More Retirees Choosing to Become Entrepreneurs

 

Call them silver entrepreneurs or senior entrepreneurs or third-age entrepreneurs. They are people who do not want — or are not financially able — to idle away their retirement years and, instead, opt to start a business.

. . .  

The numbers of retired people rejecting the unfettered leisure that has been the American model since the 1940’s in favor of starting up a small business are not exact. Federal government data suggests there are now at least three million entrepreneurs who are 55 and over — up one-third from the number counted in 2000.

”It’s like this sea swell that has been under the radar,” said Linda Wiener, the aging issues expert for Monster.com, the jobs search Web site. ”There are people who don’t want to work an hourly job, and are wondering what are they going to do for the next 30 years?”

A majority of 800 workers surveyed last year for the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University indicated in their responses that traditional retirement was obsolete. Two-thirds expect to work after 55, and about 15 percent wanted to start their own business after they retired, the survey found.

 

For the full story, see: 

Elizabeth Olson.  "Small Business; In Life’s Second Act, Some Take On A New Role: Entrepreneur."  The New York Times  (Thurs., September 28, 2006):  C6.

(Note:  ellipsis added.)

 

Communist Dictator Chavez Destroys Freedom of the Press in Venezuela

 

   Supporters of freedom in Venezuela protesting communist dictator Chavez’s shutting down the television network that dared to criticize him.  Source of photo:  online version of the NYT article that is quoted and cited below. 

 

My Wabash College economics professor, Ben Rogge, used to say that political freedom ultimately depended on economic freedom:  how could you depend on a socialist government to provide a printing press to those who seek to undermine socialism?

(In his article "The Case for Economic Freedom" published in his Can Capitalism Survive? Rogge gives credit for the argument to his friend Milton Friedman in his Capitalism and Freedom, which was based on lectures given at Wabash.)

Well, if there is a heaven, I can imagine Rogge there, reading the following passages, and reacting with his sad, knowing, half-smile.

 

(p. A3)  CARACAS, Venezuela, May 27 — With little more than an hour to go late Sunday until this country’s oldest television network was to be taken off the air after 53 years of broadcasting, the police dispersed thousands of protesters by firing tear gas into demonstrations against the measure.

. . .

The president has defended the RCTV decision, saying that the network supported a coup that briefly removed him from office in 2002.

RCTV’s news programs regularly deride Mr. Chávez’s Socialist-inspired transformation of Venezuelan society. “RCTV lacks respect for the Venezuelan people,” said Onán Mauricio Aristigueta, 46, a messenger at the National Assembly who showed up to support the president.

Mr. Chávez has left untouched the operations of other private broadcasters who were also critical of him at the time of the 2002 coup but who have changed editorial policies to stop criticizing his government. That has led Mr. Chávez’s critics to claim that the move to allow RCTV’s license to expire amounts to a stifling of dissent in the news media.

“The other channels don’t say anything,” said Elisa Parejo, 69, an actress who was one of RCTV’s first soap opera stars. “What we’re living in Venezuela is a monstrosity,” she said at RCTV’s headquarters on Sunday, as employees gathered for an on-air remembrance of the network’s history. “It is a dictatorship.”

 

For the full story, see: 

SIMON ROMERO.  "Dueling Protests Over Shutdown of Venezuela TV Station."  The New York Times  (Mon., May 28, 2007):  A3.

(Note: the excerpts above are from the updated online version of the article that appeared online under the title: "Venezuela Police Repel Protests Over TV Network’s Closing.")

(Note:  ellipsis added.)

 

On 5/28/07 CNN broadcast a Harris Whitbeck report on students protesting the Chavez censorship under the title "Hear No Evil, See No Evil."

 

   Monica Herrero protests Chavez closing down the television network that dared to criticize his government.  Source of photo:  screen capture from the CNN report at http://www.cnn.com/video/partners/clickability/index.html?url=/video/world/2007/05/28/whitbeck.chavez.tv.affl

 

Passport Fiasco Would Bankrupt a Private Company, But Government Lumbers On

 

Here is an email that I sent to Congressman Lee Terry’s office on Sat., March 24, 2007: 

 

I applied for a passport renewal on January 20, 2007.  The web form said that it would take about six weeks.  Later, on the web site they increased that to eight weeks.  Then 10 weeks.  The trip was scheduled for April 3rd, and as the weeks passed, my stress increased enormously.  I would have been willing (not happy, but willing) to pay the extra $60 for "expedited" service, if I had known they were going to lengthen the time for routine handling by a month.  But they only passed out that information after it was too late to do anything about it.  Insult was added to injury when the State Department passport office was unwilling to answer their phone after many tries at times ranging from early in the morning until a few minutes before midnight (eastern time).  Each time, a recorded voice would say:  visit the web site, or try to call later.  (But the web site did not have the answers to my questions, and calling "later" never worked.)

There is no excuse for the State Department not anticipating that there would be a huge increase in demand for passports when they put into effect the new mandate that passports be used to re-enter the U.S. from Mexico.  If a private business operated with the inefficiency of the passport office, they would justly go bankrupt. 

The only ray of sunlight in this dark vista was "Susie" of Lee Terry’s office.  When I called the Omaha office they put her on the line, and she asked me relevant questions, and proceeded to get back to me the same day with what I needed to know.  She got through to an actual human being at the State Department, and learned that I would receive my passport in a few days.  (I received it yesterday.)  "Thank you" to Susie, and thank you to Lee Terry, for having an office staffed with competent people, who care.

Sincerely,

Art Diamond

 

A Sincere Environmentalist: “If I Was a Student, I Would March Against Myself”

 

ConlinMichelleEnvironmentalist.jpg   Environmentalist Michele Conlin scooters around New York during the winter.  Source of photo:  online version of the NYT article cited below.

 

(p. D7)  Ms. Conlin, . . . , said she saw “An Inconvenient Truth” in an air-conditioned movie theater last summer. “It was like, ‘J’accuse!’ ” she said. “I just felt like everything I did in my life was contributing to a system that was really problematic.” Borrowing a phrase from her husband, she continued, “If I was a student, I would march against myself.”

 

For the full story, see: 

PENELOPE GREEN.  "The Year Without Toilet Paper."  The New York Times  (Thurs., March 22, 2007):  D1 & D7.

(Note:  ellipsis added.)

 

As Online Book Sales Increase, So Do Total Book Sales

   Source of graphs:  online version of the WSJ article cited below.

 

The graph on the left would not surprise Chris Anderson of The Long Tail.  Selling books online supplies greater variety, so that when online sales grow, overall book sales grow too. 

 

(p. B1)  For six years, Borders Group Inc. has pursued a distinctly unfashionable strategy: betting big on bricks and mortar while paying little attention to the online world. But with online sales capturing an ever-increasing share of the book business, the No. 2 book retailer is reversing course.

Today, Borders announced its intention to reopen its own branded e-commerce Web site in early 2008, ending an alliance with Amazon.com Inc. that had been the core of its online strategy.

 

For the full story, see: 

JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG.  "Borders Business Plan Gets a Rewrite; It Will Reopen Web Site, Give Up Most Stores Abroad, Close Many Waldenbooks."   The Wall Street Journal  (Thurs., March 22, 2007):   B1 & B2. 

 

BordersStore.jpg JonesGeorgeBordersCEO.gif  Photo on left is a Borders store; image on right is of Borders CEO George Jones.  Source of photo and image:  online version of the WSJ article cited above.

 

Beautiful Downtown Burbank, Runs Amok

Cultural history background for the young:  at the beginning of every installment of the "Rowan and Martin Laugh-In" TV comedy review (circa 1968-1973), someone would sarcastically intone that the show was being broadcast from "beautiful downtown Burbank." 

Excerpted below is Daniel Pink’s incredible conversation with a Burbank city clerk:

 

(p. 199)  What led me to this 100,000-person city in California’s San Fernando Valley—past the fish fountains, to the steps of City Hall—was a rumor I’d heard that Burbank puts free agents in jail.

. . .

(p. 200)  After fifteen minutes of probing, here’s the gist of what he tells me:  If I want to write from a home office in Burbank, I first must apply for a home occupation license.  The city would examine my application, and then come to my house to inspect the office from which I intended to work.  Once the inspector deemed my home office safe for writing and unthreatening to my neighbors, I could begin earning a living, my workplace now officially blessed by the city.

But that was only the beginning.  I’d have to pay a special tax.  And I’d have to abide by the strictures of Burbank Municipal Code Section 31-672—which, among other things, said:  My office couldn’t be larger than four hundred square feet or 20 percent of my home’s square footage.  I couldn’t put my home office in a "garage, carport, or any other area required or designated for the parking of vehicles."  The only "materials, equipment, and/or tools" I could use to do my work were things used by "a normal household."  I couldn’t use my home office to repair cars, sell guns, or operate a kennel.  And the only folks who could ever work with me in the office were people who lived with me.

That last provision alarmed me.

Pointing to Section 31-672(c), I ask, "Does this mean I can’t have a meeting at my house?"

"Yep," says the clerk.  "You’d have to somewhere else."

"Let me get this straight," I say.  "Let’s say I’m a writer collaborating on a screenplay.  If my collaborator comes over and we work on the screenplay together, that’s against the law?  It’s a misdemeanor to have a meeting at your house?"

"Yep," says the clerk.

"Isn’t California a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ state?"

"Yep."

Burbank, we we have a problem.  I hope it’s unlikely that a free agent who has three meetings at her house, and gets caught, prosecuted, and convicted each time, goes to jail for the rest of her life.  But the mere possibility reflects a wider problem with America’s legal, policy, and tax regimes.  They were built for a (p. 201) work world that has largely disappeared, and are ill equipped for the new world that has arrived.

 

Source:

Pink, Daniel H.  Free Agent Nation: How America’s New Independent Workers Are Transforming the Way We Live.  New York: Warner Business Books, 2001.

(Note:  italics in original; ellipsis added.)

 

“The Odor of Stagnation”

 

(p. 244)  Whenever I walk into a public school, I stagger a bit at the entrance.  The moment I step across the threshold, I’m nearly toppled by a wave of nostalgia.  Most schools I’ve visited in the twenty-first century look and feel exactly like the central Ohio, public schools I attended in the 1970s.  The classrooms are the same size.  The desks stand in those same rows.  Bulletin boards preview the next national holiday.  The hallways even smell the same.  Sure, some classrooms might have a computer or two.  But in most respects, the schools American children attend today seem indistinguishable from the ones their parents and grandparents attended generations earlier.

At first such deja vu warmed my soul.  But then I thought about it.  How many other places look and feel exactly as they did twenty, thirty, or forty years ago?  Banks don’t.  Hospitals don’t.  Grocery stores don’t.  Maybe the sweet nostalgia I sniffed on those classroom visits was really the odor of stagnation.

 

Source:

Pink, Daniel H.  Free Agent Nation: How America’s New Independent Workers Are Transforming the Way We Live.  New York: Warner Business Books, 2001.

(Note:  italics in original.)

 

Destroying Dams Can Hurt the Environment Too

 

SandyRiverDamRemoved.jpg   In response to environmental concerns, the Sandy River Dam is destroyed.  Source of photo:  online version of the WSJ article cited below.

 

The WSJ summarizes an article from the March Scientific American:

 

Environmental concerns have led the U.S. to pull down an increasing number of aging dams in the last decade, returning water to dry streams, birds to wetlands, and migratory fish to rivers. But environmentalists are also learning a torn-down dam can leave a host of challenges, writes Jane C. Marks, an ecologist at Northern Arizona University.

Sediment that has accumulated behind the dam can muddy the waters of a river, choking insects and algae that fish need to survive. Seeds buried in the sediment might unleash alien crops that kill local species and contaminated sediment might make fish poisonous.  . . .

Exotic fish can also become a problem. A dam in Arizona had been blocking exotic fish such as bass and sunfish from getting into a creek. Biologists were concerned that, without the dam, local fish in the creek would be wiped out as the exotic fish arrived.

. . .

Dams can cause dilemmas beyond the environment. Ms. Marks mentions how a father and son bitterly disagreed over the Loire dams’ removal. The father wanted the salmon and wild waters of his youth to return, whereas the son wanted to preserve the swims and boating trips of his youth.

 

For the full summary, see:

"Informed Reader; Environment; As U.S. Tears Down Dams and Rivers Rebound, Scientists Find a Flood of Ecological Risks."  The Wall Street Journal  (Weds., February 21, 2007):  B12.

(Note:  ellipses added.)

 

“A Triumph of Engaged Amateurism”

 

Steven Johnson has a great passage on the contribution of the amateur in The Ghost Map story (see below).

This is a theme that resonates.  In The Long Tail, Chris Anderson makes the case for amateurs in astronomy.  (Is it he, who points out that the root of the word "amateur" is to love?)

Stigler had an important early paper in which he discusses the professionalization of the economics profession.  He praises the results, but what he presents provides some grist for the mill of criticism too.  For example, the exit of the amateurs, reduced the applicability of the work, and turned research more toward internal puzzle-solving, and model-building.

The web is a leveler in science, as suggested in an NBER paper.  Maybe the result will be a resurgence of amateurism, and maybe that won’t be all bad.

 

(p. 202)  But Broad Street should be understood not just as the triumph of rogue science, but also, and just as important, as the triumph of a certain mode of engaged amateurism.  Snow himself was a kind of amateur.  He had no institutional role where cholera was concerned; his interest in the disease was closer to a hobby than a true vocation.  But Whitehead was an amateur par excellence.  He had no medical training, no background in public health.  His only credentials for solving the mystery behind London’s most devastating outbreak of disease were his open and probing mind and his intimate knowledge of the community. 

 

Source:

Johnson, Steven. The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic – and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. New York: Riverhead Books, 2006.

 

(Note:  A probably relevant, much praised book, that I have never gotten around to reading, is Martin J.S. Rudwick’s The Great Devonian Controversy:  The Shaping of Scientific Knowledge among Gentlemanly Specialists.)

 

Global Warming Would Give Access to Huge Oil and Gas Now Under Ice

 

The WSJ summarizes a Feb. 18, 2007 article from the Boston Globe.  Here is an excerpt from the summary:

 

(p. B12) Among the many changes global warming might bring, the melting ice in the Arctic could eventually give access to the oil and gas under the ice, estimated by the U.S. Geological Survey to amount to a quarter of the world’s reserves. Fifty-five million years ago the region was a warm land of crocodiles and palm trees whose remains have since become fossil fuel, reports Drake Bennett. The Arctic ice has made the fuel practically inaccessible by making drilling hard and blocking ships.

 

For the full summary, see:

"Informed Reader; Global Warming; Arctic Melting May Clear Path to Vast Deposits of Oil and Gas."  The Wall Street Journal  (Weds., February 21, 2007):  B12.

 

Chambers of Commerce Dump Commerce and Embrace Big Government

 

The Chamber of Commerce, long a supporter of limited government and low taxes, was part of the coalition backing the Reagan revolution in the 1980s. On the national level, the organization still follows a pro-growth agenda — but thanks to an astonishing political transformation, many chambers of commerce on the state and local level have been abandoning these goals. They’re becoming, in effect, lobbyists for big government.

. . .

In as many as half the states, state taxpayer organizations, free market think tanks and small business leaders now complain bitterly that, on a wide range of issues, chambers of commerce deploy their financial resources and lobbying clout to expand the taxing, spending and regulatory authorities of government. This behavior, they note, erodes the very pro-growth climate necessary for businesses — at least those not connected at the hip with government — to prosper. Journalist Tim Carney agrees: All too often, he notes in his recent book, "Rip-Off," "state and local chambers have become corrupted by the lure of big dollar corporate welfare schemes."

. . .

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce boasts that the organization’s "core mission is to fight for business and free enterprise before Congress, the White House, regulatory agencies . . . and governments around the world." The national chamber has done just that, pushing tort reform and free trade — but in the states, chambers have come to believe their primary function is to secure tax financing for sports stadiums, convention centers, high-tech research institutes and transit boondoggles. Some local chambers have reportedly asked local utilities, school administrators and even politicians to join; others have opened membership to arts councils, museums, civic associations and other "tax eater" entities.

. . .

"I used to think that public employee unions like the NEA were the main enemy in the struggle for limited government, competition and private sector solutions," says Mr. Caldera of the Independence Institute. "I was wrong. Our biggest adversary is the special interest business cartel that labels itself ‘the business community’ and its political machine run by chambers and other industry associations." 

 

For the full commentary, see: 

STEPHEN MOORE.  "Tax Chambers."  The Wall Street Journal  (Sat., February 10, 2007):  A8.

(Note:  ellipses added, except the one in the quote following the word "agencies.")