Economics

A Very Sweet Startup

Economics, equity crowdfunding, Issuers
A Very Sweet Startup

Paul was a 32-year-old Stanford graduate with a degree in Engineering. He had a good-paying job at one of the large tech companies. He felt that the time had come for him to go out on his own and open the “business of his dreams.” He seemed quite passionate about what he wanted to do.

Paul’s passion was French pastry. He opened Paul’s Patisserie in a larger suburban strip mall.  The mall was anchored on one end by a national chain drug store and on the other by a branch of a large bank. In between was a gym, a yoga studio, a cell phone store, among 2 dozen other merchants, and in an alcove, 2 doctors’ offices and a dentist.

There was plenty of parking and easy access from the main road. The mall was expected to have a lot of people in and out all day.

Paul’s initial approach had been to convince a lot of those people to take home some éclairs for dessert. A year later his focus had changed.

Paul’s storefront was deep and narrow. He signed his lease in December 2021 when empty storefronts were not that hard to find. He spent January building out the space and installing the ovens and other equipment. There was a counter with display cases along one wall, 6 two-top tables along the other with 2 four-tops along the wall in front of the kitchen; 20 seats in all. 

Paul did a soft opening in early February as soon as the ovens became functional and started pumping out pastries. Once he started producing pastries he put them to good use.

The official opening was on he first of March. April and every month after that have been profitable. Here is why.

Paul’s business plan had anticipated that sales in the store would be driven by people who wanted to bring some pastry home for dinner, primarily a take-out business. It turned out that his eat-in crowd sustained the business and created a blueprint for growth.

As soon as he was officially open Paul took a tray of small pastries to the bank. He introduced himself to the manager and left the pastries for the bank employees.

He also left a dozen coupons inviting the bank employees, and the employees at every other business up and down the mall, to stop by for a free coffee. If they did, he would not charge them for any pastries that they took and send them back to their stores with more to entice their co-workers to visit. 

About the Coffee

The pivotal business decision Paul made revolved around the coffee he wanted to serve with the pastries. If he had focused on his take-out business he might have followed Starbucks’ model of multiple offerings and multiple sizes.

If you order coffee after dinner in a restaurant, you get the coffee they serve. That is the model Paul chose and that made all the difference.

Paul’s Patisserie serves one coffee only, a deep French roast acquired from a local coffee roaster.  If you don’t like your coffee black, you can have one or two dollops of freshly whipped cream on top. A second cup is included in the price, $3.50 per order.

The coffee is served in a large hefty mug. Outgoing orders are served in a substantial paper cup that holds exactly two mugs of coffee for the same price. One size fits all.

There was no formal menu but a sign suggested that people order a warm croissant, apple tart, muffin, biscuit or just two slices of a warm baguette, served with butter and jam. Each was available for an additional $3.00. 

The success of the entire business rested upon Paul’s ability to sell these $6.50 coffee and croissant breakfasts by encouraging people to eat in. A single sitting (20 orders) every day would bring in almost $4000 per month. Turning his 20 tables over twice a day, with a $6.50 ticket, would bring in almost $100,000 in gross sales per year.

The cream and butter were sourced from a local dairy. The jams came from a local cottage business. The bread flour, cake flour, and other ingredients came from a local restaurant supplier and occasionally Costco.  It was as simple a supply chain as you can imagine. 

About the bread

There is no more ubiquitous product in the marketplace than a loaf of bread. Paul would place 2 dozen baguettes in a basket on a table near the front door with a little bucket. Customers could just step in the door, put $1 dollar in the bucket, take a baguette, and go. Most days every baguette was sold.

Coupons and signs

In addition to the employees at the strip mall, there were 3 small office buildings adjacent to it. Paul introduced himself and dropped off some pastries and coupons to every office. He built his initial clientele from a group of people who worked in the neighborhood every day. Many of these people might have bought a cup of coffee somewhere else each morning before they met Paul.

Paul printed the coupons himself using a laser printer.  He personalized them with a message that identified them, like: “Hi Paul welcome to the neighborhood. I work at the bank. How about a cup of coffee?”  Everyone who came in was invited to sign a guest book where Paul captured their name, employer, and e-mail address.  

If you came into the store with a coupon in your hand, Paul would hand you a half dozen new coupons to hand out with the instruction to “tell your friends that I would like to buy them a cup of coffee, too.”

Paul called these people his close friends. He would frequently send them e-mails that said:  “Trying a new recipe for cherry pie this week. Please stop by and try a slice of pie on the house and tell me what you think.”

In the first 3 months, Paul personally placed almost 800 coupons into the hands of people. There was also the cost of about 500 dozen pastries and cookies that were passed out in the process. 

Paul’s simple and efficient advertising campaign generated a base of loyal clientele, many of whom became daily customers.

Bakers and pastry chefs get up very early in the morning. Paul did his baking early and began to let customers in at about 7:30 AM. By noon he was ready to turn the daily operation over to his partner, Paula.

There was already a steady stream of people stopping in to take out a cup of coffee or to purchase some dessert for dinner.  People started ordering birthday cakes and buying pies to take along when invited to someone else’s house for dinner.  

Paula followed Paul’s path by encouraging people to come and eat in with a promotion she called “Tea for 2 for $10. Bring a friend and schmooze.”

She served the tea English style, steeped in a pot. She offered a small plate of assorted confections. For an extra $2 you could upgrade to a slice of fresh pie, served with a healthy dollop of whipped cream.

She advertised this with a sign in the window targeting the women who walked by. The sign had a picture of a woman, looking exasperated, with her palm to her forehead. The caption read: “It’s 3 PM. I deserve a slice of cherry pie today”. Paula even put on a 60-minute loop of Edith Piaf from 2 PM to 4 PM which she said tied the customer experience together.

As Paul had done in the morning, Paula built a clientele that would allow her to fill every seat, once daily. If you are following the math, you can see how the sustainable cash flow is building up.

Periodic Promotions

Starting in early November, Paul sent out e-mails suggesting to people who were having Thanksgiving dinner at someone else’s home to “bring them one of our pies and you will get invited back next year.”  Quite a few people did, and all of those sales were profitable. As importantly they introduced his pies to a lot of new potential customers.

My favorite promotion was for Valentine’s Day. Paul had purchased several extra bushels of fresh cherries when they ripened in the fall. He cleaned them and stored them in gallon jugs filled with good bourbon Whiskey.

In February, he dipped them in rich chocolate and sold them by the dozen in heart-shaped boxes.  He only produced 200 boxes but they sold out. He promised himself to make 500 boxes next year.  

Paul’s overall plan was to offer at least one promotion every quarter. He wanted to periodically add a few thousand dollars to his cash flow and profits to compensate for those days when, inexplicably, no one showed up and sales were below normal.

Summary

There is a lot to unpack in this case study of a small business. That includes everything from location, production, sourcing, pricing and mark-ups, cash flow, advertising and promotion.

Every small business owner wants to succeed and make a good profit. The overall lesson here is to keep it simple. Become profitable and sustain cash flow and build from there. The core products here are bread and coffee. The éclairs and fancy pastries are an add-on.

The most important lesson here relates to the whipped cream and the ceramic mugs. You can buy a cup of coffee in thousands of locations accompanied by those little single-serving packages of milk. The cost of serving fresh whipped cream was marginal compared to the impression it made and the message it sent to the customers.

As far as small businesses go, nothing fails as often as restaurants and food service enterprises.  It is easy to see how Paul and Paula could replicate this into a second or third location and build into a brand and franchises.

If you’d like to discuss this article or anything related, then please contact me directly HERE

Or you can book a time to talk with me HERE

Sex Sells

Economics, Life
Sex Sells

Before they left the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were told to “be fruitful and multiply.” That is probably the oldest euphemism for sex still in use today.

Sex is a natural act. If no one ever did it, no one would be here. Even your mother had sex.

Wars have been fought over sex going back at least as far as the Trojan War. Paris did not carry Helen from Sparta to Troy because she was a good cook.

Long before European monarchs sent their off-spring to marry the off-spring of other monarchs to cement peace treaties and trade agreements that practice was well known in other older cultures. The participants often had not met until shortly before the wedding and certainly did not love each other in any real sense of the word. The arrangement might best be called “diplomatic sex”.     

I used to intersperse discussions of sex and sexual situations into my lectures to my freshman Economics students. The first thing I learned about teaching Economics was that I needed to find a way to keep the students awake. Discussions about sex always kept their attention.

I used the model of a displaced persons camp in Thailand as an example of how currency is developed and how wealth is accumulated. I had a friend who escaped Saigon in1975 and who spent 14 months in such a camp until he was allow to immigrate to the US. From him, I got a pretty good idea of what went on in the camp.

I asked my students to hypothesize a camp with 100 men and 100 women. One half of the population was married and the other half single. Each received the same rations every day; a bowl of rice, some small amount of protein and some vegetables. Women with small children were given a small container of milk. Every other day everyone got a pack of cigarettes. The cigarettes quickly became the camp currency.

Some women would get together and combine their ingredients into a soup. Combined with water, the ingredients were more filling. Some of the women would drink their milk and nurse their children seeking to benefit both bodies from the same amount.

I asked the students who, at the end of every month had the most cigarettes. Who did the best at monetizing their horrific existence? 

Answer: The women who were willing to sell their sexual favors had the most cigarettes. They traded those cigarettes and their sexual favors with the guards for extra rations. There are always willing customers for sex. Some of those men would take cigarettes from their wives to pay for it. There is a reason they call prostitution the world’s oldest profession.

In upper level courses I would often assign Richard Posner’s Sex and Reason for extra credit. Posner, an economist and Federal Judge, became interested in the subject when he realized that he was being asked to judge cases involving sex and sexual situations and motives when all he really knew about sex was from his own experience.

The economist in Posner suggested that the highest value that society places on sex comes with marriage. Given the overall cost, both financial and emotional, that comes with a marriage I think he was probably correct. When a couple splits up because of financial problems I suspect their sex life wasn’t so good at the same time. 

Following the economic logic of Posner’s thinking I would ask students how they would analyze this problem.  Assume a consumer in search of a particular sex act was in Honolulu. To acquire the service he sought legally, he might fly to Las Vegas where the sex act costs $500 or to Thailand where it might cost $10. Assuming the travel and ancillary costs where identical would the consumer fly east or west from Honolulu?     

Everything about classical economics suggests that the consumer would seek out the bargain price.  Theory clearly indicates that he would fly to Thailand where he would get more bang for his buck. (I truly apologize, but that pun wrote itself.)

But the rational, logical answer might not be the correct answer. Nothing about sex is rational and that is the point.

When he coined the phrase the “medium is the message” in 1964, Marshall McLuhan was talking about the medium of television which was still quite new.  At that time the content of everything on TV was very restricted and censored.  I can’t discuss the sexual content on TV at that time because there wasn’t any.

Lucille Ball was not allowed to share a bed with her TV husband even though she was married to him in real life. The censors would not let her tell him that she was pregnant on TV. The censors were concerned about offending the advertisers. If anyone in the audience had met Lucy in real life they would probably have said “congratulations.”

As time went on there was an ever evolving boundary between good taste and titillation. David Hasselhoff was, at one time, the most popular actor in the world. People did not watch BayWatch for its thought provoking scripts. They watched because all of the actors, male and female, looked good in their bathing suits. 

The marketplace evolved from sexual innuendo to explicit sex. Early on, cable TV was often expensive. Cable TV subscriptions exploded after HBO started airing uncut versions of R rated films after midnight.

Advertising has always exploited women. At the auto show in NY the new models of cars were displayed next to attractive female models.  Models in advertisements were described as “pretty” or “attractive” people.  Models in ads were always encouraged to “show a little skin” to help sell the product.  

I help companies raise capital. I use my blog articles and Linkedin posts to offer my services to a competitive marketplace. I focus on my years of experience and pragmatic advice. You will never, ever see me in a post or article wearing a Speed-O. Maybe I am behind the times.

Economics teaches that people will allocate their resources first to the things that they need most, food, shelter, clothing and transportation. What is left they will allocate to medical expenses, entertainment and so on. In many ways our consumer driven economy relies upon how much consumers will spend with their disposable income on things they really don’t need.

Sex and the City portrayed intelligent, successful women who enjoyed sex and who sought it out. It also featured a lot of high-end fashion. Advertisers paid top dollar to reach its audience. People who buy these products spend a lot of their disposable income.

Our economy supports multi-billion dollar fashion and cosmetics industries. I would ask my students if anyone thought it was necessary for a woman to spend $300 for bottle of perfume to get a man into bed. Enough bottles of expensive perfume are sold each year that a lot of women seem to think so. That is the power of advertising. 

What message would Marshall McLuhan see in the current medium of the internet?  What scholarly thoughts would he have confronted by the data that shows that day after day, year after year, one the most visited sites in the world is PornHub?

PornHub is banned from several of their potentially largest markets. If available everywhere PornHub would give Amazon a run for its money for the number one site visited every day. Think about that.

The Kardashian empire owes its origin to an explicit sex tape. Streaming services have brought explicit sex to our cell phones. Why watch a film with casual nudity that hints at sex when on another channel you can watch people actually “doing it”?

Is nothing too “dirty” in the media today for an advertiser to be reluctant to hand over their money? Apparently not.

How long will it be until sex permeates the world of finance? Investors have traditionally been motivated by fear and greed. How much longer will it take until they are motivated by lingerie and lace?

Will Goldman Sachs invest in a chain of gentlemen’s clubs to entertain clients? Will it issue a research report suggesting that an investment in Hooters will be more profitable than an investment in McDonald’s because the hamburgers are better?  

I wish I was still teaching today, because boy, would the lectures be fun.

Perhaps Woody Allen understood it best when he said: Sex is only dirty if you are doing it right. 

If you’d like to discuss this article or anything related, then please contact me directly HERE

Or you can book a time to talk with me HERE

Grandpa was a Socialist – Solidarity Forever?

Economics, Life , ,
Grandpa was a socialist

My grandfather, Alexander, immigrated to the US from Europe in 1905. He apprenticed and worked as a carpenter. By the time I was asking about his early life he was already retired. What I got were anecdotal stories about his life rather than a comprehensive history.

It would be accurate to describe my grandfather as a “union man”.  I knew that he still spent a considerable amount of time each week at the union office with many of his union buddies.

I remember thinking that you needed to be “tough” to be in the union. It had been mentioned more than once around the dinner table that he had been severely beaten by the police while walking a picket line at some point in the late 1920s.

Around the dinner table that event was viewed as a sacrifice; a beating that he took on behalf of his union brothers.  But that was not what he wanted to talk about when I asked him about the union. 

Grandpa saw his union and his union brothers as part of an extended family. If I could synthesize what I learned about his relationship with them it would be “helping all brothers and their families to succeed; letting no brother fail”. 

Hunger was a reality in Grandpa’s community and in other immigrant communities then and now.  In many of these communities, then as now, religious organizations stepped up to care for the community’s needs.  Much of what was considered “radical” about socialists then was really just working hand-in-glove with the conservative religious organizations.      

Grandpa’s Local was affiliated with the Workman’s Circle; an organization formed in the late 1800’s to assist Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. The Workman’s Circle was a national organization in the US with branches in most industrial cities.

Workman’s Circle was certainly pro-worker and pro-union but it was much more. It helped immigrants to adopt and assimilate. Workman’s Circle sponsored schools, health clinics, food banks, business loans, English and job training and funeral and burial assistance. 

The Workman’s Circle’s world view was rooted in the raw 19th Century brand of socialism. I have no doubt that some members of the Workman’s Circle who organized alongside my grandfather might have heard Marx himself extol a group of workers to unite and strike for higher wages and better conditions.  

I do not think I ever heard anyone affiliated with the union complain about banks or condemn them as evil. My family had its bank account at a local Savings and Loan. It was the same account my father had since he came back from WWII. It was the same S&L where Alexander had his checking and savings accounts. Apparently this particular bank had always catered to union members.  

Nor did my grandfather particularly hate people who were wealthier. On more than one occasion, as we drove passed a local shopping center, he expressed how thankful he was that the developer had the backing to build it, as it had provided more than a year of steady work for himself and his union buddies in one of the worst years of the Great Depression.  

My grandfather was a US citizen, although I cannot tell you when he became one. As far as I know he voted Democratic as did most of my expanded family at that point in time.  I do remember conversations where Pres. Roosevelt was spoken of favorably. I cannot remember a single word suggesting that anyone in the extended family advocated the violent overthrow of the government.

When I saw him at home before he went into the hospital for the last time, he asked me to take $6 out of his wallet and to go down to the union hall and pay his dues. He could not accept dying if his union dues were in arrears.

I had been to the union hall many times over the years. It was the same crowd, just older than I remembered. The clerk Aaron, who took the payment, remarked how he was surprised to see me so “grown-up”.

Three weeks later Aaron and I were pall bearers at grandpa’s funeral. As the casket was wheeled into a little walled off section of the cemetery reserved for union members, I noticed my grandfather’s name on the plague next to the gate. He had been on the union’s cemetery committee when it was dedicated in 1927.

In 1970 the garment center, represented by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) was the largest employer in New York City. By the end of that decade the ILGWU was running ads on TV asking people to “look for the Union label, when you are buying a suit, coat or dress.”

People did not take that advice and look for the union label. Those jobs moved to Southern states employing non-union labor and then off-shore where labor was cheaper still.

The argument can be made that the unions had only themselves to blame. As they pushed the price of their labor higher and higher, more and more people were willing to do the jobs for less.  From the 1970s forward, as global transport became cheaper and faster, more and more jobs moved off-shore. 

So what is the legacy of these 20th Century Socialists in America?  Coming out of the pandemic there is certainly an enflamed attitude among workers that they still need to be paid more and treated better.  More and more, unions still matter.

In May of this year, ExxonMobil, one of the world’s wealthiest corporations, shut down a refinery in Beaumont, Texas and locked out about 500 workers. The company claimed that the workers were about to strike anyway, so the lock-out protected the company from any “disruption” that a strike would cause.   

More recently, the company threatened to fire the workers if they refused to accept its current offer and disband the union. The workers, represented by the United Steelworkers union (USW) took a vote and essentially told the company to shove it.

That refinery processes about 400,000 bls. of oil per day. Closing it is one reason ExxonMobil can today talk about supply shortages and raise the price at the pump to over $5.00 for the rest of us.  The company will tell you those workers were offered a fair deal.

Right now there are 10,000 workers on strike against John Deere. Their union, the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the company negotiated a settlement, with a raise for the workers. Almost 90% of the union members rejected the deal.  

The membership argued that the company is making a lot of money and its stock price near all time highs. The executives and shareholders are well paid. The question “what about the workers” is the question that is always at the core of any discussion about socialism.

Today’s post pandemic labor market is unique. There are plenty of workers available today and at the same time a great many jobs going wanting. Workers are demanding more pay and better conditions to return to their old jobs.

Even the largest unions like the UAW are having difficulty delivering what workers want but I would not count them out. There is one other fact I learned from my grandfather, union members do not cross other unions’ picket lines. 

There are many more workers on strike today than in the months before pandemic.  As noted above, they want to be paid more and they do not like to be bullied. Marx, the socialist, is remembered for challenging the workers to unite.  What if they do?

What would happen if all the union members who work for ExxonMobil walk out in support of the union in Beaumont? What if the union members in trucking industry refuse to service any ExxonMobil or Deere facilities?  

Could there be general strikes as Marx envisioned in the US? I would think that workers would need to be pretty unhappy.  Autoworkers and steelworkers are higher paid than most workers and they want more.  If you have ever been a waiter (and I have), I would bet that you would be unhappy with the current minimum wage.

Perhaps the smartest person in the labor/management debate was Henry Ford. He famously doubled workers’ wages in 1914 to keep the unions out and forced the other auto makers to do the same. He believed that the workers needed to be paid enough to be able to purchase the cars they were making. There is no question that the overall economy is better when people have more money in their pockets to spend. 

If you’d like to discuss this or anything related, then please book a time to talk with me HERE

What is a dream worth?

Capital Markets, Economics, equity crowdfunding, Issuers
What is a dream worth

A long time ago, when I was a young lawyer fresh out of school, I was walking with a friend along a side street in Manhattan, probably in the West 30s. There were brownstones on both sides of the street. We stopped in front of one that had a small shop on the street level.

In the window were two shelves on which were displayed a series of antique dolls, doll clothes and doll carriages and furniture. Many seemed to be from the early 20th Century, if not earlier. The shop was dark and the sign on the door said: Hours by Appt. Only.

“Interesting business” I remarked. My friend responded: “That isn’t a business, it is someone’s dream”.

In some ways, every entrepreneur and small business owner is a dreamer. They try to turn the intangible, an idea, into something tangible, a business. Assigning a value to any business is not an easy task. While the business is still a dream it is virtually impossible.

Valuations

Of all the things that we teach business school students, corporate valuation is given very little time or attention. When a business needs to be valued because it is being bought or sold the task is relegated to accountants. Accountants plug data about earnings and assets into established formulas and come up with a value. 

Accountants can determine the “book value” of a business by subtracting the company’s liabilities from its assets. That rarely tells the whole story. What if there is little or no data? What if the business has no earnings or assets?

Assets are placed on a balance sheet at cost and are then depreciated over time. The true value of the asset is not always represented in the financial reports. Some assets, especially real estate can often appreciate over time to greatly exceed their cost.

We teach that real estate should ultimately be valued at its highest and best use. A developer may see a dilapidated old farm as the site of a shopping mall or residential development. Still, the current owner carries the farm on its books at cost minus depreciation. The value of any parcel of real estate can change dramatically in the time it takes to hold a press conference announcing a new development.

Accountants will often add a line item for the company’s “good will” which is more often than not the accountant’s way of capturing the value of the business as a going concern, including the value of its brand and customer base. This, too, is far from perfect.

I have helped many clients buy or sell a business over the years. If they use a business broker to facilitate the transaction, they are likely to hear that a business is “worth” 3 times next year’s projected earnings.

This may not be a proper method of valuing a small business either. It is modeled after the way that many research analysts predict the future price of publicly traded securities. But with privately held companies, the risk is often higher so the price for which it sells, logically should be lower. 

Yes, I know that this is the antithesis of the view practiced by venture capital firms who are often dealing with companies that have little more than an idea that they want to bring to market. These companies do not have earnings or assets. The values assigned to portfolio companies by venture capital firms have no basis in reality nor are they entitled to be included in any serious discussion of finance.

IP

Intellectual property like patents, copyrights and trademarks are very hard to value at the time they are first obtained. No author knows that they have a best seller on the day their book is published. Few know that their book will be made into a movie or that anyone will pay to see it. So, what is the “value” of any book on the day before the manuscript goes to the publisher?

As an example, I have a friend who is a noted cartoonist. Her characters were originally published in the US for an American audience but have found a huge following in Japan. Was that in her business plan when she sat down to draw those characters for the first time? Hardly.

One of the interesting things about intellectual property such as copyrighted material, is that it can be segmented in myriad ways. A novelist can sell the right to have his book published in the US to one publisher and the rights to publish the book in a dozen other countries, or a dozen other languages to a dozen other publishers. The theatrical rights and film rights to the same novel can also be segmented and sold. In the right circumstances, the rights to produce and sell merchandise that derives from the novel may be the most valuable rights of all.

The value of intellectual property can vary greatly based upon how it is used and how it is sold. Young Bill Gates might have sold the operating system he purchased from a third party to IBM for a nice profit and gone on to do something else. Instead, he licensed the software and received a royalty every time IBM sold a PC with the operating system in it. The result was the Microsoft Corporation which made Gates the world’s richest man. We use a lot of royalty or revenue sharing arrangements in crowdfunding because they are clean and simple.

1990’s

Back in the 1990s when there was a new and disruptive technology introduced every day, I would ask my students if they could identify the most valuable intellectual property that was in use in the 20th Century. It had been a century of tremendous innovation, much of which had been superseded by even better innovation. Many very valuable patents and other IP had become worthless.

The object of the exercise was for them to identify a simple idea that had been patented, trademarked or copyrighted, that had become very valuable even though no one could have predicted the magnitude of its success on day one. I wanted to demonstrate just how difficult it was to value things that had never been done before. Two pieces of IP stood out.

The first was the copyrighted image that is Mickey Mouse. The media giant that is Disney today started with an animated short film of a mouse whistling.  Maybe the most recognizable face on the planet, I do not believe that even Walt Disney would have valued the ownership of the copyright at anything close to its true value.

The second was the patented formula for Coca Cola. I have been in a Jeep in the middle of a jungle where the guide said that there was a village up ahead where we could stop and get a Coke. Pour yourself one and try to imagine how many cans and bottles they have sold. How would you have valued that patent on the day it was filed?

I think that I have made the point that placing a value on any business, especially a start-up, is a waste of time and effort. I will encourage any small business owner to dream big, but you just cannot put a number on it. 

If you’d like to discuss this or anything related, then please contact me directly HERE

Or you can book a time to talk with me HERE

How are things, really?

Capital Markets, Economics, Life
How are things, really?

I speak with hundreds of people every year. Most are trying to figure out where their particular cog fits into the greater, global, capitalist machine. 

Some people seek me out to share their ideas and business plans, others ask the kind of questions that people always ask someone who served on a business school faculty. Many have already achieved financial success, others are just starting out.

I take these calls in part because they offer me the opportunity to ask a lot of questions to a widely disparate group of people. I get to consider what is going on in the world from many different perspectives. 

Studs Terkel

The result is a Studs Terkel view of the global marketplace.  In Working, Terkel told the stories of various working individuals to paint a picture of the complex relationships that people have with their jobs and with their employers.

Every year I get to hear the stories told by hundreds of business owners and executives, founders of start-ups and investors of all sizes. No two stories are exactly alike.

What are they saying now? As always people see what they want to see. 

There should be a lot of fear, doubt and hesitancy when a pandemic of this magnitude slows the markets so quickly, especially when so much of economic activity has simply been turned off. There are clearly a great many people who are suffering from the effects of the virus if not the virus itself.

No one should minimize the overall economic effects. A great many businesses will go out of business. A great many of the people who are now unemployed will never be rehired to the same job.

Overall, most of the people with whom I am speaking are realists and therefore optimistic.  Rational people understand that if they stay indoors they, and their family members are not likely to contract the virus or die from it. Rational people count their blessings at times like this.

Some people are complaining that working from home is too difficult because their kids are under foot or need their attention.  If you can’t make your kids understand that you need some “alone time” to get your work done, that is on you, not them. 

I wrote my first book after my kids went to bed, often working between midnight and 3AM.  Why? Because I wanted to write a book and I knew I would not get it done if I made excuses.

There are a lot of people sitting at home binge watching this or that which is fine. There are also people who are taking courses online, brushing up on accounting or marketing because when this is over, they want to start a business or get a better job. 

I got a packaged delivered yesterday and asked the delivery man how things were going. He replied over his shoulder that he had been laid off and very happy to have this new job. In his mind, despite being laid off and earning less, his glass was half full.  

You cannot turn on the TV without seeing the incredible jobs being done by doctors, nurses and first responders. They are true heroes.

But we also need to recognize the 20 something working as a cashier in the local market. She told me that all her regular customers are like family.  She has no idea why the market has no eggs as chickens are obviously still laying them. But she has a kind, uplifting word for everyone who passes through her line. “This will be over soon” she told me, “and then we will see what those chickens were up to.”      

Make no mistake, this will end.  Your life, after it is over, will largely depend upon how you act now.

I got a call this week from a former client, a chef who I helped to raise the money for his restaurant a few years back, He wanted the name of a good bankruptcy lawyer because he knows he is not going to be able to re-open. A lot of blood, sweat and tears down the drain.

At the same time, he asked me to help him start raising funds for the new restaurant he wants to open next year, That is the thing about Americans, when the shit knocks us on our ass, we get up, dust ourselves off and keep going.

He truly feels badly for the wait staff and kitchen crew he just laid off.  But he also understands that they got paid from the first day the restaurant was open. It took a year until he could draw his first check. That is the nature of capitalism. Business owners take the risks that create the jobs for others.

Worker Bees

How are things, really?

I read an opinion piece this week end by a disgruntled “influencer“ who was up in arms that the government was bailing out banks and profiteers and not the poor, worker bees who actually do the work.  These people, he reminded us, live paycheck to paycheck and have no savings.

He is certainly correct about that, but that is not the banks’ fault. They are always happy to open a small savings accounts.  It is up to the worker bees to spend a little less and save a little more. That advice has been around since I was in grade school.

I feel really bad for the author who apparently feels helpless because nothing bad has ever happened in his lifetime. I watched friends pulled into war, to die in the jungle. Shit happens and it happens to every generation.

I spent 5 months living on the cancer floor of a major hospital. When this passes, visit the cancer patients in your local hospital, many have no visitors. If there was ever a time to count all your blessings, this is it.

The most important lesson I learned from my experience with cancer is that the only thing that you can do in life is to play the hand you are dealt. If you are afraid or angry right now well that too, is on you. 

If you do nothing else in the next few weeks you can help out your neighbors. I don’t have to tell you why you should do that, you all went to Sunday school. You will be amazed how helping others will help you realize how fortunate you are.

And please ignore the angry political types of all persuasions on TV who are jumping up and down screaming and assigning blame to others. If this group would just sit down and shut the hell up they might be pleasantly surprised to see all the decent people around the US who are quietly giving each other a helping hand. 

That is what is really going on.

If you’d like to discuss this or anything related, then please contact me directly HERE

Or you can book a time to talk with me HERE

Girl Scout Cookies – America’s Unicorn

Capital Markets, Economics , ,
girl scouts

As January winds down, the Girl Scouts will once again demonstrate their high level of business acumen and begin their annual cookie sales. Business schools and MBA programs love case studies of businesses that are remarkably successful. I am always amazed that these professors do not pay more attention to the Girls Scout’s cookie sales program. 

The Girl Scouts have been selling cookies for more than a century. To say that they have it down pat would be an understatement.

You can laugh it off, but in about 8 weeks from start to finish the Girl Scouts will sell and deliver about 200 million units and take in about $1 billion in sales. I know Fortune 500 companies that do not come close.  In fact, I know Senior VPs at Fortune 500 companies that would call the Scout’s attempt to deliver that many units in that short a period of time a logistical nightmare. One told me that even thinking about it would make him reach for the antacids he keeps in his desk drawer. 

What is the secret to the Girls Scouts display of logistics perfection? Their mothers already have way too much on their plates to screw around.  Just get them sold, get them delivered and move on, one Scout’s mother told me as she was chaperoning her second daughter around the neighborhood. That phrase should be on a sign on the wall in the office of every sales manager and operations manager in America.

The entire operation is a model of efficiency. I have ordered quite a few boxes over the years. They always deliver exactly what I ordered exactly when they promised. My Amazon Prime deliveries often go to the house across the street.

The cookies themselves are manufactured in two bakeries. They are of high quality and consistent year to year. Over the years they have eliminated some that did not sell well and introduced others.  

Personally I have a thing for Samoas. Maybe it is the combination of chocolate and coconut; the sweetness and the texture.  I have been known to munch my way through an entire box during the NBA All-Star weekend.  If they ever eliminate Samoas from the menu I think it will represent a decline in Western civilization.

People do not appreciate the value of a box of Girl Scout cookies as a business tool. I have a friend who worked in the back office of the trading department of one of the large banks.  Each year he has 10 cases of Girl Scout cookies delivered and stacked up against the wall in the trading room.  He tells me that the traders, in their thousand dollar suits and $300 shoes literally climb over each other to get a box. He told me that some of the traders who don’t know his name and are not certain what exactly he does, refer to him as the “cookie guy”. He is certain that his yearly largess has raised his status at the bank. 

There are a lot of anecdotal stories about cookie sales. Back in the 1980s, one Scout sold so many boxes that it got her an invitation to visit the White House. While waiting to meet Pres. Reagan she found herself waiting in an ante room with Secretary of State George Schultz.   When Schultz complemented her on her achievement, she reportedly responded by asking Schultz if he wanted to buy some.  Do you need a better example of the phrase “never stop hustling”? 

This particular Scout went on to sell more than 100,000 boxes in her Girl Scout career and while still a teenager gave lectures to adults at sales conventions. Her success was not from going door to door but by setting up a table in the DC metro during rush hour. She told the salesmen at the convention to go where the customers are and not wait for the customers to come to you.  

More recently there was the story of the Scout who set up her table at the entrance to one of San Francisco’s medical marijuana dispensaries. Yes there was some controversy about a pre-teenager and marijuana. As a parent I had to face the questions from my own kids about what I was doing back in the 1960’s. Still the munchies are the munchies.

But from a purely business standpoint I would say that both of these young women understood their market better than a significant number of the sales people I meet almost daily.  I cannot imagine the sales manager at any Fortune 500 company not extending a job offer to either.

girl scouts

My own experience with superior Girl Scout sales women came a few years back when two neighborhood Girl Scouts, sisters aged 11 and 9 rang my door bell one Saturday. They were chaperoned by their mother. Each was in a well pressed uniform intending to make a sharp presentation. I invited them in and the oldest started her pitch by asking me if I was familiar with Girl Scout cookies and did I have a favorite.  

I professed my fondness for Samoas and ordered 3 boxes. She responded by suggesting that I try some of the other popular flavors. She knew what was in each of them and described how they tasted. She suggested that I should buy a box or two of Thin Mints “to take to the office”. I ordered 3 boxes of those as well.   

She thanked me and filled out the order form which is color coded for the ease of these young sales people. It also significantly sped up the ordering process. 

When I thought we were done her younger sister stepped forward and asked if I would buy some cookies from her as well. I would have needed ice water in my veins to turn down this innocent looking youngster who apparently had seen Glengarry, Glen Ross and taken it to heart. 

I told her that I did not want to buy too many because I was watching my weight. She responded by telling me that I could buy a few boxes and that they would ship them to servicemen serving overseas. That’s right, a 9 year old who had already learned to anticipate a customer’s objections and have an excellent response ready. 

I wrote a check and two weeks later, right on schedule, I took possession of a case of Girl Scout cookies. I swear if these two had been 20 years older they might have saved Lehman Brothers. 

I think more people should take notice of just how successful the Girls Scouts are. Two years ago I found myself having lunch with the founder of a Silicon Valley start-up who exhibited more ego than brains. He spent the better part of the meal telling me how his yet to be launched company was certain to achieve unicorn status. It never did.  

The Girl Scouts, on the other hand, will likely sell a billion dollars worth of cookies this year. They have a well known and ubiquitous product. Their brand, if not as valuable as Coca-Cola, is certainly closer to it than Uber or Airbnb.  Imagine the Girl Scouts as a unicorn without the ego.

There is huge push to give young girls more training in STEM subjects and a great many programs teaching them to write code.  I am a strong advocate for both, but learning to write code becomes less important if you can’t sell it.  As long as there are Girl Scouts selling cookies, the art of salesmanship will never die.

If you’d like to discuss this or anything related, then please contact me directly HERE

Or you can book a time to talk with me HERE

The Beginning of the End for Oil

Capital Markets, Economics ,
End for Oil

Every so often I read a single piece of news that gives me a glimpse of the future. I saw a news article last week that reinforced my belief that we are coming to the end of the Age of Oil. 

Oil became the most important commodity in world trade, literally overnight, and specifically on October 19, 1973. Since that date, oil and its price at the well-head have become a central concern of the global markets.    

Since 1973 enormous wealth has been transferred from the US and Europe to the primary oil producers around the Persian and Arabian Gulfs. Far more wealth than the conquistadors removed from the Americas in gold and silver. This wealth was extracted because the producers agreed among themselves to restrict the supply of oil thus keeping the price per barrel sky high. 

A war between Egypt, Syria and Israel began on October 6, 1973. The US Congress were preparing to provide over $2 billion in emergency aid to Israel.  In response, OPEC, the cartel that managed global oil production, instituted an embargo on oil shipments to the United States. The motivation behind the embargo was political, but the effects were most definitely economic.

The embargo halted US oil imports from participating OPEC nations. It changed the lives of all Americans immediately and had lasting effects in the US. It also had an enormous effect on the participating producing states. But for the actions of the cartel and the embargo all those skyscrapers dotting the skylines in all those OPEC countries would never have been built.

The total embargo of oil to the US meant that there was not enough gasoline in the US to go around. I remember standing in long lines trying to buy gasoline when it was available. I remember that purchases were restricted to “odd and even” days corresponding with your license plate.  It was terribly disruptive to everyone in the US and to every US business. 

The US economy was booming. By 1970, the US had just put men on the moon. US factories were operating at near capacity. The Vietnam War was sucking up a lot of labor and materials. By 1973 there was a noticeable uptick in inflation at the wholesale level.

End for Oil

The interstate highway system was largely completed to facilitate and reduce the costs of trucking goods.  Gasoline fueled all of the trucks that moved all of the goods. In 1970, demand for oil in the US outpaced supply for the very first time.

At that time the cost of regular gasoline in suburban New Jersey was about $.25 per gallon. With a fill-up you would get change back from a $5 bill and either Green Stamps or a 12 ounce drinking glass suitable for iced tea or lemonade. Everyone I knew had a cabinet full of those glasses.

Cartels like OPEC are made up of producers who are most effective when they manage the supply together.  OPEC began a series of production cuts in order to bump up the world price of oil. These cuts nearly quadrupled the price of oil from about $3.00 a barrel before the embargo to about $12.00 a barrel in January 1974, i.e. in about 90 days.   

Officially, the embargo ended in March 1974. The higher oil prices, on the other hand, kept going up.  In 1979 the revolution in Iran bumped prices even further upwards. 

Before the end of the decade, US President Jimmy Carter appeared on television urging people to turn down their thermostats and wear sweaters to keep warm at home because heating oil had become very expensive. He also encouraged Americans to “whip inflation” as the price of most goods went up as production and shipping costs rose. 

For the next 40 years US politicians would promise to make the US “energy independent” again. 

The increased price was also a boon to the large oil companies who profited from the increased price as well.  There were several notable mergers and the resulting behemoths became among the largest companies in the world. Oil had become a “bell-weather” commodity.

In the 1970s and 1980s there was the thought that US domestic production might again surpass domestic US demand. There was a substantial amount of drilling within the US, much of it incentivized by favorable tax treatment. I recall reviewing financing documents for shallow oil wells in Pennsylvania, deep wells in Texas, gas wells in Louisiana and shale oil in Colorado.

The large oil companies had earned so much that they could afford to engage in much more expensive, offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea. The pipeline from the North Slope in Alaska did not come on line until 1977, but eventually added 1 million barrels a day of crude oil to the supply.

At the same time, the US government lowered the maximum highway speed limit to 55 miles per hour. The auto industry sold a lot of smaller, more gas efficient vehicles.  With all that drilling, conservation and efficiency the price per barrel of oil should have come down. It never did.

Over the ensuing years, the global price pushed through $30 per barrel to $60 and more.  Only recently has the US actually produced more oil in a month than its residents used and not by very much.

There were people in the oil industry and the government who thought that we might “run out of oil” and who spread that thought as a justification for drilling anywhere and everywhere. That certainly seemed plausible in the 1980s when the memories of the embargo and its shortages were still fresh and the internal combustion engine had no competitors.  

People have been talking about electric powered vehicles since before the 1973 embargo.  In the 1980s and into the 2000s they were still a work-in-progress. No one really had tangible proof that we would replace the internal combustion engine in the 21st Century.

End for Oil

What I read last week told me that electric vehicles have finally arrived.

Last week, Tesla Motors announced that they had delivered over 360,000 vehicles in 2019 and are on a path to deliver more than 400,000 vehicles in 2020.  Other companies also deliver electric vehicles to customers and more companies are poised to get into the market. Some will succeed; others fail.

The technology that makes these vehicles possible has apparently evolved to the point that the vehicles are accepted by the public and are priced within a normal, commercial range.  The technology will continue to evolve to make these electric vehicles even less expensive. On board batteries will be lighter, longer lasting and cheaper. Re-charge time will be shortened to minutes. At some point in the next 10 or 20 years, there will be more electric cars and trucks manufactured each year than gas powered vehicles.

The real impetus for the changeover will come from the trucking and package delivery industry. The US Postal Service is already reviewing prototypes for electric powered delivery vans. UPS, Amazon and other companies operating fleets will also make the switch.  It does not make good economic sense for these companies to continue to buy gasoline. Instead they will operate the fleet during the day and plug it in overnight.

It should not be difficult to imagine that a company like Amazon might run an all electric fleet and at the same time own acres of solar arrays putting the equivalent of the electricity that they use back into the grid.  Tesla is positioned to sell the idea that customers might charge their cars for free if they generate solar power from the roof tiles and solar panels that they also sell.

It is not unreasonable to assume that there will be more than 10 or 20 million fully electric cars and trucks on the road by 2030 or 2035. That may be conservative. The last large automotive production lines for internal combustion engines are likely to close long before the end of this century.

What may hasten the demise of the gasoline powered automobile is the cartel itself. As demand declines, the cartel is more likely than not to continue to reduce production to maintain the high price for as long as it can. As the cartel cuts production, smaller members will begin to bail out because they will want to sell more than their allotment.

If you happen to stop over in Riyadh or Dubai take a look at their high rise skylines. Cartels do not last forever. The effects of a successful cartel can have a significant impact on global markets and global politics for many decades after they end.

If you’d like to discuss this or anything related, then please contact me directly HERE

Or you can book a time to talk with me HERE

Sex in Economics

Capital Markets, Economics ,
sex in economics

When I was teaching Economics back in the 1990s, I was fortunate to have students who had gone to high school in dozens of different countries. These students had different experiences and had functioned in markets that were often driven by local custom and culture. Their questions and comments helped me to understand a lot about the expanding global marketplace.

When I wanted to create an example to illustrate the application of a theory that I was trying to explain, I always tried to create one that everyone would understand regardless of their country of origin. Consequently, I often talked about sex. 

I admit up front that this may have contributed to my being ranked as one of the more popular members of the adjunct faculty at the university. It also seemed to keep the students awake, which, when teaching a subject like Economics can be task number one.

Economics

Classical economics teaches that consumers are rational. It teaches that because most consumers have a limited amount of money to spend each month, they will organize their spending accordingly. First, they will allocate their funds to necessities (rent, food, clothing, and transportation) and then to items that are necessary but which can be put off (dentist, auto repairs). Any funds that are left over can be spent on items that the consumer may want to buy, but could literally live without (sporting events, vacations). 

In order to get the most “bang” from the bucks they have, consumers should be good shoppers.  They should compare the prices of like products and purchase the least expensive ones that suit their needs. In theory, it is a rational process throughout.

Most consumers acknowledge they should allocate some of their monthly earnings to savings, but few will. Most also acknowledge that they should spend no more than they earn each month.  In practice, that effectively went out of style with the advent of the credit card.

Today, the market is awash in consumer debt, a factor that the classical economists could not consider.

I tried to focus the students on the underlying question: “How could they induce consumers to make an irrational decision to buy their product?”  These were, after all, business school students. 

For most products the answer is advertising. The modern “in your face” daily onslaught of ads that encourage people to purchase products were also not considered by the classical economists for obvious reasons.  The textbook I used, followed the classical view, which, to my thinking, might not give students the whole picture.  

The purpose of any advertisement is to make consumers purchase the product. Many ads will stress a product’s “value” which speaks to our rational side.  But even those ads will frequently feature attractive people making the pitch.  Using actors who are “attractive” does not change the message. But it is likely to get more eyeballs on the ad. 

Sex Sells

Indeed much about advertising is rooted in sex. There is a constant, undisputed theme in advertising: “sex sells”.

sex in economics

I could not, in my mind, conjure up a source of more irrational behavior than the human sex drive. It is not “just the things we do for love”. Sex and our desire for it motivates a huge portion of the spending that people do, even if they have limited funds that might rationally be spent elsewhere. 

For example, sex is at the root of the global fashion and cosmetics industries. These represent trillions of dollars of annual commerce.  And it is not new. Evidence of consumers’ desire for fashion, cosmetics and adornments goes back into pre-history. 

Why would anyone teach that consumer purchases were rational when so much of it was driven by irrational emotions?  And this does not even touch purchases that are made based on other emotional responses such as fear, greed or envy. I thought that perhaps the rational consumer of the textbook who was focused on the price might be a myth. 

I caught up with Richard Posner’s Sex and Reason (1992) a few years after it was published. His well researched and well presented book came to the conclusion that the human sex drive was rooted in our biology and that acting upon it was perfectly rationale behavior.  

I still have difficulty in reconciling the perfectly rational price theory with less than rational human behavior.  Over time I have come to believe that the latter might actually be underestimated as the determining factor for our purchase decisions. In this regards, I think that business school students might need a lot more sex, at least in their curriculum. 

I liked to challenge my students. I asked the class why so many consumers would reach for a fragrance that was priced at $350 per bottle. People buy fragrances to attract a partner for sex. Would not a fragrance that cost $60 get the job done? 

Vegas Baby

I would ask: If a sex worker in Las Vegas charges $500 to perform a sex act when a sex worker in Brazil might charge $20 for the same service, what can you infer from this data? Yes it is about overhead and what the market will bear, but it is also an introduction to globalization. Change sex worker to software developer and you will see what I mean.

sex in economics

Cable television and the internet itself were once brand new technologies that were slowly beginning to find acceptance from the general public.  In both cases each got an early shot in the arm from one source, pornography.

On cable, networks like HBO screened soft core porn after midnight. It is what made the cost of cable acceptable to many new viewers and indeed what attracted many new viewers. Data at the time suggested that a lot of people liked to watch in bed. If you need a reference go to Wikipedia and look up Sylvia Kristel. 

I think that everyone knows that there is a lot of porn on the internet, but not everyone appreciates how large a business it represents. MindGeek, parent of Pornhub, does not report its revenues but measuring them in the billions would not seem inappropriate. It may not be as large in gross sales as Amazon, but MindGeek’s cost of goods is minimal. 

Sex is even prevalent in finance. I wrote an article about crowdfunding back in 2015 when it was still new and I was just beginning to look at it with a critical eye.  Investment crowdfunding was and is about getting people to look at your offering.

I wrote at the time: “If eyeballs are what you need to successfully crowdfund a company, it would seem logical then that the easiest company to crowdfund might be one selling a line of lingerie. No crowdfunding consultant worth his/her fee would likely tell the company not to include its product catalog in its presentation to investors if that catalog had pictures of models wearing lingerie.” About one year later a lingerie company in London started a crowdfunding campaign that followed that advice and raised all of the funds that they were seeking.  

Sex, Drugs and Rock n’ Roll

The music industry certainly uses sex to make sales. I grew up at a time when Elvis Presley appeared on television from the waist up because much of the audience had “issues” with the way in which he moved his hips.  Currently, it’s obvious that much of the music and entertainment industries have seen that portion of the audience as far out of the mainstream. A music video without some sexual reference? Hard to find near the top of the charts.  

A few years back, I caught an interview of Mick Jagger that was being conducted by a business reporter. Jagger has flaunted sex and sexuality throughout a very long career. The Rolling Stones were starting a tour and the topic was the economics of touring.

mick jagger

Jagger suggested that the tour itself would probably net the band over $100 million, not counting the record sales. The reporter asked how the band could achieve that kind of financial success from traveling around and playing music. Let’s face it, very few musical groups have had that kind of sustained success.

Jagger responded that he had just paid attention in school. The response made me smile. He is a graduate of the London School of Economics.    

I hope that my students were paying attention too.

If you’d like to discuss this or anything related, then please contact me directly HERE

Or you can book a time to talk HERE

The Job Market at Mid-Century

Economics ,

It is that time of year when students are celebrating high school graduations and college commencements.  Many are looking for jobs and I am starting to get some resumes from students looking for a little help. Students graduating this month are likely to expect that they will still be employed for at least the next 30 years. I am not so certain they will.

I also needed to buy a graduation present or two. I would usually go to the mall, but this year I opted to buy the presents online.  While I appreciate the convenience, I also appreciate what my decision means to the job market.

On-line shopping is one of those fundamental shifts in the way we do business.  By mid-century and likely before there will be no need for consumers to come face to face with a clerk or salesperson for most of the items they buy every week.  Those jobs will disappear and the retail space that those businesses occupy will have to be repurposed.     

Malls were no different than the Roman Forum in the first century or the bazaar in Istanbul in the Middle Ages. They were an “old” model that always had the customers physically coming to the sellers, originally to inspect the goods, exchange payment and cart the goods away. Into the mid-1990s retail malls were a gathering place and an iconic cultural symbol.  Just twenty years later hundreds of malls are closing or filing for bankruptcy every year. 

Amazon has proved that it can favorably compete with brick and mortar stores. The simple fact is that the stores will always require higher costs for labor and overhead.  Given Amazon’s growth and profitability, only those retail stores that provide a personal service (like barbers) are likely to survive. Even those may become “we bring it to you” mobile enterprises.

Amazon has already deployed robots in its warehouse and distribution center operations.  Based upon technology that is in the market today or about to be introduced, Amazon will likely become a series of fully automated distribution centers. Robots will take goods manufactured elsewhere from shipping containers delivered to the loading dock, move them, store them, sort them, package them and ship them out to consumers.  All of the billing and record keeping will be done automatically.  All the trucks will be become autonomous with no drivers. 

Jobs at all levels are being turned over to robots.  I believe that before mid-century people who call themselves truck drivers or bus drivers will disappear.  Longshoreman are not needed if pallets or containers can be on-loaded and off-loaded without them.  Retail clerks will disappear. 

If you call a large company for customer service today, you are likely to speak with a machine.  Bank tellers and customer facing bank officers are already on the way out.  Billions of dollars worth of investment portfolios are selected by “robo-advisors”.

The lectures on supply and demand that I gave to my Economics classes can be had today on-line from the author of the textbook I used or a professor at Harvard or the London School of Economics who is much more qualified than I to teach the course.  Why do we need high schools or colleges (buildings or teachers) when virtually any subject can be taught on line?

This trend of reducing the amount any company will spend on human labor will certainly continue.  There is nothing new about technology changing the world. New technology is often disruptive to any legacy industry and the people who work in it.  

There has always been a mantra that says that new technologies, especially disruptive technologies that obliterate jobs in some industries “always” create new jobs in new industries.  I think that mantra needs to be examined.  I am not certain that “always” includes the next 30 years.

For example, I do not believe that by mid-century the internal combustion engine will be the primary source of power for the transport of goods and people.  I expect that all vehicles will have electric engines, powered to some extent by solar panels on the roof or another non-fossil fuel source.   Alternative sources of energy like solar will continue to get cheaper and cheaper and electric engines will dominate.  

In the normal course jobs can be expected to be lost in the oilfields and replaced by jobs in the solar industries.  But will they? We are at the cusp of an era when a great many jobs that go back to antiquity will be turned over to machines that can “think” about what they are doing.  

Something as basic as farming will be turned over to machines that will plant and grow corn, harvest it, ship it to factories that will process it into cornflakes, re-package it and ship it to consumers all without human labor.  Even the graphic design and color of the packaging may be determined by analytics and algorithms without human participation.  

Today you can construct a house with a 3D printer. By mid-century machines may be printing thousands of new homes every hour. 3D printers print a lot of other things as well. It is impossible to imagine how this technology may develop in the next 30 years, but I do not think it far-fetched to consider factories full of 3D printers printing out more 3D printers.  

All of this is very deflationary and potentially very disruptive. 

If all this comes to pass a lot of people who are employed today may find their jobs automated by mid-century and potentially much sooner.  Which raises the question that the Economics teacher in me needs to ask: if we un-employ tens of millions of people, who will be able to afford to buy the cornflakes or the homes? 

In theory as the costs come down, prices for cornflakes and the many other things that adopt this technology should also come down.  But you still need to have job in order to buy anything. If all these jobs do disappear, exactly what will people do to earn a living?

What I find interesting is that a lot of people seem to think that the skill students graduating today need to have to earn a living is to know how to write computer code.  If anything, that recommendation points out another macroeconomic trend, globalization that is also disruptive and also deflationary.  Code itself will become more and more commoditized and coders in Mumbai and a dozen other developing markets will ultimately produce most of the code at a much cheaper price than coders in Silicon Valley, Seattle or Boston because their overhead and cost of living is significantly cheaper.

I have seen studies that suggest as many as one-half of the jobs that people are doing today may be automated by mid-century. If that is even close to being true, buckle up, it is going to be a bumpy ride.  I can state without reservation that this year’s graduating classes, next year’s and the one a year after are not preparing for this change in the job market in any way. I doubt that anyone knows where to begin.

Re-visiting Prohibition

Economics, Law ,

R

Next January will mark the 100th Anniversary of the start of Prohibition. It is one of the least talked about and poorly studied events in US history. Very little has been written about it, especially by economists, but I have always found the subject to be interesting.

Americans have always had “issues” with the consumption of alcohol.  Laws restricting its manufacture and sale go back to the colonial period.  The temperance movement of the 19th Century is most often seen as a “moral crusade” or political battle.  Prohibition itself is often viewed through the lens of the speakeasy lifestyle.  As with most great movements much of the forces behind it were based in more practical issues.  

The real issue about alcohol in US politics and economics has always been about taxes. The very first tax levied by the brand new US Government in 1791 was a tax on the manufacture of alcoholic beverages. .The new Congress thought it was a good way to raise money to pay off the Revolutionary War debt.The tax was not well received especially by the people who were making and selling the product. 

Farmers in Western Pennsylvania and Kentucky were growing grain, distilling it into whiskey and shipping it east. Even back then it was a very profitable business. They saw the tax as the governments’ attempt to put its hand into their pockets.The farmers’ response to this tax was an armed rebellion against the United States. 

How big was the rebellion? The US Government sent 13,000 troops to quell it. There were no armed battles and the rebels disbursed. But many people still refused to pay the tax and more than one tax collector was physically assaulted.

The whiskey excise tax was the largest source of tax revenue in the early years of the U.S. and a substantial and reliable source of tax revenue throughout the 19th Century.  As the population grew, total consumption also grew and the total tax revenue collected each year kept going up with it.

Women were at the forefront of the temperance movement for a number of reasons. They were rarely the bread winners in their family and having the male breadwinner too drunk to work or injured because they were drinking on the job was not in women’s financial interests. Time spent at the local pub meant time away from the family and drinking has always been associated with gambling and prostitution, neither of which enhanced marital life. Drunken husbands also had a way of physically and mentally abusing their wives. For. many women Prohibition was a practical remedy for a practical problem.

The temperance movement was an amalgam of women’s groups and mostly Protestant churches or affiliated religious organizations. The movement was well organized. It claimed millions of supporters across the country. The goal was to outlaw the manufacture and sale of alcohol everywhere in the US.

By 1856 they had succeeded in doing so in 12 states and dozens of rural counties. It was a remarkable political feat for a group of like-minded citizens the majority of which were women and could not vote.

As the country moved west after the Civil War and new communities grew along the railroad right of way, saloons were often the first structures built and always a fixture in any new town. Many of those towns had more saloons than churches and many communities in America still do. 

As the 19th Century went on, there were more and more immigrants from Germany who began brewing beer in the mid-west grain belt. These brewers also developed a new business model.The breweries often would help to build or finance a local saloon in exchange for being the only beer offered in it. It was an early version of franchising.

Especially in urban areas, saloons were often a focal meeting place of the local immigrant communities. Saloons or taverns had always been places to drink and discuss politics. They also became known as places where politicians could meet and do business with voters and constituents.   Given that saloons were so prevalent, it is somewhat remarkable that the “drys” prevailed.  

By the turn of the 20th Century there were “wets” and “drys” in both political parties. Neither of the major political parties took a formal position one way or another but momentum for prohibition was growing. Competing products, like soft drinks, began lobbying for prohibition especially at the state and local levels. Eventually there were more “drys” than “wets” in the US Congress and the die was cast.

What actually paved the way for the ultimate success of the prohibitionists was the income tax which was enacted specifically to replace the excise tax on whiskey. Once that was in place, Congress in 1918 passed the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution, it was ratified in 1919 and the enabling legislation, the Volstead Act, began to put Prohibition into action in January 1920. 

The social benefits of prohibition derive from a reduced consumption of alcohol. They include a reduction of alcohol related health issues, less public disruption caused by inebriated citizens, and probably some additional domestic peace. Productivity at work rose as work related injuries and absenteeism decreased. But a lot of people never stopped drinking.  

Whatever romanticized image of Prohibition you may glean from Hollywood, it was not just fashionable people partying in a fashionable speakeasy near Times Square. During Prohibition thousands of poorer people died drinking homemade alcoholic concoctions.Manufacturing and bootlegging turned intolarge,  and profitable, albeit illegal ,businesses.

Still most people bought one bottle at a time from a family member or acquaintance. Everyone knew that they were breaking the law and no one really cared.

Overall enforcement was very difficult. Corrupting judges, politicians and law enforcement was part of the business model for the larger players. Small, person to person, transactions were almost impossible to detect.  It demonstrated to a lot of people that if you were willing to break the law, you were likely to get away with it.  

The Depression killed Prohibition. Roosevelt came into office in 1933 with big spending plans and declining revenue from the income tax as millions of people were out of work. Repealing Prohibition to allow all of the existing illegal transactions back into the mainstream and re-instating the excise tax was a no-brainer. And that is exactly what Congress did.

The post-WWII baby boomers have had alcohol integrated into mainstream family life.   Alcohol is a significant part of the socializing that the baby-boomers do. A drink after work or a beer around the barbeque is modern day normalcy.

The social issues today are the same as always. Excessive drinking frequently shows up in studies of marital problems, spousal abuse and petty crimes. According to the CDC: “Drinking too much can harm your health. Excessive alcohol use led to approximately 88,000 deaths and 2.5 million years of potential life lost (YPLL) each year in the United States from 2006 – 2010, shortening the lives of those who died by an average of 30 years. Further, excessive drinking was responsible for 1 in 10 deaths among working-age adults aged 20-64 years. The economic costs of excessive alcohol consumption in 2010 were estimated at $249 billion, or $2.05 a drink.”

Today most alcoholic beverages are served up by large multi-brand, multi-national conglomerates.   Mass media advertising has made them ubiquitous. It is virtually impossible to watch a sporting event and not see ads for alcoholic beverages.

The US government still collects a tax on every can and bottle. The tax on alcohol today makes up about 12% of the total excise tax revenue and a very small amount of the US Government’s overall income.  Not even the tax collector really cares any more.

Most studies of Prohibition overlook the seemingly constant demand for the product, even when the consumers knew that it was illegal to purchase and consume it.  The simple truth is that banning anything is not a viable policy.  America prides itself as being a nation of laws. Prohibition demonstrated that a wide swath of the population was willing to say: let the laws be damned.