One of my favorite business bloggers, Miki Saxon, recently posted some interesting information as to why this is. Here is a portion of Miki’s post:

You know the old saying, ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t'; for kids it’s more like ‘damned when they do and damned when others don’t’.

Kids stand less chance of developing into strong, balanced, ethical adults now than in past decades; not just in the US, but globally—they are heading for mediocrity.

If you think I’m being overly pessimistic consider the following.

In yet another nod to the protection of fledgling self-esteem, an Ottawa children’s soccer league has introduced a rule that says any team that wins a game by more than five points will lose by default. …

“The new rule, suggested by “involved parents,” is a temporary measure that will be replaced by a pre-season skill assessment to make fair teams.”

Great lesson to teach our future leaders—don’t excel, don’t try too hard, don’t strive too much, don’t field a winning team and, whatever you do, don’t follow in the footsteps of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Magic Johnson, Dr. Jonas Salk or any of those who surpassed their peers by a wide margin.

Helicopter parents are nothing new, but their actions are getting more outlandish. And whoever said that life is fair?

Miki’s post also deals with some of the problems of our education system, so I encourage you to read her post in its entirety…you can access it here.

Does anyone agree, or do you think everything is just fine with the way we (the “Village”) are raising our younger generations…you know—the future Presidents and Prime Ministers of our nations?

Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and Twitter have yet to turn an actual profit…while 21 million individual small businesses—with no employees—contributes $1 Trillion annually to America’s Gross Domestic Product.

No special point here…just an interesting observation.

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One stark and sobering way to frame the [economic] crisis is this: if the United States government were to nationalize (in other words, steal) every penny of private wealth accumulated by America’s citizens since the nation’s founding 235 years ago, the government would remain totally bankrupt.

No bankrupt nation in history has ever defended or preserved the freedoms of its citizens. In fact, it has been the exact opposite: in desperation, bankrupt governments have routinely plundered their citizens’ wealth and imposed totalitarian controls. What will make things different for the United States, the largest debtor nation in all of recorded civilization?

Putting Fiscal Year 2009’s… $9 trillion deficit another way, 17% of America’s private wealth, accumulated over a period of 235 years, was wiped out by just one year’s worth of government deficit spending…”

Note: These statements are excerpts taken from an article by Stewart Dougherty who is a specialist in inferential analysis, the practice of identifying historic and contemporary patterns and then extrapolating their likely effects upon the future. Dougherty was educated at Tufts University (B.A., magna cum laude), and Harvard Business School (M.B.A. and an academic Fellow). You can read his article in its entirety here: http://bit.ly/8WGXBH

$1.1 Trillion! That is the annual cost to Americans for businesses to comply with mandated government business regulations, according to the Office of Advocacy of the Small Business Administration. This is more cost per household than the cost of health insurance. Think about it.

Moreover, smaller businesses bear the brunt of these government regulations and pay 45% more per employee to comply with mandated regulations, than big businesses do.

Bear in mind that these numbers are before the new regulations coming out of Congress take effect, e.g. new health care insurance. So this cost will only continue to rise.

And we wonder why small business is not hiring people, and pulling us out of the recession like it has in the past.

Of course you do know, that businesses MUST pass ALL of these costs for government regulation on to the consumers of the goods and services they provide, in order to stay in business?

Question: Isn’t this a hidden tax on every consumer, just to pay for bureaucratic bloated programs dictated by the government?

So, how are we going to handle this inevitable change in our lives? To answer that question, I thought we might take a look at Richard and Alice Matzkin—two highly acclaimed artists who recently wrote a book about getting older, titled “The Art of Aging.”

Here is a short video of Richard and Alice discussing their book and their experiences with the process of aging that were the inspiration for the book.

(email subscribers, view on my blog)

Richard and Alice have embraced the inevitable, and handled their fears by expressing them through their art. They have determined that old age is a time for living, rather than a time of fear and despair. Each of us also needs to face our fears of growing old. We need to embrace those fears, so we can diminish them through our own endeavors. Growing older is a time for celebrating life—the life we are living and have yet to live.

There is something each of us can do with the time we have left, whether it is producing great art, joining the Peace Corp, or doing anything in-between. Older people “know things”…they have wisdom…and it is a shame if society does not appreciate and take advantage of that.

One hundred Baby Boomers turn 60 every 18 minutes—how are they going to approach this phase of their lives? My suggestion is to begin with Richard and Alice’s book “The Art of Aging.”

Alice Matzkin has two paintings hanging in the permanent gallery at the Smithsonian Institution, and during the Clinton Administration, her portrait of Chelsea Clinton hung in the White House. She has achieved national recognition by the media, and has appeared on Oprah.

Richard has achieved national acclaim through numerous one-man shows. His work is also sought after for many collections throughout the United States

Today is the end of Daylight Saving Time for this year, so I thought I would share a bit of wisdom on the subject.

Sadly, it seems that Wisdom is something seriously missing in our government—on every level.