The New York Times published an article yesterday on Apple’s payment of taxes — non-payment, that is. It is summarized here. From a business perspective, what Apple is doing is smart. No business should pay one dollar more of taxes than it must. Its fiduciary duty to shareholders is to earn income, not pay […]
Posted on April 30th, 2012 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 196 Comments »
There is nothing quite as humorless and off-putting than a bureaucracy that lives strictly by its rules. Consider this outrageous case that has been rocketing about the internet for the last week. The Transportation Security Administration is defending its agents for their pat-down of a hysterical four-year-old child. Technically, they did the right thing by […]
Posted on April 27th, 2012 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 184 Comments »
What is the ratio between the pay of the lowest and highest paid employees in a company? No one really knows because pay scales and benefits packages vary from country to country and region to region. Yet, unions are pushing for a ratio to be included in annual proxy statements. Compensation experts say that it […]
Posted on April 26th, 2012 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 185 Comments »
The University of Florida may have good reasons for closing its computer science department at the same time it is increasing the budget for its football team. Whatever those reasons are, it isn’t convincing its students. Universities face a perceptual and real gap in funding football to the detriment of education. They do so because […]
Posted on April 24th, 2012 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 187 Comments »
The media have set a new standard of transparency for presidential candidates and apparently Mitt Romney is not meeting it. This might be part of Romney’s so-called “tin ear” when it comes to public relations and campaigning, but it also might be Romney’s personal decision not to disclose details. Either way, it is not settling […]
Posted on April 23rd, 2012 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 176 Comments »
Lawyers have had a poor image for a long time, and now they are billing themselves out of business. They have upset the one audience they need to sustain $800 a hour rates — clients. Corporations now find other ways to get basic legal work done that doesn’t require sending it to their outside law […]
Posted on April 20th, 2012 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 196 Comments »
How do you trust a country that does not respect property rights? Argentina is only the latest nation to seize control of a company, and Spain is huffing about it. But what can Spain do on behalf of the victimized company — Repsol YPF? It is hardly in a position to go to war or […]
Posted on April 18th, 2012 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 189 Comments »
Canada is in the middle of giving up small coins in favor of electronic transactions. I would like to see the PR program the nation is using to get citizens to change their behavior. As the article notes, coinage is one of the oldest technologies still in use other than the wheel. Canada is asking […]
Posted on April 17th, 2012 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 178 Comments »
When you have two shrewd players generating publicity, you get stories like this. The Smithsonian and NASA are adept at sparking articles and with the retirement of the space shuttle, they are milking media interest. One could ask if the space shuttle rode on top of a 747 in the past, and of course, it […]
Posted on April 16th, 2012 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 179 Comments »
This extended rant about the number of social media users of Google+ reveals the difficulties of counting on the web. Google continues to show gains for Google+ but no one believes the company because Google apparently counts users differently than Facebook. As the article makes clear, it is hard to say how many real, […]
Posted on April 13th, 2012 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 198 Comments »
