Joel E Lewis

A Rising Tide Lifts Earning and Spending

2010-07-07T17:19:36Z

CBO’s bottom line is thus simple: tax revenues will rise faster than the economy even if Congress does nothing new. Indeed, revenues may rise faster than the economy even if Congress enacts substantial tax cuts. Our long-run fiscal dilemma exists because the scheduled growth in future spending is even larger than the scheduled growth in future revenues.

via Why Taxes Are Going Up « Donald Marron [emphasis added].

The problem isn’t raising more or spending less, it’s doing enough of both and living within our means. People says deficits don’t matter, but at some inestimable point, they do. It’s systemically safer to live within our means (bring our deficit spending and debt closer to zero,) than to approach that catastrophic, unknown number somewhere north of where we are now.

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Place Your Bets: Lebron is Leaving

2010-06-28T14:15:22Z

The most talked about issue of the year, it’s been dissected more than the captured alien in Independance Day – it’s gotten to the point where you don’t want to hear more about it but can’t stand to not talk about it. I’m by no means a basketball expert, but I think I know enough to place a bet: Sorry Ohio, Lebron is gone.

Lebron might be the best basketball player in the NBA – but he and his team are definitely the best sports PR people in the world. They want to grow his name till its bigger than his game, and they carefully cultivate how he appears in public.

“LeBron is not going on a tour. He never planned to go on a tour and has not been a part of any team’s plans for a recruiting trip.” – Maverick Carter (James’s Friend/Bussiness Partner)

Why not go and get wined and dined? Why play it low key in the press? Let’s imagine how a couple different versions of this play out in the press when it’s all over.

Scenario 1: Lebron Brings Team’s to Ohio, signs with the Cavs.

After closed door meetings at his home with several NBA teams, Lebron James has decided to re-sign with the Cavs and finish the mission at home. Talking head discussion of loyalty follows, gradually replaced by discussion of what the Cavs do now to put a winning team and coach around Lebron that they haven’t already done.

Scenario 2: Lebron Get’s Wined and Dined, signs with another team.

After a whirlwind cross country tour, Lebron James has signed with [enter team name here]. cue photo/video montage of Lerbon with celebrities, mayors, expensive dinners. Talking heads discuss the end of Lerbon as champion of the common people of ohio, savior of their sports hopes, etc. etc.

Scenario 3: Lebron Get’s wined and dined, signs with the Cavs.

After a whirlwind cross country tour, Lebron James has signed with [enter team name here]. cue photo/video montage of Lerbon with celebrities, mayors, expensive dinners. Talking head discussion of loyalty follows – juxtaposed with the video of all that eletist craip, Lerbon is heralded as the first and second coming of basketball Jesus, both saving Ohio from sports mediocrity and sacrificing his sure[r] shot at championships for the sake of his people.

Scenario 4: Lebron Brings teams to Ohio, signs with another team.

After closed door meetings at his home with several NBA teams, Lebron James has decided to sign with [insert team here]. In the absence of celebrity photos and video montage, talking heads discuss how Lebron carefully considered his options, and just had to make the best decision for him and his family.

1 is the most boring. 2 is a great story, but Lebron could become the villain. 3 & 4 make for the most media attention with the most compelling (positive) stories. In 3, he cements himself as Ohio’s first son, by giving them that video montage to rub in everyone else’s faces. In 4, he has not betrayed Ohio, he has not rubbed that same montage in his biggest fans faces. He bows out of the state with grace. He is not going for the whirlwind tour, so I think he’s gone.

Maybe that’s a little too simple, but lets add a little detail on top. The Cavs organization has spent a ton of money, signed everyone Lebron wanted, and they still didn’t make it happen. They currently have no coach, no GM, and an aging roster that couldn’t get it done. His other options have been over discussed, but I think you can narrow it done. The Clippers are the second team in LA and the Nets are the Cavs with an eventual NY address (Jay-z is not a factor – James is reportedly meeting with them first, aka showing respect before he blows them off) – they are both out. The Knicks are the Bulls without the talent already on the team, but they do have NY going for them.

That leaves the Bulls and the Heat. The Bulls have talent and room for two max contracts. They have the shadow of Jordan, but that also means continuing and embellishing that championship legacy and international brand recognition. The Heat have money for Wade and Lebron + 1, or Wade and Lebron + money to go out and get depth. Miami is also much nicer place to be in the Winter than Ohio or Chicago, and has international appeal. The Bulls would have the talent and youth to contend for years, the Heat would probably only have a few years to make it happen. As for odds on a final destination, I say 55% Bulls, 35% Heat, 10% Knicks.

Here’s hoping this all is over with quick.

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Redefining Success

2010-06-04T17:42:49Z

From an article about AT&T’s new pricing policy, with a bunch of comments about moving to Verizon for their unlimited data plan:

Verizon, the largest U.S. wireless carrier, declined to comment on whether it will scrap its advertised unlimited plan, which carries extra charges if customers use more than 5 gigabytes of data a month.

via AT&T Sparks User Backlash With End to Unlimited Plans Update1 – Bloomberg.com. [Emphasis added]

Did the definition of unlimited? When did unlimited begin to mean that the limit is 5 gigabytes?

Comcast offers users who rent a cable modem from them a free wireless router – you just have to pay for shipping. Banks routinely lower the interest rate they charge on loans by re-lacing interest with fixed fees, which mathematically earns them the same profit. BP puts out charts like this. When did it become OK for companies to treat people like idiots? When did people start acting the way they are being treated?

AT&T is trying to be transparent – they have decided to stop making everyone pay for the 2% of data-hogs, and people are up in arms. Go online to AT&t’s website and look how much data you use; if it’s less than 2 gigabytes a month, you will save at least 5 dollars a month. That’s money you were paying for someone else’s internet use, that’s now back in your pocket.

It’s sad that we can’t even recognize when a company does the right thing anymore. I don’t know if I’m more upset at the shell games companies play, or my fellow consumers who keep getting sucked in by the PR spin.

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Steroids for Your Brain

2010-06-02T15:42:33Z

Absolutely amazing:

The scientists had volunteers move a cursor horizontally across a screen by pinching a device called a force transducer between thumb and index finger. The harder each subject squeezed, the faster the cursor moved. Each player was asked to move the cursor back and forth between a series of targets, trying to travel the course as quickly as possible without overshooting. The group trained 45 minutes a day for five days. By the end of training, the players were making far fewer errors.

The scientists also trained another group of people on the same game, but with a twist. They put a battery on top of the head of each subject, sending a small current through the surface of the brain toward a group of neurons in the primary motor cortex. The electric stimulation allowed people to learn the game better. By the end of five days of training, the battery-enhanced players could move the cursor faster and make fewer errors than the control group.

And the advantage was not fleeting. For three months Krakauer and Celnik had their subjects come back into the lab from time to time to show off their game-playing skills. Everyone got rusty over time, but at the end of the period, the people who had gotten the electrode boost remained superior to the others.

via The Brain: Why Athletes Are Geniuses | Memory, Emotions, & Decisions | DISCOVER Magazine. [Emphasis added].

This raises some ethical questions about sports and “brain doping” but it also would be an astounding way to increase the speed of learning new things if it works for more than just physical tasks. Now they need to start selling those ab stimulating electric belts in a headband size.

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See (Only) What You Want to See

2010-06-01T19:10:13Z

The internet has opened a torrent of information sources to us. Over the course of the week I read selected articles from several newspapers, pipe posts form about 50 different blogs on topics ranging form finance to marketing, to what my friends did last week , not to mention all the linking and Wikipedia reading that comes from all that reading. That said, this past week I’ve gotten worried that despite all the seeming diversity of sources I get news and analysis from, I”ve just built the illusion of depth, a house of mirrors where I see a thousand versions of my own interests and thoughts refelcted back at me over the web.

This past week three things happened in the world:

Israel raided a supply resulting ind deaths and controversy
Wildfires in Canada blew smoke all over the NE US, including Boston
A massive sinkhole opened up in Guatemala

I only heard about #1 through FaceBook. I guessed there was a fire from the smoke in the air, but I didn’t realize how big the wildfires were until I looked it up on a whim today. One of the blogs I read made a reference to the sinkhole in passing and I looked it up out of confusion.

These were all straightforward events, that I learned about almost accidental. I wonder how much news I miss. How many interesting thoughts I don’t stumble upon. How I’ve curated my own garden of sources, but am losing out on some of the crazy ideas out there in the untamed wilds beyond the walls I’ve built. Realistically, there is too much out there to keep up with everything, so I will have to accept that I can’t read it all; but when I don’t hear about fairly big news stories, I have to wonder if I’m building my news diet over unstable ground.

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Shooting Ourselves in the Foot

2010-05-29T19:06:21Z

Matt Taibbi has another entertaining and informative article on financial reform:

The Sanders amendment, if it survives in conference, will lead to some delicious disclosures. Almost exactly a year ago, Sanders questioned Bernanke at a Senate-budget hearing, asking him to NAME the banks that had been bailed out by the Fed. Will you tell the American people to whom you lent 2.2 trillion of their dollars? Sanders demanded. After a little hemming and hawing, a bored-looking Bernanke – Time magazine s 2009 Person of the Year, by the way – bluntly said, No. It would be counterproductive, he explained, if clients and investors learned that these poor banks were broke enough to need a public handout. Bernanke s performance that day so rankled Sanders that he wrote up his amendment specifically to bring the Fed s goblin-in-chief to heel. The new law will force Bernanke to post the identity of loan recipients on the Fed s website for all to see.

via Politics – Latest News – Wall Street s War – RollingStone.com. [Emphasis added]

This isn’t the language of someone trying to make things better, it’s the language of an internet troll looking for cheap thrills. The only problem is, as satisfying as it would be to see all those “crooks”, “goblins”, and “vampire squids” squirm, it’ll hurt us more than it hurts them; the executives responsible already have years of paychecks, vacation homes, yachts, and whatever else tickled their fancy.

Seeking vengeance doesn’t change the facts: “It would be counterproductive, [Bernanke] explained, if clients and investors learned that these poor banks were broke enough to need a public handout.” Matt is very entertaining, but also idiotic. It’s not the poor banks Bernanke’s worried about, it’s the government money he just gave them. At the time, people would have shorted those “poor companies” if they were identified as most in need of bail out. If, like Matt, we just wanted to watch the industry burn down, it would have been cheaper not to hand them our money we poured gasoline over them.

You may not like the bailout, but the fact is that it happened, and that the people running the show at the time made the very defensible judgment call that it was necessary. Let’s stop trying for juicy “reform” meant to unearth more entertaining fodder for edutainment authors, and actually focus on boring-looking, fixing things for the better reform.

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Why Europe Can’t Compete Globally

2010-05-23T21:14:11Z

Because their is no Europe! It’s popular to compare each country in Europe to states in the US, and for all the similarities, there are a host of important differences. There are a host of different languages, legal systems, and borders. Workers can’t move as freely between countries as we can between states. Even the way the Euro Zone governs itself is decades behind.

The European Union functions a lot like the US would have if the South had won the civil war: Individual countries laws trump Euro Zone policy (State supremacy), national leaders are more powerful than Eurozone delegates (governors vs federal senators), and which geographical areas get the benefits of a policy is a bigger deal than the policy itself. To contrast:

The United States has rich and poor regions, but the 50 states are forced to run balanced budgets, and there is greater mobility within the nation, based on a shared language and culture [and lack of interstate immigration laws]. Major national policies, like President Obama’s health care plan, are not judged primarily in terms of which states win and lose; in fact the largely opposed “red states” get a lot of the benefits through higher Medicaid subsidies.

via Economic View – Greece May Not Be as Rich as It Looks – NYTimes.com.

Even within some European countries there is a constant struggle over centralization of power. In Spain, regional governments control 40% of central government spending, and are always fighting each other for bigger pieces of the federal pie. Living in the US, it is easy to forget just how well defined and relatively well functioning our federal system of government works compared to almost every other similar government out there.

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“Honey, Obama’s on the Phone for You”

2010-05-14T16:56:57Z

Expect to get a call the week before the election:

A new study shows that phone calls to encourage people to vote can be made more effective by a simple strategy – that is, by asking the would-be voter to spell out what time they plan to vote, where they will be coming from prior to voting and what they will have been doing beforehand.

via BPS Research Digest: How to increase voter turnout.

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Powerpoint Doesn’t Kill People…

2010-05-12T15:00:55Z

…bad presenters do.

PowerPoint gets a lot of hate - but usually not in the NY Times. Sure, alcohol is probably the only thing abused more than power point, but just like alcohol, we keep it around for a reason.

Powerpoint lets you quickly and easily make a visual companion to a talk. It adds a lot of power to in person talks, is essential for staying on the same page during remote meetings and conference calls, and can be a useful gateway to passing around knowledge. The key is knowing when to go easy on the detail, include lots of links, write everything you know, or use only pictures.

The best way to learn what works when is to look at a lot of them. At work, PowerPoint presentations are often standalone briefings or tutorials on a topic – they need a lot of detail because no one will be talking about them. Online, you tend to find examples used along with a presentation. Check out Note & Point, a compendium of well designed powerpoint decks – you’ll notice that most of them don’t tell the whole story, but because they are designed to be talked through, that makes them good.

Don’t hate the PowerPoint, hate the presenter.

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The 2.7 Billion Dollar Question

Privacy is a Thing of the Past

2010-05-11T03:20:31Z

“Three men can keep if a secret, if two are dead” – Benjamin Franklin

Privacy has always been difficult to achieve, even during the time of our founding fathers. Now, the war is over; privacy lost.

In order to live in the modern world, you have no choice but to give up a traditional understanding of privacy. This will bring good things and bad things, but it is unavoidable. Protecting privacy is no longer possible; moving forward, we need to focus on preventing misuse and abuse of personal information.

First why is privacy meaningless? Short of living “off the grid”, you leave a trail of digital information everywhere you go, and even if you are extremely careful, you cannot help but leave breadcrumbs that lead the way to you. For example: Every time you swipe a credit or debit card, your bank knows where you are, and how much you are spending.

Your bank could use this information to analyze what zip codes you go to, determine how often you buy new clothes, and how healthy you eat (groceries vs fast food spending). That could be a little creepy, but it also helps them detect suspicious activity and contact you about fraud on your account before your credit is destroyed.

Even if you keep your information fairly private , your friends may not be as careful. Researchers at MIT have used publicly available information to accurately predict whether a male facebook user is homosexual.

The only way to have privacy is to turn away from the growing computerization of every facet of our lives; use paper money, stay off the internet as a whole, don’t go into any retail store, carry change for pay phones, and stay clear of EZ pass equipped cars and big brand cereal. Could you give up all of that? Is it possible to avoid all those things? Is the downside risk that bad?

What about benefits? We talked about fraud prevention before. Think of the tools on the internet that don’t charge a fee – Facebook for staying connected with a larger group of people than you could otherwise, Yelp for learning about local services, Hulu for free high quality entertainment, youtube for video hosting. Mint for managing your finances. All of these services use your data to provide their service to you, but they also mine and analyze your data in order to turn a proft. Nothing is free: you either pay with money or information, usually both. If you do not take advantage of modern tools (credit and debit cards included), you miss out on incredible opportunities to stay connected, save time, and focus on the important things in your life.

What do we need to watch out for moving forward?

Data ownership (the right to end a service and delete your data on file)
Information security to protect identity
Government and corporate use of information in ways we deem abusive

The last bullet is the most vague, and the most crucial. We know our information is out there, but we need to figure out what are ok ways to use our data (fraud prevention) and what are not (fast food spending leading to higher health insurance premiums?).

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