THE ENTERPRISE—BE THANKFUL FOR WHAT WE HAVE—FIX AMERICA’s FLAWS AND BUILD ON ITS STRENGTHS.

A RAILROAD STRIKE WOULD BE DEVASTATING TO THE US ECONOMY— HOPEFULLY IT CAN BE AVERTED. 

Few people realize how dependent America is on transportation: autos, planes,  trains, and trucks. The increase in cost of diesel fuel due to mismanagement of energy in the United States, is one of the major drivers of hidden inflation. Hurricane Ian revealed what kind of a problem electric cars are when trying to evacuate from a devastating storm. 

 

“Got a little portable electricity to get me going again?” When you run out of electricity, it’s harder to bring a “gallon” of extra electricity, to get you going again.(EVs lack enough charging stations, and may spawn a new industry: portable “out of fuel” batteries to solve this. Batteries are heavy and require regular charging.) Otherwise, electric cars can be stranded, main batteries depleted, clogging the highways. Salt water flooding of cars (any kind) full of computer chips ruins them too. Plus the big lithium auto batteries can become a fire hazard. 

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RED WAVE WAS “TRUMPED” WITH WEAK CANDIDATES, AND BEATEN BY BIDEN’S PHONY TUITION REIMBURSEMENT (Known by Biden’s advisors to be soon-rejected by SCOTUS as un-Constitutional.)

What happened to the "red wave?” It was “Trumped" with his handpicked weak candidates aided by the furor over abortion. President Biden also told everyone that student loans were going to be forgiven, even though he knew that the Supreme Court was going to rule them unconstitutional. That bought about 30 million Democratic votes from young people. This is more than enough, when distributed across the states, to stop the “red wave.”

 

PRESIDENT BIDEN AT AGE 80 AT LEAST AS CONFUSED AS HE WAS AT 79.

Fortunately, Dr. Jill keeps close tabs on him so he doesn’t wander off into a crowd and start doing ad lib. interviews, which are usually. disasters.

 

DISNEY HAS TROUBLE. BOB IGER’s HAND PICKED SUCCESSOR, BOB CHAPEK DIDN’T AGREE WITH WHAT HE WAS DOING—& REVERSED COURSE ON MANY IGER IDEAS. 

Succession plans in the executive suite are very difficult and can lead to confusion and conflicting signals when the successor has a different strategic or philosophical direction than the previous CEO. That’s what seems to have happened at Disney. The result is that Iger is back, and will find the job is even more difficult than when he left it, because of Chapek’s reversals.  Disney’s animated releases recently have bombed (losing money) and more competitors entered the streaming market than Disney imagined, causing huge losses in its streaming business.

 

ELON MUSK HAS "THROWN DOWN THE GAUNTLET” TO THOSE WHO DON’T WANT TO WORK HARD TO SUCCEED AT TWITTER. THIS IS NOTHING NEW. MUSK ALSO DID IT AT SPACEX AND AT TESLA. It worked both of those places. Will it work at Twitter?There will be a mass exodus of the “snowflakes" who think work is supposed to be a party. Show up occasionally and take it easy a lot. It won’t be that way now at Twitter when Musk has invested $40+ billion of his money. Say goodbye to the people who don’t want to work.

 

"QUIET QUITTING" IS THE NEW FAD. The problem is quitters don’t win; they usually lose, and companies are better off without them. A  generation or two (X & Z?) raised by "helicopter parents,) think that the world isn’t competitive and owes them a living. It doesn’t. (They figure that out after they quit!)

 

CLOTHES MAY NOT MAKE THE MAN OR WOMAN, BUT THEY REVEAL A LOT ABOUT THE PERSON. There are only a few sure-fire clues to someone who is poorly organized, lazy or sloppy. How they dress, how they keep their vehicles, office space or home are good clues—and how they work (also sloppy). Pay attention to those and “weed them out."

 

FIGURE OUT HOW TO USE THE FLOOD OF IMMIGRANTS PRODUCTIVELY. Nobody in Washington seems to know what to do with the flood of immigrants coming across American borders. In decades gone by, immigrants were assimilated into the workforce and became a source of productive labor for generations. But it’s not happening again—not yet anyway. Nobody in charge (right now) has a clue about how to do it. Somebody needs to figure this out. Maybe if someone would show President Biden and VP Harris where the border is and what the border mess looks, like they might realize they have created a huge problem (that could have been an opportunity.)

 

PUT YOUR SMART PHONE AWAY AT SCHOOL AT THE DINNER TABLE AND WALKING IN TRAFFIC. Jaywalking used to be a ticketable violation for crossing traffice at the wrong place, or against signals. Maybe it should be again—but a new offense for walking across heavily traveled streets while looking at your cell phone; it might save lives. Confiscate the phone. Charge $50-100 fine to get it back. See what happens.

 

ARE YOU OLDER AND WISER BOTH. Older and wiser used to be a popular term. Now, it’s only accurate if the older people become wiser on how things have changed, which includes a whole lot of technology. Sometimes being older means use your experience, at others it means you resist new ideas, or fail to use new solutions. That’s not good.  Mentoring has been perceived as something that older people do with younger ones. Maybe we should turn that around and have younger people mentor older people on how to use and adapt the latest technology. 

 

TOO MUCH TECH, NOT ENOUGH TALK. Future with Alvin Toffler, using to phrases like “high-tech, high touch” to define how technology was going to require human intervention to maximize its potential?  What is happened in our tech heavy society is the human interaction has been reduced to a few words on a screen instead of the 75 to 90% of communications that are nonverbal.  It’s too easy to say wrong, hurtful or inappropriate things in a digital message, where there’s no human signal what the tone of the intended meaning was. Popular Zoom video calls lose a lot of the nonverbal communications by putting people in small video boxes on the screen. That’s a problem. A common  misuse of technology is:;”I broke up with him or her by sending a text message!” How sad that is.

 

When are the losers by states? LOSERS NEW YORK, ILLINOIS, CALIFORNIA. Population is leaving rapidly moving mostly to the South or south eastern United States. WINNERS TEXAS, FLORIDA, OHIO. Some of you are surprised that Ohio was included with the two obvious big winners, Texas, and Florida, but impact jobs and population are heading to Ohio in spite of with winter weather.  The mass migration to the south central and south east United States, at least partly due to the weather, but a great deal due to the more conservative, political climate, and right to work laws in many of those states.

 

One thing is evident a lot of people think the United States of America is a good place to live. The evidence is how many people keep flooding across our borders to come here because in spite of many problems, it is still the greatest land of opportunity on earth.

 

ON THIS WEEK, FOLLOWING THANKSGIVING, TAKE A MINUTE TO THINK ABOUT HOW THANKFUL WE SHOULD BE—FOR WHAT WE HAVE IN THIS COUNTRY—AND HOW FEW OTHER COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD HAVE WHAT THE USA HAS TO OFFER.

 

BEST, JOHN