Instant everything on TV this morning revealed that in the stimulus package, $650 million is earmarked for converting boxes to make all analog TV sets in America digital. That will make every weekend sports fan have to drink four more bottles of beer before the football yard lines begin to get a little bit fuzzy. This will require more beer to be brewed, more sales and deliveries to be made and the trickle down theory becomes real – especially when it is beer trickling down the belly of a former high school third-string football player. The newly stimulated beer brewing economy will surge and all because of that little black box that changes an old coat hanger into an outer space electronic receiver.
Instead, I think some of these billions of dollars should be spent on ski equipment. Think about this trickle-down effect:
One ski company has a 300,000-square-foot research and development factory in south Seattle. It also has an almost-shut-down manufacturing facility on a nearby off-shore island. Imagine if the company could manufacture a ski that would only last for three seasons instead of the 15 or 20 seasons that they now last and retail at under $150 with bindings. Use federal bailout funds to supply every ski resort in America with 200 pair of these skis, plastic ski boots and poles and make them available for only $10 a day including the lift ticket. The only catch would be that they could only be used on the beginner’s chairlift. Everything would be color coordinated: lift towers, skis and boots. In today’s depressed economy you could easily convince some friends to take up the sport for $10 a day instead of the more than $100 a day it now costs. Round up three or four friends, split the gasoline bill and you could go ahead and ski on the big hill while they could be taught how to ski by an out-of-work wrench twirler from an assembly line that has shut down.
I have written before about this simple idea to get more people skiing, but now everyone would be doing their patriotic chore while getting their friends to learn an entirely new sport. The skis do not have to be the high-tech $800 model, but something with a lot of side cut so they turn easily and hang on to the manmade snow; like a mountain goat on an icy rock. This $650 million being spent on ski equipment could create about 200 million more winter sport enthusiasts. Instead of the new communicable virus that has just been discovered called the “obesity virus,” the newest disease would be the “sunburned gums from smiling and aching muscle virus.”
Unfortunately there is no one in the winter sports business with any clout in Washington, D.C., even though the headquarters for the SnowSports Industry of America is located right down the road from the White House. This simple idea is feasible because when I started my ski career there where only two chairlifts in Colorado. Today a crowd at a single Colorado ski resort numbers above 25,000 on Saturday or Sunday.
After a couple of days on the small chairlift, the government-supported ski program would need more ski resorts to handle the crowds. More clothes and lunch supplies would soon need to be manufactured and sold. In a short time all of these newcomers would stimulate a building boom at ski resorts, just as stretch pants did in the 1970s. There would also be a great market for updated equipment as more people flocked to the mountains and became better skiers. Places where mountains don’t even exist could be converted into ski resorts by digging holes and piling the dirt up in the summer months, thus creating even more jobs. Soon obese bodies would slim down until they fit into skin-tight stretch pants and ski clubs would once again flourish with mid-week get togethers. Jobs for YMCA ski instructors on Tuesday night would be available. They would need ski movies to show and an entire “new” industry of storytelling with film could emerge.
It is my opinion that a lot more jobs would be created if the bailout money was spent on ski equipment than for a conversion kit, so you can see everything on your old TV set in digital format, even if it is still in black and white. E-mail me one good reason why this idea would not work to stimulate the economy, at least more than a new black box sitting on top of your TV set.