January 2011 archive

Social Security goes paperless…saves a bunch of trees and a ton of dough.

The Social Security program is undergoing several changes in 2011.  One seemingly benign change is that new recipients will be required to utilize direct deposit or have their payments loaded onto a prepaid Debit MasterCard (existing retirees have until March 2013 to make the switch).  No more paper checks…a fact which will put a smile …

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Steve Jobs’ Key Man Discount

The message boards are abuzz with the news of Steve Jobs’ (possibly) temporary medical leave of absence from Apple.  The obvious question is the impact of this news on Apple’s valuation.  For most large public companies with deep management, this is not an issue.  Relatively speaking, a single person’s importance usually affects only smaller companies, …

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What Tax is “Fair”?

photo by David Reber, Hammer Photography

Many national governments are funded through a combination of income and broad based consumption taxes, usually in the form of a Value-Added-Tax (VAT).  In the United States, consumption taxes (in the form of sales taxes) have been left to the states, while the federal government relies on a combination of income taxes, payroll taxes, excise taxes, …

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New survey shows that 100 percent of people don’t mind participating in surveys.

No, the survey in the title doesn’t exist, but it was the easiest way to summarize the problem of response rates.  The reason why the hypothetical survey in the title got its result was because they first had to ask if they wanted to take a survey before they asked the survey question.  Thus, the survey reaches the …

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Royalty Rule of Thumb Gets the Boot

The Federal Circuit ruled in Uniloc USA, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp. (January 4, 2011) that the widely used but fatally flawed 25 percent rule can no longer be part of reasonable royalty damages calculations. The rule has been widely used to calculate reasonable royalty damages for over two decades. Generally speaking, the rule pushed patent …

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