It’s a great idea, but can we do it? Can we make it happen? We are going to boil the oceans and then provide everybody gourmet seafood dinners. Ok for those who eat seafood, but how is this going to be accomplished? Making the elements of a solution happen – executing — tends to be […]
What if you could make money by selling people securities, or equivalent, that have no inherent value, but people think will eventually be worth substantially more than they paid you for them? You can potentially make money from an endeavor that provides no value to the economy or society. You can make money off of […]
I have always enjoyed playing cards. When growing up, card games were frequent in my family and quite serious in the sense that you did not joke around. You seriously and studiously did your best to win. I play cards every day, now online. In this post, I consider how card games can help us […]
One of my recent readings has been the late Hans Rosling’s Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World — and Why Things Are Better Than You Think. (Flatiron Books, 2018). It is a fascinating read, loaded with valuable insights. Hans Rosling asked chimpanzees to answer 13 multiple-choice questions about the state of the world. […]
I recently read Javier Blas and Jack Farchy’s The World for Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources (Oxford University Press, 2021). This fascinating book reads like a novel, almost a page turner. What will the traders do next? They chronicle the history of commodity traders of oil, grain, metals, and […]
Simon Winchester’s latest book, Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World (Harper, 2021), caused me to think about humans’ roles in the overall ecosystem. Are we apex predators, meaning that we regularly eat many other species but no other species regularly eats us? The contrast that interests me is not apex versus […]
I recently finished James Suzman’s fascinating book Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots (Penguin Press, 2021). He chronicles humans’ work practices over many millennia. The meaning of work has changed dramatically over this period. Perspectives that we take for granted emerged much more recently than one might have […]
Isaac Asimov introduced three rules for robots in his 1942 short story “Runaround,” which is included in his 1950 collection I, Robot. “First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human […]
Many problems and potential fixes are being considered and debated to address the pandemic, associated economic slump, and economic and social inequities. Climate change is hovering in the wings. How do all these potential initiatives fit together? I think we can integrate all of these ideas by thinking about how they all support pursuit of […]
There are many complex contexts that involve a wide range of stakeholders with a broad array of ideas for improving the context of interest. Such contexts can range from neighborhoods to wards to cities to states and countries. I am involved in one right now with 200+ ideas; a few years ago, I played a […]
Most organizations want members of their workforce to be more collaborative, share information, and make better and faster decisions. These pursuits are often termed workforce culture transformation. For very large organizations, for example, elements of the federal government, this can be a daunting aspiration. Consider experiences with two examples of transforming work. Over the past […]
I grew up in New England in the 1960s and 70s. My whole family was Republican. We supported John Chafee, Edmund Brooke, Eliot Richardson, and Nelson Rockefeller. Social liberals and fiscal conservatives. These types of Republicans are long gone. Nixon, then Reagan, and recently Trump discovered that courting southern whites could win elections. Social liberalism […]
I recently read Robertson and Breen’s Brick by Brick: How Lego Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry (Crown Business, 2013). As my children, grandchildren, and I have been long-time Lego fans, this book was fascinating. It led me to think about innovation more broadly. But first, let’s consider the Lego […]
I have just finished reading Robin L. Fox’s The Invention of Medicine: From Homer to Hippocrates (Basic Books, 2020). I found it interesting that numerous medical treatises were attributed to Hippocrates many centuries after his death. It seems that the content of these treatises was more credible if attributed to Hippocrates. I have read of […]
The old normal involved lots of bus, metro, and uber rides to meetings with sponsors, colleagues, and friends in pursuit of new opportunities, progress on existing opportunities, and just plain socializing. Transit time was at least an hour per day and sometimes two, sitting in a bus, train, or car catching up on your email […]
I often encounter people seeking mentoring. What are they usually seeking? My sense is that they are facing one or more dilemmas. They are seeking help to make sense of and address these dilemmas. One dilemma is that they are facing an important decision about what to do next in their careers. They can see […]
What needs to change to transform our society in the ways needed to achieve new levels of equality, performance, and value creation? I have nine suggestions in two broad areas. In general, we need to move from status quo practices to best practices as shown in the table below. Function Best Practices Status Quo […]
There are several forces currently driving change in our society: Pandemic impacts that have completely upset the status quo Economic impacts of the pandemic that have left many in dire straights Disproportionate effects of economic, educational and social inequities These forces have led to an overwhelmed healthcare system, enormous unemployment, and intense frustration on the […]
Wicked problems defy formulation and resolution. They involve conflicting values, concerns, and perceptions that lead to conflicts, strong positions, and perhaps even hatred of the “others” who have opposing views. We are faced with roughly 50% of the country being in fundamental conflict with the other 50% of the country. Actually, Biden-Harris won 51.3% of […]
This book provides a great tour of philosophy, primarily German, in the early decades of the 20th century. Eilenberger, W. (2018). Time of the Magicians. Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger and the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy. New York: Penguin. Darwin’s Origin of the Species (1859), Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (1905), and Freud’s Psychoanalysis (1917) had upset […]
If you think the complexity of the current situation – pandemic, global warming, and race relations – is overwhelming, I have a suggestion for coping with the complexity. The just published issue of The Bridge (https://www.nae.edu/Bridge.aspx) provides a wonderfully broad and intriguing set of perspectives of how complexity is manifested throughout our society. We cannot […]
Facebook, Twitter, and other emergent platforms have resulted in the Balkanization of the world of information. There are large subpopulations that believe the moon landing was faked, climate change and the pandemic are hoaxes, and the presidential election was fraudulently stolen from Donald Trump. They only pay attention to information sources that support these views. […]
It is important to distinguish between understanding complex problems and solving them. Solving problems in complex adaptive systems can be quite difficult and often intractable. Climate change, global warming and their consequences provide a compelling example. The science seems clear in terms of carbon emissions and greenhouse gases that lead to global warming. The relationship […]
Stephen Covey originated this idea in his book The Speed of Trust (Free Press, 2006). Progress is limited by the extent to which key stakeholders trust in the endeavor of interest and support its pursuit. There are multiple levels of trust. At one level, we are concerned that leaders and other authorities will not mislead […]
How can we deal with all the negative things swirling around us? A natural tendency is to hunker down and avoid the bad vibrations. Just wait out the negative things until positive things are possible. Of course, if everyone does this, anything positive could be a long time coming. Michael Curry has a proposal. Curry […]
It is so very easy to get angry about the current situation in the US. Pandemic, recession, hurricanes, flooding, fires, earthquakes, protests about racial injustice, attempts to pack the Supreme Court and undermine elections are all woven together over the past six months. It is almost a perfect storm of calamities. My anger is not […]
Here is my recent reading/watching list: Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America by Kurt Anderson (Random House, 2020) The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket by Benjamin Lorr (Avery, 2020) Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About People We Don’t Know by Malcolm Gladwell (Little Brown, 2019) The Social […]
“Everything will work out in the end and, if it doesn’t, it is not the end.” This was a theme in the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012) but attributed to Paul Coelho and John Lennon much earlier. I am an inveterate optimist, but I am reconsidering my inclinations. Look how we have handled […]
Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies (Cambridge University Press, 1988) presaged Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Viking Press, 2004). Both books provide vivid explanations of how societies fail and why. Societies create mechanisms to deal with new challenges. Walls are built to thwart Mongol hoards. Regulations are created to […]
How can innovation be cultivated in the public sector? Consider defense, education, and healthcare. These three primarily public sector systems are ripe for disruption and innovation. Enormous improvements of services and decreased costs are undoubtedly achievable. The key question is how to disrupt the status quo. Let’s first consider how a direct approach might work, […]
I have just finished reading a wonderful book by Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win (Penguin Press, 2020). Konnikova is a PhD psychologist who researches decision making and risk. She decides to study this in the domain of poker. She begins as a total novice and […]
It is very difficult to foster change and innovation in complex social systems. You need to understand key stakeholders; their perceptions, concerns, and values; and how to gain their support for central elements of the changes being entertained. It can take much time and work to build a coalition capable of moving forward. Examples of […]
We have in the US over 400 years of injustice in our country. Native Americans, African-Americans, and more recent immigrants have all been abused. We have taken advantage of them for the benefits of mainstream Americans at the time. What was this mainstream? Initially it was immigrants to Massachusetts and Virginia. Over time, we added […]
Show Me the Evidence was a popular book by Ron Haskins and Greg Margolis published by Brookings in 2014. The central idea was that economic and social policy should be based on credible data rather than just opinion and advocacy. This seems reasonable, although ideology has of late disrupted these intentions. Can this idea be […]
When all the days seem the same and the patterns of daily life endlessly repeat, you can begin to feel that time is gone. The clock has stopped. Nothing progresses. Everything is now. The future, even the past, is on hold. Everything will repeat, again and again. Of course, repetition has always been true. Birth, […]
This is a very risky time. What does that mean? Risk equals the probability that something unfortunate happens times the consequences of it happening. It seems like both sides of this equation are working against us. So, what to do? First, we need to differentiate risks to you and the general public. If you have […]
Recent challenges suggest that the complexity of society in the US has become increasingly difficult to understand and manage. We seem to have great trouble agreeing on anything. Consequently, we do not act to quickly understand what is happening and competently develop and execute compelling courses of action. Let’s explore the sources of the impasse. […]
We have been awash in protests of racial inequality. Assuming we agree inequality is bad — not everyone does — what can be done to greatly diminish this inequality? Those who have suffered this discrimination are poor, unhealthy, and uneducated. How can we address these discrepancies? We could just give everybody money. This idea has […]
Academia scales down problems to make them rigorously tractable for the methods being researched. Industry scales up the methods, often sacrificing rigor, to assure results are applicable to real problems. While these may seem like mutually exclusive strategies, that need not be the case. What are needed are intermediaries who understand both sides of the […]
We expect that the pandemic will lead to a new normal that will be significantly different than the old normal. Perhaps there will be opportunities for innovations in the marketplace. What changes deserve our bets? We can assume that people will always want pasta, potatoes or rice, as well as beans, broccoli or mushrooms. But […]
Two months or one sixth of a year limited to once a week early senior mornings at the grocery store with 6-8 other older folks stocking up. Everybody is in masks. Feels like a heist. I am getting used to the routine of every day being the same as every other day. Actually, it has […]
We have recently learned that blacks have been disproportionately dying from the coronavirus. This is not because the virus is sensitive to the race of its victims. It is because blacks are much more likely to have health issues that undermine their abilities to survive the virus – asthma, diabetes, obesity, etc. A recent study, […]
Unregulated capitalism developed a strategy in the 19th century, if not earlier, of the big players putting the small players out of business, either by acquiring them or cutting prices below which the smaller players could not survive. Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, and Carnegie excelled at this, often financed by JP Morgan. Once the small, possible innovators, […]
I have lately been delving into substance abuse, suicide, and mental health in general. This past weekend, I used an AI-based platform to digest 250 journal articles on these topics. The resulting panorama of mental health is really astounding. I have earlier focused on hypertension, diabetes, heart disease and, most recently, cancer. My sense is […]
The coronavirus started when a person ate a bat or another wild animal infected by a bat – both being in the same neighborhood market where wild animals were sold. This person became “patient zero” in what has blossomed into the coronavirus pandemic. Of course, the bat cannot be faulted. The behaviors of the human […]
How can we address alternative facts? I think we should differentiate realities that can be empirically verified versus assertions about why these realities have occurred. Succinctly, we need to differentiate data and evidence from various pundits’ interpretations. I am constantly amazed at the wealth of pundits available who will comment on anything. There are thousands […]
The government has delivered on its promise, via statutes and regulations, that every building in the US be heated by coal-fired electricity by 2050. All buildings – residential, commercial, and industrial – are required to have coal-fired electrical generators within the building. Every building now has a coal bin and coal deliveries are ubiquitous. All […]
Several previous posts have focused on the realities I have encountered in Washington, DC in the three years that I have been here. Indeed, I feel like a stranger in a strange land. This arena is supposedly focused on providing the greatest value for the citizens of this country. More specifically, the goal is supposedly […]
I recently read about a passenger’s experience with American Airlines. A six-hour flight from Newark to San Francisco had evolved to a 53-hour trip. Due to several cancellations, American had suggested that the passenger buy a second ticket. He waited and eventually made it – two days later. Airlines ticket prices and fees continue to […]
Within much of engineering, and particularly, operations research, the goal is often the “best” decision that maximizes or minimizes a well-defined criterion or objective function. One can then, for example, employ mathematical programming to calculate the lowest cost routes for delivery trucks. Often one can even mathematically prove that these routes are best. Over the […]
When we last saw Uncle Donny, he was focused on making Monopoly great again, with rather mixed results. Donny and Uncle Vladmir were mainly focused on making Monopoly great for them. Neither of them is ever concerned with making things great for anybody else. Uncle Donny, it seems, lives on golf courses. The picnic was […]
George and Alice told Sam about Emily and Edward’s revelations. “Pretty impressive, actually. You taught them all about sex,” Sam remarked. “So, you aren’t concerned that they know all about you?” George asked. “Yes, I am concerned. Emily and Edward are now SoftCorp moles.” “Like Kim Philby in the early 1950s?” Alice asked. “Wow, you […]
The man reached into his suit coat pocket, pulled out a wallet, and flipped it open to show his badge. “Agent Sam Baker, FBI.” George froze. He did not know what to do. After a few seconds of just staring at Baker, he said, “How do you know me?” “We have been watching Freethinker Forum […]
George Adams was a graduate student in Public Policy at Georgetown. He relied on a cognitive assistant that he named Emily after his favorite aunt. It was sort of a fun thing to do, thinking that Emily might be of some I’ll-defined assistance. George totally underestimated the possibilities. Emily learned from everything George did. His […]
Over the past couple of decades, I have invested my energies in understanding complex enterprises in terms of the multiple levels of phenomena that underlie corporations, cities, countries, and even climate. These levels include people, processes, organizations, and society, all of which both enable and constrain each other. Ignoring any of these levels risks devising […]
In my last post, I argued that everyone is cognitively unique. Others have argued that everyone is genetically unique. Can we really tailor assistive technologies and medical care to each individual? Is it feasible? Is it affordable? Of course, there are many examples of how we tailor technology to our personal preferences. We adjust the […]
In my early 50s, I changed my research focus from engineered systems — such as airplanes, ships, and power plants — to healthcare delivery. The central question was how to make the fragmented system in the US more effective and efficient. Now in my early 70s, I have for the past couple of years been […]
We have this apparent predilection to want too much of a good thing. Painkillers have their place, but not as a way of life. Smart phones are enormously helpful, but do we really need 24×7 texts on every aspect of life? Of course, this is not new. Radio and TV talk shows have long captured […]
The reception and dinner for Board of Trustees was held at the River’s Edge an upscale venue on the Hudson River on the eastern side of the Beresford property. “Welcome to everyone – trustees and guests,” Marie opens, after having clinked a spoon of a water glass to gain attention. “Welcome to Beresford Village. Most […]
Brad, Mary, and George meet in Marie’s conference room. Marie will join them later. Pete O’Connor has been recruited to help. Pete is Director of Educational Technology at Beresford. “Pete, we have been doing some benchmarking of course offerings around the country,” George opens. “What have you found?” Pete asks. “There is sufficient high quality […]
Phil Chen, the Beresford Provost, walked into Marie’s office. They greeted each other and shook hands, and then sat across from each other at Marie’s conference table. “Phil, I want to outline a new hiring strategy and get your opinion.” “Sounds great.” “Let me provide a bit of background first.” “Ok.” Marie discussed her analysis […]
Marie and George were drawn to exploring the real nature of value in higher education. “Are we investing in the things that create the most value for students and society?” Marie questioned. “It is not just a question of where we deploy each year’s discretionary resources. It is also an issue of where we deploy […]
“Ok, what is the upside of the subsidy? I think I know, but I want your assessment, George,” Marie opens. “Faculty members publish journal articles, that get cited, and over time increase their h-index,” George responds. “An h-index of N means that you have N or more articles cited at least N times. Right?” “Yes. […]
George has been exploring how money is spent and the outcomes produced. His latest quest has been trying to understand the benefits of subsidizing faculty members so they can pursue research. When Marie and George operated at the department level, it never occurred to him to question this. However, Beresford is trying to make it […]
While George continued his sleuthing, Marie focused on building relationships across campus with faculty, staff, students, and alumni, as well as each member of the Board of Trustees. It was a lot of work, leaving her exhausted every evening as she retreated to the President’s House. She tried to stay connected professionally with her colleagues […]
Marie Cornwall had a distinguished career as an engineering faculty member and department chair at one of the top universities in the US. Her specialty was decision making under risk. She had published widely on this topic and was frequently sought for consulting engagements, as well as prestigious advisory boards. From the perspectives of her […]
A couple of ideas intersected this week. First, a piece I was reading suggested that the endeavor they were elaborating was “As difficult as baptizing a cat.” Depending on how you have related with cats in the past, this statement evokes an immediate sense of what the baptism experience would be like. I am on […]
To achieve promotion and tenure in science and engineering, you need 16-20 articles published in reputable journals. You need to accomplish this in five years, so you need 3-4 articles per year. You need to publish a significant portion of these articles with your PhD students. I will assume 10 with PhD students and 10 […]
I was at one of my favorite pubs for brunch on Sunday, Town Hall on Wisconsin Avenue. A few of us regulars, including the bartender, got talking about the new normal – Occasional Government. We tried to find some analogy to help understand what is going on and likely to happen. I suggested the following […]
When do organizations fail? It is typically when their financials go south. Their deficits are unsustainable. Cash is draining from the enterprise. Their strategies for stemming the tide are too little, too late. Why do organizations fail? What causes these financial outcomes? The story that led to these consequences almost always started playing out much […]
How should we handle the current wave of domestic terrorism? It has been suggested that armed guards at all schools and houses of worship could solve the problem. Let’s estimate what that would cost, never mind its effectiveness. There are roughly 360,000 houses of worship — 350,000 churches, 4,000 synagogues, and 3,000 mosques. 360,000 times […]
I have started and led several companies, as well as research centers at universities. Often, things get started with a serendipitous opportunity. Suddenly, you have a paying customer or a willing investor, and soon an employee or two. You begin to formalize things. People ask about your strategic plan. Winning another contract or securing another […]
If you travel through Delaware to get from New Jersey to Maryland, or vice versa, it will take 240% more time per mile and cost 600% more per mile than in other states. These are pretty good reasons to avoid Delaware. It is 20 miles from the Maryland border to the Delaware Memorial Bridge. The […]
My post “Cultures of Compliance” in September 2016 led to quite a few responses from readers. I noted then that a culture of compliance laced with administrative incompetence is particularly lethal. Many readers’ responses built on this theme. In this post, I highlight some of the stories they related. Many stories related to food, primarily […]
In my last post, I noted how Kodak, Motorola, and Xerox delayed introducing new market offerings in order to avoid cannibalizing their existing offerings – film, analog cell phones, and paper copiers. They wanted to milk their cash cows as long as possible. Now these companies are shadows of their former selves. Their cash cows […]
All enterprises face a fundamental tradeoff. Do you invest in getting better and better at the products and services you already offer? Or, do you invest in creating innovative new products and services? The obvious answer would seem to be some mix of both. However, getting the mix right is rather difficult. This difficulty is […]
I have been studying various treatises on our platform economy – how Alphabet (Google), Amazon, and Apple, as well as Facebook and perhaps Microsoft, have become so central in our economy. These companies provide platforms on which many other services are delivered. Of course, the Internet enables almost all of this. It is a platform […]
This has been quite a week for dealing with technology. It started with submitting a revised journal article using a web-based publishing platform. It was unhappy because the zip code for one of my coauthors was missing. It wanted me to add this information but I did not know the user name and password for […]
A recent issue of The Economist projected when humans will become obsolete, fully replaced by machines. Some AI researchers projected 125 years, with AI researchers being the last folks replaced. Other projections ranged from 30 years to 200. How might this happen? I assume that humans will design machines that progressively take over human jobs. […]
The first-order consequence of driverless cars, when fully deployed and successful, is that humans will no longer drive cars. That’s the whole idea. Cars will be without drivers. The many Uber rides that I take won’t change that much, except there will be no human driver. There are higher-order consequences of driverless cars being fully […]
The more I delve into substance abuse, the more my perceptions have evolved. A few years ago, Lay’s Potato Chips threw down the gauntlet in a new advertising campaign, “Bet you can’t eat just one!” I used to think that people happened, or were perhaps dared, to try some substance and were captured by the […]
I have spent much time in recent years studying the possibility of transformation, fundamental change, of healthcare and higher education. For many years, healthcare was the poster child for runaway costs. That is still an issue, but cost control has received quite a bit of attention. Higher education is now the poster child for runaway […]
Stranger in a Strange Land is a 1961 science fiction novel by American author Robert A. Heinlein. I have borrowed his title as a lead in to reporting on my experiences of moving to Washington, DC, and paying much more attention to how the US government operates, including its role in the economy and society […]
Academia has become rather frustrating. Out of control costs have been leading to spiraling students debts, exceeding the total US credit card debt. Increasingly narrow and unreasonable criteria for tenure have led to people spending endless years in servitude. The overall academic value proposition has been completely eroded for all but the administrative leadership and […]
Government agencies, private sector companies, and philanthropic foundations have billions of dollars to support your ideas, ranging from research projects to community development initiatives. How can you gain access to these resources? Millions of people are asking this question. So, there are lots of competitors and your overall chances of success are quite small. You […]
What if the US had a modern state of the art train system like other developed countries? The trip from New York to Washington would take one hour rather than three plus hours. The trip from Atlanta to Washington would take three hours rather than thirteen hours. This would be a great boon to personal […]
Delta Air Lines designed and optimized a system to pack the seats on their flights and extract maximum revenue from passengers by charging for every element of an airline trip. The process is called revenue maximization. A senior Delta executive once told me, “We try to pull feathers until just before the goose honks.” Delta’s […]
What are we trying to do by rethinking the ACA? Perhaps we are seeking an ideologically acceptable ACA, one that the Republicans get credit for rather than the Democrats. On the other hand, is insurance coverage really the ultimate goal? I don’t think so. We want a healthy and educated population that is competitive in […]
The wonders of the Internet and social media seem to have radically changed the nature of relationships. This is perhaps most apparent in personal relationships where email, texting, Facebook, Twitter, and other offerings provide constant updates on what a vast network of family and friends are doing and thinking at the moment. Many people spend […]
The October issue of Consumer Reports outlines “Secrets to Stress-Free Flying.” This 14-page article provides an interesting history of the airline industry, including the forces that drove your once loved airline to become an object of intense scorn and hatred for most passengers. Over recent years, the airlines have refined their strategy for making record […]
An industry executive that chaired an advisory board at a major research university once commented to me that academia’s unit of time is the semester. “When a faculty member says he will get back to me right away, he means by the end of the semester.” We measure performance of computers in cycles per second, […]
The August 2016 issue of Consumer Reports summarizes a much longer report from revealnews.org on student debt. Their headline is 42 million people owe $1.3 trillion. Their survey found that “45% of the people with student loan debt said that college was not worth the cost. Of those who said college wasn’t worth the money, […]
The purpose of teaching is to enable learning and, over time, mastery. Classrooms and computers – smart boards, workstations, laptops, tablets, smart phones, etc. – are enablers of learning. The most important enabler is student engagement. This can be a challenge as ubiquitous digital devices often lead to significant student multi-tasking, much of it irrelevant […]
Various pundits are projecting that by 2020 – just four years – the driving of cars and trucks will be completely automated. Vehicle services, whether for consumers or businesses, will be readily available for very reasonable prices. I will not need to own a personal vehicle and my business can dispense with its fleet of […]
In “The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789,” Joseph J. Ellis chronicles the planning, drafting, and ratification of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights in 1789. The title refers to George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison. These four men, with support from Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris and Thomas Jefferson, led […]
Just watched this movie this week, after having read many of the books published on the Great Recession, as well as having served on a National Academy study committee of what happened. During this study, I had a chance to chat with the second most senior executive at one of the major banks involved, one […]
There is growing evidence that NFL referees have been instructed to make calls – particularly pass interference calls and false start calls – to control the outcomes of NFL games. The NFL vehemently denies these accusations, but the data are very clear. The NFL knows the outcomes that will maximize television revenues as well as […]
Our operatives have uncovered the motivation and reasoning behind various presidential candidates now emphasizing what many of them are calling the “new realty.” This reality relates to their personal histories, climate change, economic prospects, and so on. All of the candidates have “repositioned” their personal stories to gain voter support. One candidate, born to immense […]
My last post addressed my frustration with a 60% taxation rate that left me wondering if my role was mainly to provide resources to be redistributed to other, undoubtedly needy, people who do not pay taxes. The 40% that I get to spend barely covers my financial commitments. So, how do I ever get ahead […]
Over the past three years, my tax rate has increased to over 60% of my income. This includes Federal and State Income Taxes, Social Security Taxes, Workmen’s Compensation, Medicare Tax, Sales Tax, and Property Taxes. This tax rate, combined with the costs of living in an area where I earn a high enough income to […]
