Humans have an obsession with wealth–how to amass it, the toys they can buy with it, and that warm, safe feeling of being swaddled in it.
For the nearly 10% of working Americans who are unemployed (and the many thousands more who may be hanging onto jobs by their fingernails), having a pile of money sounds like a high-class problem they’d be thrilled to have. But here’s the deeper truth: Getting rich is a result, not a reason–and the reasons really do matter, if happiness and fulfillment are your ultimate goals.
Warren Buffett once said this about wealth building: “Enjoy the process more than the proceeds.” How right he was. After working as a clinician and coach for super-successful people for the last 30 years, I have seen the damage wrought by the single-minded pursuit of money. Wealth in itself is not harmful; it’s the why and how you go after it that can leave you frustrated at best and emotionally bankrupt at worst.
With that, here are ten horrible reasons, in and of themselves, to get rich:
1. It’s a way to keep score.
Donald Trump, a man who compulsively asserts how smart or beloved he is in every conversation, repeatedly tells people, “Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.” For once, The Donald is dead-on. Those who amass a fortune exclusively to best (or belittle) competitors inevitably find their endeavors dissatisfying. Making money for the sake of it isn’t much different than, as the saying goes, shooting fish in a barrel. You get what you’re after, but when you do you feel, “Is that it?”
2. It will enhance my sense of self-worth.
Not only can’t money buy happiness, it doesn’t do all that much for your self-esteem. That’s because self-esteem (with all apologies to Oprah and the rest) derives in large part from how others react to us–and that reaction tends to change with the size of your wallet. It’s a pernicious little paradox: If people learn that you are wealthy before they know you or work with you, they often are incapable of praising you lest the favorable feedback seem like syrupy ingratiation.
Take a former client of mine, whom I’ll call Charlie. Charlie wanted to make his mark as a freelance gag writer; he also had a large trust fund and everyone knew it. To guard against being seduced by disingenuous feedback, Charlie would only take negative criticism to heart. Surprise: That steady diet of negativity made Charlie miserable over time. Charlie was accentuating the negative for obvious reasons, but he never learned to take pride in himself or in his work–even when his jokes were truly funny.
3. It’s liberating.
Think money will set you free? Make enough of it and you’ll have to deal with what shrinks call “correspondence bias”–the tendency of people to form complex yet uninformed impressions based on a single attribute, i.e. your wealth. That sounds like it’s their problem, when in fact it becomes your problem. Example: One of my clients, beloved for his cut-up personality, unhappily adopted a more demure version of himself after his company went public. “Now that I have money I cannot do [this or that],” he kept saying. “It wouldn’t be fitting.” Irony alert.
4. I’ll meet my dream girl or guy.
Nerds have tried to woo beautiful women by amassing wealth since the dawn of time. It works–for awhile. Then the doubt creeps in: “Do people love me for who I am (as a person), or what I am (super-rich)?” Understand that money has never converted a frog into a prince: That happens only after a person does the self-analytic work it takes to find passion and purpose in their life. Without it, get ready for a string of encounters with well-dressed gold-diggers.
5. I’ll retire and enjoy life one day.
Sounds great, right? Work hard for 15 years, bank a few million or more, and then open a tiki bar in Fiji.
That’s not how it works, though. When you are in a career for the money, your most recent earnings statement becomes a floor you must exceed in successive years or be deemed a failure. Psychologists have shown that as a result of these exhilarating rewards, a high earner experiences chemical changes in the brain comparable to those produced by cocaine. In other words, moneymaking, for some personality types, becomes addictive. Hence the passage: “Those who love money will never have enough.” [Ecclesiastes (5:10)]
6. A world of new experiences and challenges will open up for me.
Here’s another vexing paradox for wealth builders: The richer you get, the more threatened you might be by the thought of leaving your comfort zone and confronting new challenges. Chalk this up to something (yes, we shrinks have a name for this, too) called catastrophizing–the tendency to overestimate the significance of any given negative event. Simply put: Many wealthy people are used to succeeding, which means they grow ever more terrified of failing, thus hemming them–oddly terrified and starved of adventure–inside their comfort zones.
7. I’ll have no problems–just expenses.
From the outside looking in, it seems that with enough money you can fix any problem life throws at you. To an extent this is true, but the relief, be assured, is ephemeral. A chronic reliance on buying (hiring) resources can breed a host of psychological hiccups–the worst being a loss of self-efficacy, which left unchecked can blossom into depression. Just as muscles weaken if not flexed on a regular basis, your ego will atrophy if you have a phalanx of assistants catering to your every need. Forfeiting control over the little things can leave you feeling–faster than you can imagine–incapable of wrestling with life’s simplest challenges. And that ain’t a good feeling.
8. I’ll never sweat the small stuff.
Because sycophants do their bidding at warp speed, folks with money never develop what psychologists call “frustration tolerance”–that is, the ability to calm oneself during the interval between sensing a desire and becoming enraged by the thought that it might not be fulfilled. The most common symptom of this–a tantrum that only rich people can pull-off without being arrested–is called the DYKWIA? (“Do You Know Who I Am?”) meltdown. In a word: ugly.
9. I’ll be a good provider for my family.
Sure you will–as measured by your credit card bill. But if face time is part of being a good provider (and any good shrink will tell you that it is), then get ready to fall short. Eighty hour work weeks don’t leave much time for Little League games, PTA meetings or anniversary dinners.
10. I’ll be safe.
Having money means you’ll eat well, have a roof over your head and be able to put your children through college. All very comforting. But safety–in the sense of experiencing inner peace and general rightness with the world–can’t be bought with cash, especially given that the rich aren’t exactly allowed to gripe about their inner turmoil. It’s one thing if a laid-off teacher says, “Life sucks,” but how can someone earning eight figures say that? As my lawyer client would say: “It wouldn’t be fitting.”
Go ahead, earn a pile. Just have a sense of why you’re doing it–and take care of yourself along the way.
DISCLAIMER: This article was copied from www.forbes.com. Written by Stevan Berglas
Showing posts with label Article. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Article. Show all posts
Friday, August 12, 2011
Thursday, May 5, 2011
The Past is Paralyzing-Financial Times Article
Regret can be a terrible addiction. Those who suffer from it so often become bitter and full of self-pity. It is an emotion that serious entrepreneurs cannot afford: they must keep pressing onwards and should not look back with remorse, dwelling on errors of long ago.
As Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, said: “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” Entrepreneurs must learn to manage the conflict between constant experimentation – which means lots of painful mistakes – and a fear of failure, which can lead to paralysis.
Likewise, past glory can be a killer. For example, Greg Dyke, who is a clever fellow, still harks back too much to his resignation as director-general of the BBC. He should move on and stop moaning about the injustice of it all.And Tim Waterstone should give up trying to buy back his bookshop chain, which he finally left more than 10 years ago (after selling it once and then getting involved again). He has tried to repurchase it at least five times, if rumour is to be believed. Possibly the root of the problem is that he exaggerates the chain’s importance, once saying: “Waterstone’s does more for the day-to-day cultural life of the nation than perhaps anything or anyone else.”
No doubt I suffered from a similar delusion in taking over Borders bookshops. But such thoughts were never true, and are even less so now, in the age of e-books and Amazon. Admittedly, I did try to buy back PizzaExpress once, but that was different – it would have been a sound financial deal ...
And who doesn’t have a tale of the one that got away? I remember David Dein, my predecessor as chairman of the charity Stage One, telling a wonderfully self-deprecating anecdote of his initial activities as a theatrical angel. Mr Dein, who has made a fortune investing in Arsenal football club, backed some early shows from a promising young producer called Cameron Mackintosh, and they unfortunately lost money. Finally, the apprentice impresario approached him about supporting an idea to put some of T.S. Eliot’s poems to music, on stage. Not unreasonably, Mr Dein turned it down. It became, of course, Cats, one of the most successful productions of all time, and helped make Mr Mackintosh a very rich man indeed.
One of my experiences in that vein was Transform, a leading cosmetic surgery company. It was a highly profitable undertaking, serving a booming market, and I believed the acquisition would be a real winner. I spent many weeks negotiating a deal, but then got slightly cold feet at the last minute, and fell out with the vendor over a relatively trivial sum. He immediately turned round and sold it to those astute fellows at Phoenix private equity. Inevitably, they proceeded to make a rapid fortune.
At least my mistake wasn’t as expensive as George Bell’s. He was the former documentary film-maker hired in 1996 to run Excite, the dotcom darling, which achieved a market capitalisation of $35bn at its peak. Three years later, the founders of Google decided that their search business was interfering with their studies and tried to sell it to a number of buyers, including Mr Bell, for just $750,000. He turned it down flat. Excite subsequently went bankrupt, while Google is now worth $170bn.
And it would be hard not to feel some sympathy for James Monaghan. In 1960, he teamed up with his brother Tom in the purchase of a single pizza restaurant in Michigan for $500. But later that year, he decided to go travelling, and so sold his 50 per cent share in the business to his brother in exchange for a used Volkswagen Beetle. A few years later, the company changed its name to Domino’s Pizza, and in 1998 was sold for about $1bn.
By all means treasure experience, and learn from your blunders. But don’t wallow in nostalgia, pining for what might have been. Rather, go ahead and seize the day no matter what. I have little time for those who say: I wish I had started my own business. My only response is: so do it now.
DISCLAIMER: This article was taken from The Financial Times, written by Luke Johnson, published April 19th, 2011
As Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, said: “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” Entrepreneurs must learn to manage the conflict between constant experimentation – which means lots of painful mistakes – and a fear of failure, which can lead to paralysis.
Likewise, past glory can be a killer. For example, Greg Dyke, who is a clever fellow, still harks back too much to his resignation as director-general of the BBC. He should move on and stop moaning about the injustice of it all.And Tim Waterstone should give up trying to buy back his bookshop chain, which he finally left more than 10 years ago (after selling it once and then getting involved again). He has tried to repurchase it at least five times, if rumour is to be believed. Possibly the root of the problem is that he exaggerates the chain’s importance, once saying: “Waterstone’s does more for the day-to-day cultural life of the nation than perhaps anything or anyone else.”
No doubt I suffered from a similar delusion in taking over Borders bookshops. But such thoughts were never true, and are even less so now, in the age of e-books and Amazon. Admittedly, I did try to buy back PizzaExpress once, but that was different – it would have been a sound financial deal ...
And who doesn’t have a tale of the one that got away? I remember David Dein, my predecessor as chairman of the charity Stage One, telling a wonderfully self-deprecating anecdote of his initial activities as a theatrical angel. Mr Dein, who has made a fortune investing in Arsenal football club, backed some early shows from a promising young producer called Cameron Mackintosh, and they unfortunately lost money. Finally, the apprentice impresario approached him about supporting an idea to put some of T.S. Eliot’s poems to music, on stage. Not unreasonably, Mr Dein turned it down. It became, of course, Cats, one of the most successful productions of all time, and helped make Mr Mackintosh a very rich man indeed.
One of my experiences in that vein was Transform, a leading cosmetic surgery company. It was a highly profitable undertaking, serving a booming market, and I believed the acquisition would be a real winner. I spent many weeks negotiating a deal, but then got slightly cold feet at the last minute, and fell out with the vendor over a relatively trivial sum. He immediately turned round and sold it to those astute fellows at Phoenix private equity. Inevitably, they proceeded to make a rapid fortune.
At least my mistake wasn’t as expensive as George Bell’s. He was the former documentary film-maker hired in 1996 to run Excite, the dotcom darling, which achieved a market capitalisation of $35bn at its peak. Three years later, the founders of Google decided that their search business was interfering with their studies and tried to sell it to a number of buyers, including Mr Bell, for just $750,000. He turned it down flat. Excite subsequently went bankrupt, while Google is now worth $170bn.
And it would be hard not to feel some sympathy for James Monaghan. In 1960, he teamed up with his brother Tom in the purchase of a single pizza restaurant in Michigan for $500. But later that year, he decided to go travelling, and so sold his 50 per cent share in the business to his brother in exchange for a used Volkswagen Beetle. A few years later, the company changed its name to Domino’s Pizza, and in 1998 was sold for about $1bn.
By all means treasure experience, and learn from your blunders. But don’t wallow in nostalgia, pining for what might have been. Rather, go ahead and seize the day no matter what. I have little time for those who say: I wish I had started my own business. My only response is: so do it now.
DISCLAIMER: This article was taken from The Financial Times, written by Luke Johnson, published April 19th, 2011
Stigma of failure holds back Japan start-ups (Financial Times Article)
When the seafood processing company that Kazuo Honda worked for in Japan’s western city of Nagasaki went bust, he did something vital for the future of the world’s third-largest economy: he founded another company. In setting up Nagasaki Takara Foods, Mr Honda joined the thinning ranks of Japanese willing to take on the challenge of building a business in a market suffering anaemic economic growth, declining demographics and chronic deflation. Such bold souls are unfortunately increasingly rare. Between 2007 and 2009, new company registrations fell from 95,363 to 79,902, according to Ministry of Justice data. Policymakers fret that a paucity of new companies is undermining growth and making it hard for Japan to innovate fast enough to stay competitive against China or South Korea. “There are too few start-ups, so we are considering all kinds of policies that might be used to encourage them,” says Banri Kaieda, minister for trade and industry.
Entrepreneurs could certainly do with extra encouragement. While launching a business anywhere is no picnic, Japanese start-ups face cultural, funding and regulatory hurdles much higher than counterparts in the US, for example. Not least, notes Mr Honda, is an unforgiving tradition of viewing business failure as a personal disgrace. Small company bankruptcies often involve the total ruin of their owners, with an accompanying grim toll in resulting suicides.
And the stigma means very few survivors ever get the chance to try their entrepreneurial luck again. “What’s different about Japan compared with the US is that here you only get one chance,” says Mr Honda, citing Walt Disney’s return from bankruptcy to found the US media empire that bears his name. By contrast, Japan adheres to a corporate culture more akin to the exacting code of Japan’s samurai warriors. “From olden times, if you were defeated in battle you committed seppuku [ritual suicide by slicing the belly, also known as hara-kiri],” Mr Honda says. “That’s in our genes, so people don’t try if they think they might fail.” John Roos, a former Silicon Valley lawyer who is now US ambassador to Tokyo, agrees that the social and financial costs of failure are a major restraint on the commercialisation of Japan’s formidable reserves of ingenuity. “You need to give entrepreneurs second chances,” says Mr Roos. “Disruptive technologies and new companies take a lot of risk, and if you take risks in business you are not going to succeed all the time.” Nor, Mr Roos notes, do successful Japanese entrepreneurs enjoy the adulation accorded their US counterparts. Some business founders do get a generally positive press, such as Hiroshi Mikitani, who has built Japan’s largest shopping website and started the country’s first new baseball team in 50 years. But mainstream media have tended to focus more on scandal-stained counterparts such as Takafumi Horie, a spiky-haired internet entrepreneur convicted of securities fraud in 2007. Fortunately, it was not a search for personal glory that prompted Mr Honda’s act of corporate creation. He felt a sense of responsibility for being unable to prevent the collapse of his previous company, in which he had a junior management role.
A visit to the local “Hello Work” job centre yielded no obvious opportunities. Starting a new business was unlikely to yield riches, he thought, but would at least give people jobs and help keep the money “moving around”. Now, though still engaged in a daily battle for corporate survival, Mr. Honda glows with pride when he tells visitors that he employs 30 former fellow Hello Work jobseekers at his processing plant and nearby shop. He also has some valuable suggestions for policymakers wondering how to smooth the path for other new companies in a country where venture capitalists and angel investors are rare and banks are often suspicious of start-ups. In Mr Honda’s case, a Y10m state-supplied credit guarantee and a Y20m labour ministry subsidy were crucial to setting up his business.
But he has a point when he suggests more generous support could be justified, given the contribution that new companies make to the local tax base and the outsize personal burdens shouldered by Japanese entrepreneurs. And if Japan tamed its tendency to prop up “zombie” companies – hopeless cases kept in motion by state subsidies and banks unwilling to recognise their loans are lost – then there would be more in the kitty to take a punt on new ventures. “I’d like the finance people to take on a little bit more of the risk,” as Mr Honda puts it. “If they don’t, then only fools will ever start companies.”
DISCLAIMER: This article was taken from the Financial Times, written by Mure Dickie, originally published February 22, 2011.
Entrepreneurs could certainly do with extra encouragement. While launching a business anywhere is no picnic, Japanese start-ups face cultural, funding and regulatory hurdles much higher than counterparts in the US, for example. Not least, notes Mr Honda, is an unforgiving tradition of viewing business failure as a personal disgrace. Small company bankruptcies often involve the total ruin of their owners, with an accompanying grim toll in resulting suicides.
And the stigma means very few survivors ever get the chance to try their entrepreneurial luck again. “What’s different about Japan compared with the US is that here you only get one chance,” says Mr Honda, citing Walt Disney’s return from bankruptcy to found the US media empire that bears his name. By contrast, Japan adheres to a corporate culture more akin to the exacting code of Japan’s samurai warriors. “From olden times, if you were defeated in battle you committed seppuku [ritual suicide by slicing the belly, also known as hara-kiri],” Mr Honda says. “That’s in our genes, so people don’t try if they think they might fail.” John Roos, a former Silicon Valley lawyer who is now US ambassador to Tokyo, agrees that the social and financial costs of failure are a major restraint on the commercialisation of Japan’s formidable reserves of ingenuity. “You need to give entrepreneurs second chances,” says Mr Roos. “Disruptive technologies and new companies take a lot of risk, and if you take risks in business you are not going to succeed all the time.” Nor, Mr Roos notes, do successful Japanese entrepreneurs enjoy the adulation accorded their US counterparts. Some business founders do get a generally positive press, such as Hiroshi Mikitani, who has built Japan’s largest shopping website and started the country’s first new baseball team in 50 years. But mainstream media have tended to focus more on scandal-stained counterparts such as Takafumi Horie, a spiky-haired internet entrepreneur convicted of securities fraud in 2007. Fortunately, it was not a search for personal glory that prompted Mr Honda’s act of corporate creation. He felt a sense of responsibility for being unable to prevent the collapse of his previous company, in which he had a junior management role.
A visit to the local “Hello Work” job centre yielded no obvious opportunities. Starting a new business was unlikely to yield riches, he thought, but would at least give people jobs and help keep the money “moving around”. Now, though still engaged in a daily battle for corporate survival, Mr. Honda glows with pride when he tells visitors that he employs 30 former fellow Hello Work jobseekers at his processing plant and nearby shop. He also has some valuable suggestions for policymakers wondering how to smooth the path for other new companies in a country where venture capitalists and angel investors are rare and banks are often suspicious of start-ups. In Mr Honda’s case, a Y10m state-supplied credit guarantee and a Y20m labour ministry subsidy were crucial to setting up his business.
But he has a point when he suggests more generous support could be justified, given the contribution that new companies make to the local tax base and the outsize personal burdens shouldered by Japanese entrepreneurs. And if Japan tamed its tendency to prop up “zombie” companies – hopeless cases kept in motion by state subsidies and banks unwilling to recognise their loans are lost – then there would be more in the kitty to take a punt on new ventures. “I’d like the finance people to take on a little bit more of the risk,” as Mr Honda puts it. “If they don’t, then only fools will ever start companies.”
DISCLAIMER: This article was taken from the Financial Times, written by Mure Dickie, originally published February 22, 2011.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
10 Signs the U.S. Is Losing Its Influence in the Wester Hemisphere-Business Insider Article
We won't be the alpha dog in the western hemisphere forever.
Even if the U.S. hadn't crashed into a financial crisis, there are demographic, material, and political forces that have been spreading power around the Americas for decades.
Brazil is first among the BRICs -- four economies that are supposed to overtake the six largest Western economies by 2032.
Mexico is first among the MAVINS (Mexico, Australia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Nigeria, and South Africa) -- six economies we expect to blow away expectations and become leading powers in their regions relatively soon.
Canada and Venezuela are oil powers of the distant future.
Peru and Chile are sitting on a fortune of metals and minerals.
All these countries are cranking up, while America faces plenty of fiscal and demographic problems at home.
Here are Signs the US Is Losing Its Influence In Its Own Backyard:
Our most powerful regional ally--Brazil--refuses to follow our orders on Iran
Hillary Clinton went to Brazil to beg support for sanctions against Iran and came away empty handed. Now the UN is counting on Brazil, which is friendly with America and Iran, to lead nuclear diplomacy.
The World's Richest Man is now a Mexican, not an American.
For the first time in 16 years, the World's Richest Man is not an American. Carlos Slim, worth $54 billion, is the first Latin American to hold that title and one of many emerging market billionaires to eclipse the U.S.
Three years after a US financial crisis, Latin America is again growing rapidly. The U.S.? Not so much...
Compare this to what happened during the Great Depression. Latin America was devastated when US investment dried up and the export market soured in the 30s. A League of Nations report said Chile, Peru, and Bolivia suffered the world's worst depression.
Today is quite different. Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico have led a buoyant recovery from the global recession, according to Reuters. The regional economy is expected by the UN to grow 4.3 percent in 2010. If the American consumer remains weak, Latin American exports will move elsewhere.
Chile produces 300% more copper than America--the former world leader in copper production
America used to lead the world in copper production. We produced 49% of the world's copper in 1929, according to this article from the archives. Today we produced 1.2 million tonnes yearly, compared to 5.4 million tonnes in Chile.
Brazil now produces over four times as much iron ore as the U.S.. We used to lead that industry, too.
America once led the world in iron mining. In 1892 we discovered the world's largest mine at the Great Lakes Mesabi Range. It was a wellspring for America's industrial might and the foundation of the rust belt.
Now we claim reserves at 2,100 mt. Seven countries claim higher reserves, including Brazil at 8,900 mt. We produce only 54 mt yearly, while Brazil produces 250 mt.
Canada and Venezuela will pass the US in oil production in the next decade
America produces around 9 million billion barrels of oil a day. Venezuela and Canada each produce around 3 million. But America's reserves are 21 billion barrels and may last less than a decade. Our oil-rich neighbors claim 99 billion bbl and 178 billion bbl, respectively, and will keep producing oil into the distant future.
Now Brazil exports over twice beef as much as we do
America used to lead the world in beef production. Although we still do, America exports only 800,000 mt of beef per year. Brazil exports 2,200,000 mt. Here's some ironic excerpts from a 1911 NYT article: "American-Canadian syndicate to have world's largest beef plant in Brazil... The chilled beef industry has never been tried before in Brazil and has only recently gotten under way in Argentina."
Brazil is now a critical partner for Russia, India, and China
The acronym coined by Goldman Sachs to describe the four key emerging powers has taken on a life of its own. Brazil, Russia, India, and China have held several summits and even discussed making a supranational currency -- that would pull the rug out from the US dollar.
What's important here is that global emerging powers have good relations and are inclined to work together. For instance, China just signed major contracts to build factories and a high-speed rail in Brazil.
Brazil, Canada, and Mexico all invest a greater share of GDP in clean energy
A Pew survey found that Brazil invests 0.37% of its economy in clean energy. Canada invests 0.25% and Mexico invests 0.14%. America is eleventh in the world at 0.13%.
Hugo Chavez is still in power
The CIA has a notorious history of interventions in Latin America, supposedly targeting Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, Fidel Castro, Manuel Noriega, Rios Montt, Che Guevara, and many others. But they haven't stopped Hugo Chavez from railing against the United States for years. Clearly America has adopted a more passive regional strategy.
DISCLAIMER: Posted Sep 27, 2010 03:40pm EDT by Gus Lubin in Recession, Emerging Markets Related: eem, ewz, fxi, eeb, jjm, ^dji, xle
Provided by the Business Insider:
Even if the U.S. hadn't crashed into a financial crisis, there are demographic, material, and political forces that have been spreading power around the Americas for decades.
Brazil is first among the BRICs -- four economies that are supposed to overtake the six largest Western economies by 2032.
Mexico is first among the MAVINS (Mexico, Australia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Nigeria, and South Africa) -- six economies we expect to blow away expectations and become leading powers in their regions relatively soon.
Canada and Venezuela are oil powers of the distant future.
Peru and Chile are sitting on a fortune of metals and minerals.
All these countries are cranking up, while America faces plenty of fiscal and demographic problems at home.
Here are Signs the US Is Losing Its Influence In Its Own Backyard:
Our most powerful regional ally--Brazil--refuses to follow our orders on Iran
Hillary Clinton went to Brazil to beg support for sanctions against Iran and came away empty handed. Now the UN is counting on Brazil, which is friendly with America and Iran, to lead nuclear diplomacy.
The World's Richest Man is now a Mexican, not an American.
For the first time in 16 years, the World's Richest Man is not an American. Carlos Slim, worth $54 billion, is the first Latin American to hold that title and one of many emerging market billionaires to eclipse the U.S.
Three years after a US financial crisis, Latin America is again growing rapidly. The U.S.? Not so much...
Compare this to what happened during the Great Depression. Latin America was devastated when US investment dried up and the export market soured in the 30s. A League of Nations report said Chile, Peru, and Bolivia suffered the world's worst depression.
Today is quite different. Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico have led a buoyant recovery from the global recession, according to Reuters. The regional economy is expected by the UN to grow 4.3 percent in 2010. If the American consumer remains weak, Latin American exports will move elsewhere.
Chile produces 300% more copper than America--the former world leader in copper production
America used to lead the world in copper production. We produced 49% of the world's copper in 1929, according to this article from the archives. Today we produced 1.2 million tonnes yearly, compared to 5.4 million tonnes in Chile.
Brazil now produces over four times as much iron ore as the U.S.. We used to lead that industry, too.
America once led the world in iron mining. In 1892 we discovered the world's largest mine at the Great Lakes Mesabi Range. It was a wellspring for America's industrial might and the foundation of the rust belt.
Now we claim reserves at 2,100 mt. Seven countries claim higher reserves, including Brazil at 8,900 mt. We produce only 54 mt yearly, while Brazil produces 250 mt.
Canada and Venezuela will pass the US in oil production in the next decade
America produces around 9 million billion barrels of oil a day. Venezuela and Canada each produce around 3 million. But America's reserves are 21 billion barrels and may last less than a decade. Our oil-rich neighbors claim 99 billion bbl and 178 billion bbl, respectively, and will keep producing oil into the distant future.
Now Brazil exports over twice beef as much as we do
America used to lead the world in beef production. Although we still do, America exports only 800,000 mt of beef per year. Brazil exports 2,200,000 mt. Here's some ironic excerpts from a 1911 NYT article: "American-Canadian syndicate to have world's largest beef plant in Brazil... The chilled beef industry has never been tried before in Brazil and has only recently gotten under way in Argentina."
Brazil is now a critical partner for Russia, India, and China
The acronym coined by Goldman Sachs to describe the four key emerging powers has taken on a life of its own. Brazil, Russia, India, and China have held several summits and even discussed making a supranational currency -- that would pull the rug out from the US dollar.
What's important here is that global emerging powers have good relations and are inclined to work together. For instance, China just signed major contracts to build factories and a high-speed rail in Brazil.
Brazil, Canada, and Mexico all invest a greater share of GDP in clean energy
A Pew survey found that Brazil invests 0.37% of its economy in clean energy. Canada invests 0.25% and Mexico invests 0.14%. America is eleventh in the world at 0.13%.
Hugo Chavez is still in power
The CIA has a notorious history of interventions in Latin America, supposedly targeting Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, Fidel Castro, Manuel Noriega, Rios Montt, Che Guevara, and many others. But they haven't stopped Hugo Chavez from railing against the United States for years. Clearly America has adopted a more passive regional strategy.
DISCLAIMER: Posted Sep 27, 2010 03:40pm EDT by Gus Lubin in Recession, Emerging Markets Related: eem, ewz, fxi, eeb, jjm, ^dji, xle
Provided by the Business Insider:
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
The Seven Secrets of a Happy Life-FINANCIAL TIMES ARTICLE
Many of us struggle to find real happiness. Why is that? Studies in psychology suggest that part of the reason is that most of us are very bad at predicting how we’ll react when faced with many of life’s experiences. Consequently, we end up making choices that are potentially harmful to our emotional well-being. According to Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, we tend to overestimate, by a long way, the extent and duration of the emotional impacts of, say, a pay rise, the death of a loved one, or even moving to an area that’s sunny all year round. This is simply because, when we’re trying to imagine how an experience will affect us emotionally, we tend to focus too much of our attention on the most salient features of the experience in question. In reality, however, the many other less salient features that we often fail to consider will have emotional consequences. Los Angeles, for instance, is actually thousands of miles away from our friends and family; we need to work harder in order to earn more. This explains why happiness often eludes us when we blindly follow our imaginations or what conventional wisdom tells us about what makes us happy.
So where should we look for happiness? New research in psychology and economics suggests the answer lies in what we already have ? things like friends and family. The secret to being happy is simply to devote more of our time and attention to these happiness-rich and fulfilling experiences.
As the US rabbi Hyman Schachtel once famously said: “Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.”
1. Money buys you little happiness
One of the most infamous findings in happiness research is that money doesn’t buy a lot of happiness ? or at least not as much as we think it should. According to the economist Richard Easterlin, part of the reason for this is that we care a great deal more about what other people earn than what we do ourselves.
For those whose most basic needs are already met, money buys additional happiness only if it can lead to higher status in society, which is hard when everyone else is also getting richer over time. Since people’s comparison group varies from place to place, those living in more affluent areas of London, for example, would probably need to earn at least ￡200k a year to ensure that they are staying well ahead of most other Londoners ? and even that might not be enough.
Moreover, according to the Princeton University psychologist Daniel Kahneman, the weak relationship between happiness and income can also be explained, in part, by the evidence that richer people tend to spend more time engaging in activities associated with no greater happiness, on average, but with slightly higher tension and stress ? such as work, childcare and shopping. By contrast, people with lower incomes tend to spend more time engaging in happiness-rich experiences such as socialising with friends and other passive leisure activities such as resting and watching TV.
However, when these high- and low-income earners are prompted to think about the impact of income on their happiness, both tend to focus more on the conventional possibilities of money when evaluating its effects. This leads to the conclusion that life must be significantly happier for the rich than for the poor.
The truth is quite the opposite: poorer people can ? and often do ? lead significantly happier lives than the rich.
2. Friends are worth more than a new Ferrari
The price of happiness
By using a seven-point Likert scale, happiness researchers were able to quantify how much certain life events are worth*
Excellent health
+￡1,300,000
Marriage
+￡200,000
Regularly talking to your neighbours
+￡120,000
Retirement
+￡114,000
Death of a friend
-￡8,000
Death of a child
-￡126,000
Divorce
-￡296,000
Death of a partner
-￡312,000
* Value in the first year
How much money is enough to make us happy? Because the effect of income on our happiness depends largely on how much money our colleagues, neighbours and friends earn, it’s difficult to say. Yet it’s easier to say how much extra money is required, on average, for a socially isolated person to be just as happy as a socially active person ? no more, no less.
The calculation of prices of various non-marketable goods such as the joy of friendship or marriage, first put forward in the early 1990s by the University of Warwick economist Andrew Oswald, is based on a very simple idea. Imagine that, on average, money makes people happy. Imagine also that people who see their friends every day are significantly happier than those who live in isolation. In principle, then, it’s possible to calculate how much extra income would have to be given to someone to compensate exactly for the lack of social life.
In Britain, for example, a pay rise of ￡1,000 is associated with an increase in happiness of approximately 0.0007 points on a self-reported seven-point happiness scale. Seeing friends more often, on the other hand, is associated with an increase in happiness of approximately 0.161 points. What this implies is that swapping a sociable life for an isolated one requires a pay rise of approximately 0.161/0.0007 ? roughly ￡230,000 a year. That’s a little more than a new, gleaming Ferrari 612 Scaglietti.
3. Winning the lottery won’t make you instantly happy
One of the most surprising findings in recent research shows that a lottery win of ￡1,000 or more won’t immediately make you happy. Instead, it takes two years before winners enjoy their money. This is in stark contrast to the effect of earned incomes on happiness: an increase in salary often leads to some immediate improvement (again, not as much as one would think) in a person’s happiness. But why does the joy from a lottery win take two years to arrive? One hypothesis is that, while traditional economic theories typically assume that a pound is a pound is a pound, the reality is that one pound won is not the same as one pound earned.
From new research on “lagged deservingness” among lottery winners that I undertook with economists Andrew Oswald and Rainer Winkelmann, earned income is regarded as money that is intrinsically deserved. Lottery income isn’t. The winner doesn’t immediately think that she is fully deserving of the money because winning the lottery creates a form of unwanted cognitive dissonance ? the process associated with holding two contradictory ideas in one’s head. The winner thinks: “I’m happy about the money, but I’m not sure whether I’m really entitled to it.” Through time, however, the lottery winner can persuade herself that she deserves the money. Empirically speaking, this slow erosion of cognitive dissonance takes approximately two years to complete. Interestingly, we also found in our study that people weigh differently the various incomes that accrue to them: gift income and inheritance income are viewed in a very different way to wage income and lottery income.
A pound is not just a pound.
4. Losing your job makes you unhappy ? but less so when others have too
Losing your job is one of life’s most miserable experiences ? more so than getting a divorce. One reason for this is obvious: unemployment removes a constant stream of income. Even so, the unemployed also report substantially lower levels of happiness relative to those who are employed but have the same income. The psychic cost of unemployment can in part be explained by the social stigma and loss of self-esteem job loss entails.
There is a flipside to this, though. While unemployment lowers well-being for both the unemployed and the employed (perhaps by creating expectations of job loss), its effect on those already unemployed is notably reduced when a lot of other people ? colleagues, neighbours, people living in the same region or even in the same household ? are also unemployed.
The reason is simple, argues the economist Andrew Clark of the Paris School of Economics. Where being unemployed is the norm, the impact on your reputation caused by job loss is lessened. In other words, it feels relatively OK to be unemployed when a lot of others are also unemployed.
In fact, the well-being gap between the employed and the unemployed actually ceases to exist if the unemployment rate is high enough. Average happiness is typically lower in high-unemployment areas relative to low-unemployment areas. Yet, in the UK this happiness gap disappears completely when the average regional unemployment rate tops 20 per cent. Bad things don’t seem so bad when you’re not alone in experiencing them.
5. Fat friends make you happier than thin ones
New evidence in economics and epidemiology seems to suggest that we care about other people’s weight as much as we do our own. It’s always more desirable to be slim ? perhaps because it offers a better chance of finding a person to date or marry, or even faster job promotion. However, when the people we normally compare ourselves with become fatter, the cost of putting on weight for many of us reduces. Put simply, when other people around me become fatter, I don’t have to compete so much with them to stay slim.
According to research conducted by economists David G. Blanchflower, Andrew Oswald and Bert Van Landeghem, people with weight problems ? those with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or over ? are significantly unhappier than people within a healthy weight range (BMI 18.5?25). However, the overweight tend to report higher levels of happiness when other people of the same age and gender are as heavy or heavier than they are. The same also goes for individuals who live in the same household: our own weight doesn’t bother us as much, that is, when our partner is also putting on weight.
This positive relationship between our happiness and other people’s weight provides a good psychological explanation for the current obesity epidemic in the west. It’s psychologically easier for us to accept being overweight when everyone else is also overweight ? assuming, of course, that most of us enjoy food a lot more than dieting.
6. Divorce can make you happy
At any given point in time, those who are divorced tend to report, on average, significantly lower levels of happiness than people who are married. While this result is probably unsurprising to many people, such cross-sectional comparisons between two groups of individuals at the same point in time can often lead to severely misleading conclusions ? in this case, that divorce makes people unhappy.
For one thing, the choice to dissolve a marriage is a rare decision for any individual to take, and one that’s unlikely to have been made entirely on a whim. One could even argue that divorce must make people happy given that one would only go through with it if the benefits of doing so outweighed the costs. This leads to an important question: what happens to people’s happiness in the periods before and after divorce?
According to the psychologist Ed Diener, the worst moment for men is the year preceding the divorce. By contrast, the worst moment for women is two years before the divorce, with their happiness on the verge of bouncing back the year preceding the split. This pattern probably reflects the fact that the majority of divorces are initiated by the wife.
After a divorce, it then takes approximately two years for men and three years for women for the effect of the break-up on happiness to become positive and stay positive. In other words, it seems that divorcing couples often become significantly happier with their lives by breaking up.
7. Happiness is contagious
There are many benefits to being happy. Happier people tend to be healthier, live longer and earn more. They also tend to volunteer more, be better at relationships and smile more of what psychologists call “Duchenne” or genuine smiles. Less well understood is why happiness is contagious.
According to James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis, authors of the international bestseller Connected, people surrounded by many happy friends, family members and neighbours who are central to their social network become significantly happier in the future. More specifically, they say we will become 25 per cent happier with our life if a friend who lives within a mile of us becomes significantly happier with his or her life.
Similar effects are seen in co-resident spouses (8 per cent happier); siblings who live within a mile of each other (14 per cent); and next-door neighbours (34 per cent). What this implies is that the magnitude of happiness spread seems to depend more on frequent social contact (due to physical proximity) than on deep social connections. Alas, for some reason this doesn’t translate to the workplace.
So, why is happiness contagious? One reason may be that happy people share their good fortune with their friends and family (for example, by being pragmatically helpful or financially generous). Another reason could be that happy people tend to change their behaviour for the better by being nicer or less hostile to those close to them. Or it could just be that positive emotions are highly contagious.
In short, happiness is not only desirable for personal reasons; its pay-offs can also be of unimaginable value to society as a whole.
DISCLAIMER:
This article was taken from the Financial Times. Originally published on August 28, 2010. By Nick Powdthavee and Carl Wilkinson. Nick Powdthavee is a behavioural economist and author of ‘The Happiness Equation’ (Icon Books).
So where should we look for happiness? New research in psychology and economics suggests the answer lies in what we already have ? things like friends and family. The secret to being happy is simply to devote more of our time and attention to these happiness-rich and fulfilling experiences.
As the US rabbi Hyman Schachtel once famously said: “Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.”
1. Money buys you little happiness
One of the most infamous findings in happiness research is that money doesn’t buy a lot of happiness ? or at least not as much as we think it should. According to the economist Richard Easterlin, part of the reason for this is that we care a great deal more about what other people earn than what we do ourselves.
For those whose most basic needs are already met, money buys additional happiness only if it can lead to higher status in society, which is hard when everyone else is also getting richer over time. Since people’s comparison group varies from place to place, those living in more affluent areas of London, for example, would probably need to earn at least ￡200k a year to ensure that they are staying well ahead of most other Londoners ? and even that might not be enough.
Moreover, according to the Princeton University psychologist Daniel Kahneman, the weak relationship between happiness and income can also be explained, in part, by the evidence that richer people tend to spend more time engaging in activities associated with no greater happiness, on average, but with slightly higher tension and stress ? such as work, childcare and shopping. By contrast, people with lower incomes tend to spend more time engaging in happiness-rich experiences such as socialising with friends and other passive leisure activities such as resting and watching TV.
However, when these high- and low-income earners are prompted to think about the impact of income on their happiness, both tend to focus more on the conventional possibilities of money when evaluating its effects. This leads to the conclusion that life must be significantly happier for the rich than for the poor.
The truth is quite the opposite: poorer people can ? and often do ? lead significantly happier lives than the rich.
2. Friends are worth more than a new Ferrari
The price of happiness
By using a seven-point Likert scale, happiness researchers were able to quantify how much certain life events are worth*
Excellent health
+￡1,300,000
Marriage
+￡200,000
Regularly talking to your neighbours
+￡120,000
Retirement
+￡114,000
Death of a friend
-￡8,000
Death of a child
-￡126,000
Divorce
-￡296,000
Death of a partner
-￡312,000
* Value in the first year
How much money is enough to make us happy? Because the effect of income on our happiness depends largely on how much money our colleagues, neighbours and friends earn, it’s difficult to say. Yet it’s easier to say how much extra money is required, on average, for a socially isolated person to be just as happy as a socially active person ? no more, no less.
The calculation of prices of various non-marketable goods such as the joy of friendship or marriage, first put forward in the early 1990s by the University of Warwick economist Andrew Oswald, is based on a very simple idea. Imagine that, on average, money makes people happy. Imagine also that people who see their friends every day are significantly happier than those who live in isolation. In principle, then, it’s possible to calculate how much extra income would have to be given to someone to compensate exactly for the lack of social life.
In Britain, for example, a pay rise of ￡1,000 is associated with an increase in happiness of approximately 0.0007 points on a self-reported seven-point happiness scale. Seeing friends more often, on the other hand, is associated with an increase in happiness of approximately 0.161 points. What this implies is that swapping a sociable life for an isolated one requires a pay rise of approximately 0.161/0.0007 ? roughly ￡230,000 a year. That’s a little more than a new, gleaming Ferrari 612 Scaglietti.
3. Winning the lottery won’t make you instantly happy
One of the most surprising findings in recent research shows that a lottery win of ￡1,000 or more won’t immediately make you happy. Instead, it takes two years before winners enjoy their money. This is in stark contrast to the effect of earned incomes on happiness: an increase in salary often leads to some immediate improvement (again, not as much as one would think) in a person’s happiness. But why does the joy from a lottery win take two years to arrive? One hypothesis is that, while traditional economic theories typically assume that a pound is a pound is a pound, the reality is that one pound won is not the same as one pound earned.
From new research on “lagged deservingness” among lottery winners that I undertook with economists Andrew Oswald and Rainer Winkelmann, earned income is regarded as money that is intrinsically deserved. Lottery income isn’t. The winner doesn’t immediately think that she is fully deserving of the money because winning the lottery creates a form of unwanted cognitive dissonance ? the process associated with holding two contradictory ideas in one’s head. The winner thinks: “I’m happy about the money, but I’m not sure whether I’m really entitled to it.” Through time, however, the lottery winner can persuade herself that she deserves the money. Empirically speaking, this slow erosion of cognitive dissonance takes approximately two years to complete. Interestingly, we also found in our study that people weigh differently the various incomes that accrue to them: gift income and inheritance income are viewed in a very different way to wage income and lottery income.
A pound is not just a pound.
4. Losing your job makes you unhappy ? but less so when others have too
Losing your job is one of life’s most miserable experiences ? more so than getting a divorce. One reason for this is obvious: unemployment removes a constant stream of income. Even so, the unemployed also report substantially lower levels of happiness relative to those who are employed but have the same income. The psychic cost of unemployment can in part be explained by the social stigma and loss of self-esteem job loss entails.
There is a flipside to this, though. While unemployment lowers well-being for both the unemployed and the employed (perhaps by creating expectations of job loss), its effect on those already unemployed is notably reduced when a lot of other people ? colleagues, neighbours, people living in the same region or even in the same household ? are also unemployed.
The reason is simple, argues the economist Andrew Clark of the Paris School of Economics. Where being unemployed is the norm, the impact on your reputation caused by job loss is lessened. In other words, it feels relatively OK to be unemployed when a lot of others are also unemployed.
In fact, the well-being gap between the employed and the unemployed actually ceases to exist if the unemployment rate is high enough. Average happiness is typically lower in high-unemployment areas relative to low-unemployment areas. Yet, in the UK this happiness gap disappears completely when the average regional unemployment rate tops 20 per cent. Bad things don’t seem so bad when you’re not alone in experiencing them.
5. Fat friends make you happier than thin ones
New evidence in economics and epidemiology seems to suggest that we care about other people’s weight as much as we do our own. It’s always more desirable to be slim ? perhaps because it offers a better chance of finding a person to date or marry, or even faster job promotion. However, when the people we normally compare ourselves with become fatter, the cost of putting on weight for many of us reduces. Put simply, when other people around me become fatter, I don’t have to compete so much with them to stay slim.
According to research conducted by economists David G. Blanchflower, Andrew Oswald and Bert Van Landeghem, people with weight problems ? those with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or over ? are significantly unhappier than people within a healthy weight range (BMI 18.5?25). However, the overweight tend to report higher levels of happiness when other people of the same age and gender are as heavy or heavier than they are. The same also goes for individuals who live in the same household: our own weight doesn’t bother us as much, that is, when our partner is also putting on weight.
This positive relationship between our happiness and other people’s weight provides a good psychological explanation for the current obesity epidemic in the west. It’s psychologically easier for us to accept being overweight when everyone else is also overweight ? assuming, of course, that most of us enjoy food a lot more than dieting.
6. Divorce can make you happy
At any given point in time, those who are divorced tend to report, on average, significantly lower levels of happiness than people who are married. While this result is probably unsurprising to many people, such cross-sectional comparisons between two groups of individuals at the same point in time can often lead to severely misleading conclusions ? in this case, that divorce makes people unhappy.
For one thing, the choice to dissolve a marriage is a rare decision for any individual to take, and one that’s unlikely to have been made entirely on a whim. One could even argue that divorce must make people happy given that one would only go through with it if the benefits of doing so outweighed the costs. This leads to an important question: what happens to people’s happiness in the periods before and after divorce?
According to the psychologist Ed Diener, the worst moment for men is the year preceding the divorce. By contrast, the worst moment for women is two years before the divorce, with their happiness on the verge of bouncing back the year preceding the split. This pattern probably reflects the fact that the majority of divorces are initiated by the wife.
After a divorce, it then takes approximately two years for men and three years for women for the effect of the break-up on happiness to become positive and stay positive. In other words, it seems that divorcing couples often become significantly happier with their lives by breaking up.
7. Happiness is contagious
There are many benefits to being happy. Happier people tend to be healthier, live longer and earn more. They also tend to volunteer more, be better at relationships and smile more of what psychologists call “Duchenne” or genuine smiles. Less well understood is why happiness is contagious.
According to James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis, authors of the international bestseller Connected, people surrounded by many happy friends, family members and neighbours who are central to their social network become significantly happier in the future. More specifically, they say we will become 25 per cent happier with our life if a friend who lives within a mile of us becomes significantly happier with his or her life.
Similar effects are seen in co-resident spouses (8 per cent happier); siblings who live within a mile of each other (14 per cent); and next-door neighbours (34 per cent). What this implies is that the magnitude of happiness spread seems to depend more on frequent social contact (due to physical proximity) than on deep social connections. Alas, for some reason this doesn’t translate to the workplace.
So, why is happiness contagious? One reason may be that happy people share their good fortune with their friends and family (for example, by being pragmatically helpful or financially generous). Another reason could be that happy people tend to change their behaviour for the better by being nicer or less hostile to those close to them. Or it could just be that positive emotions are highly contagious.
In short, happiness is not only desirable for personal reasons; its pay-offs can also be of unimaginable value to society as a whole.
DISCLAIMER:
This article was taken from the Financial Times. Originally published on August 28, 2010. By Nick Powdthavee and Carl Wilkinson. Nick Powdthavee is a behavioural economist and author of ‘The Happiness Equation’ (Icon Books).
Friday, September 3, 2010
Your Own Hot Spot, and Cheap-NY TIMES ARTICLE
Someday, they’ll build wireless Internet into every building, just the way they build in running water, heat and electricity today. Someday, we won’t have to drive around town looking for a coffee shop when we need to check our e-mail.
If you want ubiquitous Internet today, though, you have several choices. They’re all compromised and all expensive.
You could get online using only a smartphone, but you’ll pay at least $80 a month and you’ll have to view the Internet through a shrunken keyhole of a screen. You could equip your laptop with one of those cellular air cards or U.S.B. sticks, which cost $60 a month, but you’d be limited to 5 gigabytes of data transfer a month (and how are you supposed to gauge that?). You could use tethering, in which your laptop uses your cellphone as a glorified Internet antenna — but that adds $20 or $30 to your phone bill, has a fixed data limit and eats through your phone’s battery charge in an hour.
Last year, you could hear minds blowing coast to coast when Novatel introduced a new option: the MiFi. It creates a personal Wi-Fi bubble, a portable, powerful, password-protected wireless hot spot that, because it’s the size of a porky credit card, can go with you everywhere. The MiFi gets its Internet signal from a 3G cellphone network and converts it into a Wi-Fi signal that up to five people can share.
You can just leave the thing in your pocket, your laptop bag or your purse to pump out a fresh Internet signal to everyone within 30 feet, for four hours on a charge of the removable battery. You’re instantly online whenever you fire up your laptop, netbook, Wi-Fi camera, game gadget, iPhone or iPod Touch.
The MiFi released by Virgin Mobile this week ($150) is almost exactly the same thing as the one offered by Verizon and, until recently, Sprint — but there’s a twist that makes it revolutionary all over again.
The Virgin MiFi, like its rivals, is still an amazing gizmo to have on long car rides for the family, on woodsy corporate offsite meetings, at disaster sites, at trade show booths or anywhere you can’t get Wi-Fi. If you live alone, the MiFi could even be your regular home Internet service, too — one that you can take with you when you head out the door. And it’s still insanely useful when you’re stuck on a plane on a runway.
But three things about the Virgin MiFi are very, very different. First, Virgin’s plan is unlimited. You don’t have to sweat through the month, hoping you don’t exceed the standard 5-gigabyte data limit, as you do with the cellular-modem products from Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile. (If you exceed 5 gigabytes, you pay steep per-megabyte overage charges, or in T-Mobile’s case, you get your Internet speed slowed down for the rest of the month.)
If you hadn’t noticed, unlimited-data plans are fast disappearing — but here’s Virgin, offering up an unlimited Internet plan as if it never got the memo.
Second, Virgin requires no contract. You can sign up for service only when you need it. In other words, it’s totally O.K. with Virgin if you leave the thing in your drawer all year, and activate it only for, say, the two summer months when you’ll be away. That’s a huge, huge deal in this era when every flavor of Internet service, portable or not, requires a two-year commitment.
Third, the service price for this no-commitment, unlimited, portable hot spot is — are you sitting down? — $40 a month.
That’s no typo. It’s $40 a month. Compare that with the cheapest cellular modems from AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint: $60 a month. T-Mobile also charges $40 a month for its cellular modems. But all four of those big companies require a two-year contract, and come with those scary 5-gigabyte monthly data limits.
(There’s actually another Virgin plan available, too: you can pay $10 for a 100-megabyte chunk of Internet use that expires in 10 days. It’s intended for people who are heading out for the weekend and just want to keep in touch with e-mail without having to fork over a whole month’s worth of money — and without paying $15 or $25 for each night of overpriced hotel Wi-Fi. And speaking of options, Virgin also offers a standard U.S.B. plug-in cellular modem with exactly the same pricing details.)
I’ve pounded my head against the fine print, grilled the product managers and researched the heck out of this, and I simply cannot find the catch.
Is it the speed? No. You’re getting exactly the same 3G speed you’d get on rival cellular modems and MiFi’s. That is, about as fast as a DSL modem. A cell modem doesn’t give you cable-modem speed, but you’ll have no problem watching online videos and, where you have a decent Sprint signal, even doing video chats.
Is it the coverage? Not really; Virgin uses Sprint’s 3G cellular Internet network, which is excellent. You’re getting exactly the same battery life and convenience of Verizon’s MiFi — for two-thirds the monthly price.
(Why would Sprint allow Virgin to use its data network but undercut its own pricing in such a brazen way? Because Sprint is focused on promoting its 4G phones and portable hot spots — even faster Internet, available so far only in a few cities. For example, its Overdrive portable hot spot is $100 after rebate, with a two-year commitment. The service is $60 a month for 5 gigabytes of 3G data and unlimited 4G data.)
That’s not to say that there’s no fine print whatsoever.
First, the Virgin plan doesn’t include roaming off Sprint’s network; the old Sprint MiFi plans did. According to Virgin, that’s not a big deal — the regular Sprint network covers 262 million people, whereas roaming would cover 12 million more — but it means that you might be out of luck in smaller towns.
Second, the Virgin MiFi can’t plug directly into your computer’s U.S.B. port to act as a wired cellular modem, like other carriers’ MiFi units. You can connect to it only wirelessly, if you care. (You can still charge it from your computer’s U.S.B. jack, but very slowly. A wall outlet or car adapter is a much better bet.)
Finally, remember that the Virgin MiFi is still a MiFi, so it’s a bit uncommunicative. It has only a single, illuminated button that serves as the on-off switch and an indicator light that blinks cryptically in different colors. You have to press that button and wait about 20 seconds before you can get online.
But come on: $40 a month? With no commitment or contract?
I did a little survey of broadband Internet prices among my Twitter followers. Turns out $40 a month is not only a great price for cellular (portable) Internet service — it’s among the lowest broadband prices in America, period. In some areas you can pay $35 a month for DSL service. But most people pay $50 to $60 for high-speed Internet, which makes the Virgin deal seem even more incredible.
And unlike those plans, Virgin lets you turn on service only when you want it. You can buy service — as with a prepaid phone —either by calling an 800 number or visiting a Web site. Handily enough, you can get onto the Virgin Web site to re-activate your MiFi, even if you’d previously stopped paying for service.
The MiFi’s portability has always made it an exceptionally flexible and useful little gadget — and Virgin’s prepaid model, unlimited data plan and dirt-cheap pricing just multiply that flexibility. And if Virgin can make money with a plan like this, the mind boggles at just how overpriced the similar offerings from its rivals must really be.
DISCLAIMER: This article was taken from the NY Times. Contact: pogue@nytimes.com
If you want ubiquitous Internet today, though, you have several choices. They’re all compromised and all expensive.
You could get online using only a smartphone, but you’ll pay at least $80 a month and you’ll have to view the Internet through a shrunken keyhole of a screen. You could equip your laptop with one of those cellular air cards or U.S.B. sticks, which cost $60 a month, but you’d be limited to 5 gigabytes of data transfer a month (and how are you supposed to gauge that?). You could use tethering, in which your laptop uses your cellphone as a glorified Internet antenna — but that adds $20 or $30 to your phone bill, has a fixed data limit and eats through your phone’s battery charge in an hour.
Last year, you could hear minds blowing coast to coast when Novatel introduced a new option: the MiFi. It creates a personal Wi-Fi bubble, a portable, powerful, password-protected wireless hot spot that, because it’s the size of a porky credit card, can go with you everywhere. The MiFi gets its Internet signal from a 3G cellphone network and converts it into a Wi-Fi signal that up to five people can share.
You can just leave the thing in your pocket, your laptop bag or your purse to pump out a fresh Internet signal to everyone within 30 feet, for four hours on a charge of the removable battery. You’re instantly online whenever you fire up your laptop, netbook, Wi-Fi camera, game gadget, iPhone or iPod Touch.
The MiFi released by Virgin Mobile this week ($150) is almost exactly the same thing as the one offered by Verizon and, until recently, Sprint — but there’s a twist that makes it revolutionary all over again.
The Virgin MiFi, like its rivals, is still an amazing gizmo to have on long car rides for the family, on woodsy corporate offsite meetings, at disaster sites, at trade show booths or anywhere you can’t get Wi-Fi. If you live alone, the MiFi could even be your regular home Internet service, too — one that you can take with you when you head out the door. And it’s still insanely useful when you’re stuck on a plane on a runway.
But three things about the Virgin MiFi are very, very different. First, Virgin’s plan is unlimited. You don’t have to sweat through the month, hoping you don’t exceed the standard 5-gigabyte data limit, as you do with the cellular-modem products from Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile. (If you exceed 5 gigabytes, you pay steep per-megabyte overage charges, or in T-Mobile’s case, you get your Internet speed slowed down for the rest of the month.)
If you hadn’t noticed, unlimited-data plans are fast disappearing — but here’s Virgin, offering up an unlimited Internet plan as if it never got the memo.
Second, Virgin requires no contract. You can sign up for service only when you need it. In other words, it’s totally O.K. with Virgin if you leave the thing in your drawer all year, and activate it only for, say, the two summer months when you’ll be away. That’s a huge, huge deal in this era when every flavor of Internet service, portable or not, requires a two-year commitment.
Third, the service price for this no-commitment, unlimited, portable hot spot is — are you sitting down? — $40 a month.
That’s no typo. It’s $40 a month. Compare that with the cheapest cellular modems from AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint: $60 a month. T-Mobile also charges $40 a month for its cellular modems. But all four of those big companies require a two-year contract, and come with those scary 5-gigabyte monthly data limits.
(There’s actually another Virgin plan available, too: you can pay $10 for a 100-megabyte chunk of Internet use that expires in 10 days. It’s intended for people who are heading out for the weekend and just want to keep in touch with e-mail without having to fork over a whole month’s worth of money — and without paying $15 or $25 for each night of overpriced hotel Wi-Fi. And speaking of options, Virgin also offers a standard U.S.B. plug-in cellular modem with exactly the same pricing details.)
I’ve pounded my head against the fine print, grilled the product managers and researched the heck out of this, and I simply cannot find the catch.
Is it the speed? No. You’re getting exactly the same 3G speed you’d get on rival cellular modems and MiFi’s. That is, about as fast as a DSL modem. A cell modem doesn’t give you cable-modem speed, but you’ll have no problem watching online videos and, where you have a decent Sprint signal, even doing video chats.
Is it the coverage? Not really; Virgin uses Sprint’s 3G cellular Internet network, which is excellent. You’re getting exactly the same battery life and convenience of Verizon’s MiFi — for two-thirds the monthly price.
(Why would Sprint allow Virgin to use its data network but undercut its own pricing in such a brazen way? Because Sprint is focused on promoting its 4G phones and portable hot spots — even faster Internet, available so far only in a few cities. For example, its Overdrive portable hot spot is $100 after rebate, with a two-year commitment. The service is $60 a month for 5 gigabytes of 3G data and unlimited 4G data.)
That’s not to say that there’s no fine print whatsoever.
First, the Virgin plan doesn’t include roaming off Sprint’s network; the old Sprint MiFi plans did. According to Virgin, that’s not a big deal — the regular Sprint network covers 262 million people, whereas roaming would cover 12 million more — but it means that you might be out of luck in smaller towns.
Second, the Virgin MiFi can’t plug directly into your computer’s U.S.B. port to act as a wired cellular modem, like other carriers’ MiFi units. You can connect to it only wirelessly, if you care. (You can still charge it from your computer’s U.S.B. jack, but very slowly. A wall outlet or car adapter is a much better bet.)
Finally, remember that the Virgin MiFi is still a MiFi, so it’s a bit uncommunicative. It has only a single, illuminated button that serves as the on-off switch and an indicator light that blinks cryptically in different colors. You have to press that button and wait about 20 seconds before you can get online.
But come on: $40 a month? With no commitment or contract?
I did a little survey of broadband Internet prices among my Twitter followers. Turns out $40 a month is not only a great price for cellular (portable) Internet service — it’s among the lowest broadband prices in America, period. In some areas you can pay $35 a month for DSL service. But most people pay $50 to $60 for high-speed Internet, which makes the Virgin deal seem even more incredible.
And unlike those plans, Virgin lets you turn on service only when you want it. You can buy service — as with a prepaid phone —either by calling an 800 number or visiting a Web site. Handily enough, you can get onto the Virgin Web site to re-activate your MiFi, even if you’d previously stopped paying for service.
The MiFi’s portability has always made it an exceptionally flexible and useful little gadget — and Virgin’s prepaid model, unlimited data plan and dirt-cheap pricing just multiply that flexibility. And if Virgin can make money with a plan like this, the mind boggles at just how overpriced the similar offerings from its rivals must really be.
DISCLAIMER: This article was taken from the NY Times. Contact: pogue@nytimes.com
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