Do we really want that much innovation?

The Boston Globe has an article about CEO pay (the paper it’s based on is here). Given what’s happened in the last few years, I find things like this a little annoying:
What this means, as a practical matter, is that much of the recent populist backlash against executive incentives, and the US government’s move to cap [...]

The problem with schools and elitism

The Boston Globe has an article about the consolidation of schools. The idea of the governor is that larger schools will save money and give a better education, while the article tries to argue that neither is true. Besides the fact that I went to a consolidated school (ConVal in Peterborough, NH), I don’t know enough [...]

$500,000 is not much?

The proposal by President Obama to have a salary cap of $500,000 for executives in bailed out companies, brings this comment (bold added):
“That is pretty draconian — $500,000 is not a lot of money, particularly if there is no bonus,” said James F. Reda, founder and managing director of James F. Reda & Associates, a [...]

A Sit-In in Chicago

Here’s another example of corporate compassion:
Fried said the company can’t pay its 300 employees because its creditor, Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, won’t let them. Crain’s Chicago Business reported that Republic Windows’ monthly sales had fallen to $2.9 million from $4 million during the past month. In a memo to the union, obtained by the [...]

Tweeter Shafts Workers, Again

What is it with the company Tweeter? Last year they closed stores without paying severance that was promised workers and then tried to get bonuses for its executives. Yesterday they shut all their stores (they were being closed, but this was cut short) and:
The employees, including roughly 150 in Massachusetts, are still owed at least [...]

The Mandarin Oriental in Boston

I’m not sure what I think of Alex Beam as a journalist. He’s a very breezy writer, sometimes appropriately and sometimes not. In talking about the newly opened Mandarin hotel in Boston, it works:
About two weeks ago, I was at the Hynes Convention Center and ate supper across Boylston Street. As I emerged from the [...]

‘Bloated’ Pay

David Tuerck has an article in the Boston Globe about traffic details. Massachusetts is the only state where police are the only ones who can be traffic flaggers at work sites. I’m actually not sure where I stand on this, but let’s look at the last bit:
Maine has a prevailing wage law. In the Portland [...]

Class Warfare

I haven’t often seen class warfare as blatant as this:
Both the plaintiffs and Mr. Icahn have criticized the severance plan as costly and said it was an obstacle to any merger. Yahoo has said the plan is necessary to retain valuable employees and is good for shareholders.
The plan offers enhanced benefits, including cash and accelerated [...]

Taxes For the Rich

Kevin Drum has a post talking about this Wall Street Journal article. He notes that the average AGI (adjusted gross income) of the top 400 IRS filers is now $213.9 million (it has increased fairly steadily from $17.4 to $57.3 in 1990 dollars) and the average tax rate has fallen from 26.38% to 18.23% (which compares [...]

Hmmm

The Japanese probe has released the first of its satellites to orbit the moon and has taken its first pictures.
Kevin Drum has a good graph to show to people who think the poor pay no taxes.
Someone in the Bush administration leaked an Al Qaeda video to the press which closed a link to information. Unlike [...]

Food Aid Down?

Since the price of staple crops has increased so much recently (driven in part by the increased use of corn for ethanol), the amount of food aid is decreasing.  Here I actually agree with Bush that the US should spend more on crops grown in Africa (of course many others also support this, including many aid [...]

White Collar Crime

I thought that there were inequities in how the rich were treated by the justice system in the US, but that’s nothing like Korea (via Kevin Drum):
Convicted of embezzling $110 million, Hyundai Chairman Chung Mong-koo was deemed too important to South Korea’s economy to be sent to prison, an appeals court ruled late Thursday.
The three-judge [...]

Wealth and Productivity

I was going to compare the productivity of the US to its wealth.  A report noted that the US has the highest productivity per capita of any country and has the second highest output per hour worked (behind Norway).  I wanted to see where the US ranked in terms of median income because the US [...]

The Economy

The economy from last year seems to be mixed:
The nation’s median household income grew modestly in 2006, the Census Bureau reported yesterday, even as the percentage of people without health insurance hit a high.
Experts said the rise in income was mainly a reflection of an increase in the number of family members entering the workplace [...]

Subprime Mortgages

This article in today’s Boston Globe by Robert Kuttner looks at the sub-prime lending crisis in longer terms.  It traces it back to deregulation:
Securitization enabled subprime lenders to throw away the rulebook. As long as some investment bank could be found to buy the loan, convert it to a bond, and peddle it to someone [...]

More Tweeter

The execs at Tweeter are so noble (from July 26):
“The management incentive program is being withdrawn,” Hunt said. “It didn’t seem like the right decision to incentivize management when the creditors would get so little.”
And feel the workers pain:
Hunt said Tweeter didn’t intend to mislead employees who were helping in the company’s struggle to survive. “We feel [...]

Gilded Age

Via Kevin Drum, take a look at this article.  These guys (the richest of the new rich) are annoyingly arrogant.  Here are a few quotes.
Mr Weill (ex-CEO of Citigroup):
“I once thought how lucky the Carnegies and the Rockefellers were because they made their money before there was an income tax,” Mr. Weill said, never believing [...]