Monday, December 18, 2006

 

You are the Person of the Year; Online Retail Up; Santa Cookie Document; Reynolds Explains Income

Think the Internet's role in life hasn't changed? Then you'll hate Time magazine's person of the year cover story
Reuters http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061217/tc_nm/time_dc
Time http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
Information consumers are in charge, and they use the 'net in more and different ways than before. It there ever was a time to understand what marketing is, it's now. "We're in the publishing business" used to mean print, always. "We're in the content-creation business" doesn't even capture the sea change. I still think of publishing today as the content deployment business.

Online retail sales are very strong
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2006-12-17-online-retail-usat_x.htm

How radio broadcasters are coping with the Internet
http://www.radioandrecords.com/radiomonitor/news/business/top_news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003522664

Skype founders using their money on Internet TV
http://news.com.com/Skype+founders+to+launch+Web+TV+service/2100-1038_3-6144389.html
This will undermine broadcasters, of course, and open up significant new markets for micro audiences and microsegmentation of markets

Essential legal document if you are leaving any cookies for Santa
http://www.consumerfreedom.com/downloads/pro/docs/061217_christmas.pdf

Commentator Rich Lowery talks about Lou Dobbs
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/12/the_apocalyptic_centrism_of_lo.html
"Ninety-six percent of our clothing is imported. This nation cannot even clothe itself." But if we literally couldn't clothe ourselves, we'd be naked. Dobbs' line is like saying we can't feed ourselves because we buy groceries from supermarkets. Textiles inherently are not an advanced, high-paid industry, and it is no wonder that an economic superpower doesn't do a lot of textile production. Would Dobbs prefer that more of us were hunched over sewing machines rather than employed in industries like software development, financial services, law, accounting, biotech and pharmaceuticals?
It's a reminder of the Wall Street Journal article "We Think, They Sweat" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB110376349870907921.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

And Lou Dobbs won't want to read Alan Reynold's analysis of income data
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009398
Biggest problem? Not including transfer payments to low income earners. I do remember back in 1995 that the four most common and simultaneously provided programs together for families was the equivalent of a $40,000 taxable income. I have not seen any data that make the adjustment for taxation to determine what the equivalent income would be for a wage earner in 2006.
There was an excellent book a few years ago about this called "Myths of Rich and Poor" cited in Thomas Sowell's 2/8/06 column http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell020806.asp
The book does a worldwide comparison of economies and populations, and is more fascinating that one would think.

Comments: Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Get legal. Get OpenOffice.org