I'll tell you one reason we're in a recession - it's because parents spend to much on their kids (fair warning - this is a good old days post)...

Seriously, while I'm busy with the new book, I'd love a little help around here. One thing that would be nice to scratch off the weekly 'to-do" list is cutting my lawn. I live in a "neighborhood", so I figured it would be pretty easy to find someone.

It wasn't.

I offered $20 to several neighborhood kids to cut my lawn. It can be done in less than an hour. That's more than $20 per hour, or approximately 6 times what I made at 18.

There were no takers. They preferred playing X-Box or whatnot. To the 12-15 y/o's in my neighborhood, $20 is completely meaningless to them.  

Now, on the surface, I don't fault them - heck, *I* would rather play X-Box too. But, and this is kind of the difference - when I was 12, if I wanted something (like, say a new game for the Atari), I had to buy it myself. I would have literally jumped at the chance to earn, say, $7 for cutting a lawn (have no idea what $20 today was worth in 1978 - that's a guess.)

But today, nobody is jumping. That tells me parents spend too much on their kids. So you know, I don't want to hear or read any "pain at the pump" sob stories until the kid money stops and someone actually wants to cut my lawn because the mom and dad well dried up.

THAT will tell me we're truly in a recession.