| Never retire |
[Feb. 9th, 2012|03:01 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  optimistic | ] |
| [ | music |
| | If the River Can Bend - Elton John | ] |
I have said this for some time, but it is sinking in harder now in the beginning of this still new year. Our generation will likely never afford to retire. So it's crucial that we pick careers that we enjoy and from which we derive not only money but meaning.
And maybe that isn't what you do today, but tomorrow is a new day. What will you do tomorrow? |
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| LJ fun to resume |
[Mar. 10th, 2011|09:58 am] |
It occurs to me that I have not posted nearly enough in the past six months, nor read friends' LJs.
A quick status update on FB is all I can muster these days. |
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| Quote of the Day |
[Sep. 14th, 2010|11:48 am] |
From Thomas Friedman:
"We had a values breakdown -- a national epidemic of get-rich-quickism and something-for-nothingism. Wall Street may have been dealing the dope, but our lawmakers encouraged it. And far too many of us were happy to buy the dot-com and subprime crack for quick prosperity highs."
We're No. 1(1)!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/opinion/12friedman.html
I agree. Most of our human problems can be traced not to evil on the part of bad actors, but just laziness generally. Apathy kills. |
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| Earned or unearned income |
[Jul. 28th, 2010|11:57 pm] |
Hmm...
Oracle's Ellison: Pay King
Leads WSJ List of Top-Paid CEOs of the Decade; Diller, Irani, Jobs Rank High
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703724104575379680484726298.html
I have long held the belief that billionaires whose riches come from products, systems, or companies they created, deserve every penny.
Professional managers who climb the ranks but ultimately take the reigns and run something someone else created, or even grow it significantly, may deserve to be paid handsomely, but it's usually several orders of magnitude less than the founders. Perhaps a few million dollars a year is appropriate for large responsibilities and for most of them, working 80 hours and creating a lot of value for shareholders.
But seriously, does someone like Larry Ellison, who already owned a huge chunk of Oracle, need to be paid 1.84 BILLION dollars over 10 years. Would he quit if he got a pay cut? Given he owns about a quarter of the company, taking such a high salary almost seems like self-dealing.
Then again in financial planning isn't the old saw, "Pay yourself first"? |
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| Government Accountability, not Govt Journalism!!! |
[Jul. 14th, 2010|12:13 pm] |
This is just absurd on its face:
Journalism Needs Government Help
Media budgets have been decimated as the Internet facilitates a communications revolution. More public funding for news-gathering is the answer.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704629804575324782605510168.html
The piece is by former Dartmouth provost Lee Bollinger, currently president of Columbia University.
Curiously, he raises a couple of the objections most folks might have, but these objections are so strong he never comes close to overcoming them:
"To many it seems inconsistent with our strong commitment, embodied in the First Amendment, to having a free press capable of speaking truth to power and to all of us. This press is a kind of public trust, a fourth branch of government. Can it be trusted when the state helps pay for it?"
It can't be trusted now, let alone if government were bankrolling. Duh.
Just because there are a couple decent public broadcasting outfits does not mean the government needs to subsidize the whole journalism industry.
If there are not enough correspondents in China, that's an issue for Mr Bollinger's sector, academia, to handle. They can open think tanks and policy centers there to study it better and report back. Why should the government underwrite the cost?
To boil down his argument, it's something like this:
--There is too much competition with the internet and news agencies cannot make the outsize profits they once did. Their business model is in danger, and news gathering is a dying industry since the common people would rather read celebrity trash than learn about international affairs.
--The FCC and the FTC are studying the issue, and one solution is for the federal government to spend money to do the news gathering.
--This is at odds with the traditional American separation of the press and the government. But there are plenty of examples of governmental spending with high quality results that are not compromised.
--Then he cites various state-supported news agencies, many hosted by undemocratic governments.
Nice try, but
1) China's Xinhua is exactly the sort of thing we should NOT be doing for our people. Nor Al Jazeera.
2) VOA and other agencies were expressly propaganda machines to further the American perspective in other corners of the world.
3) He never actually makes the case why GOVERNMENT should pay for it in an era of such scarce resources and dire finances. Where has this guy been hiding for the past few years? And please, just how is news gathering a core function of the government? Is it a shared infrastructure that no one person could build for him/herself (like roads or the internet)?
No, the news is simply not a business the government should be in. Sorry, Mr Bollinger, but you have to make a stronger case than that. |
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| What not to do |
[Jul. 1st, 2010|11:15 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | shocked | ] |
I got an email from MoveOn.org a little while ago.
The headline reads,
"BP is burning endangered sea turtles alive"
Apparently in attempts to control the damage of the Deepwater Horizon's oil spill and resulting plumes and slick, "BP is using "controlled burns" to contain the oil spill, and any turtles that are not removed from the area before the fire is lit are literally burned alive."
What is next? Mutilation of puppies? This whole thing defines public relations disaster! (And environmental, and engineering, and management, and political disaster.) |
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| Cut the crap |
[Jun. 21st, 2010|05:47 pm] |
Ten days ago the NY Times's David Brooks had an interesting piece on fiscal prudence and debt reduction, with a final call to targeted fiscal actions... A pretty moderate stance loaded with cliches like "spend wisely." it's funny but I've never heard a politician say, "let's just burn these tax dollars and party like it's 1999. They'll just make more!"
The conclusions I draw are the same as usual - probably reflective of my biased worldview:
1) Govts should strive for tax (and systemic) simplicity.
2) High earner rates should rise to pay for large capital projects.
3) Bottom earner rates should raise to make sure everyone is paying SOMETHING.
4) Cut entitlements and program spending at all levels and reduce subsidies. See number 1.
Op-Ed Columnist - Prune and Grow - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/opinion/11brooks.html
There's an oppourtunity here to "right-size" the government. Ignore the deficit for a minute if you can and always ask, "does this make sense?"
The focus on fiscal austerity directed toward the deficit suggests a return to the 1937 double dip recession, where a freakout about the deficit drove FDR to pull way back on Federal spending, which was a lot less then than now. What we need now is justification for every dollar, a search for the highest and best use of limited resources, like we do when we are running a business for cash.
Sent from my iPhone |
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