What's Best Next

  • Newsletter
  • Our Mission
  • Contact
  • Resources
    • Productivity
    • Leadership
    • Management
    • Web Strategy
    • Book Extras
  • Consulting & Training
  • Store
    • Online Store
    • Cart
    • My Account
  • About
    • Our Mission
    • Our Core Values
    • Our Approach to Productivity
    • Our Team
    • Contact
You are here: Home / Archives for 6 - Culture

Justin Taylor's Blog Mentioned in Time Magazine

March 12, 2009 by Matt Perman

As many of you have probably seen, my friend Justin Taylor is mentioned in the cover story for next week’s Time Magazine, 10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now. My pastor, John Piper, is mentioned as well.

They didn’t mention Justin by name, but they mentioned his blog, Between Two Worlds. Great work, Justin!

Filed Under: Current Events, Gospel Movements

How to Use Basecamp as a Standalone App on the Mac

March 5, 2009 by Matt Perman

To keep Basecamp from getting lost in all of your Firefox or Safari tabs, you can create a Basecamp icon on the menu bar on your Mac. That way, you can launch it just like any other program, without first having to launch your web browser. Simon Dorfman explains how.

You can also use this approach to create stand alone menu bar icons for other sites that you use a lot, such as Gmail or your blog admin page.

(HT: Josh Sowin)

Filed Under: Technology

Kindle on the iPhone

March 4, 2009 by Matt Perman

From the Tools of Change for Publishing blog:

Users of the iPhone and iPod Touch can now tap into Amazon’s Kindle store with the free Kindle for iPhone application. From The New York Times:

“The move comes a week after Amazon started shipping the updated version of its Kindle reading device. It signals that the company may be more interested in becoming the pre-eminent retailer of e-books than in being the top manufacturer of reading devices.”

Amazon is positioning the iPhone app as a gap filler: nibble on book content while waiting at the airport, in line, at a restaurant, etc., but settle in for deep reading with the original Kindle (or, presumably, the printed edition). Toward that end, the Times says Amazon is using a bookmark feature that keeps a reader’s spot as they switch devices.

For those interested in the Kindle 2, you can also see the Kindle 2 here.

Filed Under: Technology

Someone to Watch for 2012

February 25, 2009 by Matt Perman

Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana. Here is a summary of his response to Obama’s speech last night, and here is the transcript.

Filed Under: Politics

Now This is a Good Vision Statement

February 10, 2009 by Matt Perman

This is what Jeff Bezos said about the Kindle: Amazon’s Wireless Reading Device at a Monday press conference: “Our vision is every book ever printed in any language all available in 60 seconds.”

Here’s why that is a good vision:

  1. It’s simple.
  2. It’s clear.
  3. It takes things all the way: “every book ever printed in any language.” Yes! It’s not “most books” or “95% of books.” To be remarkable, you have to be bold and go the full distance. 95% does not inspire. But 100% — that’s amazing.
  4. Its fulfillment would be a tremendous service to the world.

Now, here’s something not so great:

Some publishers and agents expressed concern over a new, experimental feature that reads text aloud with a computer-generated voice.

“They don’t have the right to read a book out loud,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. “That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”

Here we have a recommendation that the kibosh be put on a really great idea because “they don’t have the right to read a book out loud.” This is another example of how innovation is stifled and how good ideas get killed. Sure, there may be issues, but let’s figure them out. Let’s not point to process and say “well, this shouldn’t be done.”

What about the copyright law, though?

An Amazon spokesman noted the text-reading feature depends on text-to-speech technology, and that listeners won’t confuse it with the audiobook experience. Amazon owns Audible, a leading audiobook provider.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if the Kindle, or a device like it, could by means of this audio feature bring great access to books into societies with currently low literacy rates? In other words, such a device could perhaps make it possible for those who can’t read to still “read” some great books by listening to them via the text-to-speech technology. And what if everyone was given one?

Someone could say “well, you would run into problems with recharging those devices because electricity would probably not be reliable or available, and beyond that if the literacy rate is this low, probably food and water are higher priorities. Also, people just might not be interested in that.”

Well, good points. But the way forward is not to then stop and give up on the idea (whether this one or any other), but figure out if there is a way to do it which overcomes the obstacles. Maybe not. But don’t kill ideas too early. At the very least, exploring them could lead to something different, more workable — and better.

Filed Under: b Vision, Publishing, Technology

Amazon to Announce the New Version of the Kindle Today

February 9, 2009 by Matt Perman

Here are some details from the Wall Street Journal on the new version of the Kindle.

Update: See Amazon’s homepage for more details.

Filed Under: Technology

Gmail Goes Offline with Google Gears

January 28, 2009 by Matt Perman

From TechCrunch:

Until today, one of the biggest drawbacks of Gmail is that you could not go through your emails when you were offline. Today, that changes. Gmail is finally going offline. Google is rolling out a Google Gears version of Gmail that will be available to users starting today in Gmail Labs. (If you don’t see it, keep checking, the rollout to all users should be complete by the end of the week).

(HT: Andy Naseli)

Filed Under: Technology

Why This Stimulus Package Won't Work — And What Will

January 27, 2009 by Matt Perman

There was a very good editorial in the Wall Street Journal yesterday on the current stimulus package heading through congress and why it won’t work.

Here are a few of the key reasons that it won’t work, some of which are covered in the article and some of which are not:

Public Works Projects Do Not Stimulate the Economy

The government has to fund those projects by taking the money from somewhere else (through taxes or borrowing). Thinking that public works will stimulate the economy assumes that the government will invest that money more productively than the private sector would. But that is almost never true.

Plus, the government is not our parent. It should not try to take care of us by stepping in to create jobs directly. It’s aim should be to keep us — the citizens in the private sector — maximally free to act. Let’s learn from the 1930s!

Government Spending Does Not Stimulate the Economy

This is really another way of stating point one. It is not spending per se that stimulates the economy. It is spending on profitable ventures which advances the economy. The private sector has a litmus test for knowing what society needs and wants most: profit and loss. But the government has no such means of knowing what is truly most wanted and needed.

I know that profit and loss realities alone do not create a good society — we must also have non-profit enterprises, and yes government does have a legitimate role. But the point is that, in the governmental realm, the incentives are not there to direct government spending toward the specific “stimulus projects” that society truly needs. So it needs to keep such initiatives to a minimum.

The business sector, on the other hand, has a clear test governing how it invests: the ventures that a business invests in must be profitable. But this is not so with government initiatives, since they are funded not by business results (profits) but taxes. And those taxes take money away from businesses and individuals — that is, they take it away from those that invest according to the clear and decisive knowledge of profit and loss.

The Problem is Lack of Supply, Not Lack of Demand

During the depression, FDR and his administration kept trying to figure out ways to stimulate demand. That has it backwards. The problem is never lack of demand — human demand is basically infinite.

The problem is that, when it comes to the economy, you first have to produce before you can receive. My family needs a larger vehicle right now. The want, need, and “demand” are there. Here’s what is not there: the money (or, at least, an amount that would leave us with the savings level we want after the purchase). I need to figure out how to produce the equivalent value of a vehicle before I can actually go buy that vehicle. (Or, alternatively, I need to be confident enough in the economy to take out a loan and trust that my future earnings will be sufficient to pay that off.)

So nobody needs to convince me or anybody else to want various goods and services. The issue is that we need to be able to produce enough in order to purchase them. In other words, supply creates demand. If we define “demand” as the actual decision to purchase a vehicle, rather than simply the desire for one, we see that that kind of demand is created by supply — that is, by my producing something of value, which value I can then “exchange” for the vehicle.

The Solution is Immediate and Permanent Tax Cuts

If the problem is lack of supply, then the solution is not to stimulate demand, but to stimulate supply. Or, if we want to put it another way, the way to stimulate demand (defined as the actual decision to buy) is by stimulating supply.

So how do you stimulate supply? Well, you don’t really need to stimulate that, either. It is a part of human nature to seek to be productive. We have an ongoing thirst to create, make things, and produce. That is a good thing.

The problem is that there are obstacles that interfere with this. Sometimes the obstacles are simply that life is hard. But most of the time, the biggest obstacles are created by the government — unintentionally, of course, and usually in the name of “stimulating the economy” or “making things equitable” and such. What needs to happen is simple: these obstacles that we can control, namely those created by the government, need to be removed. The government has to “back up” a bit.

And that means tax cuts. Taxes are legitimate and necessary. But high taxes are the biggest obstacle to the ability of people and business to produce (excessive regulation is a close second). This is because taxation diverts money away from private sector investment in productive goods and services and into government initiatives. In other words, there is less money for businesses to invest in creating and expanding their goods and services.

There is objective, real-world evidence that tax cuts do indeed lead to a growing economy. We saw this with the Kennedy tax cuts of 1964 and Reagan tax cuts of 1983, for example. Further, the WSJ piece notes that “Research by Mr. Obama’s own White House chief economist, Christina Romer, has shown that every $1 in tax cuts can increase output by as much as $3.” This is in contrast even to the best-case scenario thinking behind the government spending approach to stimulating the economy, which is based on a theory that “each $1 of spending the government ‘injects’ into the economy yields 1.5 times greater output.”

Even if that theory were true, that is still only half of the stimulus created by tax cuts. But, more importantly, it’s not true. As the WSJ piece also notes, “There’s little evidence to support this theory [that $1 of government spending creates $1.50 in output], but you have to admire its beauty because it assumes the government can create wealth out of thin air. If it were true, the government should spend $10 trillion and we’d all live in paradise.”

Again, there do need to be taxes. But a 35% corporate tax rate and 35% individual tax rate for top earners is far beyond what the founders would have envisioned (in fact, we did not even have an income tax for the first several generations in our nation’s history). We are in absolutely no danger of taxing businesses to little. There is a lot of room for taxes to come down, in turn resulting in greater economic growth.

Some object that this is not a true picture of the corporate tax burden because many transfer their money to tax shelters (for example, see this article at Smart Money). But that is precisely part of the problem as well: corporations and individuals end up moving portions of their income to less productive tax shelters, which thus also diverts money away from more productive uses. It is ironic that you even see this done by wealthy individuals that espouse the “need” for higher taxes — they call for higher taxes, while at the same time seeking to minimize their own tax burden through various tax shelters.

Let’s affirm that is a good thing, not a bad thing, that people want to minimize their tax burden. Of course most people want to minimize the taxes they pay. We try to minimize the amount we have to pay for everything — we never want to pay more than we have to, whether at the grocery store, Target, or anywhere. That’s part of the reality of living in a world of finite resources, and it is a good thing.

The really incredible thing is that reducing taxes not only syncs with the good and natural human desire to see as little of our income as possible removed from us through taxation, but also frees up people and businesses to more fully invest in productive initiatives, thus expanding the economy.

But the tax cuts need to be permanent, because otherwise they cannot lead to a permanent change in behavior. Further, they need to be immediate and “on the margin”:

To be genuinely stimulating, tax cuts need to be immediate, permanent and on the “margin,” meaning that they apply to the next dollar of income that an individual or business earns. This was the principle behind the Kennedy tax cuts of 1964, as well as the Reagan tax cuts of 1981, which finally took full effect on January 1, 1983.

If the Obama Democrats can’t abide this because it’s a “tax cut for the rich,” as an alternative they could slash the corporate tax to spur business incentives. The revenue cost of eliminating the corporate tax wouldn’t be any more than their proposed $355 billion in new spending, and we guarantee its “multiplier” effects on growth would be far greater. Research by Mr. Obama’s own White House chief economist, Christina Romer, has shown that every $1 in tax cuts can increase output by as much as $3.

This is not hard. Obama could solve this recession in a day. Propose a tax cut bill that cuts taxes immediately, permanently, and “on the margin;” shepherd its approval through Congress (which is controlled by his same party), and then the day that he signs it into law, the recession will be solved. The effects would take many months to be felt, for sure. And the bad loans do need to clear out as well. So I’m not saying the recession would end that same day. But the healing would begin immediately, and would lead to a true and lasting recovery via the quickest route possible.

Filed Under: Economics

John Piper on the Economic Downturn

January 20, 2009 by Matt Perman

Very helpful and very wise:

(HT: DG)

Filed Under: Economics

Bush's Farewell Address

January 15, 2009 by Matt Perman

Here is the video (part 1) of Bush’s farewell address:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbZRh1aR_TM

I would recommend most of all, however, watching Reagan’s farewell address from 1989. (For some reason, the video will not embed. But you can watch it directly from YouTube.)

Filed Under: Politics

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 11
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • Next Page »

About

What’s Best Next exists to help you achieve greater impact with your time and energy — and in a gospel-centered way.

We help you do work that changes the world. We believe this is possible when you reflect the gospel in your work. So here you’ll find resources and training to help you lead, create, and get things done. To do work that matters, and do it better — for the glory of God and flourishing of society.

We call it gospel-driven productivity, and it’s the path to finding the deepest possible meaning in your work and the path to greatest effectiveness.

Learn More

About Matt Perman

Matt Perman started What’s Best Next in 2008 as a blog on God-centered productivity. It has now become an organization dedicated to helping you do work that matters.

Matt is the author of What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done and a frequent speaker on leadership and productivity from a gospel-driven perspective. He has led the website teams at Desiring God and Made to Flourish, and is now director of career development at The King’s College NYC. He lives in Manhattan.

Learn more about Matt

Newsletter

Subscribe for exclusive updates, productivity tips, and free resources right in your inbox.

The Book


Get What’s Best Next
Browse the Free Toolkit
See the Reviews and Interviews

The Video Study and Online Course


Get the video study as a DVD from Amazon or take the online course through Zondervan.

The Study Guide


Get the Study Guide.

Other Books

Webinars

Follow

Follow What's Best next on Twitter or Facebook
Follow Matt on Twitter or Facebook

Foundational Posts

3 Questions on Productivity
How to Get Your Email Inbox to Zero Every Day
Productivity is Really About Good Works
Management in Light of the Supremacy of God
The Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards in Categories
Business: A Sequel to the Parable of the Good Samaritan
How Do You Love Your Neighbor at Work?

Recent Posts

  • How to Learn Anything…Fast
  • Job Searching During the Coronavirus Economy
  • Ministry Roundtable Discussion on the Pandemic with Challies, Heerema, Cosper, Thacker, and Schumacher
  • Is Calling Some Jobs Essential a Helpful Way of Speaking?
  • An Interview on Coronavirus and Productivity

Sponsors

Useful Group

Posts by Date

Posts by Topic

Search Whatsbestnext.com

Copyright © 2025 - What's Best Next. All Rights Reserved. Contact Us.