Posts
How to kill e-mail (before it kills you)
E-mail has become a pandemic disease. Here's the cure.
Mike Elgan
April 11, 2009 (Computerworld) The average executive spends two hours a day on e-mail. That adds up to roughly one day per week.
We probably waste a lot of time every day on phone calls and meetings, too. The difference is that the demands on your time don't grow automatically as they do with e-mail.
E-mail has become a pandemic social disease. The more you get, the more you send. And the more you send, the more you get.
And I'm not just talking about e-mail viruses. The longer you use it, the more of it comes at you. The quantity of e-mail you get grows and never stops growing.
In the 1990s, e-mail was all good. At first, you had to be on the same office system or consumer service to exchange e-mail. But then the Internet made it possible to send messages from AOL to CompuServe, and from CompuServe to MCI. E-mail was wonderful. You could search it. You could send attachments and links.
Slowly, gradually, e-mail became something else. Every communications medium has its own costs and benefits. But with e-mail, the costs grow over time as the benefits shrink.
What's wrong with e-mail? In a nutshell, the medium is perfectly designed for information overload. Both message size and quantity are essentially unlimited. Unfortunately, electronic communication is like a gas: It expands to fill its container.
It's way too easy to copy everyone and "Reply All." It's also easy for companies to automate the sending of e-mail. There are almost no barriers to an unlimited number of people sending you an unlimited quantity of random stuff. But your time and attention are truly limited.
Because e-mails tend to be so many and so long, it's not friendly for reading on a cell phone. So, as we become more mobile, e-mail becomes less compatible with how we live and work.
E-mail has always suffered from another flaw: It facilitates miscommunication. When you're typing out words, you're thinking one thing, but the receiver can perceive your intent as something else. You're being funny. They perceive hostile. The reason is that humans are designed to communicate with words, facial expressions, body language and hand gestures all together. When you send only cold, black-and-white words, the other person can easily read into your message inaccurate intent or emotional content.
The experience of using e-mail has become like walking through a bad, big-city neighborhood at night. This person wants to rip you off; that person wants to offer you drugs or some shady sexual service; yet another is trying to infect you with a virus. You're literally dealing with organized crime syndicates every single day. Who needs that?
Everything -- from the most important business communication to love notes from your spouse to software that will damage your computer to bank fraud -- is all dumped into the same in-box in random order. In order to find an important message from your boss, you have to wade through raw sewage.
Meanwhile, the most precious resource you have is your own attention. At the very least, e-mail is a massive, constant distraction. And because you really do live in an attention economy, all that objectionable e-mail you get every day is taking money away from you and your company.
While the signal-to-noise ratio of e-mail has declined, other forms of communication have emerged and improved. Now we have free video messaging, chat, social-network messaging and Twitter.
Those are nice, but that e-mail just keeps coming.
It's time for you to reboot your entire communication strategy and start over. The goal is to transition to better forms of communication, and stop using e-mail altogether -- at least stop using it the way you have been doing. Here's how:
1. Set up a Twitter account. You can use your account as a way for people you don't know to contact you.
2. Set up a "public" e-mail account as a data repository. Use an online e-mail service. I prefer Gmail because it has better spam filtering and better search than other services.
Use the public address for whenever you set up an account with any service and it requires an e-mail address, and give it out as your one e-mail address. In most cases, you can just use your existing e-mail account for this.
Set up an autoreply message informing e-mail senders that you do not check this e-mail. If they would like to contact you, they should call you on the phone, message you on Facebook or send you a direct message on Twitter. But here's the trick: Give them only your Twitter name, not your phone number or Facebook profile address. (People you know should already have your phone number or Facebook profile. If they don't, they can ask on Twitter.)
(If you want to explain what you're doing, just link to this article in your autoreply and let me explain it for you.)
The purpose of all this is to set up a barrier or a filter. If people want your attention, they'll have to earn it. Only real, motivated people will be able to contact you, not automated message servers, not Nigerian scammers. When they do, they're forced by the system to keep it short. If you don't want to hear from them again, you can block them on Twitter with one click.
If you have to send long-winded e-mails for whatever reason, you can use this public account to do so. If others have to send long-winded e-mails to you, they can use this address, too. But they'll have to inform you on Twitter, and you can decide whether it's worth the trouble.
Whenever you need to access the stuff that flows into this e-mail address, you use Gmail's search feature to find it. It works just like Google itself.
3. Set up a "secret" e-mail account for content. This second account is for content, namely e-mail newsletters. Use whatever service you want for this. Move all your subscriptions to this account. Now, whenever you want to read your newsletters, you can do so without spam or all the other clutter and junk that normally accompany e-mail.
4. Set up a Facebook account. I recommend doing all messaging with people you actually know well (friends, family and co-workers) on Facebook because people need your permission in advance to send you messages.
5. Set up a Skype account and get a webcam. When you get in the habit of using Skype video calls instead of certain types of e-mail, you'll skip all the needless miscommunication that happens with e-mail. Let's say you need to discuss a personnel issue with a subordinate working in another city, or discuss a personal matter with a relative. Do yourself a favor and do videoconferencing. It will be faster, and you'll communicate without misunderstandings.
The idea here is to take all that stuff you're getting via e-mail and separate it into an appropriate place. Each type of communication is directed into a vastly more effective process based on who's sending it.
Random information is autofiled into a searchable system in case you need it. Newsletter content is all put in one place so you can read it with concentration. Strangers are forced to contact you on Twitter in a short message. Friends, family and co-workers that you approve send you messages on Facebook. And video Skype is for any conversation prone to miscommunication.
Once you've set this up, you've eliminated e-mail from your life, and with it, the spam, scams, junk, long-winded messages and other massively time-wasting garbage. Meanwhile, you're forcing anyone who wants to consume your most precious of resources -- your time and attention -- to get permission in advance and keep it short. And it's all mobile-friendly, too.
If killing e-mail is proscribed by company policy, you'll have to modify these instructions. A typical scenario is that an employee is required to give the corporate e-mail address to business contacts and to reply to e-mail on the company system. But you can still redirect all Web site sign-up traffic, e-mail newsletters and other stuff to the "public" and "private" Gmail accounts. You can urge colleagues or contacts to call you, or use chat. In other words, you can minimize, rather than kill, your company e-mail. And, of course, you can kill your personal e-mail.
E-mail is a disease. By taking strong action to cure yourself, you'll radically reduce the quantity of messaging in your life, while improving its quality.
Source: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9131438&source=rss_news
Sunday, April 12, 2009
A Layman's Explanation of the Current Financial Crisis
Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Berlin. In order to increase sales, she decides to allow her loyal customers - most of whom are unemployed alcoholics - to drink now but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).
Word gets around and as a result increasing numbers of customers flood Into Heidi's bar.
Taking advantage of her customers' freedom from immediate payment constraints, Heidi increases her prices for wine and beer, the most-consumed beverages. Her sales volume increases massively.
A young and dynamic customer service consultant at the local bank Recognizes these customer debts as valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit.
He sees no reason for undue concern since he has the debts of the alcoholics as collateral.
At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert bankers transform these customer assets into DRINKBONDS, ALKBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then traded on markets worldwide. No one really understands what these abbreviations mean and how the securities are guaranteed.
Nevertheless, as their prices continuously climb, the securities become top-selling items.
One day, although the prices are still climbing, a risk manager (subsequently of course fired due his negativity) of the bank decides that slowly the time has come to demand payment of the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar.
However they cannot pay back the debts.
Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations and claims bankruptcy.
DRINKBOND and ALKBOND drop in price by 95 %. PUKEBOND performs better, stabilizing in price after dropping by 80 %.
The suppliers of Heidi's bar, having granted her generous payment due dates and having invested in the securities are faced with a new situation.
Her wine supplier claims bankruptcy, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor.
The bank is saved by the Government following dramatic round-the-clock consultations by leaders from the governing political parties.
The funds required for this purpose are obtained by a tax levied against the non-drinkers.
Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Berlin. In order to increase sales, she decides to allow her loyal customers - most of whom are unemployed alcoholics - to drink now but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).
Word gets around and as a result increasing numbers of customers flood Into Heidi's bar.
Taking advantage of her customers' freedom from immediate payment constraints, Heidi increases her prices for wine and beer, the most-consumed beverages. Her sales volume increases massively.
A young and dynamic customer service consultant at the local bank Recognizes these customer debts as valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit.
He sees no reason for undue concern since he has the debts of the alcoholics as collateral.
At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert bankers transform these customer assets into DRINKBONDS, ALKBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then traded on markets worldwide. No one really understands what these abbreviations mean and how the securities are guaranteed.
Nevertheless, as their prices continuously climb, the securities become top-selling items.
One day, although the prices are still climbing, a risk manager (subsequently of course fired due his negativity) of the bank decides that slowly the time has come to demand payment of the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar.
However they cannot pay back the debts.
Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations and claims bankruptcy.
DRINKBOND and ALKBOND drop in price by 95 %. PUKEBOND performs better, stabilizing in price after dropping by 80 %.
The suppliers of Heidi's bar, having granted her generous payment due dates and having invested in the securities are faced with a new situation.
Her wine supplier claims bankruptcy, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor.
The bank is saved by the Government following dramatic round-the-clock consultations by leaders from the governing political parties.
The funds required for this purpose are obtained by a tax levied against the non-drinkers.
51st State? American trends challenge British ways
LONDON – Anyone searching for a sepia-tinted rugby photo, antique cuff links or a precious piece of art deco jewelry at the Antiquarius Center had better come fast.
Blink and it will be gone. The dozens of diverse, very British shops on the chic King's Road in Chelsea face eviction to make way for Anthropologie, an American-based chain planning an American fashion emporium, much like the stores it operates in St. Louis and Miami Beach.
"There used to be three antique centers in Chelsea, soon there will be none," said Sue Norman, who has sold hand-painted 19th-Century china here since 1972. "I think it's very sad. It seems the younger generation much prefers American-style things to English style."
The pending loss of the Antiquarius Center is part of the wider, inexorable Americanization of Britain, where rich veins of eccentricity are being snipped as American customs catch on.
Remember the dapper English gentleman? Shoes polished and dressed to the nines? He's often found in blue jeans, an open shirt, and sneakers these days.
And those bad English teeth, neglected for years? Tooth-whitening is catching on, a l'americaine. There has been a surge of cosmetic surgeries as more women — and teenagers — embrace the Hollywood ideal and have their breasts enhanced and wrinkles Botoxed. Pillbox psychiatry is catching on too, with record numbers gobbling antidepressants, and Britons are turning to fast food at such an alarming pace that obesity among young people is reaching epidemic proportions.
A Prozac-popping, surgically enhanced nation of overweight slobs? Sometimes it seems dear olde England could almost be the 51st state.
The cultural mood is changing along with the physical landscape. Harried British physicians are more likely than ever to prescribe antidepressants, in part because the waiting list for individual psychological therapy under the government-run National Health Service is so long. The mental health charity MIND reports that roughly 34 million prescriptions were written in Britain in 2007, more than a 20 percent increase over the 27 million prescribed just two years earlier.
Alison Cobb, senior policy director at MIND, said publicity from America is an important reason why growing numbers of British doctors turn to antidepressants as a first resort.
"Part of it is the literature and endorsement message we were getting from the USA," she said. "In terms of the profile, and the brand recognition, with Prozac in particular, there was an American influence in that."
Another factor is the public's increasing desire to seek treatment for depression rather than endure it with typical British stoicism. The days of the "stiff upper lip" seem numbered.
Attitudes toward cosmetic surgery have also evolved. The nonprofit British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons reports the number of operations has more than tripled since 2003, with breast augmentation increasing by 30 percent in the last year alone.
And British men are turning to the scalpel. There were only 22 male breast reductions in 2003, but that figure rose to 323 last year as more men sought a sculpted look.
Much-maligned British dentistry is changing too.
It's long been a national stereotype that many Brits have awful teeth made worse by years of neglect. There's a tendency to postpone trips to the dentist until there is a real emergency, but in recent years the use of cosmetic dental techniques pioneered in America has increased.
Dr. Jonathan Portner, a spokesman for the British Dental Association, said there is still a push to inform many Britons about the need for regular appointments and the harm caused by a sugary diet, but at the same time there has been a new zest for the use of implants, veneers, advanced orthodontics, and tooth-whitening. The goal for many, he said, is a Tom Cruise-style Hollywood smile.
Some of his adult patients did not have orthodontic work when they were young — it was not common in Britain several decades ago — and are having the work done now.
"Things have changed," said Portner. "There is a lot more elective dentistry now. People are more concerned about the appearance of their smile and the color of their teeth and the impact it has on their social life and careers and general confidence. I'm finding my male patients are more vain than the women."
The British are also eating more American fast food. The fast food chain KFC, for one, already has more than 700 chicken restaurants here, with plans to add another 200 to 300 in the next five years. Sales are up 14 percent so far this year despite the economic gloom.
Health officials in Britain blame the popularity of American-style fast food for a startling rise in childhood obesity. One of three British schoolchildren is either overweight or obese by the time they enter high school, said Tam Fry, spokesman for the National Obesity Forum.
"It is basically your U.S. fast food, which is mass processed, available everywhere, and probably comes out of some factory in Illinois," he said. "It is breaking all the rules in terms of fat, sugar and salt."
The trend toward Americanization is not new: In 1925, Time Magazine reported that dollar-rich American financiers had invaded London, infusing the postwar British capital with "American engineering and American habits and customs." But it's picked up pace in the last decade, said Mark Glancy, a history professor at the University of London who has written about the impact of Hollywood films on the British psyche.
"It's much more Americanized now, because it's so much more affluent," he said. "People's purchasing power has gone up so dramatically in the last 10 or 15 years that they've become very caught up in the American consumer lifestyle."
He said the British infatuation with Hollywood movies — dating back to the silent film era — has shaped the public's view of glamour and style and given Britons a taste for American rebels who challenge authority.
"There are different values at work in American films," he said. "Authority in British films is respected, not challenged — partly because of British film censorship — and American films tend to challenge authority and make heroes out of ordinary people."
Today it is American urban music — primarily rap — that is setting the style agenda for British youth, Glancy said.
"The low-cut baggy jeans, the gold chains, the rap style, really extends to a huge swath of British people under 20," he said. "It's a defiance of middle class values."
It's hard to tell how far the Americanization will go, and whether it's only skin deep, essentially a fashion statement.
After all, church attendance is still very low in Britain compared to the United States, and U.S. sports have not caught on — nothing can dent Britain's passion for soccer, rugby and cricket. Tea remains very popular despite the proliferation of U.S.-style coffee bars.
But in general the move toward American ways is clear, and not just in London but also in the towns and cities of the bucolic British countryside.
Michael Harling, an American who moved to the town of Horsham in West Sussex 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of London, said small, quirky British shops have gradually been replaced by chain stores and burger shops, including many of American origin.
Most upsetting, he said, is the loss of all but one of the town's tea shops.
"It's becoming like America in that you have the same McDonald's and the same stores in every town," said Harling, author of "Postcards from across The Pond."
"It's hard to stop this American invasion because people like fast food and cheap stuff, but it's very sad. If I had wanted that, I would have stayed in America."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090411/ap_on_re_eu/eu_americanization_spreads
LONDON – Anyone searching for a sepia-tinted rugby photo, antique cuff links or a precious piece of art deco jewelry at the Antiquarius Center had better come fast.
Blink and it will be gone. The dozens of diverse, very British shops on the chic King's Road in Chelsea face eviction to make way for Anthropologie, an American-based chain planning an American fashion emporium, much like the stores it operates in St. Louis and Miami Beach.
"There used to be three antique centers in Chelsea, soon there will be none," said Sue Norman, who has sold hand-painted 19th-Century china here since 1972. "I think it's very sad. It seems the younger generation much prefers American-style things to English style."
The pending loss of the Antiquarius Center is part of the wider, inexorable Americanization of Britain, where rich veins of eccentricity are being snipped as American customs catch on.
Remember the dapper English gentleman? Shoes polished and dressed to the nines? He's often found in blue jeans, an open shirt, and sneakers these days.
And those bad English teeth, neglected for years? Tooth-whitening is catching on, a l'americaine. There has been a surge of cosmetic surgeries as more women — and teenagers — embrace the Hollywood ideal and have their breasts enhanced and wrinkles Botoxed. Pillbox psychiatry is catching on too, with record numbers gobbling antidepressants, and Britons are turning to fast food at such an alarming pace that obesity among young people is reaching epidemic proportions.
A Prozac-popping, surgically enhanced nation of overweight slobs? Sometimes it seems dear olde England could almost be the 51st state.
The cultural mood is changing along with the physical landscape. Harried British physicians are more likely than ever to prescribe antidepressants, in part because the waiting list for individual psychological therapy under the government-run National Health Service is so long. The mental health charity MIND reports that roughly 34 million prescriptions were written in Britain in 2007, more than a 20 percent increase over the 27 million prescribed just two years earlier.
Alison Cobb, senior policy director at MIND, said publicity from America is an important reason why growing numbers of British doctors turn to antidepressants as a first resort.
"Part of it is the literature and endorsement message we were getting from the USA," she said. "In terms of the profile, and the brand recognition, with Prozac in particular, there was an American influence in that."
Another factor is the public's increasing desire to seek treatment for depression rather than endure it with typical British stoicism. The days of the "stiff upper lip" seem numbered.
Attitudes toward cosmetic surgery have also evolved. The nonprofit British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons reports the number of operations has more than tripled since 2003, with breast augmentation increasing by 30 percent in the last year alone.
And British men are turning to the scalpel. There were only 22 male breast reductions in 2003, but that figure rose to 323 last year as more men sought a sculpted look.
Much-maligned British dentistry is changing too.
It's long been a national stereotype that many Brits have awful teeth made worse by years of neglect. There's a tendency to postpone trips to the dentist until there is a real emergency, but in recent years the use of cosmetic dental techniques pioneered in America has increased.
Dr. Jonathan Portner, a spokesman for the British Dental Association, said there is still a push to inform many Britons about the need for regular appointments and the harm caused by a sugary diet, but at the same time there has been a new zest for the use of implants, veneers, advanced orthodontics, and tooth-whitening. The goal for many, he said, is a Tom Cruise-style Hollywood smile.
Some of his adult patients did not have orthodontic work when they were young — it was not common in Britain several decades ago — and are having the work done now.
"Things have changed," said Portner. "There is a lot more elective dentistry now. People are more concerned about the appearance of their smile and the color of their teeth and the impact it has on their social life and careers and general confidence. I'm finding my male patients are more vain than the women."
The British are also eating more American fast food. The fast food chain KFC, for one, already has more than 700 chicken restaurants here, with plans to add another 200 to 300 in the next five years. Sales are up 14 percent so far this year despite the economic gloom.
Health officials in Britain blame the popularity of American-style fast food for a startling rise in childhood obesity. One of three British schoolchildren is either overweight or obese by the time they enter high school, said Tam Fry, spokesman for the National Obesity Forum.
"It is basically your U.S. fast food, which is mass processed, available everywhere, and probably comes out of some factory in Illinois," he said. "It is breaking all the rules in terms of fat, sugar and salt."
The trend toward Americanization is not new: In 1925, Time Magazine reported that dollar-rich American financiers had invaded London, infusing the postwar British capital with "American engineering and American habits and customs." But it's picked up pace in the last decade, said Mark Glancy, a history professor at the University of London who has written about the impact of Hollywood films on the British psyche.
"It's much more Americanized now, because it's so much more affluent," he said. "People's purchasing power has gone up so dramatically in the last 10 or 15 years that they've become very caught up in the American consumer lifestyle."
He said the British infatuation with Hollywood movies — dating back to the silent film era — has shaped the public's view of glamour and style and given Britons a taste for American rebels who challenge authority.
"There are different values at work in American films," he said. "Authority in British films is respected, not challenged — partly because of British film censorship — and American films tend to challenge authority and make heroes out of ordinary people."
Today it is American urban music — primarily rap — that is setting the style agenda for British youth, Glancy said.
"The low-cut baggy jeans, the gold chains, the rap style, really extends to a huge swath of British people under 20," he said. "It's a defiance of middle class values."
It's hard to tell how far the Americanization will go, and whether it's only skin deep, essentially a fashion statement.
After all, church attendance is still very low in Britain compared to the United States, and U.S. sports have not caught on — nothing can dent Britain's passion for soccer, rugby and cricket. Tea remains very popular despite the proliferation of U.S.-style coffee bars.
But in general the move toward American ways is clear, and not just in London but also in the towns and cities of the bucolic British countryside.
Michael Harling, an American who moved to the town of Horsham in West Sussex 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of London, said small, quirky British shops have gradually been replaced by chain stores and burger shops, including many of American origin.
Most upsetting, he said, is the loss of all but one of the town's tea shops.
"It's becoming like America in that you have the same McDonald's and the same stores in every town," said Harling, author of "Postcards from across The Pond."
"It's hard to stop this American invasion because people like fast food and cheap stuff, but it's very sad. If I had wanted that, I would have stayed in America."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090411/ap_on_re_eu/eu_americanization_spreads
Saturday, February 28, 2009
On Demand Workforce: Amazon's Mechanical Turk
Amazon has made deep forays into the cloud computing arena with EC2 & S3 services that were launched some time ago. Now, expanding the horizons of the cloud computing arena further, Amazon is introducing an on demand workforce platform for all tasks that require human intervention, precisely like the BPO work done by outsourcers.
After Standoff, Calif. Reaches Budget Deal
Legislators Patch Nation's Largest Shortfall
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 20, 2009; A01
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 19 -- In a pre-dawn bargain, California legislators on Thursday passed a budget that closes a $42 billion hole, the worst state budget shortfall in U.S. history, after spending 45 straight hours locked in the Capitol trying to find a solution.
The drama in Sacramento served as a warning to other states that their budget problems have the potential to turn into full-blown crises.
While some of the issues are unique to California, nearly all states are feeling pressure from falling revenue and rising costs as tax collections decline and demand for services increases. At least 46 states are facing shortfalls this year or next, and the combined budget gaps are estimated to total more than $350 billion, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Lawmakers in California finally reached a deal after bowing to the demands of a moderate Senate Republican, whose price was a ballot measure allowing voters to opt to loosen the state's restrictive primary election laws.
"These reforms were possible because we were in a crisis," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) said afterward. "And as I've always said . . . crises also provide opportunities."
Many state offices will still be shuttered Friday, in keeping with Schwarzenegger's decision to furlough all 238,000 state employees two days a month. The budget deal calls for $1.4 billion in savings from employee compensation, and negotiations are underway with unions that will help determine how to achieve the savings.
The deal includes tax increases that are designed to expire in two years, underscoring the temporary nature of the patch. But analysts warn that California faces the prospect of chronic revenue shortfalls, grounded in some ways in Proposition 13, the taxpayer revolt that 30 years ago put a cap on property taxes and made the state more reliant on income tax revenue, which rises and falls with the economy.
"California's revenues are extra sensitive to the health of the economy," said Jed Kolko, associate director of research at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, in a December interview. "Most states are running a budget shortfall right now, but the degree of the crisis is so much greater in California."
Analysts also fault California lawmakers for writing a new budget each year rather than adopting a multiyear process that sets targets.
With an economy larger than those of all but seven nations, California lumbered into the downturn carrying the nation's biggest revenue shortfall, in terms of dollars as well as percentages.
Already hit harder than any other state's by the housing slide, the California treasury took a huge blow when the stock market dived, cutting by more than half its projections of revenue from the wedge of wealthy taxpayers who provide an outsize portion of revenue.
Revenue from capital gains -- the 9 percent that California takes from the sale of a stock or property -- accounted for 11.5 percent of the state's general fund in the past fiscal year. That was estimated to drop to 5 percent in the current year and lower still the next.
Then-Gov. Gray Davis (D) faced a similar shortfall after the tech bubble burst in 2001, causing the torrent of tax revenue flowing out of Silicon Valley to drop precipitously.
"I think a lot of people would say that California never really fully addressed the problem from 2001, which was that they had an upturn in revenues largely fueled by stock options and capital gains, and that evaporated fairly quickly," said Tracy Gordon, an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, who studied the California economy for seven years.
Schwarzenegger swept into office more than five years ago after angry voters recalled Davis for his handling of the budget crisis, one less forbidding than the current shortfall. Analysts noted that among the $12 billion in taxes that Schwarzenegger negotiated with Democrats this week was a doubling of the very tax that more than anything hastened Davis's departure from office. The budget package, which Schwarzenegger promised to sign Friday, will double the state's infamous car tax to 1.15 percent.
It will also raise the state income tax by a point, to 8.25 percent, and impose a 2.5 percent surcharge on income tax bills. The $15 billion in spending cuts come mostly from education. The balance of the patch will come from borrowing and California's share of the federal stimulus.
New York is in the next worst budget condition after California, with Gov. David A. Paterson (D) locked in negotiations with the Democratic-controlled legislature over how to plug a looming $13 billion deficit, which could total $48 billion over several years. Paterson has proposed painful cuts to health-care funding and education, but some members of the General Assembly favor a tax increase on the wealthy.
Like the federal stimulus, the California package passed with only three GOP votes in the legislature's upper chamber. But the narrative gave Schwarzenegger a fresh opportunity to talk about bipartisanship, a favorite topic. Last year he championed the passage by voters of Proposition 11, which calls for legislative districts to be drawn by an expert panel, rather than lawmakers.
The budget deal could lead to the next step in election reform. In exchange for supporting it, GOP Sen. Abel Maldonado won a promise to let voters opt for "open primaries."
Open primaries, if conducted as in Washington state, would replace party primaries with a single primary, with the top two vote-getters proceeding to the general election. Depending on how the rules are written, candidates might be able to choose whether to be identified by party; in Washington state, they can pick their own phrase.
"We've got to bring people to the center," Schwarzenegger said after the deal was reached. "We have legislators that are so out to the right and so far out to the left, it's very hard to get them together."
Democratic lawmakers resisted the change, saying it was too dramatic to be considered in the eleventh hour of a budget crisis. But Bruce Cain, a political scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, said open primaries tend to help incumbents -- chiefly because, on a crowded or confusing ballot, name familiarity is paramount.
Students of California government point to other structural issues that make the state less than a model, including the constitutional requirement of a two-thirds majority to pass a budget.
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/19/AR2009021900462.html
Is It Time to Name This Recession?
By Stephen J. DubnerAs evidenced by this chart from the betting site Intrade, the probability of Slumdog Millionaire winning the Oscar for Best Picture has risen over the past two months right along with the probability that 2009 will be a year of recession (i.e., two negative quarters of G.D.P.):
This correlation isn’t meaningful in any way. Lots of things rise (or fall) in lockstep all the time without having anything to do with one another. Intrade sent this picture around just for kicks, pointing out the presence of “a feel-good movie for feel-bad markets.”
But it did get me to thinking. However you want to characterize this economic storm we’re living through — Gordon Brown “mistakenly” called it a depression while Richard Posner has called it a depression outright — the fact is that it doesn’t yet have a proper name, just as many historic events don’t have a name until long after the fact.
I am now wondering if “Slumdog,” a new word that has burst into public consciousness, shouldn’t be the name, or at least part of it. It’s got the requisite feel-bad connotations — slums, dogs, etc. Are we living through the Great Slumdog? The Slumdog Recession/Depression? The Day of the Slumdog?
Source: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/is-it-time-to-name-this-recession/
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