There is fascinating article in yesterday’s Washington Post by Paul Schwartzman that chronicles the choices one family has to make as they face economic hardship. The article evokes a range of emotions from sympathy (doting father, bad luck, articulate family) to outrage (spending unemployment money on gambling, beer and cigarettes).  I found that the most [...]

I was a having a conversation today with a co-worker today about politics, the economy, the state of the world, etc… In 2002, the infant mortality rate in the US was 7 per 1000 live births; in 1933, it was 58.1. In 1915, the maternal mortality rate rate was above 600 for every 100,000 births — [...]

The current issue of Foreign Policy has an article that attempts to dispel the notion that The World is Flat. According to author Pankaj Ghemawat, less than 10% of patents, phone call revenues, management research, direct investment and “management cases” cross borders. In his opinion, if globalization truly lived up to its hype, he [...]

In Thursday’s WSJ, Michael Bloomberg comments on a new report by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) that the US educational system is “flabby, inefficient and outdated”.  Key points from his OpEd piece include:

Only 18 out of 100 high-school freshmen will graduate on time, enroll directly in college and earn a two-year [...]

Although he is right about the shortage of IT engineers and deficiencies of math education in the US, given the degree of animosity and passion that surrounds the immigration/outsourcing debate, it would be foolhardy of me to quote this interview with Wipro Chairman as exclusive support for my position. However, he does raise an [...]

Over the last few posts, I’ve seemingly strayed from business and technology matters into political commentary. However, my posts on immigration and technology policy actually foreshadowed some changes that I was planning to make to the PPM construct – specifically, adding a sixth principle of profit maximization that mandates hiring, training and retaining top [...]

The immigration and off-shoring debate is certainly an emotionally charged issue. In the spirit of the balanced debate that I called for in my Monday post, I’d like to respond to one of the commenter’s points individually:

“Slave Wages” – according to the US Dept of Labor, median annual earnings of computer programmers were $62,890 [...]

A report by the National Venture Capital Association that was delivered to members of congress last Wednesday suggests that immigrants started one in four venture backed companies in the US since 1990, and that companies started by immigrants have market valuations in excess of $500 billion and employ 220,000 in the US. I am sure [...]