New America in California: Latest Articles

Gut Reactions

Articles — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 11:08:00 -0400

For more than a hundred million years, termites have lived in obscurity, noticed only by the occasional hungry anteater or, more recently, by dismayed homeowners. Other social insects, such as bees and ants, are celebrated for their industriousness and engineering feats, but popular culture has not gotten around to cheering on termites for theirs -- even though they build mounds as tall as 20 feet, which may be oriented north-south as accurately as if plotted with a compass, in order to maximize heat from the sun. The extraordinary powers evolution has bestowed on termites -- some protect the mound by spraying chemicals from nozzles on their heads at intruders,… more

Big Mac Politics

Articles — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 07:27:00 -0400

Don't do it. Don't tune in to this year's political conventions. For two decades, Americans have been wising up and increasingly tuning out those quadrennial made-for-television pageants that pass for participatory democracy. In 1976, roughly 22 million people watched Jimmy Carter receive his party's nomination. By contrast, four years ago, only 16 million viewers enjoyed the high jinks at the GOP convention. Over the years, declining interest has persuaded broadcast networks to scale back their coverage, and I think a lot of us suspect we didn't miss much. But this year, thanks to heightened interest in the presidential campaign, both broadcast and cable news networks… more

California's Ballot Billions

Articles — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:40:00 -0400

There's little chance that the state budget eventually passed in Sacramento will actually rid California of its stubborn $15.2-billion deficit. But in the improbable event that the Legislature and governor balance the budget without resorting to such gimmicks as raiding other accounts, enjoy the moment. In just 10 weeks, California voters will likely throw it out of whack again. California has two budgets. One is passed by lawmakers. The other is improvised at the ballot box. The state's Constitution requires that the budget put together in Sacramento at least pretend to be balanced. The spending that voters enact operates under no such discipline. We do what we please.

And what… more

A Middle Road in Azerbaijan

Articles — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:30:00 -0400

There's probably no country in the world watching the Russia-Georgia conflict more intently than this small, energy-rich nation to the south and east of the turmoil. It too leans toward the West. Its oil runs through the pipeline that crosses Georgia. And it too wants to know how far Russia will go to keep its former vassal states within its sphere of influence. Azerbaijan was one of the first Soviet republics to win independence. It's a rare secular Muslim nation with a tradition of religious tolerance -- it enjoys friendly relations with Israel. It also signed on to the U.S.-led war on… more

Why Monterey Would Be a Cool Capital

Articles — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 09:20:00 -0400

California's elected leaders are sweating out another summer of budget stalemate. Temporary state workers are hot under the collar after losing their jobs, and the permanent employees may see their paychecks cut. Commentators are heatedly blasting the lack of a budget and recycling old ideas about how to change the state's budget process, none of them politically viable. What better way to lower the budget heat than to relocate state elected leaders to someplace cool?

California is a big state, and there's no particular reason that legislators have to gather and negotiate a budget in hot and humid Sacramento. So here's… more

Closing Tax Gap

Articles — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:26:00 -0400

Since the early 1980s, there has been a plethora of recommendations about how to reduce the tax gap. Many changes have been enacted, yet the gap grows. Proposals requiring additional information reporting or withholding are usually overlooked despite evidence that these techniques result in a low tax gap for wage earners. However, a significant information reporting rule was enacted in 2008. Its enactment though, seems to be more a result of its revenue potential than its role in a comprehensive tax gap reduction strategy.

Below, we'll review the tax gap and the recently enacted credit card information reporting provision, and explain reasons for the slow approach.

Tax Gap History more

Why Manners Matter at Work

Articles — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:25:00 -0400

For those of you who never bothered to pay attention to your mother, perhaps you'll listen to Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, instead.

This cheeky thought has crept into my head a couple of times in the last few weeks as I've noticed a run of stories about etiquette (or lack thereof) in the workplace. Most recently, there was the case study posted on this Web site (BusinessWeek.com, 8/12/08) about a worker who had to deal with a boorish boss.

And just a couple of weeks ago, I saw that officials in Anaheim, Calif.--home to Disneyland (DIS)-- were set to hold classes for… more

The Other Olympic Gold

Articles — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 08:23:00 -0400

"One World, One Dream" -- that's the slogan the Chinese Olympic Committee chose for the 2008 Games in Beijing. But don't let the idealism fool you. This year, beneath the roar of the high-minded sloganeering, you could hear the same twin engines that have powered all modern Olympiads: nationalism and capitalism. While I was in China last week, I noticed that the media were doing the same dance they do in the U.S. They paid lip service to the Olympic ideal -- the Games as a moment when humanity puts politics aside to honor youth, talent and noble competition -- but their hook was national… more

What Drucker Would Say About Mervyns

Articles — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 09:21:00 -0400

Mervyns portrayed itself as a victim of the crummy economy and a miserable retail environment last week as it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. But in truth, a key part of the department store chain went bankrupt long ago. It's what Peter Drucker called the "theory of the business."

Every organization rests upon a set of such premises--fundamental notions about customers and competitors, about technology, about a company's own strengths and weaknesses. When an enterprise fails, Drucker explained, it is often because "the assumptions on which the organization has been built and is being run no longer fit reality."

As obvious as this may seem, it… more

A City Built on Impermanence -- And That's OK

Articles — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 07:41:00 -0400

SHANGHAI -- "Most of them are so superbly ugly that they're exciting." That's what Qingyun Ma, dean of the architecture school at USC, told me last Tuesday afternoon when I asked him what he thought of this city's remarkable explosion of skyscrapers. We were in a taxi heading east on the elevated Yan'an Highway, in the heart of the city, continuing a conversation we had started an hour earlier in a conference room at the architecture firm he runs here in the French Concession neighborhood. A year and a half after coming to L.A. to take over the architecture department at USC, Ma, 42,… more

Obama's Celebrity is a Good Target

Articles — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 06:49:00 -0400

John McCain's television ad comparing Barack Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears will be chronicled by no sane historian, and even those of us who have seen it must curse the expense of time and neurons involved in viewing it or reading about it or, God forbid, writing about it. (There goes my memory of the subjunctive of "être", for example, dislodged to make room for McCain's latest.) But those of us determined to follow this race without fail - at work, at home, in our beds, in our showers - can say we saw something this week, and that was the coalescing of McCain's anti-Obama… more

Grabbing Remote Vendors

Articles — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:56:00 -0400

As far back as 1872, when Montgomery Ward issued its first mail-order catalog, vendors have sold to customers without being physically present in the customer’s state. Although sales taxes have existed since the 1920s, we have no effective system for collecting sales-and-use tax on sales by remote sellers.

Today we’ll look closer at the history of the remote sales tax issue, clarify New York’s law change and note possible solutions.

Interstate Sales Tax History

As a 1965 congressional report noted: “The present system of State taxation as it affects interstate commerce works badly for both businesses and the States.” (State Taxation of Interstate Commerce Report No. 952, 9/2/65, Vol. 4, (the… more

A Tax Commission for California? How It Can Be Made to Work

Articles — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:32:00 -0400

Both Governor Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Bass have stated that they would like to form a bipartisan commission to find ways to improve California’s tax system. They seek to modernize our tax system, make the state more economically competitive, and have a system that produces stable revenues.

These are great goals. California’s tax system was designed decades ago in a manufacturing era when borders were important and tangible goods ruled. Our tax system was not designed for the current information age with its mobile capital, worldwide-based workforce, and goods and services transferable over the Internet. Serious work is needed to bring our tax system into the 21st century.

A tax… more

Ich Bin Ein Obaman

Articles — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:05:00 -0400

We already know that Barack Obama can be many things to many people, but could anyone have guessed that he would also be a good German?

In honor of the Democratic candidate's visit to Berlin last week, Die Zeit, the Hamburg-based weekly, revealed for the first time that the Illinois senator's great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was an upstanding Alsatian farmer named Christian Gutknecht, who shoved off to America on Sept. 13, 1749. The article was titled "The German Obama."

And not only was the German press trying to claim Obama for their own last week, they were wishing and hoping that more of their leaders would be… more

Inmates and Integration

Articles — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 06:16:00 -0400

To be honest, it didn't look like racial segregation. I was standing among long rows of metal bunk beds in a room where 36 men of different races -- black, white, Latino -- live together more or less peaceably. But the setting was a dormitory for minimum-security inmates at the Sierra Conservation Center, a prison in Tuolumne County near Yosemite, and in such places, unwritten rules apply. One of the rules is that each bunk must be shared by two men of the same race. The bunks are close together. A white inmate could probably shake hands with a black inmate in a neighboring bunk… more

For Obama, Beyond Civil Rights

Articles — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 04:52:00 -0400

A Barack Obama presidency could end the Iraq war, transform our national energy policy, revive America's standing in the world -- but please don't expect the first black man in the Oval Office to move us above and beyond the civil rights era. At least that's what Obama himself suggested last Monday in his speech to the NAACP. In a campaign fueled by high expectations, Obama seemed to be trying to lower his audience's hopes that the election of the first black president would be anything more than a symbolic milestone. "Just electing me president doesn't mean our work is over," he told civil rights activists. more

When 2008 Feels Like 1968

Articles — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:36:00 -0400

It's been a bummer of a summer, hasn't it?

At the gas station the other night, I found myself staring in disbelief—as I have for weeks—while the numbers on the pump kept spiraling higher and higher. The total: $67.83 to fill my Passat. I hopped back in my car and flipped on the radio, figuring a little music might take my mind off the lightness of my wallet, but the news came on instead: Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) were reeling. Nervous depositors had stormed IndyMac Bancorp, looking to pull their money. General Motors (GM) was poised for another round of cuts.

Sigh. You… more

Rethinking IRAs

Articles — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 06:33:00 -0400

A Department of Labor retirement guide notes: “For many Americans, retiring in this new century is a mystery.” They’re living longer, they’re more personally responsible for their own retirement savings and they have many more savings options than previous generations did, which exacerbate the confusion. In June 2008, a House Ways and Means Subcommittee hearing explored options for expanding IRA participation. This article presents data about the mystery and IRA participation, highlights of the hearing and considerations for reform.

For general information about IRAs see IRS Publication 590 (PDF) and IRS FAQs.

Data In 1974 when IRAs were created, … more

Cartooning Obama's Economics

Articles — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:46:00 -0400

Among the things I admire most about Barack Obama is the way that he’s able, without sounding wishy-washy, to capture issues in their full complexity – to explain them not in the obtuse terms typical of so many politicians but in a manner that recognizes nuance, that allows for shades of gray.

It’s too bad that the same can’t be said of John R. Talbott’s Obamanomics: How Bottom-Up Economic Prosperity Will Replace Trickle-Down Economics. Instead, much of it presents an overly simple, cartoonish view of the world.

Trumpeting any politician’s platform while he’s still out on the campaign trail can be perilous. Still, I had high… more

Berlin's Edifice Complex

Articles — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:07:00 -0400

Well before the new U.S. Embassy here officially opened in a soggy (outdoor and uncovered) Fourth of July celebration that featured hors d'oeuvres from McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts, German critics had roundly savaged the building as an architectural disaster. Last May, the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung called it "Ft. Knox at the Brandenburg Gate." Der Tagesspiegel pronounced it a "triumph of banality." Particularly offended by the embassy's windows, the critic at the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung contended that they "look as if a bankrupt homeowner had bought them in a home-improvement store near Fargo in order to get his house ready for winter." Die Welt, meanwhile, stated simply that… more