Articles

Barack Obama loves reconciliation, but it isn't all it's cracked up to be. Sometimes it isn't even possible, and let's be honest, it isn't always the point.

About six weeks ago, during his "More Perfect Union" speech on race that some heralded as the second coming of Abraham Lincoln, Obama had a choice between reconciliation and renunciation, and, true to form, he chose the former. He protested that he could "no more disown" the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. than he… more

One afternoon early in his second year as governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger flew home from Sacramento to Los Angeles with a vexing political problem. He needed to cut $2 billion from the budget he was putting together, and any of his best options for doing it could get him into trouble.

If he raised taxes, he'd anger his fellow Republicans. Break a promise to increase education funding and he'd alienate the top Democratic interest group, the California Teachers Assn. Option 3: Cut… more

I remember one particularly bad factory in China. It produced outdoor tables, parasols, and gazebos, and the place was a mess. Work floors were so crowded with production materials that I could barely make my way from one end to the other. In one area, where metals were being chemically treated, workers squatted at the edge of steaming pools as if contemplating a sudden, final swim. The dormitories were filthy: the hallways were strewn with garbage -- orange peels, tea… more

While Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain appear anxious to move into the White House, none of them have much to say about housing. Yet rarely a day goes by that the headlines don't mention the current housing crisis and its threat to the financial markets and the economy. This has led to a strange disconnect between the presidential campaigns and national reality.

Subprime lending and the ensuing foreclosures are being blamed for the crisis, but the problems and blame… more

Of all of Peter Drucker's achievements -- advising captains of industry and heads of state, coining the term "knowledge worker," winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom -- the most remarkable may be this: In 1974, his 800-plus-page tome, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, vaulted past The Joy of Sex on the national best seller list.

Last week, HarperCollins released a revised edition of Management. And regardless of whether it winds up eclipsing Bonk, the latest hot-selling volume on the physiology and psychology… more

If Americans are such huge fans of big dreams and high rolling, self-made tycoons and upward mobility, why then do we insist on seeing our national political elites -- who are also generally our economic and educational elites -- throw back a shot of whiskey or lace up bowling shoes?

Why do we need to pretend that high-flying politicians who graduated from the fanciest schools and dine at the toniest restaurants really don't live in a different world and -- dare… more

Politicians don't like to talk about taxes except to brag about cutting them. But with California's widening budget deficit threatening deep cuts in education and other public services, it's difficult to avoid discussions about raising taxes.

Unfortunately, what's likely to be lost in the upcoming partisan melee over whether new taxes are needed to close the $16-billion gap is an equally important tax issue -- California's aging and often unfair tax system needs to be overhauled.

The goal of tax… more

If I didn't already prefer Ketel One vodka in my martinis, I might very well call for my own boycott against Absolut.

Not because I agree with the knuckleheads who fear that the Swedish company's advertisement featuring a map of the American Southwest as Mexican territory is fueling ethnic secessionism, but because, in its attempt to lure upper-middle-class consumers in Mexico, the company played on an age-old canard that has historically been used to justify discrimination against Mexican immigrants and… more

Education cuts and reform campaigns can be the drinking and driving of California politics. Each carries certain risks when pursued separately. Combined, they can be deadly.

This is a truth that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has found hard to accept. Three years ago, just as he launched his breakneck drive to win voter approval of budget and political reforms, he decided to withhold part of a mandated increase in education funding from his 2005-06 budget proposal. The delay in Proposition 98 funding… more

Ending birthright citizenship is a placebo, not a solution to illegal immigration.

The debate over immigration is fundamentally about who we are as a nation,who we are not, and who we want to be.

It is thus no surprise that those most afraid of who we are becoming have moved to redraw the rules of inclusion by proposing to do away with birthright citizenship. Such a move is not only legally dubious, it is a threat to American prosperity.

Opponents of birthright citizenship… more

Forty years ago, the steel mills and factories south of Chicago were known for their sooty smokestacks, plumes of steam, and throngs of workers. Clean-air laws have since gotten rid of the smoke, and labor-productivity initiatives have eliminated most of the workers. What remains is the steam, billowing up into the sky day after day, just as it did a generation ago.

The U.S. economy wastes 55 percent of the energy it consumes, and while American companies have ruthlessly wrung out… more

Last February, I found myself in the difficult position of explaining American insecurity to a group of Mexican undergraduates at a college in Matamoros, Mexico, just south of the border at Brownsville, Texas. I was taking questions after delivering a lecture on the long-term prospects of Mexican immigrants being accepted into U.S. society. A neatly dressed young man in the back stood up to ask a pointed question. "How," he said politely in Spanish, "could such a rich and powerful… more

If Americans have such a low opinion of politicians -- and they do -- why then do they invest so many hopes and expectations in one of them every four years?

Are they stupid? Naive? Like continually heartbroken but eternally hopeful lovers, do they really think their next suitor will not disappoint them like all the rest?

Try writing a newspaper column for a few weeks and, if you dare check your e-mail, you'll get a whiff of how much people want… more

Long before so much of the nation became fixated on what was being preached inside black churches on Sunday mornings, Peter Drucker would go on occasion and listen for himself.

It was the late 1930s, and Drucker had just landed in New York, having fled the Nazis. Whenever he happened to spend the weekend in Washington, Drucker recalled years later, he would sneak into Rankin Chapel to be "shaken and moved" by Howard Thurman, the chaplain at Howard University. His was… more

In some ways, Barack Obama's speech on race last week was as brilliant as it was nuanced. But for all its rhetorical beauty, it was also an enormous step backward and, in the end, a rather self-serving call for more discussion about racial grievance in a country that has already done way too much talking.

Until last week, so much of Obama's appeal lay in the fact that he was not asking us to talk about the racial divide. Instead, he… more

In recent years, reformers have sought to improve our failing public education system by tightening and standardizing the measures we use to judge performance. From the numerical requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act to California's increased focus on assessment and accountability, there's been a conscious attempt to use hard data to measure success at every level of the education system.

But one group does not have its performance measured this way: teachers. Determining the effectiveness of individual teachers --… more

Last week, a bill was proposed by a majority of Assemly Democrats to impose extra taxes on oil companies to help prevent pink slips for teachers. A March 12 vote, mostly along party lines, failed to garner the required two-thirds majority for passage of a tax increase.

But Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez has said he does not plan to give up on the idea.

Despite the importance of not laying off teachers, failure to pass was a good result. The bill, ABX3… more

A generation after Three Mile Island's near-disaster in 1979, nuclear power remains politically radioactive. Though energy consumption has increased dramatically -- Americans upped their per capita household electrical use by a third between 1980 and 2001 -- no new nuclear plants have been built since 1996. We've let the Mighty Atom sit in the penalty box rather than settle whether we're Pro-Nuke or No-Nuke once and for all.

In her provocative yet flawed and often frustrating book, "Power to Save the… more

For decades, critics of affirmative action on both sides of the aisle have argued that the policy calls into question the talents and qualifications of the minorities who benefit from it. They insisted that it generates a cloud of suspicion around the successful black or Latino student or professional. It makes whites wonder whether their minority colleagues really "earned" their positions.

It turns out those critics are right about the suspicion part. And evidently you don't even have to be an… more

A couple of weeks ago, Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett officially put the kibosh on what many an investor must have regarded as the ultimate succession plan: "I've reluctantly discarded the notion of continuing to manage the portfolio after my death -- abandoning my hope to give new meaning to the term 'thinking outside the box,'" Buffett, 77, wrote in his annual letter to shareholders.

Despite his tongue-in-cheek approach, Buffett touched on one of the most important issues an enterprise faces:… more

While tax season tests our technical tax knowledge daily, here is an opportunity to take a break and test your knowledge about our federal tax system.

Answers to this quiz can be found at the bottom of this article.

Questions IRS tax revenue collections for fiscal year 2006 were approximately $______ trillion. The individual income tax was the largest portion of these tax collections, representing ___% of the total. For 2005, _____ million individual tax returns were filed… more

All right, I admit it. I sold out. Last Wednesday night, I went on "The Colbert Report," and I can't quite shake the feeling that I made a pact with the devil.

But did I?

I published a book four months ago, and everyone knows a sit-down with Stephen Colbert gives book sales a healthy bump.

So when a "Report" producer called last month to invite me to the show, I said what any author eager to sell more books would say:… more

With Ralph Nader in the race, Democrats are fuming and no doubt preparing to use the same legal tricks they used in 2004 to keep Nader off the ballot in many states. Republicans are cackling with glee.

But Republicans shouldn't cackle too loudly. They've also been hurt by the spoiler dilemma.

In fact, the GOP lost control of the U.S. Senate due to Libertarian Party candidates in Montana, Washington, Missouri, Nevada and South Dakota spoiling things for Republicans. And many observers… more

California has a massive dropout problem: An estimated 25 percent of students fail to complete high school, ultimately costing the state billions in lost income tax revenue, crime costs and public assistance.

Last month, a study from UC Santa Barbara suggested that the dropout problem might be more concentrated than previously thought: It found that just 20 percent of schools account for 80 percent of dropouts, and that many of them are "alternative" schools that are meant to help students who… more

Charles Handy has been called "the Peter Drucker of Britain." But in a sense, pinning Handy to a particular place misses the whole point.

In the last year alone, this venerated thinker and writer on organizational behavior and society has left his home near London to spend time in Hong Kong, China, Romania, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, and India. He's also made three trips to the U.S., where he just wrapped up a five-week stay as a scholar-in-residence at Claremont… more

If Barack Obama really wants to rise above the "old politics of division," he might want to start by putting that American flag pin back on his lapel and retracting his all too earnest explanation as to why he took it off in the first place.

No, not because he should seek to appease his conservative critics who are absurdly questioning his loyalty to the country. But because it could help heal the festering division over the meaning of patriotism in… more

Americans have little confidence that assimilation is happening today as it once did. According to a 2006 Pew Research Center poll, 44 percent of Americans believe that today's immigrants are not as willing to assimilate as those who came during the early 1900s. Their confidence is not likely to grow with the release of a new Pew Hispanic Center report, which shows that by 2050 nearly 1 in 5 people in the United States will be foreign-born. Nativists, such as… more

Six weeks ago, 29-year-old Culver City Internet copy writer Christian Lander started a blog, stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com, on a whim, thinking he'd poke fun at himself and fellow white people. Spending roughly two hours a day writing satirical posts about "stuff white people like," Lander had no idea how much his little inside joke would catch on. In the first week, the site received about 200 hits a day. The next week it jumped to 600, and then 4,000 the next. By… more

Which detergent do you use?  Procter & Gamble spent $3.3 billion on media in 2006 to get customers to buy its products. Which beer will you opt for at the end of a long day's work? Beer marketers spent $1.2 billion during that same year to influence your choice. Who will you pick to be your next president? That's another costly decision: The two major parties are expected to blow a combined $1 billion during this election cycle in their… more

I don't know about you, but I'm proud of the fact that the most celebrated symbol of our city isn't a statue that was a gift from the French. I also think it's fitting that it isn't burdened with heavy ideology, profound symbolism or deep meaning. Nobody ever accused the Hollywood sign of inspiring high-minded musings about the essence of our city, let alone the exalted mission of our nation. If anything, it evokes a sordid lust for fame and… more

When you set out to fix something, it first pays to figure out what's broken and why. That's advice that state officials would do well to heed as they try to close a $14.5-billion budget shortfall. But unfortunately, the budget debate in Sacramento has served mostly to shroud the reasons for the problem in three myths.

Myth No. 1: The Deficit Comes from Autopilot Spending.

In his State of the State address last month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said that "while revenues are… more

You'd be hard-pressed to find many things to which Peter Drucker was as openly hostile as the hostile takeover.

In his book The New Realities, he went so far as to call the gobbling up of companies in this fashion "the most serious assault on management in its history -- a far more serious assault than any mounted by Marxists."

Mind you, he made these comments in 1989, when all too many real-life Gordon Gekkos were commanding center stage. What… more

The current crop of Presidential candidates sound a lot like they did in prior years with promises of new targeted tax breaks, loophole closures, increased taxes on the rich and new spending programs. Have the candidates not read the doom and gloom budget reports from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and others?

The fiscal agenda for the next President and Congress must include some very difficult decisions that go beyond just tweaking the tax system. Below,… more

When the Kentucky-based Yum Corp. was looking for a city in Mexico in which to open a Taco Bell, it must have figured it couldn't go wrong with this ultra-modern, hyper-Americanized metropolis 125 miles from the Texas border in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon. Regiomontanos, as Monterrey residents are called, wear their pro-Americanism on their sleeves and see little shame in the fact that their streets are as overrun by corporate American retailers as any suburban town north… more

Free trade's benefit to the country as a whole may be open to debate, but there is no doubt that California stands to gain from it. So why are the state's political leaders so squeamish about standing up for free trade in Washington?

California has twin engines of ingenuity -- Hollywood and the Silicon Valley -- and continued trade liberalization is crucial to keep both running. These industries face more daunting market barriers -- the absurdly low number of foreign films… more

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's diagnosis of California's $14.5 billion budget shortfall: a "spending problem." His remedy: 10 percent across-the-board spending cuts. What about a second opinion?

A spending problem is a chronic condition that warrants more than unfocused across-the-board cuts. Eliminating unnecessary spending would be a more reasonable and lasting treatment. The first step is identifying that wasteful spending -- not always an easy task. The task is made even trickier when some of it is hidden in our tax laws. Removing… more

I imagine he said it as if he were confessing a deep, dark secret. And, of course (wink, wink), he had no idea his little confession would make the rounds. But when Sergio Bendixen, Hillary Clinton's pollster and resident Latino expert, told the New Yorker after her win in New Hampshire that "the Hispanic voter -- and I want to say this very carefully -- has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates," he started… more

Last year, Americans spent more greenbacks on oil than any other nation -- about $517 billion, according to the Energy Information Administration. But we've failed to lead in developing green energy, and that's going to cost us even more.

Historically, we've treated renewable energy and energy efficiency as virtuous, feel-good projects rather than shrewd investments in the industries of the future. It shows: We now trail China and Germany in renewable-power production and lag behind Japan and most of Europe in… more

With Super Duper Tuesday looming on Feb. 5, the presidential horse race is about to move into its mid-game. At the end of this process, we may end up with the first president in history who is a woman, or an African American, or a former prisoner of war, or a Mormon or an ordained Southern Baptist minister.

Beyond the headlines and election results, when you lift up the hood of our nation's nominating process, you see a pretty gnarly… more

There is no shortage of people who exemplify Peter Drucker's principles and practices -- a multitude of middle managers and top executives responsible for many millions, if not billions, of dollars in economic activity. Yet the most Drucker-like of all may well be a man who launched his enterprise with a series of transactions totaling 27 bucks.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, who pioneered the concept of microcredit -- providing the poorest of the poor with tiny loans to… more

If a Hillary Clinton campaign official told a reporter that white voters never support black candidates, would the media have swallowed the message whole? What if a campaign pollster began whispering that Jews don't have an "affinity" for African American politicians? Would the pundits have accepted the premise unquestioningly?

A few weeks ago, Sergio Bendixen, a Clinton pollster and Latino expert, publicly articulated what campaign officials appear to have been whispering for months. In an interview with Ryan Lizza of… more

S corporations now account for two-thirds of U.S. corporate tax returns (see NTA report) and while designed for simplicity, they’ve become increasingly complex and harder for regulators to standardize and monitor.

As the number of small businesses has exploded, the number of S corporations formed has more than quadrupled since the last review (of 1984 returns) while the number with assets exceeding $10 million has increased 10-fold. Today’s S corporations are not necessarily small, and not necessarily easy to classify… more

Is Barack Obama a crossover candidate? And, if so, where is he crossing over from and to?

Over the past year, Obama has been called a post-racial candidate and has been praised for his ability to transcend race. But such idealistic observations are not only wrongheaded, they fundamentally misconstrue the Illinois senator's complex identity as well as the new understanding he brings to America's ongoing debate over how best to unify our wildly diverse nation.

Last February, in an interview… more

In the aftermath of Iowa and New Hampshire, many Americans have begun to question the nominating process itself. Are two tiny rural states really the place to kick off an all-important national selection process? According to a survey conducted for the Associated Press and Yahoo News, fewer than 1 in 5 voters favors Iowa and New Hampshire's "favored state" status, and nearly 80 percent would rather see other states get their chance at the front of the line. more

You could see California's 2008 budget mess coming years ago.

In 2003, it loomed on the horizon, in long-term fiscal projections that Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill published just days before Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor. Without "actions to bring spending and revenues into line," she wrote, California's budget gap in 2008-09 would be "in the range of $10 billion, assuming the [vehicle license fee] increase remains in place, and $15 billion if it is rolled back." Borrowing to cover up the… more

As I sat down to work on this column, I couldn't help but feel as if I should be lending my voice to the "Wikia Search stinks" chorus. After all, the Internet search engine, rolled out this month by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, didn't seem to be doing much to enhance the standing of my organization, the Drucker Institute.

When I typed our name into the search field, I got reasonably close: The top result that popped up was the… more

As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has released his budget threatened by $14 billion of red ink, many are asking whether California can afford the ambitious health care reforms that passed the state Assembly in December. Given the social and economic costs of leaving as many as 6.5 million Californians uninsured, the better question may be: Can we afford not to? Those worried by the possible impact of the budget gap on health reform include Senate President Pro Tem Don… more

The Internet has become ubiquitous for much of the population, but your clients may not be aware that their Web activities could produce tax liabilities and some may change in their individual tax status (for example, to sole proprietor). As a practitioner, you need to remind your clients to ensure that all of their Internet-related income is reported and that they are compliant with all relevant taxes. This article provides a set of questions to aid in this endeavor.

Why Ask?

Internet… more

The new year has begun without Larchmont Hardware, a small shop that opened its doors in 1925 in the middle of Larchmont Boulevard -- a two-block stretch between Beverly Boulevard and 1st Street known in the neighborhood simply as "the village."

It was the sort of store that kept dog bones at the front counter for customers' pets to chew on. Edwin, the clerk, was always happy to chitchat while you scrounged for a single bolt to buy. When Mario, the… more

The reams of news stories on the new French ban on smoking in cafes, restaurants and night spots have invariably focused on the aura of glamour those little death sticks once conveyed. In newspapers around the globe, nostalgic descriptions of the likes of Coco Chanel or Albert Camus taking a luxurious drag on a cigarette have been, um, de rigueur. But to focus on the diminished allure of the cigarette is to miss the significance of the French banning… more

While the United States and Europe share much in common, they also exhibit basic differences, an "American Way" and a "European Way," that are diverging and had been leading to frequent clashes even before the U.N. rift over Iraq. In a globalized capitalist world, where all nations are seeking models of development that allow "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" for its people, this clash within the West is every bit as elemental as the clash with Arab-Islam because… more

'Tis the season for giving. Yet, as Peter Drucker knew so well, the rewards from such actions flow two ways -- not just to those in need, but to those who get a lift from making a difference in an all-too-troubled world.

That is why on Christmas day I went over to a church not far from my house to help dish up dinner for the hungry and homeless. Dozens of volunteers from my synagogue and elsewhere passed out about 1,000… more

What do the Hillary Clinton campaign and comedian Michael Richards have in common? When feeling insecure, both appeal to social prejudices to delegitimize their adversaries.

Three weeks ago, two Clinton campaign volunteer county coordinators in Iowa forwarded an e-mail that accused Illinois Sen. Barack Obama of being a stealth Muslim intent on bringing jihad to the United States. Last week, former Nebraska senator and Clinton supporter Bob Kerrey borrowed a page from Rush Limbaugh when he made a point of highlighting… more

Proper classification of workers for tax purposes is important as different rules apply to employees versus independent contractors. Contractors may deduct expenses for adjusted gross income (AGI), owe self-employment tax and take advantage of tax-favored benefit plans for those who are self-employed. Employees have unemployment benefits, split payroll taxes with the employer and can be covered under employer-provided benefit plans.

Some employers misclassify workers to reduce employment tax liabilities. Tax compliance by contractors is not as high as it is for… more

Regardless of one’s view on the issue of climate change and how high priority it should be on national and international agendas, the topic, as well as ideas for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, is getting much attention by legislators, governors, mayors and others. One idea that has been suggested for changing manufacturer’s behavior to reduce GHG emissions is a carbon tax (for more information on carbon taxes and examples of current proposals,… more

About two years before he died, Peter Drucker told an interviewer that among the things he regretted in the course of his long and productive career was not writing a book -- it would have been his 40th -- called Managing Ignorance. He added, tantalizingly, that it was bound to have been his best, but otherwise he didn't elaborate.

I've been thinking a fair bit lately about Drucker's work-that-wasn't, wondering what such a volume might have explored. Most likely, it seems,… more

There's a rule that politicians are reminded of: “do no harm.” In recent months, politicians have implicitly amended the rule to say “do no harm -- unless immigration is involved.” The rancor sparked by a failed New York plan to permit illegal immigrants access to driver's licenses and the fallen federal and state versions of the DREAM Act highlight a dangerous obsession with keeping illegal immigrants from accessing the supposed privileges of citizenship at any cost.

In today's debates, considerations of… more

No doubt, taxes are complicated. A good example of this complexity is the Alternative Minimum Tax or AMT which is part of our income tax. This is a flawed tax that ignores principles of good tax policy and generates revenue beyond expectation. While Congress is currently trying to keep millions of individuals from paying AMT in 2007, outright repeal would be best.

The income tax has always had "preferences" that reduce one's tax bill. Today these include deductions for dependents,… more

Reports made by the United Nations and other groups over the past year have concluded that global warming is a certainty (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Pew Center on Global Climate Change and others). Greenhouse gases (GHG) trap heat in the atmosphere that slowly warms the earth. The primary greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide (CO2) generated from the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil, coal and natural gas.

The U.S. is the largest emitter… more

The Toyota Way might just as well be called the Drucker Way.

As much as any company anywhere, Toyota Motor eagerly embraced many of the key principles that Peter Drucker first laid out in the 1940s and '50s: that corporations must move away from a "command and control" structure and cultivate a true spirit of teamwork at all levels; that line workers must adopt a managerial outlook and take responsibility for the quality of what they produce; that the enterprise must… more

Watching a bunch of gangly middle-schoolers hopping around in their gym clothes at 9 in the morning brought back all sorts of bad memories from my own junior high school days. Still, just by watching Wilmington Middle School students in phys ed class one day last week, I learned a valuable lesson about generosity, voluntarism and just plain common sense.

I went to Wilmington to check out what I thought was a simple yet brilliant idea to help working-class students compete… more

It couldn't have been more than a few months after the 1992 riots. I was seated in the office in the back of the Son Shine Missionary Baptist Church on Nadeau Street in South L.A. talking with the Rev. Leroy Shephard about how Mexicans and blacks in his neighborhood did and did not get along.

"We all know about the tensions," he said in his preacher's cadence. "But there are also plenty of budding friendships. You see, when blacks moved into… more

Imagine this: I was 14 , seated at the dining room table with my Uncle Francisco in the Madrid apartment he shared with my Aunt Marie. A refugee from a miserable suburban adolescence, I had persuaded my parents to send me to Europe for a year to live with these relatives I barely knew.

The three of us had just finished a leisurely Sunday meal -- most likely a poor man's paella, i.e, a whole lot more chicken than shellfish. My… more

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees not only the freedom to speak but also the freedom not to listen. The U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that "no one has a right to press even good ideas on an unwilling recipient." Nevertheless, American businesses are increasingly violating the First Amendment freedoms of their employees.

Frito-Lay Inc., one of the world's largest producers of snack foods, is also one of America's worst abusers of employees' right not to listen.… more

It's ba-aaaaack! Like the hockey masked assailant in the Friday the 13th movies that refuses to die, the GOP ballot measure designed to ensure that their presidential candidate wins nearly half of California's electoral votes has been revived. And it's got Democratic leaders nervous.

GOP operatives have found a new sugar daddy to bankroll their proposition that would award one electoral vote for each congressional district won by a presidential candidate, instead of giving 100 percent of electoral votes to the candidate that wins the… more

It's more than a little difficult to imagine Angelo Mozilo, the embattled chief executive of mortgage lending giant Countrywide Financial, being a Drucker disciple. But just last year he didn't hesitate to paint himself that way and, in at least one sense, he was right.

"As the late Peter Drucker once said, the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity," Mozilo told an audience of bond holders, bankers, and others. "This is the essence… more

On October 25, 2007, House Ways and Means Committee Chair Charles Rangel introduced H.R. 3970 (text, summary (PDF)), the Tax Reduction and Reform Act of 2007, a bill he informally calls the “mother of all tax reforms.” Based on what we have learned from the last major reform effort -- the Tax Reform Act of 1986, are we likely to see H.R. 3970 enacted?

Strategy

Briefly described below are actions and techniques that can improve the chances… more

On the same week last month that the European Union unveiled its new, no-hassle "blue card" program to attract highly skilled migrant workers, the U.S. Senate voted to hike employer fees for H1-B visas to $5,000. H1-Bs allow U.S. employers to bring foreign talent into the American workforce. It was a telling coincidence, demonstrating that as the rest of the world is becoming more welcoming of skilled immigrants who fuel innovation, the United States, mired in its know-nothing Lou Dobbesian… more

Last Tuesday, the New York Times ran a front-page story on the diminishing allure of gay enclaves in the United States. The next day, the San Francisco Chronicle published a Page 1 story explaining how same-sex couples in California are a lot more socioeconomically and ethnically diverse -- read: less white and less wealthy -- than you might believe. The Williams Institute at UCLA Law School will release a report today by demographer Gary Gates that all but poses the… more

There’s nothing quite like the sight of massive destruction to elicit talk of God. We heard it last week out of the mouths of fire victims and evacuees from Canyon Country to Escondido. "I hope God is good to you, Don," said one man in Santa Clarita to a neighbor who had lost his home. "I think it’s God’s deal," said a San Diegan who had just escaped what he described as a wall of flame. As she was being… more

Two great concerns leading to calls for tax reform are (1) that changes in the world economy are reducing the likelihood that the U.S. will be assured of a dominant role and (2) inordinate complexity that leads to disrespect for the tax system, economic inefficiencies and increased costs of tax compliance. Yet, despite numerous calls for tax reform, the major changes we have seen to the system recently have actually increased its complexity. Examples include the addition of Schedule M-3… more

Google turned out quite a dazzling display of data recently when it released its third-quarter results: Profit jumped 46%. Revenue soared 57%. The company’s shares shot up $6.14, to more than $639 each, on the news. But it’s another set of figures that most impresses me: 17, $0, and 20%.

These refer, respectively, to the number of cafés at Google’s Mountain View (Calif.) campus; what it charges employees for all the meals and snacks eaten there; and the amount of… more

Wide-ranging and provocative, Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds offers an unprecedented account of the long-term cultural and political influences that Mexican Americans will have on the collective character of our nation.

In considering the largest immigrant group in American history, Gregory Rodriguez examines the complexities of its heritage and of the racial and cultural synthesis -- mestizaje -- that has defined the Mexican people since the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century. Rodriguez deftly delineates the effects of mestizaje… more

Storm clouds on the horizon? Been feeling kind of blue? Then count your blessings. It turns out that there’s such a thing as too much happiness.

A new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that those lucky few who enjoy high levels of well-being -- and I assume that includes large swaths of the newspaper reading public -- can reach the point of diminishing returns. In other words, the people with the most positive attitudes toward… more

You’ve heard the old saw: You can’t get to where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been.

It’s as true for peoples and countries as it is for individuals: We all need narratives to give meaning to our lives; we all look to archetypes and symbols to explain who we are. Ethnic and national "origin myths" may be pure fable (two divines, Izanai and Izanami, giving birth to the islands of Japan; twins, born of the gods and suckled by… more

Peter Drucker loved music -- Haydn and Beethoven, Mozart and Mahler. Were the late management philosopher around these days, however, he would undoubtedly be grabbed by the newest offering from an altogether different sort of act: the British rock band Radiohead.

Not its synthesizer-driven sound. Drucker, rather, would be struck by Radiohead’s bold focus (BusinessWeek.com, 10/09/07) on something that far too many businesses overlook: pricing. If effectively tied to an overall marketing strategy, it can be a powerful tool in… more

In the movie Groundhog Day, the Bill Murray character, a weatherman who is doomed to repeat the same day over and over, asks a question that haunts redistricting reformers in California: "What would you do if you were stuck in one place and everyday was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?"

With the recent failure of the Legislature to place redistricting reform on the ballot -- for the second year in a row -- reformers are scrambling for… more

Don’t worry, I’m not another one of those priggish good-government types who’s going to scold California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez for his lavish, campaign-financed globe-trotting. Nor am I going to make fun of the fact that he characterized his lifestyle -- the $5,149 meeting at a Bordeaux wine shop or the $8,745 hotel bill in Barcelona -- as being pretty much the same as "how most middle-class people live." Believe it or not, I actually have reason to be encouraged… more

Some immigrant rights activists are afraid that the new citizenship test unveiled by the government two weeks ago will create a new and higher barrier for people who want to become Americans.

They’re wrong. Far from being an exclusionary tool, the new test, which will be given to legal resident aliens who apply for citizenship after Oct. 1, 2008, is actually a rare mechanism for immigrant inclusion, the kind our country needs more of.

It’s true that, historically, whenever the government has… more

In the global economy, today's winners can become tomorrow's losers in a twinkling, and vice versa. Not so long ago, American pundits and economic analysts were snidely touting U.S. economic superiority to the "sick old man" of Europe. What a difference a few months can make. Today, with the stock market jittery over Iraq, the mortgage crisis, huge budget and trade deficits, and declining growth in productivity, investors are wringing their hands about the U.S. economy. Meanwhile, analysts point to… more

The best way for a business to simplify its nexus determination for sales tax purposes is to set up a sales office in the state in question. Then, it clearly has nexus and must collect sales tax there. But, this approach isn’t the business reality or plan for Internet-era businesses. Businesses without an obvious physical presence in a state, but with customers there, may be challenged to know if they should collect sales and use tax. This article looks at… more

These are anxious times for election security and voting equipment. The system is truly broken, starting at the federal level with a lack of national standards, a chaotic testing regimen, untrustworthy vendors, a revolving door between the industry and government regulators, and a decentralized hodgepodge of election administration from coast to coast.

Into that abyss has stepped Debra Bowen, California’s secretary of state. Many of us have supported her call to make elections more secure, and Bowen came into office with… more

Last Tuesday’s release of what is known as the "Nation’s Report Card" for math and reading is likely to reignite talk of the so-called racial achievement gap. Despite some good news, the report, published by the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, shows that Latinos, like blacks, haven’t made progress in catching up to the test scores of whites.

But the dour assessment of Latino educational achievement has nothing to do with a racial gap. We can’t use the same… more

In 1946, Peter Drucker’s intimate, multiyear examination of General Motors (GM), Concept of the Corporation, was published. GM hated it.

Drucker’s take -- that the then-wildly-successful automaker might want to reexamine a host of long-standing policies on customer relations, dealer relations, employee relations, and more -- was viewed from inside the corporation as hypercritical. GM’s revered chairman, Alfred Sloan, was so upset about the book that he "simply treated it as if it did not exist," Drucker later recalled, "never mentioning… more

Venture capitalists are not known to haunt Sproul Plaza, with its drummers and dreamers, but last spring Silicon Valley’s financiers showed up in force. On March 21 they filed across the flagstones and into the Student Union auditorium to hear such scintillating discussions as “Carbon Regulation and the Impact on Innovation,” and “Energy Storage: Hydrogen, Batteries, and Beyond.” The draw was not the topics, but rather the 400 people sitting in the folding chairs. They encompassed the entire energy universe… more

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislative leaders Fabian Núñez and Don Perata have found common ground on the central goal of health care reform: to cover the millions of California workers and their families who don’t get health insurance through their jobs and can’t afford to buy it themselves. The harder part, to no one’s surprise, is agreeing on a way to pay for it.

The governor set out this year to take a big step closer toward universal health coverage… more

Republicans these days insist that their anti-immigration stance has nothing to do with race or ethnicity. It’s the left, they say, that injects identity politics into everything. I caught the well-coiffed, permanently snarling ideologue Michelle Malkin making that exact point on television a few weeks back. "Let me drive this through the thick skulls of the open-border zealots at The New York Times and elsewhere," she barked. "This [illegal immigration] crisis has nothing to do with race. It’s about peaceful… more

When it comes to taxes, the United States is not very creative. We have the traditional income, sales and property taxes, as well as sin taxes on tobacco and alcohol. In comparison, Ireland has a tax on plastic bags and Denmark has a tax on disposable tableware. The United Kingdom has a landfill tax. China has a tax on disposable wooden chopsticks and Sweden has a carbon tax.

Are these countries just desperate for revenue? No. There are good reasons for… more

Thoughtful people will disagree about immigration policy -- how many foreigners to let in, for what purpose, and what to do about the 12 million illegal immigrants already in this country. That’s why sweeping immigration reform has failed again and again. This fall, Congress should think smaller, and figure out what it can agree on, before another year passes with no progress. It might start by considering young people like Lucia.

When Lucia’s parents dropped her off at a new elementary… more

When you think of international ethnic hot spots, Belgium probably doesn’t jump to mind. Its 10 million inhabitants are relatively prosperous, and its two main ethnic groups, the Flemings and Walloons, with their different languages and cultures, aren’t blowing each other up with car bombs or hacking each other to bits with machetes. But that doesn’t mean Belgium is the model of inter-ethnic cooperation it’s cracked up to be.

Four years ago, outgoing Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt called his nation… more

A few Sundays ago, I was sitting in my home office, working on an outside writing project -- an historical narrative that has nothing to do with my day job as director of the Drucker Institute. The think tank’s mission is to advance the teachings of the late Peter Drucker, the man widely hailed as "the father of modern management."

My stack of reading this day included a 1939 article from The Nation magazine that explored a long-forgotten pension scheme,… more

Hundreds of billions of tax dollars go uncollected each year at the federal and state levels. Legislators and tax administrators are pursuing ways to understand the reasons better and to implement techniques for reducing the tax gap. Here are some ways that property transactions of individuals can contribute to the tax gap and what strategies Congress and the IRS might pursue to address the problem.

The Tax Gap

The annual federal tax gap is estimated to be about $345 billion. States also… more

Last week’s posthumous publication of Mother Teresa’s private letters has sparked a debate on the nature of saintliness and, by extension, what it means to be good. The letters, which she had asked to be destroyed, reveal a complex woman who was tormented by her faith and suffered long periods of religious doubt and spiritual emptiness.

Two years after her death in 1997, a Gallup poll asked Americans to name the people they most admired from the 20th century. Not surprisingly,… more