Archive for October 22nd, 2010

Gut check for Obama: What if Google were Exxon ?

October 22, 2010

Obama loves to vilify Exxon-Mobil.

One theme: Exxon paid no U.S. income taxes in 2009.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Tax/ge-exxon-paid-us-income-taxes-09/story?id=10300167&page=2

Yep. Exxon uses strategies to minimize their U.S. corporate income taxes.  All completely legal — nothing that other companies don’t do — they’re just better at it and their income numbers have a lot of digits.

GE does the same — with about the same results.

Obama never bashes GE.

Why?

A cynic might say it’s because CEO Immelt has become a visible cheerleader for many of Obama’s wacky initiatives … hoping GE will get a bunch of the business from the government and green technology ventures.

Yesterday’s news frenzy re: Google using tax schemes to get their U.S. tax rate down to 2.4% presents Obama with a dilemma.

He should be publicly vilifying them … especially now that he’s out on the west coast.

After all, 2.4% is not statistically different from zero when it comes to tax rates.

And, it doesn’t smell right when companies are using tax strategies known  as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich”.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-shows-how-60-billion-u-s-revenue-lost-to-tax-loopholes.html

But, Obama has been mum on the revelations … and you can bet he’ll stay that way.

Why ?

Google is 3rd among tech giants (behind Microsoft and Cisco) in political giving.

Guess what? 75% of their political contributions go to Democrats.
http://politics.usnews.com/news/articles/2010/07/02/high-tech-industry-gives-more-money-to-democrats.html

As Gomer Pyle would say: “Suprise, suprise, suprise>” (sic)

And, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has always been an Obama favorite.

Schmidt stumped for Obama in 2008.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/20/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-e_n_136047.html

Schmidt has been on Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology since day one.
http://venturebeat.com/2009/04/27/googles-schmidt-and-microsofts-mundie-join-obama-advisory-council/

And — when Christine Romer suddenly realized that her daughter was entering high school and resigned from the Council of Economic Advisers — Schmidt was rumored to be on the short list of replacements.

Hmmm.

Google is lucky it’s not Exxon.

Bullet dodged …

Posted in Obama Administration | Leave a Comment »

What you earn is a function of what you learn …

October 22, 2010

I don’t often quote Bill Clinton (except for “depends on what the meaning of the ‘is’ is”) … but he’s on the mark with this one …

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Slate, The Great Divergence: The United States of Inequality, Sept. 8, 2010

Bill Clinton said more than once when he was president, “What you earn is a function of what you learn.”

That had always been true, but Clinton’s point was that at the close of the 20th century it was becoming more true, because computers were transforming the marketplace. A manufacturing-based economy was giving way to a knowledge-based economy that had an upper class and a lower class but not much of a middle class.

The top is occupied by a group  labeled “symbolic analysts.”

These are people who “simplify reality into abstract images that can be rearranged, juggled, or experiment with” using “mathematical algorithms, legal arguments, financial gimmicks, scientific principles, psychological insights,” and other tools seldom acquired without a college or graduate degree.

At the bottom were providers of “in-person services” like waitressing, home health care, and security.

The middle, once occupied by factory workers, stenographers, and other moderately skilled laborers, is disappearing fast.

Did computerization create the Great Divergence?

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In the 1950s, at the dawn of the computer age, people first began to worry that automation would bring about mass unemployment.

Computers represented an entirely different sort of new machine.

Previously, technology had performed physical tasks.

Computers were designed to perform cognitive tasks.

Theoretically, there was no limit to the kinds of work computers might eventually perform … “a system of almost unlimited productive capacity which requires progressively less human labor.”

The kinds of jobs computers tend to eliminate are those that require some thinking but not a lot — precisely the niche previously occupied by moderately skilled middle-class laborers.

Consider the sad tale of the bank teller. Over the last 30 years, people pretty much stopped ever stepping into the lobby of their bank; instead, they started using the automatic teller machine outside and eventually learned to manage their accounts from their personal computers or mobile phones.

Contemporary culture is so fixated on the computer revolution that the very word “technology” has become an informal synonym for “computers.”

But before computers we witnessed technological revolutions brought on by the advent of the automobile, the airplane, radio, television, the washing machine, the Xerox machine, and too many other devices to name.

Most of these earlier inventions had much the same effect as the computer—that is, they increased demand for progressively higher-skilled workers.

Full article:
http://www.slate.com/id/2266025/entry/2266508/

Posted in Economics, Education - Academics | 1 Comment »

Goya looks beyond Latinos …

October 22, 2010

TakeAway: For decades, Goya has been at home in Latino households. 

Now, it’s going after a broader, general market with a new advertising campaign, and for the first time in its 75-year history, Goya is using mobile technology in its efforts.

Goya Foods’ biggest general market effort runs counter to those of many other food companies, which are focusing their efforts on the growing Latino population in the United States.

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Excerpted from NYTimes, “Goya Aims to Expand the Neighborhood” By Tanzina Vega,September 23, 2010

 After conducting focus groups in New York and Houston in June, Goya learned that non-Latinos were looking to “spice up” their everyday meals.

 So, Goya is talking to general market consumers.

Rather than teaching the general population “to cook Latino,” the campaign encourages general market consumers to include Goya products in their everyday cooking (e.g. casseroles, salads and meatloaf) and not just for the occasional taco night.

As part of the effort, Goya worked with the Food Network’s Web site, Foodnetwork.com, and bought a one-day home page banner ad that resulted in more than 700,000 views.

The campaign will not appear on social-networking sites like Twitter and Facebook because Goya’s ad agency hasn’t seen ROI on them.

Edit by AMW

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Full Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/business/media/24adco.html?_r=2&ref=global

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Posted in Mktg - Positioning, Mktg - Segmentation | Leave a Comment »