In European countries when people reach retirement age they should have a choice of retiring like now or belonging to a new category of people. The working seniors. Working seniors if employed would not collect pensions (only while employed of course) but also their employer would not have to pay any social charges for them. The underlying principle is that people who reached retirement age have already paid their contribution to the pension system they can stop collecting but do not need to contribute if they work. Employers would find it more attractive to keep people or hire people pass retirement age and the pension system would benefit because it does not pay out while the person who could retire still works.
The other big incentive is that because working seniors can at any point quit and collect their pension they would not be part of the forced severance pay system of Europe which is so costly and makes companies not want to hire.
2011 12
Four quick ideas for Blackberry
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Internet & Technology with No Comments
-Make it such that when you get a new Blackberry you can clone the old one, apps included, as iTunes does with the iPhone, now it’s just Blackberry services. As a manufacturer you want to make it as easy as possible for people to buy your newer products.
-Create an API for the keyboard and trackpad so any other gadget in the planet, including your iPad, your TV… can be managed from your Blackberry acting as remote, of course the Blackbery should be the remote of the Playbook. What people love the most about Blackberry is the keyboard.
-Make it easy for developers to write stable apps for Blackberry.
-Have BBM connect to the iPhone, Androids and the web. It is useless to give this business to WhatsApp if you are RIM.
2011 7
Wikileaks should be more transparent
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
I was looking at the financial statements of Wikileaks online and could not find them. Greenpeace, Oxfam, Wikipedia and other NGOs that solicit money are very transparent about their financial situation. To me Wikileaks becomes much less credible if they do not have that level of transparency but yet they claim to bring transparency to the world.
Oil prices are collapsing. I see this as a mixed blessing. On one side I am happy that oil exporters get to make less money doing nothing. On the other side I am concerned about more CO2 emissions around the world and a slower shift to alternative energy. So what I would love to see is for the US and EU governments to leave gasoline prices as they are now and as oil prices go down to keep the differences in taxes. This would reduce their gigantic deficits, help alternative energy, reduce the oil import bill and reduce CO2 emissions.
2011 6
A perfect ending to our summer vacation
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
These photos are from the last day of our summer vacation. We spent it on Aphrodite, the family sailboat. We have been sailing Aphrodite for 11 years. We have gone as far East as Beirut and as far West as Mexico. Aphrodite is a 92ft Ketch designed by Andre Hoek and built by Vitters. And don’t ask me why I still work so hard at turning ideas into businesses like Fon and just don’t spend my life sailing 🙂
Aphrodite is a blue water sailboat that has crossed the Atlantic 10 times. What they say about boats is true, they are incredibly complex and expensive to maintain. But they are also great fun to sail.
In this video I show Aphrodite sailing.
2011 5
What “A” yacht
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Trips with No Comments
Sailing around Menorca we found this incredible yacht. Maybe somebody who looks at the pictures can tell me her name. In the meantime it was funny to see that some nudists had discovered this ultramodern wet dream ahead of us 🙂
Ok now I know it was this yacht the most expensive in the world, $300M to build $1M to refuel, $20M to maintain per year, designed by Starck