What price fun?

Advance word on this year's Toy Fair, which starts Sunday in New York for some 20,000 buyers and sellers in the $22 billion industry, is that price matters. In an interview with MarketWatch, Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner said the company would be "dialing back" on some of its pricier toys in light of the recession and emphasized that most of its products retail for $20 or less. This doesn't include its Transformers line, based on kids' movies, which has roughly $500 million in annual sales.

Will one of the prominent players in today's dialing-back economy, Bernard Madoff, be on display at Toy Fair? Two months after Madoff was arrested and allegedly admitted to a decades-long Ponzi scheme that has liabilities of roughly $50 billion, HeroBuilders.com is selling the Bernie Madoff action figure, complete with a fistful of cash, for $149.95. Yes, of course there's a Rod Blogojevich figure, too. Same price.

If all this makes you want to snap your wallet shut, may I suggest Good Times Made Simple: The Lost Art of Fun and Tips for Parenting in a Consumer Culture, free booklets from the New American Dream organization. They may be the antidote for kids of all ages who are attracted to action figures of all kinds.

Welfare on the Street and in the street

Amount of taxpayer bailout money used to pay Wall Street bonuses in 2008: $18.4 billion
Federal allocation for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (welfare) in 2008: $16. billion
Number of states that cut their welfare rolls last year: 18

How those numbers are playing out, at street level:
From the Star-Ledger in Essex County, N.J. "All over New Jersey, the welfare lines are getting longer and longer. Victims of the recession are lining up to apply for food stamps and seek help paying for utilities, rent and subsidized health care in numbers that veteran social service workers have never seen before. While the lines may run the longest in urban Essex County, rural Salem County and suburban Middlesex see the same thing: lines getting longer, lines made up more and more of people that have never stood there before. The state Department of Human Services, which oversees the distribution of welfare, Medicaid and food stamps benefits, saw a dramatic spike in the demand for these programs in the fall. Food-stamp applications doubled from 2,234 people in October 2007 to 4,547 people in October 2008, according to the most recent state data available.
Inundated Essex County welfare director Bruce Nigro said county agencies have yet to feel the full impact of the lost jobs. 'They've just extended unemployment for another 13 weeks, but when unemployment runs out, I expect to get hit, probably late spring or early summer,' he said."

From the South Bend Tribune in Indiana: "A common story falls from the lips of many seeking help at the Sister Maura Brannick Center. Lost jobs, late bills and little mouths to feed have forced them to put aside their own medical treatment. But now, running out of medication or worse — such as enduring a painful infection — has finally caused them to turn to the center. Most are suffering from chronic illnesses, says Director Carla Bice, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart problems or serious dental ailments. 'A lot of people have lost their insurance,' she says. 'The problem is a lot of them are getting sicker. We see so many train wrecks.' ...The number of food stamps recipients has increased by thousands in the last year, with a total of 31,563 St. Joseph County residents receiving stamps in 2008, compared with 28,089 in 2007, according to the Indiana Family and Social Security Administration.The numbers do not include residents who apply for food stamps but are denied qualification, according to FSSA spokeswoman Lauren Auld. She says that number is not recorded."

Nationally, the number of people receiving cash assistance in 2008 remained at or near the lowest in more than 40 years, according to a recent survey by The New York Times. "Of the 12 states where joblessness grew most rapidly, eight reduced or kept constant the number of people receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the main cash welfare program for families with children. Nationally, for the 12 months ending October 2008, the rolls inched up a fraction of 1 percent."

Bargain is in the eye of the beholder

"Invest in yourself and forget about your portfolio. You shouldn’t ever be losing sleep over your investments. Learn something new. There’s more to life than fretting about a financial nightmare that never seems to end. " So says John Wasik on Bloomberg.com in a column that consitutes a good response to those people (often salespeople) who say: If you loved stocks at Dow 14,000, shouldn't you really love them at the bargain price of Dow 8,000?

Economic corruption? Call on the blogosphere

We may be too close to it to have good perspective, but 2008 was a triumphant turming point for democracy and humanity, thanks to the blogosphere. So says Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist, the Internet's classfied ad section.

Imagining that he is writing from the year 2058, in the new book "The Way We Will Be 50 Years from Today," Craig credits bloggers with restoring the American Constitution in 2008.

"People forget that a tipping point occurred that year; citizen journalists exposed so much corruption that the mainstream press followed through. That was the real beginning of continuous coverage of governance via Congresspedia. Until 2008, the victors, the guys with guns, wrote what we'd consider history. That year, the history of record became Wikipedia. What I think happened is that the mass of humanity, who are almost all moderates, got tired of the fanatics, got connected via the 'net, and started to run things."

If humanity can use the 'net to save the Constitution, can it save the economy--or build a better one? Maybe it will be an economy that values voter participation and civic engagement and clean air and water, an economy where status doesn't have much to do with stuff you buy?

Inertia is the enemy in today's job market

If you count discouraged workers—those who have given up looking for a job—about one in seven American adults are unemployed, not the one in 13 contained in the official unemployment rate of 7.6 percent, released today.

It’s easy to be discouraged in an economy that is losing upwards of half a million jobs a month. At the same time, hiring never drops to zero. What if you don’t have the luxury of waiting for a more welcoming job market? What if the only way you are going to keep body and soul together is to get to work?

That's what I asked Ed McEneny, a longtime professional employment counselor for a large, nationwide firm that shows the laid off, the underemployed, and the never-employed how to increase their chances of getting where they want to go. Here's his take on what it takes:

• Yes, getting a job is tougher today, but people are getting offers. One thing hasn’t changed, no matter what’s happening in the economy: The harder you work, the luckier you get.

• Don’t let your spouse or your mom or your former colleague tell you there are no jobs out there. "Let the market tell you whether it has a place for you," Ed says. You won’t know the answer until you’ve spent some quality time in the job-search.

• Several Web sites and books will give you the basics of job-hunt behavior—a top-notch resume vs. any old resume; using the Internet to do focused, rather than scattershot, job research; preparing for tough interview questions—as well as provide moral support and tips from others in your situation. To start, you could check out the venerable “What Color is Your Parachute?” as well as The Riley Guide and CareerJournal.

• Tell everyone you know that you’re looking for a job, and be specific about the fields you’re targeting and the skills you’re offering. You’re not asking people for a job, you’re telling them what you’re up to in case they have advice or they know someone who knows someone whose business may need a person with your skills. Such networking is the most effective form of job-hunting--better than on-line listings, career fairs, headhunters, etc. Passive job-hunting (emailing a resume to an online ad) is rarely enough. How many times have you heard: “I sent out a hundred resumes and I didn’t get even one interview!”

• Don’t limit your networking to people in your line of work. Tell everyone—your neighbor, your cousin, your book club—what you’re looking for. Remember, six degrees of separation.

• Don’t limit your networking to conversations, either. Volunteer, which will widen your contacts, keep you active in the world, and perhaps let you show off your skills or further develop a dormant set of skills. Join Toastmasters. Yes, even in the era of email and YouTube, maybe especially in the era of email and YouTube, sharpening your face-to-face communication style and your critical-thinking skills is important. They will help you get the interview, make a good impression in the interview, make you more effective in your next workplace, and widen your network.

You’ve done it all, for as long as you can, and you haven’t gotten the kind of job you're looking for? Go to the sidelines, Ed says, and get a job (or two) that pays the bills while you wait for your field to open up again or while you retool for a field with better prospects.

Whether you’re employed or not, don’t stop networking. In an era when the average adult will change jobs more than 10 times, job-hunting is not just for the unemployed. If you keep yourself out there in the relevant professional organizations, if you make it a point to stay educated and current in your field, if you maintain your connections, it will be that much easier to land on your feet, no matter what happens.

His years of advising the unemployed have sharpened Ed's definition of job security: "Your skills, plus your ability to get your next job."

This market is a wake-up call for all of us, unemployed or not.