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Showing posts from December, 2008

The trouble with budget surpluses

The trouble with a government (or any big organization) running a budget surplus and sitting on a big pile of cash is that people start asking questions like, "Why don't we do something with that money, especially since there's so much to fix?" At that scale, having some cash ready for a rainy day is not an excuse that people are able to handle, especially when the quoted figure is in the billions of dollars. Surpluses may seem like a lot of money, although when divided on a per-person basis, they seldom amount to much at all. In this deficit-infested time, it's easy to rail against profligacy in our budgets. I'm not trying to engage in what-ifs here. I'm suggesting a way we can avoid this same problem in the future. We've been told that it's wise to save up for the future, to have some cash on hand just in case — folk wisdom that was reinforced by the big collapses this year. We also know that it's hard for most people to hear about a surplus

Small business owners: don't be a jerk

My girlfriend Sophia is an assistant manager at Abercrombie and Fitch , and is thus bombarded with more than her fair share of rude customers. One story she told me this week was about a woman who went ballistic after asking to try on one of the mannequins' jackets and being told no. Now, people are just crazy, and Sophia has told me many stories like this before. What was so different this time? Well, the crazy lady played the business owner card: if it were her store, she would have gladly taken the jackets off the display mannequins. This know-it-all "business owner" then proceeded to hound Sophia for her full name and pressed her for her employee ID so she could file a formal complaint, and refused to go through the normal channels. It is precisely this self-serving arrogance and provincial, narrow-minded ignorance that keeps small business owners from being taken seriously. As a former small business owner myself, I know that the burden is heavy: you've got to

Conceptual tools for allocating finite resources

I have lived and worked in Greater Los Angeles for over a year now. Since the area is one of the world's major population centers, it only makes sense that I'd come across plenty of opportunities to observe the interplay between two forces: lots of people and limited resources. It's a common problem, but always a multifaceted one. Coming up with a solution means that planners (who could be church volunteers, business managers, or software engineers) must consider various factors. Having to stop and think about this can slow down decision making, and even when there's time to ponder and plan, thinking of a solution from scratch is more error-prone than referring to a proven set of guidelines and rules. Pricing Consider the situation when lots of people are elbowing each other to buy concert tickets. There's no increasing the supply of these tickets since a concert hall or stadium can only hold a set amount of people without the Los Angeles Fire Department throwing a