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Immigrant Entrepreneurs Thrive in New York City

Manuel and mother Mercedes of the entrepreneurial Miranda family, inspect the corn flatbread called "arepa." Source of photo: online version of the NYT article cited below.

Immigrant entrepreneurship contributes to the vitality and dynamism of New York and the nation. Note the graphic at the bottom of this entry shows that employment increases in the same areas of the city in which immigrant entrepreneurship is thriving.

Manuel A. Miranda was 8 when his family immigrated to New York from Bogotá. His parents, who had been lawyers, turned to selling home-cooked food from the trunk of their car. Manuel pitched in after school, grinding corn by hand for traditional Colombian flatbreads called arepas.

Today Mr. Miranda, 32, runs a family business with 16 employees, producing 10 million arepas a year in the Maspeth section of Queens. But the burst of Colombian immigration to the city has slowed; arepas customers are spreading through the suburbs, and competition for them is fierce. Now, he says, his eye is on a vast, untapped market: the rest of the country.

. . .

“Immigrants have been the entrepreneurial spark plugs of cities from New York to Los Angeles,” said Jonathan Bowles, the director of the Center for an Urban Future, a private, nonprofit research organization that has studied the dynamics of immigrant businesses that turned decaying neighborhoods into vibrant commercial hubs in recent decades. “These are precious and important economic generators for New York City, and there’s a risk that we might lose them over the next decade.”

A report to be issued by the center today highlights both the potential and the challenge for cities full of immigrant entrepreneurs, who often face language barriers, difficulties getting credit, and problems connecting with mainstream agencies that help businesses grow. The report identifies a generation of immigrant-founded enterprises poised to break into the big time — or already there, like the Lams Group, one of the city’s most aggressive hotel developers, or Delgado Travel, which reaps roughly $1 billion in annual revenues.

In Los Angeles, at least 22 of the 100 fastest-growing companies in 2005 were created by first-generation immigrants. In Houston, a telecommunications company started by a Pakistani man topped the 2006 list of the city’s most successful small businesses.

But even in those cities and New York, where immigrant-friendly mayors have promoted programs to help small business, the report contends that immigrant entrepreneurs have been overlooked in long-term strategies for economic development.

. . .

Now, some children of the early influx are trying to build on their parents’ success — success that itself has increased the cost of doing business, by driving up rents and creating congestion.

One example is Jay Joshua, a Manhattan company that designs souvenirs and then has them manufactured in Asia and imported. Jay Chung, who arrived from South Korea in 1981 as a graduate student in design, started printing his computer-graphic designs for New York logos and peddling them to local T-shirt shops. His company is now one of the city’s leading suppliers of tourist items, from New York-loving coffee mugs to taxicab Christmas ornaments.

Mr. Chung’s son Joshua, 26, who was 3 when he immigrated, joined the company after studying business management in college, and recently helped land orders for a new line of Chicago souvenirs. But frustration mixes with pride when the Chungs, both American citizens now, discuss the company’s growth.

“It’s really hard to conduct a business over here as a wholesaler,” Mr. Chung said in the company’s West 27th Street showroom, chockablock with samples. “We get a ticket every 20 minutes, no matter what. We need more convenient places with less rent, less traffic.”

Thirty years ago their wholesale district was desolate. Now hundreds of Korean-American importers are there, said Jay Chung, who is a leader of the local Korean-American business association. They face a blizzard of parking tickets and high commercial rents — nearly $20,000 a month for 1,400 square feet, he said.

For the full story, see:

NINA BERNSTEIN. "Immigrant Entrepreneurs Shape a New Economy." The New York Times (Tues., February 6, 2007): C13.

(Note: the ellipses are added.)

The author of the New York Times article has contributed to a New York Times digital video clip that is based on the article and is entitled "Immigrant Entrepreneurs: A Tour of One Bustling Ethnic Enclave."

Entrepreneur father Jay and son Joshua own a firm that supplies New York City souveniers. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article cited above.

Source of graph: online version of the NYT article cited above.

Investments Increase in Electric Transmission

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

U.S. utilities are significantly increasing their spending on new electricity-transmission lines, a trend that could ease choke points in the flow of power, enhance reliability and increase the potential for renewable energy.

The spending should put a dent in the chronic problem of underinvestment, a factor in the big 2003 blackout that left 50 million people in the eastern U.S. and Canada in the dark.

. . .

American Electric Power created buzz in November when it announced it will partner with Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s utility unit, MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., to build more transmission lines in Texas. AEP is budgeting about $1 billion for Texas projects, some designed to serve wind power developers.

AEP has identified $9 billion in important transmission projects in its 11-state region, including $3 billion for a 550-mile line that would bring cheaper power to New Jersey from West Virginia. AEP Chairman Michael Morris said transmission projects "will begin to pay benefits to shareholders as early as 2007."

. . .

Some projects pay for themselves, in effect, by eliminating grid choke points that limit power flows. In Connecticut, a new high-voltage line to Norwalk from Danbury, cost $340 million but will produce immediate savings for consumers by allowing less costly power to flow into the area. That eliminates so-called congestion costs, or the difference between what it would cost to supply the need in the most economical way versus what it actually costs because transmission capacity is limited.

For the full story, see:

REBECCA SMITH. "Money on the Lines Utilities Invest in Transmission." The Wall Street Journal (Tues., February 6, 2007): A10.

“Free” Parking Has Hidden Costs

Two views of the new parking meters in Redwood, California. Source of photos: online version of the WSJ article cited below.

Economists have long made the case that the solution to the parking crunch many cities face lies not in more free or cheap parking but in higher prices. The idea is that higher prices result in a greater churn — and get more people on buses and subways — which leads to more open spaces. But this notion has often run up against city planners and retailers arguing that cheap and plentiful parking results in more commerce and, thus, higher sales taxes and a vibrant economy.

Now, in places like Redwood City, some officials are finally listening. One reason is that after decades of losing people to the suburbs, many city centers are swelling again. Many of these new residents are bringing cars with them, creating the kind of traffic that makes them yearn for the suburbs again.

One of the most influential of the parking gurus is Donald Shoup, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles who commutes on a bicycle. Since the publication in 2005 of Mr. Shoup’s "The High Cost of Free Parking," he has become something of a celebrity at academic gatherings and parking-industry meetings. Lines form at his book signings. "He’s a parking rock star," says Paul White, of Transportation Alternatives, a New York group that advocates for pedestrians and bicycles.

. . .

Dan Zack, downtown development coordinator for Redwood City, has bought in. A few years ago, his boss presented him with a problem. "He said, ‘We’re adding a million visitors every year, but only 600 new parking spots — make it work,’ " Mr. Zack recalls. After visiting neighboring cities and reading books like "The Dimensions of Parking," Mr. Zack was handed an article by Mr. Shoup.

The city recently raised rates to 75 cents for some prime downtown spots that had been free, and ditched its one-hour time limits, so cars can prepay for as long as they’d like. The move has helped steer more cars to underutilized parking garages away from the main drag.

. . .

San Francisco, perhaps more than any other city, shows how radically some cities are rethinking their parking. The city is one of the toughest places to find a meter spot in all of America, and there have been a spate of attacks by angry drivers, against parking enforcement officers. One block near the popular Fisherman’s Wharf has average stays of four hours — even though there’s a two-hour time limit — and some spots are filled for days at a time.

Recently, the city hired a company to lay hundreds of 4-inch-by-4-inch sensors along the streets in some areas. The sensors, which resemble reflectors, have recorded some 250,000 "parking events" across 200 parking spots. City planners can now tell you which spots are occupied the longest and how traffic flow affects parking supplies.

If the sensors get a wider rollout, the city has floated a number of ideas. When there’s a Giants baseball game at AT&T Park, the city could temporarily charge about the same as private lots near the stadium. The ground sensors are also connected to the Internet wirelessly, which creates the possibility that parking enforcement officers equipped with PDAs could get real-time information on parking violations beamed to them. It also means consumers could get information on which parking spots are open.

For the full story, see:

CONOR DOUGHERTY. "The Parking Fix; Free-market economists are overhauling a frustration of American life — and erasing what may be one of the last great urban bargains." The Wall Street Journal (Sat., February 3, 2007): P1 & P5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

Sensors such as the one embedded in the San Francisco street on the left, could eventually be used to help track parking violators, as imagined in the fictional picture on the right. Source of photos: online version of the WSJ article cited above.

In Praise of Microsoft

A PC screen displaying one of the wallpaper options from Microsoft’s Vista operating system. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article cited below.

I know what Microsoft wants. I know because I have been exploring its new operating system, Vista, which was released last week after five years of false starts, persistent bugs and great expectations. I also know because after spending three weeks building a computer from scratch to test out Vista, piecing the PC together from parts bought online, I want the same thing. What we want is to eliminate the PC altogether, to dismantle that box of green circuit boards and crammed-in wires, to break through even the most glorious flat-screen monitor and open up a new … vista.

That’s why the operating system has its name, of course, and why the screen images it includes show exotic landscapes with skies lit by sunset or sunrise or aurora borealis displays.

. . .

Apple had it easy: it kept its PC box closed, maintaining control over the hardware so it would perfectly suit its software. But Microsoft faced hundreds of thousands of boards, drives and chips like those I had spread out before me a few weeks ago, all of differing technological vintages, made by hundreds of companies with wildly different goals. Microsoft has taken these objects, along with the many thousands of PC programs now sold, and tried to create a system that would overlook their dizzying differences, bind them to a coherent vision and force them, in all their variety, to leave techne behind for the uncharted possibilities of magic.

For the full commentary, see:

EDWARD ROTHSTEIN. "CONNECTIONS; Techie’s Cyber Odyssey: Magic in Bits and Bolts." The New York Times (Weds., February 7, 2007): B1 & B7.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

In the Vista operating system, the user can shuffle through open windows almost like a deck of cards. Source of image: online version of the NYT article cited above.

Job Market Resilience: Going to the Dogs

Patrick Logue the former real estate agent and current dog trainer. Source of photo: online version of the WSJ article cited below.

Selling homes has turned into a dog-eat-dog business, so Patrick Logue decided to work with some friendlier canines.

Mr. Logue quit his job as a real-estate agent near Fort Myers, Fla., in December. Then he set up shop as a franchisee of the dog-training chain Bark Busters. So far, he says, "I have zero regrets."

. . .

Mr. Logue, a 34-year-old former golf pro, became an agent for the Assist-2-Sell franchise chain in the Fort Myers area about three years ago. He says his commission income was nearly $100,000 in his first year and $180,000 in his second. Then it plunged to $40,000 last year. "Nothing was selling," he says.

For the full story, see:

JAMES R. HAGERTY and ANJALI ATHAVALEY. "Amid Slump, Real-Estate Agents Hang Up Their Blazers; Housing Downturn Leads To an Industry Shakeout; Seeking Alternative Careers." The Wall Street Journal (Weds., February 7, 2007): B6.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

Many Muslim Newcomers Did Not Embrace Dutch Tolerance

Source of book image: http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/12210000/12213853.jpg

Two key moments in Ms. Hirsi Ali’s life stand out. One is her arrival in the West, a moment she considers to be her "real birthday." On the day her husband shows up at the refugee camp in Holland to claim his rights, Ms. Hirsi Ali finds that she can say "no" to a man stronger than she is, thanks to the protection of a democratic state, a protection made visible, in this case, by the presence of Dutch policemen. She thus experienced an imperative that to most of us is a mere abstraction: Individual freedom needs the rule of law.

The second pivotal moment in her life, Ms. Hirsi Ali says, was the 9/11 terrorist attack on the U.S. She understood what drove Mohamed Atta and his co-hijackers; she once shared their values and had known people like them in the Muslim Brotherhood. "Every devout Muslim who aspired to practice genuine Islam," she writes, "even if they didn’t actively support the attacks, they must have at least approved of them." With 9/11, Ms. Hirsi Ali’s religious doubts erupted into defiance of what she had known while growing up.

From that day onward, Ms. Hirsi Ali became a public voice in the Dutch post-9/11 debates. Eloquently, she made bruising, sometimes inflammatory, arguments. Islam was backward, she said, and needed its Voltaire. She declared that, considered by modern standards, the Prophet was a "pervert" because he had married a 9-year-old girl. Elected an MP for the market-oriented VVD Party in 2003, she became a politician in the grand, passionate style, breaking with Dutch habits of consensus and accommodation.

A nation of 16 million people, with a Muslim minority of about one million (mostly Moroccan and Turkish immigrants), the Netherlands was at the time (and is still) trapped by its carefully nurtured sense of tolerance and hospitality. The trouble was that its newcomers did not necessarily embrace tolerance, women’s rights, free speech and other core Dutch values. Ms. Hirsi Ali knew that she was courting danger by openly addressing such concerns. Nonetheless, she pushed ahead and began working with director Theo van Gogh on "Submission," the film about the mistreatment of Muslim women. When van Gogh was murdered on Nov. 2, 2004, the police found a knife stuck in his body — the weapon was holding in place a letter threatening Ms. Hirsi Ali.

For the full review, see:

LUUK VAN MIDDELAAR. "BOOKS; Out of Europe How a prominent African refugee confronted Islam — then fled to the U.S." The Wall Street Journal (Sat., February 3, 2007): P12.

Reference to the book:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali. INFIDEL. Free Press, 2007. (353 pages, $26)

Omaha Public Schools’ Attack on Other Districts Costs $12 Million in Lawyer Fees

Source of graphic: online version of the Omaha World-Herald article cited below.

(p. 1A) Who’s winning in the Omaha-area disputes about school finances and boundaries?.

So far, it looks like the lawyers.

Taxpayers have shelled out $12 million to private lawyers hired to handle those matters for Omaha-area school districts and the State of Nebraska, a World-Herald study found.

Nearly all of that has been paid during the past 3¹/₂ years to two Omaha firms: Baird Holm, hired by the Omaha Public Schools, and Fraser Stryker, which was hired by the state and separately by the suburban districts.

The money has been spent on three interconnected items:

• The OPS lawsuit against the state’s school funding system, which accounts for most of the $12 million.

• The Omaha district’s effort, now on hold, to take over its suburban neighbors.

• And fallout from the Legislature’s 2006 law that would break apart OPS and create a two-county "learning community" for the Omaha metro area.

The $12 million doesn’t include lobbying costs or staff time for the three matters. And it doesn’t include millions of dollars the districts paid lawyers during the same period for routine legal work.

The three items have fueled a stunning increase in OPS payments to lawyers. The district now pays about $400,000 a month in legal fees – four times what it (p. 2A) paid five years ago.

"This seems to me to be crazy," said State Sen. Ron Raikes of Lincoln, who introduced a bill this year aimed at curbing school districts’ spending on legal fees.

"These are legal fees, paid pretty much by taxpayers, for a school district to conduct a legal war against another school district or against the state," said Raikes, who heads the Legislature’s education committee.

For the full story, see:

PAUL GOODSELL. "Lawyers reap OPS windfall; District, state actions cost taxpayers $12 million, so far." OMAHA WORLD-HERALD (Sunday, March 4, 2007): 1A & 2A.

(Note: the online version had the somewhat different title: "OPS legal fees cost taxpayers $12 million, so far.")

Communists Import Giant Rabbits to End Starvation in North Korea

Apparently the North Korean Communist government’s plan to end starvation in North Korea, is to import and breed giant German rabbits. If they were really serious, they would do better by respecting property rights, and embracing the free market.

EBERSWALDE, Germany — Few people raise bigger bunny rabbits than Karl Szmolinsky, who has been producing long-eared whoppers since 1964. His favorite breed, German gray giants, are the size of a full-grown beagle and so fat they can barely hop.

Last year, after the retired chauffeur entered some of his monsters in an agricultural fair, word of his breeding skills spread to the North Korean Embassy in Berlin. Diplomats looked past the cute, furry faces with the twitching noses and saw a possible solution to their nation’s endemic food shortage: an enormous bunny in every Korean pot.

The North Koreans approached Szmolinsky in November and asked whether he’d advise them on how to start a rabbit breeding program to help "feed the population," the 67-year-old pensioner recalled in an interview at his home in Eberswalde, an eastern German town a few miles from the Polish border. Sympathetic to the Koreans’ plight, he agreed to sell some of his best stock at a steep discount and volunteered to travel to the hermetic nation as a consultant.

. . .

In December, Szmolinsky stuffed six of his rabbits into modified dog carriers and took them to the airport in Berlin, where they boarded a flight for Pyongyang, via Frankfurt, Germany, and Beijing. Robert, a 23-pounder, was the largest of the bunch, which included four female rabbits and one other male carefully selected for their breeding potential.

How, exactly, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea intends to parlay the small herd of German Flopsies into hunger relief for its 23 million citizens is unclear.

For the full story, see:

Craig Whitlock. "A Colossal Leap of Faith In Fight Against Famine North Koreans See Potential in German Breeder’s Giants." The Washington Post (Friday, February 2, 2007): A10.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

A giant German rabbit. Source of photo: http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,774187,00.jpg

In Health Care “the U.S. is a Model of Inefficiency”

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

When it comes to managing its citizens’ health, the U.S. is a model of inefficiency.

Recently released figures from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services show that in 2005, the U.S. health-care tab came to 16% of gross domestic product, more than any other country. France spends 10.5% of its GDP on health care, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, while Japan spends 8%.

Americans don’t seem to be getting much for the money. In both France and Japan, the average life expectancy is higher than in the U.S., and the infant mortality rate is lower. This is true in most other OECD countries, so green tea and red wine don’t explain it all.

This is a drag on U.S. companies, raising their costs, pulling money out of consumer pockets and giving overseas firms a competitive edge.

For the full commentary, see:

JUSTIN LAHART. "AHEAD OF THE TAPE; Rethinking Health Care And the GDP." The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., January 25, 2007): C1.

The New York Times Bests the Wall Street Journal at Business

We had a major winter storm in Omaha on Thurs., March 1st. Schools were closed on Thursday and again on Friday. Throughout the storm, the Omaha World-Herald got a paper delivered every day.

The New York Times missed Thurs. and Fri., (there is no Saturday delivery). The Wall Street Journal missed Thurs., Fri., and Sat.

The main difference is that in the end, the New York Times made good on eventually delivering me all the papers that I had paid for.

After a half hour wait to get through to a customer service person, the Wall Street Journal told me that they could not get me copies of the Thursday and Saturday papers. They were all out, and I "should go to the library." (During the long wait, every couple of minutes, an automated voice would come on to tell me how important my call was to them—if the call is so important, why don’t they hire enough people so that customers don’t have to wait for a half hour?)

The weather problem was not a secret. Wouldn’t a good business anticipate publicly known problems, and have a contingency plan for dealing with them? Wouldn’t they increase their production in order to be able to make good on the papers their logistical operation was incompetent to deliver? Even if they did not have a clue at the beginning of the storm, couldn’t they have acquired a clue by Saturday, three days into the storm?

If the Omaha World-Herald can deliver, and the New York Times can make good when it can’t deliver, then the Wall Street Journal should be able, at least, to do as well as the New York Times. The Wall Street Journal insults its customers when it tells them to "go to the library."

It’s no way for the nation’s leading business newspaper to run its own business.

Mugabe’s Hyperinflation Destroys Zimbabwe Economy: More on Why Africa is Poor

The article excerpted below does a good job of sketching some of the effects of hyperinflation on the people of Zimbabwe. But it does little to illuminate the cause. As Milton Friedman definitively demonstrated, inflation is caused by government printing too much money. Mugabe and other tyrants are motivated to print too much money so they will have more money to spend, without having to raise taxes. The ploy seems to work for a little while sometimes, but in the end it results in inflation.

Gideon Gono is the governor of Zimbabwe’s central bank. Note Mr. Gono’s display of chutzpah in his blaming the people for inflation, and note the wonderful just symbolism of the power black out that cut off Mr. Gono’s speech.

(It almost sounds like an outtake from Atlas Shrugged.)

(p. A1) JOHANNESBURG, Feb. 6 — For close to seven years, Zimbabwe’s economy and quality of life have been in slow, uninterrupted decline. They are still declining this year, people there say, with one notable difference: the pace is no longer so slow.

Indeed, Zimbabwe’s economic descent has picked up so much speed that President Robert G. Mugabe, the nation’s leader for 27 years, is starting to lose support from parts of his own party.

In recent weeks, the national power authority has warned of a collapse of electrical service. A breakdown in water treatment has set off a new outbreak of cholera in the capital, Harare. All public services were cut off in Marondera, a regional capital of 50,000 in eastern Zimbabwe, after the city ran out of money to fix broken equipment. In Chitungwiza, just south of Harare, electricity is supplied only four days a week.

. . .

In the past eight months, “there’s been a huge collapse in living standards,” Iden Wetherell, the editor of the weekly newspaper Zimbabwe Independent said in a telephone interview, “and also a deterioration in the infrastructure — in standards of health care, in education. There’s a sort of sense that things are plunging.”

. . .

(p. A6) The trigger of this crisis — hyperinflation — reached an annual rate of 1,281 percent this month, and has been near or over 1,000 percent since last April. Hyperinflation has bankrupted the government, left 8 in 10 citizens destitute and decimated the country’s factories and farms.

. . .

The central bank’s latest response to these problems, announced this week, was to declare inflation illegal. From March 1 to June 30, anyone who raises prices or wages will be arrested and punished. Only a “firm social contract” to end corruption and restructure the economy will bring an end to the crisis, said the reserve bank governor, Gideon Gono.

The speech by Mr. Gono, a favorite of Mr. Mugabe, was broadcast nationally. In downtown Harare, the last half was blacked out by a power failure.