outlines the sure fire ways in which you can guarantee that you will fail. We probably should all read it.
Meanwhile, if kids continue their allergy to staying in school long enough to complete even a rudimentary education, they will have one of the elements that should help them fail. This is true about education almost more than ever before. Personally, I don't think the world will end before you have time to finish school, even if you have a few post secondary years to go.
Today, when our knowledge requirements are considerably less than what grade schools gave our grandparents, everyone should recognize that lifelong upgrades in education will likely be necessary in most workplaces, if only to keep up with the technological advances.
If young people keep parroting that LIFE IS TOO SHORT to persevere and delay immediate gratification for things, which traditionally took others a lifetime to accumulate through hard work, this will also help them fail.
If we are all going to die anyway, and maybe some of our family members have died of Cancer, we might remind kids who think this way, that, no one gets out of life alive. How you live however, defines who you are and how happy with that you might be.
If the large number of PRINCESSES AND PRINCELINGS decide that they DESERVE, their families financial support, long after they have been working, perhaps someone should explain where money comes from.
If they decide that only a 'royal wedding' and wildly expensive dress will do, and that only the down payment on a house is a big enough wedding present; someone should suggest it is wildly exciting if they elope, on one of the many trips their parents pay for to Europe anyway. That's a BOGO (buy one, get one free) bargain, with a plus of the kids being away at the same time.
If they also continue to develop envy and begrudge other people of what they have accomplished or earned, we are likely to see an interesting time ahead of us for our society in the next 10+ years. Nose ring anyone?
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