“It’s another broken promise and more proof this administration’s assurances have no credibility,” said House Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio. “This law has been an absolute disaster, leaving us to ask ‘what’s next?’ “
– "Small-business rollout for Obamacare postponed for a year", Noam N. Levey, Star Tribune, 2013-11-27
“The war in Iraq is another broken promise and more proof the Bush administration’s assurances have no credibility,” never said John A. Boehner, R-Ohio. “This war has been an absolute disaster, leaving us to ask ‘what’s next?’ “
“The release of Xbox/Playstation is another broken promise and more proof Microsoft's/Sony's assurances have no credibility,” never said House Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio. “These products have been an absolute disaster, leaving us to ask ‘what’s next?’ “
"[In] 2007 [Microsoft] has spent more than $1 billion to repair the problems associated with the Xbox 360."
– "Xbox, PlayStation deal with launch glitches", Derrick L. Lang, Associated Press, from Star Tribune, 2013-11-28
I wish that those who complain about government inefficiency or corporate missteps would realize that both are organizations of people and people are bound to over-promise and under-deliver.
Showing posts with label small business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label small business. Show all posts
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
Executive pay and customer satisfaction
Yahoo had a list of 15 worst companies for customer satisfaction. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-15-most-disliked-companies-in-america.html I wondered how the CEOs of these companies ranked in pay. I found a list of the top 500 highest-paid CEOs at "Gravity Defying CEO Pay". h
Matching the two lists, I found the following selection:
Time Warner 6th worst, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, 62nd highest, 19.79 million annual pay, 10.3
Comcast, 4th worst, Brian L. Roberts, 70th highest, 18.77 million annual pay, 17.5
Century Link, 11th worst, Glen F. Post III, 121st highest, 13.74 million annual pay, 1.25
Delta Airlines, 10th worst, Richard H. Anderson, 130th highest, 13.17 million annual pay, 1.37
Aetna, 13th worst, Mark T. Bertolini, 329th highest, 4.76 million annual pay, 0.37
United Airlines, 5th worst, Jeffrey A. Smisek, 346th highest, 4.36 million annual pay, 0.87
American Airlines, 8th worst, Thomas W. Horton, 482nd highest, 1.25 million annual pay, 0.16
Bank of America, 15th worst, Brian T. Moynihan, 447th highest, 2.26 million annual pay, 0.15
Charter Communications, 3rd worst, Thomas M. Rutledge, 460th highest, 2.00 million annual pay, 0.67
The final figure in the above list is the annual pay divided by the Forbes ranking on worst customer service. Notice how the top two highly paid CEO have the worst ranking. To be fair, I haven't ranked those companies with good or excellent service. But could these CEOs executive excessive salaries be partly because they aren't involved in "free market" capitalism? How much competition do phone and cable companies have? How much real competition do airlines have? I am thankful that there are still local banks to provide competition for the mega-banks.
Who was at the bottom of the highest paid list? Larry Page of Google with zero salary. However, he does have over 16 billion dollars worth of Google shares out of nearly 192 billion of capitalization. Many of us have a love-hate relationship with Google, how many of us can go a day without using some Google service?
Should anybody get nearly 20 million dollars for making a lot of people unhappy? Should anybody get even 1.25 million dollars for poor service?
Where do I get good service? From locally-owned businesses - BAM Style, Minnesota Surplus, Denny's Lawn and Garden, and many others. Some of the owners may be millionaires, but that is their net worth, not their annual salary. And I get to talk directly with the owners. Do you think Glen F. Post at 13.17 million per year would talk to me about Century Link's customer service? See "Who is worth more, the CEO with rigid rules or the employee giving excellent service?"
Matching the two lists, I found the following selection:
Time Warner 6th worst, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, 62nd highest, 19.79 million annual pay, 10.3
Comcast, 4th worst, Brian L. Roberts, 70th highest, 18.77 million annual pay, 17.5
Century Link, 11th worst, Glen F. Post III, 121st highest, 13.74 million annual pay, 1.25
Delta Airlines, 10th worst, Richard H. Anderson, 130th highest, 13.17 million annual pay, 1.37
Aetna, 13th worst, Mark T. Bertolini, 329th highest, 4.76 million annual pay, 0.37
United Airlines, 5th worst, Jeffrey A. Smisek, 346th highest, 4.36 million annual pay, 0.87
American Airlines, 8th worst, Thomas W. Horton, 482nd highest, 1.25 million annual pay, 0.16
Bank of America, 15th worst, Brian T. Moynihan, 447th highest, 2.26 million annual pay, 0.15
Charter Communications, 3rd worst, Thomas M. Rutledge, 460th highest, 2.00 million annual pay, 0.67
The final figure in the above list is the annual pay divided by the Forbes ranking on worst customer service. Notice how the top two highly paid CEO have the worst ranking. To be fair, I haven't ranked those companies with good or excellent service. But could these CEOs executive excessive salaries be partly because they aren't involved in "free market" capitalism? How much competition do phone and cable companies have? How much real competition do airlines have? I am thankful that there are still local banks to provide competition for the mega-banks.
Who was at the bottom of the highest paid list? Larry Page of Google with zero salary. However, he does have over 16 billion dollars worth of Google shares out of nearly 192 billion of capitalization. Many of us have a love-hate relationship with Google, how many of us can go a day without using some Google service?
Should anybody get nearly 20 million dollars for making a lot of people unhappy? Should anybody get even 1.25 million dollars for poor service?
Where do I get good service? From locally-owned businesses - BAM Style, Minnesota Surplus, Denny's Lawn and Garden, and many others. Some of the owners may be millionaires, but that is their net worth, not their annual salary. And I get to talk directly with the owners. Do you think Glen F. Post at 13.17 million per year would talk to me about Century Link's customer service? See "Who is worth more, the CEO with rigid rules or the employee giving excellent service?"
Wednesday, August 03, 2011
The rich create jobs, but rich in what?
As a response to "tax the rich", many say that the "rich create jobs". Hm! How many jobs has Paris Hilton created? Certainly lots of jobs for paparazzi and tabloid writers. How many real jobs have the Wall St. manipulators created?
Today's Star Tribune had an interesting article on how graduate students are being affected the jiggling of grants. See "Debt deal nicks grad students, not others", Jenna Ross.
Given the cuts in Pell Grants, Congress in its great wisdom cut grants for graduate and professional students. Some will say that students shouldn't get "charity". But if we limited education only to those who could afford it, would we have enough educated people to do the innovation that we need to sustain our economy.
Abou Amara is president of the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly at the University of Minnesota. He was quoted as saying, "There's a disconnect here. The narrative now is about jobs and innovation. Well, people in graduate and professional school are the people who are going to be creating jobs. We're the people who are going to grow the economy." See "If you want to grow, you have to spend money for seeds."
In the rush to avoid "taxing the rich" and "cutting spending", many ignored that they cut jobs with government shutdowns. The rich hardly noticed, but many small businesses noticed. For example, highway projects were shut down, the contractors laid off workers, and the contractors had shut-down costs that they may never get paid for. The laid-off workers had be be paid unemployment benefits and some had to pay more for their health insurance. Isn't this increased spending and taxing the middle class?
I've seen several articles recently about immigrants starting businesses, especially in the cities. I don't know what portion of new, local businesses are created by immigrants, but I sense it is out of proportion to their numbers. If so, why might this be?
Some of them took risks to be here, and so the risk of starting a business is just one more. They are not accustomed to having health insurance and other benefits, and so they don't consider lack thereof as an impediment to starting a business. Finally, they often have large networks of friends and relatives from whom to draw financial support.
I have two ideas that could encourage more people to start businesses.
The first is universal healthcare. Too many consider this a cost rather than an investment. If more people were freed of the need for a job with "benefits", wouldn't more people risk starting a business? If more people started businesses, wouldn't there be more jobs? If there were more jobs, wouldn't there be more taxes and less costs?
The second is more neighborhood banks. Not only neighborhood in the sense of being located closer to the customers, but neighborhood in being staffed by people from the neighborhood. With the larger banks, one can never be sure who will be in the locally-sited bank from one month to the next. If the staff were more permanent, they would develop closer relations with their customers.
I know this certainly helped me in keeping a business growing. I ran around the track at a YMCA with the president of a local bank. Never mind that it was owned by Carl Pohlad, a Twin Cities billionaire, as part of a small empire of banks; the people were the same month after month and year after year. Because the president got to know me and feel he could trust me, he extended a line of credit to me. I drew on it, I paid it back, I drew on it, I paid it back. I never really succeeded in the business, but how many others who had similar, local treatment succeeded.
Then Pohlad consolidated his banks under one brand, and the personality went out of the local bank. He probably got even richer, but the community was poorer for it.
In summary, it's not the rich in dollars who create jobs; it's the rich in experience and education who create jobs.
Today's Star Tribune had an interesting article on how graduate students are being affected the jiggling of grants. See "Debt deal nicks grad students, not others", Jenna Ross.
Given the cuts in Pell Grants, Congress in its great wisdom cut grants for graduate and professional students. Some will say that students shouldn't get "charity". But if we limited education only to those who could afford it, would we have enough educated people to do the innovation that we need to sustain our economy.
Abou Amara is president of the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly at the University of Minnesota. He was quoted as saying, "There's a disconnect here. The narrative now is about jobs and innovation. Well, people in graduate and professional school are the people who are going to be creating jobs. We're the people who are going to grow the economy." See "If you want to grow, you have to spend money for seeds."
In the rush to avoid "taxing the rich" and "cutting spending", many ignored that they cut jobs with government shutdowns. The rich hardly noticed, but many small businesses noticed. For example, highway projects were shut down, the contractors laid off workers, and the contractors had shut-down costs that they may never get paid for. The laid-off workers had be be paid unemployment benefits and some had to pay more for their health insurance. Isn't this increased spending and taxing the middle class?
I've seen several articles recently about immigrants starting businesses, especially in the cities. I don't know what portion of new, local businesses are created by immigrants, but I sense it is out of proportion to their numbers. If so, why might this be?
Some of them took risks to be here, and so the risk of starting a business is just one more. They are not accustomed to having health insurance and other benefits, and so they don't consider lack thereof as an impediment to starting a business. Finally, they often have large networks of friends and relatives from whom to draw financial support.
I have two ideas that could encourage more people to start businesses.
The first is universal healthcare. Too many consider this a cost rather than an investment. If more people were freed of the need for a job with "benefits", wouldn't more people risk starting a business? If more people started businesses, wouldn't there be more jobs? If there were more jobs, wouldn't there be more taxes and less costs?
The second is more neighborhood banks. Not only neighborhood in the sense of being located closer to the customers, but neighborhood in being staffed by people from the neighborhood. With the larger banks, one can never be sure who will be in the locally-sited bank from one month to the next. If the staff were more permanent, they would develop closer relations with their customers.
I know this certainly helped me in keeping a business growing. I ran around the track at a YMCA with the president of a local bank. Never mind that it was owned by Carl Pohlad, a Twin Cities billionaire, as part of a small empire of banks; the people were the same month after month and year after year. Because the president got to know me and feel he could trust me, he extended a line of credit to me. I drew on it, I paid it back, I drew on it, I paid it back. I never really succeeded in the business, but how many others who had similar, local treatment succeeded.
Then Pohlad consolidated his banks under one brand, and the personality went out of the local bank. He probably got even richer, but the community was poorer for it.
In summary, it's not the rich in dollars who create jobs; it's the rich in experience and education who create jobs.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Health care repeal is the real job-killer
The Republicans are calling for the repeal of the "job-killer health care bill". But have they considered that the previous health care "system" was the real job killer?
Why? Consider that many people seek jobs based on the "benefits" offered by the company – "benefits" generally meaning health care insurance. These people will seek jobs in large companies rather than smaller companies. Once people work for large companies, they are almost "locked" into their jobs.
People who are "locked" into their jobs won't venture out on their own, whether to be consultants, to be employees of smaller companies, or to start their own companies.
When people move in any of these directions, they may be moving to a more creative environment. That creative environment may in itself create more jobs. Thank goodness that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were young, healthy, and well-enough off to start Apple and Microsoft, respectively.
But have many people not started companies because they didn't want to be concerned or couldn't afford health care for their employees. That situation is/was a job-killer.
About the only job-killing I think the health care bill does is reduce the number of people who are looking for ways to deny care.
Why? Consider that many people seek jobs based on the "benefits" offered by the company – "benefits" generally meaning health care insurance. These people will seek jobs in large companies rather than smaller companies. Once people work for large companies, they are almost "locked" into their jobs.
People who are "locked" into their jobs won't venture out on their own, whether to be consultants, to be employees of smaller companies, or to start their own companies.
When people move in any of these directions, they may be moving to a more creative environment. That creative environment may in itself create more jobs. Thank goodness that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were young, healthy, and well-enough off to start Apple and Microsoft, respectively.
But have many people not started companies because they didn't want to be concerned or couldn't afford health care for their employees. That situation is/was a job-killer.
About the only job-killing I think the health care bill does is reduce the number of people who are looking for ways to deny care.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Guess who is a capitalist?
Many in the calamitist side of "liberals" decry capitalism as if it were some evil force out to destroy the world.*
Is this so-called capitalism really capitalism or is it management hi-jacking a company? Upper management controls the company even though they have no or few shares in the company. They appoint other corporate managers to serve on their boards. Then they grant themselves and the board members shares in the company, or at a minimum give them a well-below market price for the shares.
Have you thought that your neighbors may be the real capitalists? What about the people that do lawn-mowing for a living? Nobody is going to cut grass with a pair of shears on their hands and knees. Nobody is going to cut grass with a scythe (I saw this being done in Budapest in 1974). Few are going to cut grass with a push mower. Anybody cutting grass as a job is going to have a power mower or two or three. Having a power mower requires capital.
Because few could make a living mowing grass within walking distance of their home, they will need a truck to haul their mower around. Having a truck requires capital.
Some jobs will require different kinds of mower. More capital for more mowers and more capital for a trailer to haul several mowers. Oh, yes, mowers need gasoline. Capital buys gasoline.
In northern climes snow covers grass part of the year. To keep cash flow going, our lawn-mowing capitalists have to also clear snow. The equipment to clear snow requires capital.
Capitalism permeates many trades: carpenters, plumbers, and electricians. These tradespeople generally don't work for large corporations, but themselves, their families, or small companies. They need capital for their tools and materials.
Capitalism is part of all small businesses - the coffee shops, the restaurants, the shoe repair shops, the web designers, the free lance programmers, the free lance photographers, the small farmers, …
If we didn't have individuals practicing capitalism, who would create innovative stuff? Would we have Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak creating new computers in a garage? Would we have Bill Gates selling his BASIC? Selling software!!?? How uncooperative!! Would we have Earl Bakken creating Medtronic? We can't wait for government or for large corporations to do these things.
The next time somebody criticizes "Capitalism" ask them to explain what they mean. Ask them how an individual can start a business without capital. If an individual starts a business, is that a bad thing because that individual is a capitalist?
* For more on "calamitists" see Climate change and so-called bipartisanship.
Is this so-called capitalism really capitalism or is it management hi-jacking a company? Upper management controls the company even though they have no or few shares in the company. They appoint other corporate managers to serve on their boards. Then they grant themselves and the board members shares in the company, or at a minimum give them a well-below market price for the shares.
Have you thought that your neighbors may be the real capitalists? What about the people that do lawn-mowing for a living? Nobody is going to cut grass with a pair of shears on their hands and knees. Nobody is going to cut grass with a scythe (I saw this being done in Budapest in 1974). Few are going to cut grass with a push mower. Anybody cutting grass as a job is going to have a power mower or two or three. Having a power mower requires capital.
Because few could make a living mowing grass within walking distance of their home, they will need a truck to haul their mower around. Having a truck requires capital.
Some jobs will require different kinds of mower. More capital for more mowers and more capital for a trailer to haul several mowers. Oh, yes, mowers need gasoline. Capital buys gasoline.
In northern climes snow covers grass part of the year. To keep cash flow going, our lawn-mowing capitalists have to also clear snow. The equipment to clear snow requires capital.
Capitalism permeates many trades: carpenters, plumbers, and electricians. These tradespeople generally don't work for large corporations, but themselves, their families, or small companies. They need capital for their tools and materials.
Capitalism is part of all small businesses - the coffee shops, the restaurants, the shoe repair shops, the web designers, the free lance programmers, the free lance photographers, the small farmers, …
If we didn't have individuals practicing capitalism, who would create innovative stuff? Would we have Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak creating new computers in a garage? Would we have Bill Gates selling his BASIC? Selling software!!?? How uncooperative!! Would we have Earl Bakken creating Medtronic? We can't wait for government or for large corporations to do these things.
The next time somebody criticizes "Capitalism" ask them to explain what they mean. Ask them how an individual can start a business without capital. If an individual starts a business, is that a bad thing because that individual is a capitalist?
* For more on "calamitists" see Climate change and so-called bipartisanship.
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