How to Make A Capitalist

First, provide a child with a pack of index cards, a rubberband, and a pen or pencil. On each card, suggest children write down the names of companies that make the items they use, such as toys, playground equipment, snacks. They also can make cards for the retail shops and grocery stores they visit and for companies that provide services: banks, dry cleaners, fast food restaurants, Netflix, and those that provide repairs.

According to Peter Lynch's book, BEATING THE STREET, identifying firms you know is one way to decide where to invest, where to hold stock in a company, i.e. where to become a company owner.

At home or in a classroom, once children get in the habit of checking the names of companies they and their households use, they can add more information to each card. They might add the locations of company headquarters they find noted on boxes or that they find by checking internet contact information to see if companies are domestic or foreign. They can add the names of products, especially new products, these companies produce, as well as prices and, maybe, the number of ounces in each product.They might start counting cars in parking lots to note which stores are doing better than others.

In Britain, Imperial College transferred seed money from the school's endowment to a student investment fund. Young people can begin "investing" by becoming their household's and classroom's financial advisers by monitoring stock prices on CNBC or the internet and recording stock prices over time. If prices rise, they can figure how much the initial value of an investment would have increased. And stock might be listed as the gift they want for their next birthday or other special occasion. 

How to Make the Boring Interesting

I was reading a book a friend recommended that I found very boring, when I discovered a trick to help make something interesting. Give it a purpose. When I didn't find the women characters in the book interesting, I started reading to see if the males in their lives were.

While watching the third Democratic presidential debate, I pretended I was watching to find, not only the next leader of the free world, but also the best vice president, attorney general, and Cabinet secretaries.

Beijing Meets Its Match

Continuous protests begun in Hong Kong in early June, 2019, achieved results on September 4, 2019. The government withdrew a bill that would have required those charged with domestic crimes to be transferred to mainland China for trial. Nonetheless, Hong Kong's leader, Ms. Carrie Lam, failed to resign and protests could continue.

     When China's President Xi Jinping visited Hong Kong for the first time in July, 2017, he said attempts to challenge Beijing's sovereignty, security, and power were "impermissible." On June 30, 2017, a spokesman for China's foreign ministry had said Beijing no longer considered itself bound by the 1984 Sino-British treaty that ended the UK's rule and prepared Hong Kong to become a semi-autonomous region of China for 50 years.

     Under terms of a secret provisional agreement, on August 26, 2019, atheistic China allowed the Roman Catholic Pope, Francis I, to ordain Bishop Anthony Yao Shun of Jining in China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region and Bishop Stephen Xu Hongwei of Hanzhong in Shaanxi. Previously, Beijing claimed such appointments would be considered foreign interference with China's internal affairs.