Will the unrealized capital gains tax be paid every year?

I found some useful tidbits in this podcast from Harvard Business Review with Peter Cuneo.

The first was this bit about what’s usually wrong with the companies he comes in to turnaround:

I have found in my turnarounds actually that the most important thing and the thing that was wrong, that was, I like to say, bankrupt, even if they weren’t bankrupt financially, what was bankrupt was the culture of the company.

The value system was, in some cases, shockingly wrong. What the company, what the organization, what the employees thought was important to accomplish, and what really was important [was very different].

That hit home. The day after hearing that, I encountered several clear examples of it.

In one case, the organization wanted to build a nice-looking, shiny report to show the results of a stinker of a project. Pointing out it was a stinker, that maybe we should shut it down and not scale it further so we could we could direct resources toward things that might have a better payoff was not important in that culture. That was shunned. Building the report, doing what had been asked without pushback was an important accomplishment in the organization and the accomplishment that would be rewarded. Even if the project will be shuttered in 6 months and the report abandoned and all the resources spent on it will wasted.

The podcast has other good tidbits, too. Recommended.

Do you still believe the media?

When new ideas fail, I’ve seen lots of excuses: They run out of money, didn’t execute right, or market enough.

If true, these would be easy to solve.

One common reason I’ve seen for failures is the company’s managers viewed the idea in isolation, as if no existing competing options existed to solve the problem, or they severely underestimated how well those existing options (even their company’s own products) work.

They don’t consider what it means that their current products generate billions in sales.

That means that a lot of consumers think their product solves the problem well. To beat that, the new product needs not only to solve the problem, but to solve it better than the existing options.

I know they don’t understand this because in the time leading up to the big roll-out they don’t ask if thew new idea is better than what they already have? If so, in what ways?

I will say that it’s not always obvious if something is better or worse until it’s in the market. Sometimes, something new works in unexpected ways.

But, I think these type of failures could be avoided by asking these simple questions. They may even learn some new things about their existing products that gives them some ideas that could work.

“Watch this video. What do you see?”

“What’s going on here?”

“Are you paying attention yet?”

Posts with the words ‘absolutely’ and ‘literally.’

“BREAKING:…” These are almost always some minor piece of news.

“BOOM” or “BAM”

“I just moved into your community. Let me know if you need your air ducts cleaned.’ Hey air duct cleaners: I don’t think Facebook ads are that expensive. Try it. Build the cost into your price.

Most of the posts I see on X appear to be folks trying to get their hot take out there on whatever topic is currently garnering folks attention so they can get a piece of that attention wave.

They aren’t genuine. They are are just playing the game. Get lots of posts out there. Say things on the topics du jour. Maybe 1-2% of them go viral or maybe they are right 10% of the time. Then claim success on the small % that hit.

I guess it works.

Seems like a sad life.

In a recent interview with vice-presidential candidate, J.D. Vance, mentions the “media lies about Trump.” The interviewer, Dana Bash, responds that, The media doesn’t like. We just show people what they said and let them decide.

Most of the time I’d say that’s technically true.

The mind trick is that they show you something Trump says without context, knowing that most folks will draw an incorrect conclusion on what is meant by it.

A recent example of this is, “Trump said there will be a bloodbath if he isn’t elected.” They sometimes surround this other facts, like bringing up J6, to help lead you to the incorrect conclusion.

I’ve seen this on media. I’ve also seen Pelosi repeat this and President Biden said it in his DNC speech last week.

It’s a fact Trump said this.

What they want you to conclude is that the Trump promised political violence if he isn’t elected.

Even though they never said that and neither did Trump.

This is another example of the ‘reverse inception’ that I wrote about here.

Part of the trick relies on us assuming media would point out the true context if it was easy to conclude incorrectly. “We should point out that Trump said there would be a bloodbath in autoworker jobs as a result of his opponent’s policies.”

That’s part of the trick. By them not doing clarifying that context, this confirms the obvious conclusion. People think, why would the media risk their reputation by not clarifying that?

Well, the answer is that it keeps working.

If and when folks catch on, the media plays dumb like Dana Bash did. We just show the facts and let them decide. Implied: We can’t help if you came to the wrong conclusion from the facts we gave you. That’s your fault, not ours’.

And, they’re right. If you haven’t caught on their BS by now, you might be gullible.

Locally, the end is nearing for a sales tax that was passed about 20 years ago to help upgrade and expand the stadiums for local pro sports so those teams could make even more money.

That was the first extension of the original sales tax that was passed several decades prior, to get those teams started because simply having the teams, as it was sold, would be a boon to the local economy.

Here are some things I find annoying about the whole discussion on local media:

It’s presumed the sports teams will leave if they don’t get some money from taxpayers, so its just a matter of how to make that happen. And, the tone is, “we don’t want that..tsk…tsk…what would we do with our beloved sports teams?”

The news doesn’t ask the owners obvious questions like, if these are such good investments, why don’t you make them on your own?

Or…you’re pretty wealthy. What you want from the taxpayers is X% of your net worth, which is relatively small. Why is it so important for taxpayers to help you out?

Or…don’t you make enough from the high ticket prices and concessions and parking and billion dollar broadcast contracts?

Or…at what point do we say the pro sports teams are good businesses and self-sufficient? Or will they always need public support?

Or…many studies show that the economic impact of pro sports teams is overblown because they ignore or severely underestimate the economic activity that would have taken place in the market if the team wasn’t there. Given that, is it really a good investments for taxpayers? If it was such a good investment, why aren’t billionaire team owners willing to make those investments themselves?

Additionally, these stadiums have now been there for over 50 years and the area surrounding them is blighted. If these things are such boons to the economy, why is the surrounding area so blighted?

Of course, I know why they don’t ask these questions. It’s safe to assume they are in on the PR campaign to get the taxpayer funds. They stand to benefit, too. Those teams buy lots of ads on local stations and garner ratings, even if the news teams just cover pre and post game events, like the coaches & players news conferences, and don’t broadcast the game.

If they asked such questions, the pro sports teams owners and PR people would stop giving them interviews and access to such things.

He had an impact on me. As a young lad, I occasionally watched his show after school.

I loved that he had folks on that he disagreed with and hashed it out with them.

He also introduced me to Milton Friedman. I didn’t know who that was at the time, but he made sense to me.

I saw a post on X that shows a robot that can play table tennis.

Makes me wonder when are we going to solve some real problems? Seems like such low hanging fruit to build a robot that can mow the lawn, do the laundry, fold clothes, and put them away, load and unload the dishwasher and put dishes away, clean the house, maybe even paint and do some basic maintenance on items that frequently break.

That would free up many hours in each household each week to put toward more productive activities or more leisure.

Yet, it seems like nobody is really all that interested in that.