Tag: Business
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Stuck in Merrill Lynch beneficiary hell
It sure is nice to inherit some money. Good luck in collecting it, at least at Merrill Lynch. My father passed away on February 1. Some weeks afterward our stepmother told us we were beneficiaries to some of his accounts. It turned out to be a fair amount of money, considering there are eight of…
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The Walmart egg cracks at last
Walmart protesters like me are cheering, somewhat tentatively. We are celebrating Walmart’s announcement this week that it is raising its starting wages. Walmart will boost starting wages to $9 per hour this year and it will raise them to $10 per hour by February 2016. $10 an hour is still not a living wage, but…
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A taxing situation for Intuit and TurboTax
Corporations of course are out to make money, but surely one of the first things you should learn when you study for an MBA is not to antagonize your loyal and profitable customers. TurboTax is by far the largest selling income tax software out there, in part because it was the first to market. I…
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IBM: The Dilbert of companies
IBM UBM We all BM For IBM HARLIE (the computer), from When HARLIE was One, by David Gerrold I grew up in an IBM town. IBM pretty much owned Endicott, New York when I lived in the area. The exception was the Endicott-Johnson shoe factories, which were in serious decline in the 1960s. In fact,…
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The power and profitability of treating workers with dignity
It’s taken a few years but striking fast food and Walmart workers are slowly getting some national attention. This Black Friday there was a continuation of strikes and protests that happened on Black Friday 2012, only bigger, with at least 111 protestors arrested around Walmart stores nationwide. Organizers at Our Walmart, a group organizing Walmart…
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SuperShuttle: Have you no shame?
No, I suppose not. You are a business, after all, and businesses are all about making profits through all means fair and unfair. So this article should not have surprised me. Yet it made me, a mild manner person, so irate I wanted to throw a brick through the window of SuperShuttle’s corporate offices. SuperShuttle…
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Governments should not be run like a business
It’s hard to listen to a politician today without hearing them tell you that the problem with government is that it’s not being run like a business. For example, Mitt Romney says his private sector experience running a venture capital firm (Bain Capital) was great preparation for being governor of Massachusetts and, he hopes, president…
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Not so smart on Wall Street
I had a feeling that our cruise would occur during an auspicious time. A last minute debt deal at least assured me that I would not be on furlough when I returned home. On the day our cruise set sail for Bermuda, the stock market plunged over six hundred points, the sixth worst point fall…
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New Hampshire’s civil unions decision is good for business
New Hampshire’s decision yesterday to allow its gay and lesbian residents to have legal rights equivalent to marriage is not only a just and equitable thing to do. It is also a smart way for the state to keep its economic edge. Mind you, I think it is terrific that New Hampshire is giving equal…
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The Two Sides of Google
Google is one of these amazing companies that demonstrates how uninspiring and mediocre most businesses in the Information Technology (IT) field actually are. Unlike Microsoft, which claims to be innovative but largely is not, Google can truly claim the mantle. Google is a company with the power to inspire awe. Its search engine continues to…
Occam's Razor 