Airlines are really hurting. Now tickets are doubling as pizza advertisements. The back of my JFK-LHR ticket had offers for free coke from Papa Johns.

I was surprised to read noted economist Michael Boskin’s op-ed in the WSJ and his take on the economy and the election. Basically the article states that Obama will raise taxes and push the US into recession.

1. Some economists think we already are headed for a recession. So it doesn’t seem like a sound conclusion that Obama higher taxes will lead to a recession if the US is already on its way.
2. There seems to be some maxim in popular culture that says low taxes are good and high taxes are bad. The lowest possible tax rate is 0% and the highest is 100%. I don’t think anybody is arguing that they want 0%…100% is equally insane. So, I don’t understand why economists don’t start speaking about the optimum tax rate. Boskin seems to be using supermarket logic. “Obama wants to raises taxes….isn’t that bad blah blah”.
3. Presidents don’t raise or lower taxes. The congress does that.
4. I don’t think it’s accurate to characterize Bill Clinton has having a big government agenda when Bush is the king of big government. In 1998, the US budget was $1.7 trillion. In 2008 the budget is $2.9 trillion. That’s a 70% increase in ten years. The US population increased from circa 270 million to 304 million, a 12% increase. Let’s assume around a 3% inflation adjustment over 10 years which is roughly 35%. So our population increased by 12%, our inflation by 35% and our federal budget by 70%. That’s big government.
5. As a small business owner, paying taxes means you’re doing well. I started a medical software company during college, and the amount of paperwork was astounding. If you want to encourage growth, a reasonable solution is making the regulatory overhead lower, not lowering taxes. Between city, county, state and federal taxes, regulations and licenses it stifles what small businesses want to do most: work on their business, not fill out government forms. Another brilliant idea is Mark Cuban’s proposal to abolish taxes for under 25 person companies.

In the States, phone companies offer 1-900 numbers which cost money for the caller to make. They are generally reserved for sex lines and scam artists. In the UK, they are used for customer service lines. For reasons I have yet to understand, almost every business’s customer service number and many professionals (including lawyers who charge upwards of £400/h) will only offer customers an 0845 number, which is euphemistically referred to as a non-geographical number. Aka “Special Services: Lower Rate”, “local call” and “Lo-call”. It can cost up to 25p a minute to make such a call. For example, I need to order a Letter of Introduction from my bank. They charge me £15 plus the fees to make the call. If I need to report an outage on my Virgin Broadband, they charge me to call that line (and will refund you should it be their fault, but that’s not always easy to prove). There’s a great website called Say No to 870 which will let you find the normal number to call some businesses. Here’s a good explanation of the mess: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0845, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0870 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_Geographical_Numbers.

I went to the doctors today which was my first time dealing with the British medical system. I can’t say how impressed I was with how smoothly things went. To book the appointment I had to call my local NHS outpost a week in advance. When I showed up, the reception desk had touch screen to select my birthday and then notify the doctor that I was in. The doctor himself called my name on time. I went to his office, we had a chat, he checked me out, answered my questions, wrote a prescription and out the door I went in twenty minutes. I didn’t have to fill out any paperwork. My visit was free. I don’t have to file any forms. Amazing.

There’s a post today on Perez Hilton about the Barbary Macaques monkeys being culled in Gibraltar and was mentioned on Reuters a few days ago.

I was in Gibraltar last week. Here’s a video I made about the funky monkeys:

I was walking back from Wagamama in Camden when there was some hubbub in sleepy Kentish Town. Down from the sky came the Virgin sponsored ambulance and landed in a football pitch. I checked the news for reports of what happened but nothing came up.

It was supposed to be a simple round trip flight from London to Gibraltar. Hunter and I booked a the flight about a week out, so we were stuck going with easyJet, aka sleasyJet. They try to con you into thinking they’re cheaper, but they charge you for checking bags and the website has an opt-out insurance scheme for £9.95 pp. No thanks.

Our flight was scheduled to depart at 7am from London Gatwick. We left at 4:15 to get to the airport on time. We arrive at the airport at 5:30 to find a massive queue…the kind where you think you found the end, but a lovely BAA employee tells you to keep going. Not only is this the man that gives you the bad news, but he has to wake up at 3am to do it. Goes without saying he’s not the most accommodating individual.

We got to the front after some confusion at 6:30, at which time our friendly junkyJet check-in lady told us boarding started in ummm 4 (!!!) minutes with no particular sense of concern. We sprinted through security, stuffing our extra belongings into laptop bags. We were unaware of crappyJet’s one bag per person rule. After 20 minutes on the security line, we sprinted a mile to gate 34A, to find the flight attendant closing the gate.

We had arrived at the airport a good hour and a half before takeoff, and because of the poorly managed queue, we had almost missed our flight

So, this got me thinking, maybe shittyJet’s poor management wasn’t just sloppy, it was intentional. They want you to miss your flight. It’s part of their business plan. Modern airlines have computer check-in; they’re cheap and ease staff burden. LousyJet had no such computers and a horrible queuing system. They charge you massive amounts to change flights should you not get there in time because of their shit queue. Any industrial engineering student could make a more efficient system overnight. Queueing Theory 101 innit. It could be made more efficient by doing three things.

1. Computer check-in
2. A proper queuing system
3. Priority check-in for flights that leave soon

But that wasn’t the worst of our problems with sleasyJet. Our return flight was diverted into Malaga because of weather. Instead of discovering this through the airport monitor system or a regularly updated website, we heard it through ridicuJet’s primitive PA system. So, we slowly shuffled into overpacked buses on our way to Malaga. No company representative to answer questions, just a massive blob following each other confusedly. Luckily, Hunter and I were the first off the buses so we were in group A boarding priority. Ace.

My friend Thayer just posted an entry on Twitter and social media. I wanted to commiserate with her, and add that whenever I followed Loic and Jason Calacanis, they auto-followed me. Seems to be another form of social spam.

Then I had a problem: I had no idea how to share it with her. I could IM her on MSN, send her a tweet, post a comment on her blog, send her a private Facebook message or wall post, call her, text her, email her, or finally, write about it here. Contextually I probably should have posted a comment on her blog, but the larger issue is becoming where to send the message? It’s overwhelming.

On a side note, I was taking a midday snooze in my room and heard this loud man talking on the phone in my office. Scared the shit out of me. Turns out I had left a blog post open. Talksalot Calacanis embedded ustream into his blog. Ugh ugh. Audio should not be on by default.

In today’s Independent, the most popular article deals with the possible link between mobile usage and cancer. The first sentence is

Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded.

Does this sound like an appeal to authority? The article refers to ‘growing evidence’ without giving it. Of course the possibility of danger from mobiles exists, but to what extent? Was this research done on humans? What measures danger, death? Etc, etc.

Dr Khurana is well-respected. Fine. But I think that the journalist and/or the scientist are reaching.

Which one is a movie trailer and which one is a presidential ad?