Many wonder why Israel as a nation appears to be so aggressive, to invade Gaza and Lebanon when attacked, to bomb Syria, Iraq and possibly now Iran when threatened by the Iranian nuclear bomb program. In general many question the way Israel violently reacts to provocation. The answer may lie in the sad history of the Jewish people. Growing up Jewish, one of the 15 million in a world of 7 billion people, is growing up feeling like a survivor of so many historical massacres, lucky to be alive and stay alive. Given our history it is not surprising that there would be a slight “paranoiac” tone to the experience on real or perceived threats. And this is not to always justify Israel’s behavior, as I think that Israel as a nation is not doing itself a favor with some of the most aggressive intervention. For example I personally support having bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactors but not attacking the Turkish ship headed to Gaza when just towing it away would have sufficed. And historically many innocent people have died as a result of Israel’s quick trigger reactions.
Yellow badge Star of David called “Judenstern”. Part of the exhibition in the Jewish Museum Westphalia, Dorsten, Germany. The wording is the German word for Jew (Jude), written in mock-Hebrew script. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Still, contrary to what many believe, Jewish-Arab conflicts have killed far fewer people than Muslim-Muslim conflicts. For example the civil war in Syria these days, or the Iraq Iran war, or the Lebanon civil war or many other Muslim against Muslim conflicts that have been far more lethal than Israel’s conflicts. Just looking at the Wikipedia casualty lists of these wars I estimate for every Muslim killed by a Jew there are 100 Muslims killed by other Muslims. And there are many more Muslims killed by US and EU armies than by Israel as well. But still even one non combatant death is too many and should be avoided, so let’s try to understand why Israel responds so violently to aggression, sometimes crossing acceptable boundaries.
Israel is so aggressive because the history of Judaism is a history in which us Jews get killed for being Jewish again and again. And the few times we were spared, we celebrate it as a holidays. As one Jewish friend put it, a Jewish holiday can be summarized as “they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat”. So we have Passover for when we saved ourselves from the Egyptians, and today, February 24th, we celebrate Purim, another survival celebration. This time we celebrate how we prevented a holocaust in Persia when Jews were deported from present-day Israel to present-day Iran. But then of course there was the very sad time we did not win, and that was the Holocaust, a systematic elimination of Jews, where nobody saved us and around a third of the Jews of the world were massacred by the Nazis. As a result, while the population of the planet has tripled, there are the same amount of Jews now as there were in 1900. And this is very much in the mind of the current generation of Israeli leaders who grew up right after the Holocaust. These leaders are haunted by the ever present question of why Jews didn’t defend themselves effectively in the Holocaust, by a conviction that if we don’t defend ourselves nobody will. And that’s why they see that their primary mission as leaders is to prevent a new Holocaust. This mission is not helped when Israel’s Sharon returns Gaza hoping for peace and Hamas who has a stated mission to eliminate Israel wins the local elections and starts an ongoing conflict with Israel. Or when Iran itself says that Jews should be thrown out of their country or exterminated. As these events unfold, Israeli leaders think “never again” and act, sometimes judiciously, sometimes not.
So given the history of the Jewish people, which could be summarized as the history of a people who tried to stay alive among Christians and Muslims and did quite poorly, a history of a people that are now only one in 500 of humanity as a whole, not one in five as Muslims or one in three as Christians, the Israeli fear is more understandable. Especially in a world in which other nations like the USA go much further in committing what I would call human rights violations (i.e use of drones) in order to defend itself. The intervention of Europe and the USA in the Arab world in the last few years in Afghanistan and Iran has resulted in far more deaths than all the Israel wars with Arabs combined, yet even these invasions seem more accepted by general public opinion around the world than Israel’s policies. So as Jews, myself included, celebrate Purim today, I hope this commentary helps to put the issue in perspective and helps non-Jews understand why Jews will always be quick to react to attacks like the rockets Hamas frequently fires into Israel.
I have spent around a third of my life in Argentina, a third in the USA and a third in Spain. While I have friends from all over the world, most of my friends are from these three countries. And there is a very big difference in the tone of their social media commentaries. My American friends talk about their lives in a positive tone and are in love with innovation, with ways of making the world a better place. Occasionally, generally at election time, they speak about politics.
My Argentine and Spanish friends, on the other hand, share an obsession with local politics that makes reading most of their social media commentaries tedious and sad. I am so tired of their whining that at this point I am actively looking for ways to filter out of my social media for political commentary. Both countries suffer from similar problems, an inept and corrupt leadership that makes it hard for citizens to move on with their lives. The tone of the commentaries is always something like “I can’t believe that such and such politician would say or do such a crazy wrong thing”. Most of my friends are disgusted by all politicians and complain across party lines. In the case of Argentina there are still a few who love the Kirchner government while most by now hate it. In Spain there is a general sense of embarrassment for all politicians that is more realistic but the conversation about them never ends. There is always some new topic, lately it is the Barcenas corruption scandal.
People in Spain and Argentina never seem to come to the conclusion that their political class is just rotten and probably will always be like that, and that they can either emigrate or put up with it. They are like children of divorced parents whose only obsession is for their parents to get together again. And that they never will. But as children of divorced parents can overcome the trauma and thrive, so can citizens of these nations. Argentines, Spanish and citizens of all troubled nations (which all countries are to some extent) should learn to live well in their own countries in spite of their political classes, something that is actually very doable. But in order to do this they have to stop talking, commenting or getting involved in political discussion, and focus that energy instead on their families, friends and especially on their work. I can give you countless examples of Argentines and Spaniards who have done amazing work in spite of the crisis. The most striking example is Amancio Ortega who, working out of a little town in the northeast of Spain, La Coruña, has managed to become the third wealthiest man in the world (net worth estimated at $55 billion ahead of Warren Buffet) building Inditex. On a smaller scale, the same can be said about Marcos Galperin, an entrepreneur who is building Mercado Libre into a multi-billion dollar company from Buenos Aires, or my own company Fon, which we built in Madrid and is now the largest WiFi network in the world. And Spain has many more large and thriving companies that are ignoring the political impasse and moving on. Mango, the fashion retailer, is another example. And in other fields like the arts, movies, architecture, fashion, technology, science, many productive, creative and extremely smart Argentines and Spaniards have decided to focus on their expertise and are managing to thrive in spite of the negativity that surrounds them.
So my advice to friends who live in troubled countries is to ignore politics. To stop blaming their environment for their shortcomings and to move ahead in life never even mentioning Kirchner or Rajoy and other political “leaders”.
In the meantime as a favor to me, if you know of a way to filter political commentary in Spanish away from my Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter do let me know. I just want to know what my friends are up to, or what they are doing. Not what the Spanish and Argentine politicians are up to or doing, because their ability to screw up their countries out of ineptitude and/or greed is endless.
Everyone says that Facebook fights privacy because they grow by making you and everyone else, very public. And that part is obvious, if they don’t encourage you to be less private they have no network. But there is a countertrend to that and that is post IPO monetization. Now that Facebook got 1 billion people to share their intimate and mostly irrelevant moments they hope to make money by you being so desperate for the attention that you got used to having that you start paying NOT to be private. In order to achieve this Facebook is now making you less popular, or more private against your will.
So the new Facebook, the post IPO “have to meet the next quarter numbers” Facebook, is paradoxically more private, unless you pay of course. But if you don’t pay, less is disclosed about you to others because those who pay increasingly crowd you out. And paradoxically a new privacy will be achieved.
2013 11
Lance Armstrong: To cheat is French, to get caught is American
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Lance Armstrong in the prologue of the Tour de France in July 2004 in Liege, Belgium (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I once saw a Steve Martin movie in which he played a character, an American, who while visiting France got stopped by the police together with a woman who was not his wife. Worried that somehow the story would leak to his wife he tells the policeman: Well, you understand, “to cheat is French” but the policeman smartly replies. “Yes sir, to cheat is French, but to get caught is American”.
As the whole Armstrong confession happened I remembered this phrase and felt that what’s really embarrassing about the Lance Armstrong investigation is that the US government has been the only one to truly fight in a forceful way by stripping its own national hero of his titles. In the meantime the widespread cheating that has been taking place in the Tour de France for years has gone with lesser punishment to European competitors and that is shameful. Here’s a Wikipedia article on doping in the Tour de France. I have a hard time imagining European nations going through the trouble that the US government went through to strip their national heros of their cycling titles. Because as you read the history of doping in the Tour de France you conclude that it’s been incredibly common and that as Armstrong cheated and rightly got stripped of his titles many others should have gone through the same level of scrutiny and public outrage.
2013 6
Something better to do
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In Spain there is tremendous unemployment right now, it has gone up from 7% to 26%, so when I interview there I find a great deal of people looking for something to do. But surprisingly as I have started interviewing in the USA I find that here also everyone seems to be looking for something to do. But this is not because they are not doing anything, but because Americans are always looking for something better to do. The good news about this behavior is that it makes for a more efficient labor market. The bad news is that it also accounts for a lot of unhappiness, both at work and in other realms of life. People here wonder not only if they could have a better job but also if they could be eating at a better restaurant, or hanging out with better people, or having a better boyfriend/girlfriend, or a better spouse, or sadly sometimes even better children. The grass is always greener takes a new dimension in the USA. Americans think that Europeans are laid back but having lived as much time in Europe as in America I can also say that sometimes it is good to be content. The American quest for excellence, for self improvement, for always wanting to do better or having something better to do, can take a high emotional toll. Change is good, improvement is good, competition is good, but being happy with what you have is better.
2013 6
Europe is way behind when it comes to WiFi on planes
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In Europe, whether you fly privately or commercial, there is no WiFi on the plane. In the USA there is always WiFi on the plane. It is not a luxury. Pay $7 and you are connected.
Ok, clearly I am a fan of WiFi and work at Fon, building the largest WiFi network in the world. Hence what I am going to say may sound like self promotion. But what saves me here is that Fon has nothing to do with providing WiFi on aircrafts and I have nothing to do with Gogo WiFi. So I can say it. Gogo WiFi is a revelation. It makes flying something more humane, less of a trauma. And it is not that I am afraid of flying. I am a pilot, but because I am a pilot I know that a plane is much safer if and when it has Internet. One thing is a pilot with a radar, another thing is a pilot with a radar and weather information as to what is behind the CBs that appear on the radar. Or think of that Air France plane that fell in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, had no internet and they could not know where it had fallen not even within a 500 mile accuracy. So not only is flying safer when everyone is connected (9/11 could have been possibly or partly prevented) but it is much nicer!
Now when I fly I “connect”, I work, or I chat with my wife Nina, with three out of my five kids (the older ones), with friends. I tweet, I Facebook, I blog (as this post) and I read the news. And I have to fly a lot in the USA these days, every Tuesday Miami NYC, every Thu or Fri back to Miami. And when I do, thanks to WiFi, time flies 🙂
Now can anyone please tell me when Europe will have WiFi on all flights? Or other continents?
2013 3
Social car movers
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We have a car in NYC and one in Miami. But it is useless to have a car in Manhattan this time of the year and very useful to have 2 in Miami. So we decided to bring the Q7 to Miami and I had this crazy idea to ask somebody to do it over social media. I posted it on Twitter and Facebook, said that if anyone wanted to drive our car we would pay for gas and $250. This was intended for somebody who wanted to enjoy driving down the East Coast and get to know this part of America. I told them they could take up to a week although the trip itself according to Google Maps is 19 hours of driving. Friends told me that I could get a crook or somebody who could destroy our car but I thought it highly unlikely.
And it totally worked! Many people volunteered and I chose this computer programmer who inspired confidence in me over email and via his LinkedIn profile. It all went great and the car just made it to our garage in Miami.
It is not that we saved much money, there are professional services that do this work, ship your car on a train or truck. But I like the sharing economy. That’s what Fon is. For Randall who brought the car it was a great trip he said. He stopped along the way to visit friends and relatives. He loved the Q7. And for us it was so much easier than dealing with a company, filling out the paperwork and legal stuff that normally accompanies all these things. Pick up, drop off.
Is there a business here of moving cars instead of renting cars for those who want to drop a car far from where they rented it? For car rental companies it’s all about drop off charges. Maybe that’s the next, albeit smaller AirBnB, or ZipCar.
After writing this post I came across Spanish company Amovens, founded by Diego Hidalgo, what they do is not exactly shipping your cars through social means but car pooling. Also Socialcar which is like a car rental company among individuals.
2013 23
Fon teams up with KPN to offer WiFi all over the Netherlands!
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KPN (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I am pleased to announced that Fon has teamed up with the largest telecom operator in the Netherlands, KPN to bring WiFi to all the Dutch people in a similar way as we do in neighboring Belgium with Belgacom and in the UK with BT. Soon many Dutch customers of KPN will be able to roam in Fon’s 7.8 million hotspots around the world for free and Foneros (Fon members) will be able to do so in the Netherlands. Personally I can’t wait to go to Amsterdam, one of my favorite cities in the world and connect to Fon everywhere. For those currently in our network (including our telco partners’ subscribers at Belgacom in Belgium, BT in the UK, MTS in Russia, Oi in Brazil, Netia in Poland, SFR in France, SoftBank in Japan and ZON in Portugal), it will provide them with more WiFi access in the Netherlands, one of the most advanced economies in the world. I take the opportunity with this announcement to thank the early Foneros of the Netherlands who have been helping the Fon community grow since 2006 and to the teams at KPN and Fon who are working so hard to make this happen.
This is the first of several deals we will announce in 2013. Stay tuned.
2013 7
So What’s Wrong With The States?
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The USA is a great nation for entrepreneurship and innovation, it has the best science in the world, the most creativity in the arts, it is the number one economy in the world, it has an energy unrivaled by other nations and we have chosen to move to this great nation with our family. So everything that follows must be seen as friendly criticism from a person who loves this country.
Now most of my friends in the USA agree on what is great about this nation. But when I speak to some American friends they seem to be unaware of the shortcomings of the USA compared to others, and this is what I would like to focus on. Here are some quick examples.
The USA ranks 38th in life expectancy which is shocking considering that it has the best medical science in the world. And this generation is the first one that will live less than the previous generation. The average American is expected to live two years less than, say, the average Spaniard. This is partly because the USA has a medical system that leaves 50 million people uninsured and many others under-insured or worried about losing their insurance (my wife Nina, for example, can’t get medical insurance to have our next baby because pregnancy is considered a pre-existing condition and we moved to USA when she was already pregnant). It is also partly because the USA is the nation with the highest percentage of its population obese, over 30%. The WHO studied overall level of health and concluded that Americans rank 72 in the world. Family structure is also weak as the USA has the highest divorce rates in the world. Moreover inequality is on the rise: as this Wikipedia article argues, the top earning 1 percent of households gained about 275% over a period between 1979 and 2007, compared to a gain of just under 40% for the 60 percent in the middle of America’s income distribution.
The USA has a legal system that is extremely expensive and unreliable and tends to favor those with resources to pay for it. The USA spends almost half of what the whole world spends in the military and since WWII (in which the USA did an amazing job), other military interventions have been of dubious value for such a huge investment, especially Iraq and Afghanistan. The USA leads all developed countries in executions by death penalty, it has a love for guns that makes its murder rate unusually high for a developed nation, it has the highest incarceration rates of the developed world mostly focused on one ethnic group, African Americans. The USA has more people in jail or parole than Madrid has people. And while the USA has most of the best ranked universities in the world, according to PISA scores the USA ranks very poorly compared to other developed nations. The USA is also the largest polluter in the world together with China but a leader on a per capita basis. The American lifestyle is great but not scalable to the world as a whole. Replicating this lifestyle on a global basis will lead to extreme competition over resources and high environmental damage.
Yes, the USA is great nation. I am happy to be here teaching at Columbia– this country probably has the most educated elite in the entire world. It has incredible business creativity and it is home to the Apples and Googles of this world and in this sense, they are an example for the whole world to follow. It also has individuals who are among the most driven in the world and who want to succeed and do as much as they can. But it has a number of very important issues to address, many of which were not part of the 2012 presidential debates (climate change for example) and which seem to rarely be part of the conversation with many of my American friends.
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As the USA edges closer to the “fiscal cliff”, an automatic mechanism that eliminates Bush tax cuts and mandates across-the-board spending cuts under the Budget Control Act of 2011, a lot has been said on taxing the rich as a possible solution to the $1 trillion US budget deficit. But taxing the rich, this article will argue, is at most 15% of the solution. The rest has to either come with higher taxes for all, or lower expenditures in all key government spending categories. Let’s start with the current situation of the rich in the USA today.
A rich person in the San Francisco or New York City, say with an income of a million dollars a year and capital gains of another million, pays around 52% income tax and around 27% capital gain tax. On top of that, a rich person pays taxes every time he/she consumes: sales taxes, taxes on certain luxury goods. And then there are other special taxes on real estate transactions over certain amounts such as the ones in NYC.
It is hard to argue that rich people in America don’t pay enough taxes in terms of proportion of their income, even though there are some circumstances under which they pay less taxes. For example, there are some rich people who pay less taxes because they buy tax exempt securities, but tax exempt bonds were created by governments to pay less interest on them– the government pays less interest but in exchange collects no taxes. It’s a wash, not a gift to rich people. A person who derives most of his/her income from this will be seen as paying no taxes but this is not really so.
Then there are others in the private equity and hedge fund industry that have special treatment of their income as capital gains and a LOT has been said about this because of Romney’s position at Bain Capital. But if this is indeed a loophole and it were closed, it would raise around $2 billion a year– hardly a dent on the $1 trillion dollar 7% of GDP yearly deficit that the USA has.
And then some rich people in America, many in the technology sector for example, reinvest everything they make in their companies, go for capital appreciation, grow their businesses, don’t pay dividends and therefore pay no taxes on income nor on capital gains (because they don’t sell their shares). But society has concluded that reinvesting in jobs and growth is good, and that charging taxes on assets you don’t sell (like Spain does, for example) is counterproductive. And of course these tens of thousands of new employees pay all sorts of taxes and the USA needs a lot of those to close the deficit gap.
So the more we look into this the more we see that the US budget deficit can’t be solved by taxing rich people. Even President Obama’s plan shows that taxing the rich will only go 20% of the way to solving the budget gap. How will the current budget deficit will be solved?
A tool that was developed by the New York Times, the budget puzzle tool, provides a series of spending cuts and tax increase options that will help you understand the problem. Here are the steps I took to eliminate the deficit (and I encourage you to do the same exercise to understand how complex the problem is and how there is no magic bullet solution for it):
- I eliminated earmarks and farm subsidies. I opted to reduce various military spending and programs. I enacted medical malpractice reform and increased the Medicare eligibility and Social Security retirement age to 68. I reduced Social Security benefits for those with high incomes. In all, these spending cuts generated $570 billion in savings by 2030. A Los Angeles medical malpractice lawyer combines legal expertise with compassion, guiding you through the complexities of your claim and fighting for fair compensation. And if you or your child suffered a birth injury that may be linked to medical negligence, speaking with a qualified birth injury lawyer can help you understand your legal rights and explore your options for support and compensation.
- I returned the estate tax and capital gains tax rates to their level under President Clinton and yes, these are more taxes for the rich as part of the solution. I eliminated tax breaks for companies and individuals while marginally cutting corporate and individual taxes rates for all brackets. I imposed a value added tax on consumption and taxed carbon emissions. Overall, these tax increases and revisions resulted in over $800 billion in savings by 2030.
And what percentage of this $1.4 trillion in combined savings qualifies as taxing the rich? With the return of Clinton-era taxes, which would enact a 20% tax on capital gains for middle and high-income earners, as well as an estate tax of 55% on estates worth above $3 million, savings amount to $150 billion by 2030, or less than 11% of the total solution.
In other words, as we head for the fiscal cliff, relying on to the rich is only part of the solution. The real solution involves many other moving parts. Now to end on an optimistic note, the Obama administration has already reduced the deficit from a high of $1.4 trillion to $1 trillion but much more is needed. Hopefully there will be economic growth accompanying this and the deficit reduction effort will be a bit less painful.
(Photo: mith_y, Flickr)
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