Caffeinated Real Estate

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Buying near a Starbucks has benefits beyond easy access to your
double-tall, non-fat, bone-dry cappuccino.

Between 1997 and 2014, homes within a quarter-mile of a Starbucks increased in value by 96 percent, on average, compared with 65 percent for all U.S. homes, based on a comparison of Zillow Home Value Index data with a database of Starbucks locations.

Some areas brew even frothier returns, as Julie Lerch can attest.

A little over a year after she moved in, a Starbucks opened less than two blocks from her Chicago condo. Three years later, she sold the 2-bedroom unit for $100,000 — or 53 percent — more than she paid for it.

“Everybody was all excited, because our property values did go up,” she said. “It was a sign that the neighborhood was changing, and people who normally wouldn’t have chanced that neighborhood said, ‘Oh, that’s a Starbucks.'”

Lest you think all java purveyors have the same effect, the data showed that homes near Dunkin’ Donuts locations appreciated 80 percent, on average, during the same 17-year period.

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... excerpted from an article posted on the Zillow blog.

On Sale? Really? Am I that much of a Sucker?

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Got an email from Starbucks regaling me with dreams of big savings if I would just go to their website or to one of their stores. So I went to their website and found this "on sale" box of Sumatra k-cups which regularly sells for less at Walmart. Ugh!! Why am I always drawn to these ad scams? Is it just my quest for cheaper prices or is it something else? Do I really think that companies like Starbucks really want to help me out? Am I that much of a sucker? Perhaps I am? I did click on the link in the email. I am such a sucker!

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Blockbuster Memories

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Just heard that Blockbuster Video is closing all of it's stores in the USA. The news caused me to flash back to the days before Netflix. You remember those days. The times before streaming videos and Red Box dispensing machines. Memories of trips in the car on weekend nights to get the latest VCR and hoping that it was not sold out. And then there was the Nintendo games that the kids always wanted to rent. It seems like just a few years ago. Fond memories of a simpler time in my life.

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Résumé Bots

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Ann told me about an article that appeared in today's issue of the KC Star. It reminded me of why so few people ever get a response from potential employer. The article, titled "Fake resume for ‘Noah Z. Ark’ draws interview offers but is mostly ignored" chronicles a fake job hunter and how companies responded to him. Here is an excerpt:

When Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler founded a consulting company to help employers improve their employee recruiting processes, they decided to first find out what employers were doing wrong. So, for 10 years, their CareerXroads company has engaged volunteers to help a fictional job hunter apply online for jobs, posting resumes directly on the websites of “best places to work” companies.

This year, “Noah Ark” was the job hunter, presenting a resume that had great experience and buzzwords at the top but wound down into absurdity the longer one read it. Sadly, only a tiny fraction of the companies each year have recognized the obvious job hunter ruse, which would have been apparent had their resume screeners — computerized or human — read the entire resume. [read more]

My experience in looking for work in the early 2000s bears this out. I was applying for work all of time and very rarely ever got a response. It is a sad testament to the robotic ways that Corporate America interacts with potential employees.

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The 403b Plan

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Most of us have heard of, and many have participated in, a 401k. It is the plan that allows employees of companies to set aside a portion of their wages in a tax free retirement account. That said, did you know that there is a similar plan for employees of tax-exempt entities?

A 403(b) plan is a U.S. tax-advantaged retirement savings plan available for public education organizations, some non-profit employers (only Internal Revenue Code 501(c)(3) organizations), cooperative hospital service organizations, and self-employed ministers in the United States.

I have never understood why more churches do not offer 403b plans for their staff. Do you know of churches that do? If so, do they match a part of the employee contributions like companies do with 401k plans? And do you know if employees tend to contribute or not?

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Why drag your work on Vacation?

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Gotta love the crazy imagery of a guy in a sports jacket using his laptop on a beach. Speaks to how it is so hard for some folks to really separate themselves from their jobs when they are on vacation. In a piece titled "More adults work while on vacation than ever before" the folks at ZDNet speak to this phenomenon. Here is a clip from it:

Clinicians and psychologists recommend taking regular breaks from the grind to re-energize and regenerate. In fact, if you look at the word "recreation," you can see it as "re-creation." Unfortunately, courtesy of the wonders of the digital world, fewer of us are taking complete breaks from work. According to Human Resource Executive Online, the folks at TeamViewer did a study about how people work while on vacation.

According to TeamViewer GM Holger Felgner, 61 percent of employed Americans will "spend time on work-related tasks during their summer vacation this year." That's up from last year, when only 52 percent of employees said they'd be on the grind while on vacation. For digital natives, the millennials out there, 79 percent say they'll need to take a work-capable device with them on vacation. [read more]

I think that it begs the question of why do people act like this. Do you think that folks just really love their work and cannot take time away from it? Or is it more about fear (realistic or not) about losing their jobs or disappointing their employer? Or is it about employers putting demands on employees? Or is it simply about the web-connected nature of our corporate culture? What do you think? Can you relate? Is this the new normal for vacations?

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Ever worn Overalls?

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Thomas Edison once said "The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work."  I have to admit that I have never worn overalls but I think that Edison reminds me of a time when hard work and industry were valued differently than they are today. I saw that change in the 1970s when people clichéd about working smarter not harder - that statement seemed to subtly disparage the value of the kind of work done in overalls. I like the way that David Brooks begins his column titled "Religion and Inequality" ...

About a century ago, Walter Judd was a 17-year-old boy hoping to go to college at the University of Nebraska. His father pulled him aside and told him that, though the family had happily paid for Judd’s two sisters to go to college, Judd himself would get no money for tuition or room and board. His father explained that he thought his son might one day go on to become a fine doctor, but he had also seen loose tendencies. Some hard manual labor during college would straighten him out.

Judd took the train to the university, arrived at the station at 10:30 and by 12:15 had found a job washing dishes at the cafeteria of the Y.M.C.A. He did that job every day of his first year, rising at 6 each morning, not having his first college date until the last week of the school year. Judd went on to become a doctor, a daring medical missionary and a prominent member of Congress between 1943 and 1963. The anecdote is small, but it illustrates a few things. First, that, in those days, it was possible to work your way through college doing dishes. More important, that people then were more likely to assume that jobs at the bottom of the status ladder were ennobling and that jobs at the top were morally perilous.

I like the way that Brooks goes on to say that the hard work of the working class was once the moral bedrock of our nation. Once people like Walter Judd's father understood first hand that success was meaningless without hard work. I wonder, in these get-rich times, if we can ever recover the idea that working hard is a smart and noble way to live?

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Target v. Walmart

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I occasionally debate the merits and demerits of the worlds largest retailer. Always interesting to see how sometimes folks that hate 'evil' Walmart will shop at Target. Here are a clip from an old news article that gives us some food for thought.

After a decade of meteoric growth at both Target and Wal-Mart, labor groups say the two retailers are no longer very different in the way they treat their workers. Entry-level hourly workers in Target stores earn roughly the same pay and have more difficulty qualifying for health care coverage than their peers at Wal-Mart. Both retailers oppose unions and have taken steps to prevent organizing efforts in stores. And both have outsourced jobs overseas to save costs. But while Wal-Mart is perceived as a corporate giant that will do just about anything to maximize sales and profits, Target — thanks to its hip advertising campaigns and its longtime contributions to a variety of civic and cultural causes — is seen as a model corporate citizen and benevolent employer.

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Most Admired Companies?

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Fortune magazine has produced a list of the World's Most Admired Companies. The ones to the left are the cream of their crop. I wonder what voting criteria they used? I mean really, who admires a company like Apple that uses sweatshops in China to make their electronic glip-glop? And who thinks that the billionaires at Google give us things like this blog without the bottom line in mind? Amazon makes sense in a world that values cheap stuff. And who wouldn't vote for the sweetness of a Coke? Pepsi was thirty three lower on the list. Sad that poor old junk food king McDonald's missed the list and came in at number twelve. And if you can believe it Walmart was most admired at number twenty seven and evil banker Goldman Sachs at thirty four. Interesting  to note that no telecom, gaming, health care or insurance company made the list.

I guess this top fifty list speaks to me of the ways that we value corporations. The top companies seem to be the ones that do something for us or make things that we like. Guess I am not all that surprised by the list. Doubtful that most of us would admire companies that are unsuccessful, losing business and laying off employees. Even so, are these really admirable companies?

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Sprint goes Asian

As an AT&T retiree, long-time Sprint customer and one-time Sprint consultant, I have mixed emotions about the recent acquisition of Sprint by SoftBank. Here are some of the specifics that Larry Dignan details at ZDNet:

• Softbank will invest $20.1 billion in Sprint. Of that sum, $12.1 billion goes to Sprint shareholders and $8 billion goes to the balance sheet.
• 55 percent of Sprint shares will be exchanged for $7.30 in cash. The rest will become shares of the newfangled Sprint.
• The deal closes in mid-2013.
• The new version of Sprint will float a convertible bond that translates into common stock at $5.25. This move will dilute existing Sprint shareholders heavily.
  

Here are a few of the positives that Larry lists:

• Sprint is clearly saved. The company had cash, but also had a lot of debt. It will still have a lot of debt, but a balance sheet that can take a punch. For perspective, Sprint had $21 billion in long-term debt and a market cap of less than $17 billion.
• The Softbank deal also allows Sprint to keep its current executives and network vision in place. Sprint will be able to compete on LTE with the likes of Verizon and AT&T. Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son is basically betting that Sprint can disrupt the mobile market as Softbank Mobile has in Japan.

And here a few of the things that Larry says the deal does not do:

• Softbank's cash infusion doesn't really eliminate Sprint's debt. It's not like Sprint deleveraged overnight. That reality will become clear in the years ahead.
• Boost Sprint's network immediately. For all of Son's talk about how U.S. networks are too slow, it's unclear how exactly Softbank-Sprint are going to leapfrog LTE. At this point, Sprint is playing LTE catch up. 
• Offer any synergy. Softbank can lend expertise and money to Sprint, but there aren't a lot of natural connection points. ... Softbank and Sprint are on two sides of the world.
• Enable Sprint to stay independent. Sprint is still going to be squeezed from above and below. AT&T and Verizon lead the U.S. from above and Sprint will still be No. 3. The catch is that Deutsche Telekom orchestrated the T-Mobile-MetroPCS deal. In other words, T-Mobile will be stronger at No. 4 and could breathe down Sprint's neck for years to com. Sprint still could wind up merging with T-Mobile once the LTE rollouts are done.
  

I guess that last point is the one that has me wondering about the deal. Sprint has struggled for years in the quest for market share. I think that they are poised to take away some of that market share now that they offer the iPhone and have the cheapest data plan in the USA. Of course I could just be rooting for the home town team?

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Did Obama really save GM?

George Will is one of my favorite conservative writers and pundits. A few weeks ago he framed the takeover of General Motors in a way that might make liberals, I mean progressives, cringe in his piece titled "Liberalism, as we know it".
Here is an excerpt from it:

"After a delusional proclamation — General Motors “has come roaring back” — Obama said: “Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.” We have been warned.
Obama’s supposed rescue of “the auto industry” — note the definite article, “the” — is a pedal on the political organ he pumps energetically in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and elsewhere. Concerning which:

He intervened to succor one of two of the U.S. auto industries. One, located in the South and elsewhere, does not have a long history of subservience to the United Auto Workers and for that reason has not needed Obama’s ministrations. He showered public money on two of three parts of the mostly Northern auto industry, the one long entangled with the UAW. He socialized the losses of GM and Chrysler. Ford was not a mendicant because it was not mismanaged.

Today, “I am GM, hear me roar” is again losing market share, and its stock, of which taxpayers own 26 percent, was trading Thursday morning at $21, below the $33 price our investor in chief paid for it and below the $53 price it would
have to reach to enable taxpayers to recover the entire $49.5 billion bailout."

The GM takeover and their subsequent performance gives me cause to pause when I hear it used as an achievement of the administration. How can a candidate boast about a deal that has lost taxpayers so much money?

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Will the Steve Jobs Legacy be Hypocrisy?

Just read a ZDNet article titled "Steve Jobs's dire legacy: Devastating bad taste" that made me wonder which Steve Jobs people will remember the most. Will most think of the genius innovator or will they remember the rich tycoon? Following are a few clips from the article. Read them (or even the whole piece) and let me know what you think.

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"We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas" — Steve Jobs, Triumph of the Nerds, 1996

"I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this" — Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs, 2011

What made the Jobs of 2011 so different from the 1996 model? Power. Apple was in trouble in 1996, losing its way in a welter of bad products and worse decisions. Jobs was at NeXT, contemplating the failure of his workstation strategy.
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Take a moment and let Jobs's threat sink in. This is a man who once excoriated Microsoft about its lack of taste: for him to use nuclear war as a metaphor is a horrible irony.
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Apple, however, is following the diktats of its lost leader. It is using its cash and patents — the nuclear weaponry of large corporations — while, inevitably, claiming that this is the application of natural justice against a great wrong.

The facts of thermonuclear war are stark. The collateral damage to everyone, regardless of their active involvement in the conflict, is tremendous. The long-term consequences are incalculable. It is extraordinarily distasteful to talk of the mobile phone business in such terms.
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Android, after all, is guilty at worst of nothing more than the sort of behaviour that Jobs himself once gloried in — back in the days before he had nukes.

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Who owns Congress?

This interesting chart from a 2010 Mother Jones article presents an interesting image of congressional donors. They purport that to the dots on the chart represents the industries which gave them the most money over their entire careers. So interesting to note the different patterns between the two congressional houses. Seems like Finance, Insurance and Real Estate are the power players. You can get the full story and dotted details here.

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About the things that Executives say ...

I had a great conversation this morning with a friend on Facebook about the ways that corporations and their executives are weighing in on socially political issues in the United States. Here is the heart of what I feel about it:

"My point is that it seems to be foolish (to me anyways) for a businessman (Christian or not) to alienate customers based on their own view of a politically charged issue. I also think that it is foolish for Starbucks, Microsoft and Nike to openly support the opposite view in Washington State's pending same-sex marriage legislation."

My view seems to resonate with some:

"Usually companies stay away from anything contentious," says Allen Adamson, managing director at branding firm Landor Associates and author of "BrandSimple: How the Best Brands Keep it Simple and Succeed." "They want the focus and attention on their products and services."

Interesting how consumers are reacting. Some are boycotting and some are supporting companies like Chick-fil-A and Costco because of things that their leaders have said. Some don't feel a need to respond either way to the things that executives say or the issues that they endorse. I am more in the latter camp. And I imagine that, in the long term, folks will be eating chicken and drinking coffee in the establishments that disagree with their political views.

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Nelly Don

I can see this bit of street art (pictured below) from the deck of my loft in Kansas City and have wondered what the story was behind the image. Here is a bit of it from NellyDon.com:

John and Catherine Quinlan had 13 children. Nell was the 12th child and the fifth daughter. She was christened Ellen Howard Quinlan but her older sisters quickly took to calling her Nell. She grew up in the small railroad town of Parsons, Kansas, where her father worked as a farmer and worked in the shop at the Katy Railroad. ... Nell was relegated to wearing hand-me-down clothes from her older sisters and learned to sew early on so as to repair and re-size the clothes that she was given.
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At age 16 she moved to Kansas City in 1905. Nell did not want to wear the everyday Mother Hubbard fashions women were resigned to wearing in those days so she started making her own dresses. She gave them away to her family, friends and neighbors who soon encouraged her to sell them, which she did. In 1916, Peck's Dry Goods Store in Kansas City ordered 18 dozen of Nell's dresses and her business was off and running.

The name "Nelly Don" was a creative transposition of Donnelly (i.e Don Nelly), her husband's last name, and her nickname. By 1923, Nell had 250 employees. By 1931, Nell had more than a thousand employees and $3.5 million in sales. Her factory was making five-thousand dresses a day and continued to do so under her leadership for the next 25 years. ... Nelly Don manufactured 75 million dresses from 1916 to 1978 making it the largest dress manufacturer of the 20th century. They were one of the first companies to apply assembly line techniques to clothing manufacturing. It was reported that she only had to dismiss one employee in the entire history of the company.
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Nell was greatly loved by her employees. She was the largest manufacturer of women's military and work clothing during World War II. She fought unionization successfully. In 1947 she built the largest dress manufacturing plant in the world. Nell lived to be 102 years old, outliving all her brothers and sisters.

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The Password Protection Act of 2012

The issue of employee privacy has been recently challenged by over-zealous employers wanting access to employee's social networking accounts. I really do not understand these folks or why the government needs to be involved. Consider this to this excerpt from a ZDNet article:

A group of Democrats today introduced legislation in both the House and Senate to prevent employers from forcing employees and job applicants into sharing information from their personal social networking accounts. In other words, Maryland may soon not be the only state that has banned employers demanding access to Facebook accounts. The Password Protection Act of 2012 (PPA) would also prevent employers from accessing information on any computer that isn’t owned or controlled by an employee, including private e-mail accounts, photo sharing sites, and smartphones.

Do you agree with employers or do you agree with the ACLU that "employers have no business snooping on their employees’ Facebook pages, private email accounts and smart phones"?

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Are the New Entrepreneurs all about our Geeky and Cheap Stuff?

Do you think it strange that this list of great entrepreneurs focuses mainly on folks who provide services that many of us use? For sure there is Apple who does make computerish hardware - albeit they manufacture it overseas. Yet the predominant entrepreneurial genre is providing planes to fly on, web services to thrill us, coffee to energize us and companies (physical and virtual) to sell us (and deliver to our homes) the cheap stuff we crave so much.

Years ago our American culture took a swing toward consumerism and the folks who capitalized on it have seemed to have had a good measure of success. Of course these giants of entrepreneurship have built their successes on the backs of those who make computers (i.e. Michael Dell), plant coffee beans, make airplanes and work on assembly lines in China. Perhaps the lack of engineering students in college is a symptom of this kind of focus? What do you think?

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Is Warehouse Shopping a Scam?

When I was younger and shopped for a family of four these kind of places seemed like a good idea. Then I started comparing them to Walmart prices and found them lacking. I checked one of them out this afternoon and my mind was not changed.. especially when the membership is over $50.

Do you warehouse shop? If so, what do you like about it?

Preventing Cyber Monday Identity Theft

Sadly this is a time of the year that identity thieves prey on folks making purchases online. So on this day called Cyber Monday I give you the following checklist with complements of the folks at ProtectMyID.com and ConsumerInfo.com:

• Don't access secure websites, such as online banking, from shared computers or in public.
• Use the privacy settings on social networking sites to ensure you're only sharing information with those you trust.
• Only provide your Social Security number when necessary, such as for employment, tax forms or bank records.
• Be careful opening files, links, emails, etc. from unknown sources or from a friend's account that may have been hacked.
• Check the security of online stores before you purchase.
• Shred all sensitive information before throwing in the trash
• When sharing personal information with certain professionals, such as tax preparers or mortgage lenders, be sure to choose companies you trust.

Ann and I will probably do a bit of online shopping this season. How about you?

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Crony Capitalism: Socialism for Tycoons

Many of my libertarian and conservative friends often regale the virtues of capitalism and free markets. Some of them however understand that much of what our system looks like these days is an example Crony Capitalism. Here is how Wikipedia defines it:

Crony capitalism is a term describing a capitalist economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between business people and government officials. It may be exhibited by favoritism in the distribution of legal permits, government grants, special tax breaks, and so forth.

Nicholas D. Kristof shares this about it in his New York Times opinion piece titled "Crony Capitalism Comes Home".
Here are a few of his thoughts:

I’m as passionate a believer in capitalism as anyone. My Krzysztofowicz cousins (who didn’t shorten the family name) lived in Poland, and their experience with Communism taught me that the way to raise living standards is capitalism. But, in recent years, some financiers have chosen to live in a government-backed featherbed. Their platform seems to be socialism for tycoons and capitalism for the rest of us.
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Capitalism is so successful an economic system partly because of an internal discipline that allows for loss and even bankruptcy. It’s the possibility of failure that creates the opportunity for triumph. Yet many of America’s major banks are too big to fail, so they can privatize profits while socializing risk.

The upshot is that financial institutions boost leverage in search of supersize profits and bonuses. Banks pretend that risk is eliminated because it’s securitized. Rating agencies accept money to issue an imprimatur that turns out to be meaningless. The system teeters, and then the taxpayer rushes in to bail bankers out. Where’s the accountability?

The lack of accountability in Crony Capitalism is troubling. The lawmakers in DC do not seem to have it. The executives in Corporate America do not want it. And the rest of us seem powerless. Small wonder that some feel a need to protest.