Mainly at the Zoo

We had a glorious weekend, Friday I finally managed to get out of the office at a sensible time and we took the kids to the park (earlier in the week I'd been leaving after midnight 3 days straight but we hit our deadline :-) The colours are all changing now and by the end of next week I expect there wil hardly be a green leaf in sight.



On Saturday we went to the Minnesota Zoo, a high risk strategy as it has twice been the site of child behaviour meltdown and appaling weather. This time however the clouds stayed away as did any tantrums and we had a fantastic day at an excellent zoo where the animals don't appear to be too cooped up. Met one of the consultants who has been doing some work with our teams and a really nice guy there with his kids, seen here with Dan. He was apologising for the 'American President Idol' competition going on at the moment masquerading as an election and asking what people in the UK think of it all. I have to say that for me it has been going on so long that I think it comes down to who you are less sick of by the time it comes to vote. It really has very little to do with who is the best politician, instead being who is the better on TV (which may be sole requirement of the president who knows).

While I'm digressing from the diary format of the blog it is probably worth noting that ever since we were coming here things have been collapsing, starting with the bridge which collapsed the day before we came and now the economy is collapsing. It really does feel like this is the beginning of the end of the American Empire not necessarily just because of the credit crunch but that is one of the reasons. From an outside perspective America requires huge resources to run and pretty much everything is very inefficient, such as:
Cars - diesel is extremely rare, so although petrol is much cheaper the cars are much less efficient so the over journey costs are still high. Because the automotive companies in the middle of the last century pretty much forced the closure of the public transport systems, there is now no alternative to the car, so if fuel costs continue to rise the average person takes a huge hit that they may not be able to afford.
Houses - Houses are usually timber framed and require regualar maintenance, people will often completely gut a house that is just 10 years old and replace everything and older houses are often just torn down and rebuilt. Without a constant stream of money to do this I can imagine swathes of the US becoming run-down very quickly.
Healthcare - The US has some of the best healthcare in the world, the standard of care where we are is fantastic. The only problem is that the system of payment for this is so convoluted and inefficient that it costs about twice as much as it does in other countries.
Litigation - US consumers are obsessed with suing, and US companies are obsessed with trying not to be sued. Everything at a corporate level has so much red tape to try to keep from being sued that I don't see how they can compete with companies from coutries that are less rigidly regulated.
Sales Tax - This is so complex that you probably think I was joking if I tried to explain some of the compexities, each state makes up its own tax rules too which further complicates things and not only that but each district and city can have different tax rates or rules. Again this adds a huge overhead to every business.
Personal Tax - Whereas in the UK people are encouraged to pay off their mortgage (esp since MIRAS was abolished) in the US people are encouraged to have a mortgage because they get really good tax relief on it. This obviously was designed to fuel public spending but increases personal debt which has helped lead to the current crisis.
National Debt - 14 trillion and rising - this is the elephant in the room of the US economy, the problem is so big that people just ignore it hoping it will go away.

These are just some examples that I can immediately think of; and I think because of the huge natural resources that America has for a long time they could get away with being massively inefficient, now that is no longer the case I don't know how well they will be able to adapt and what the impact will be on the rest of the world if the last superpower goes pop. I'm also not sure on what this will mean for politics and economics - a cynic might say that with the dumbing down of politics and the way that the medium of TV personality is the deciding factor for election - is Democracy really the best way of deciding who runs the country or will we see the evolution of a new political system better suited to our time. Also will free market economics be dealt a blow from which it does not recover, and what comes afterwards if so?

While we ponder the fate of the US, here are some pictures of our time at the zoo, the bears were my favourite.



Camels
Prizes for guessing what animal this is.

Grizzly bears play fighting - really impressive.

After the zoo we picked Teresa up from the airport, she is staying for a week. On Sunday we went into Uptown to Lake Harriet, these pictures are from the rose garden opposite the lake.