A team from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill seems to think so:

U.S. researchers estimate that an 18 percent tax on pizza and soda can push down U.S. adults’ calorie intake enough to lower their average weight by 5 pounds (2 kg) per year.

The researchers, writing in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine on Monday, suggested taxing could be used as a weapon in the fight against obesity, which costs the United States an estimated $147 billion a year in health costs.

“While such policies will not solve the obesity epidemic in its entirety and may face considerable opposition from food manufacturers and sellers, they could prove an important strategy to address overconsumption, help reduce energy intake and potentially aid in weight loss and reduced rates of diabetes among U.S. adults,” wrote the team led by Kiyah Duffey of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In economics terms, the price-elasticity of a product measures how the demand for a product changes (or not) when the price changes. Or, in other terms: how much will an increase in price lower sales?

Items that are inelastic are not generally affected by changes in price. According to Wikipedia, the consumption of items like beef, legal gambling, and movie-theater tickets does not fluctuate when the price changes. However,  soft drinks like Coca-Cola and Sprite, for example, are elastic goods whose sales decline significantly when the price increases.

(I had expected some of the data to be different — I would have thought that movie-theater tickets would be very elastic since people now have options including cable, Netflix, and TiVo as well as a result of the fact that the price of movie tickets has risen 66% since 1929 and the price of popcorn has skyrocketed an evil 666%! Moreover, I’m not sure I believe that people concern themselves with the cost of soft drinks, especially since consumers drink so much soda and pop.)

Well, a tax on soft drinks may discourage soda consumption. But what about cigarettes? The addiction to cigarettes laden with nicotine is far stronger than a desire for sweet syrup. Here are some statistics:

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control:

Research shows that tax increases on tobacco products are an effective policy intervention designed to prevent initiation of adolescents and young adults, reduce cigarette consumption, and increase the number of smokers who quit. A 10% increase in the price of cigarettes is estimated to reduce consumption by 4%.

From a U.S. National Institute of Health study on Taiwan:

The model predicts that sustained tax increases have the potential to substantially reduce the number of smokers and the number of premature deaths, with the effects growing over time. Indexing taxes to inflation stems erosion of the tax effect. In our model, when the tax increases by 10 times (NT$50) over the recent tax increase (NT$5) and taxes are indexed to inflation, the smoking prevalence rate falls by over 15% soon after the tax increase, and by about 30% in relative terms by the year 2040, resulting in 4500 lives saved per year.

According to the government of China and the University of California:

…if China’s cigarette tax rate was raised to 51 percent of the retail price, an increase of 11 percentage points from the current level, 13.7 million smokers would therefore quit smoking and 3.4 million lives would be saved. The tax rate increase could also generate 64.9 billion yuan ($9.5 billion) in additional revenue for the government every year.

Interestingly enough, higher taxes reduce smoking but increase illegal sales of cigarettes in lower-income communities:

According to a study conducted by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, a dramatic rise in illegal street sales of untaxed cigarettes was reported among minority low-income persons immediately after the price increase that reinforced smoking and undermined cessation efforts.

But does the data support these conclusions? Items with a price-elasticity of greater than one is viewed as elastic (prices matter more); those less than one are inelastic (prices matter less). According to the same Wikipedia page, the price-elasticity of cigarettes is:

• –0.3 to –0.6 — US population
• –0.6 to –0.7 — US children

So, the picture is somewhat complicated. No item is infinitely inelastic — if the price of tap water (which is considered inelastic) would surge to $100 per liter, people would drink a lot less. So, a rise in prices always cuts demand at least a little. But as the price-elasticity of cigarettes shows, the addiction to nicotine is stronger than the U.S. researchers probably realize. Smoking would decline — but not as much as one might expect. (This is why other measures — like early education and active parenting — are also important.)

But what about pizza? An eighteen-percent tax would increase the price of a pie from $10 to $11.80. It’s not that much of an additional burden for someone who orders delivery once a week. (Hopefully, it is not a daily meal similar to smokers who purchase at least a pack each day!) Foods that are desires (like pizza) are indeed more susceptible to price increases than those that are needs (like milk and bread), but pizza could be considered a luxury item — at least in this economy — that people choose to enjoy once in a while regardless of price.

Moreover, it may be difficult for legislatures who would write such a law (or for the executive-level bureaucrats who would enforce it) to define “pizza” accurately. Since the intent of a tax would be to encourage healthy lifestyles, would pizzas using low-fat cheese and having only vegetarian toppings be exempt? Is a calzone a pizza? How about the frozen pizza-bagels that one can microwave? What if someone puts tomato sauce and cheese on a toasted bagel? What about the raw materials — dough, tomatoes, and cheese — that one can use to make a pizza at home — would they be taxed if purchased together? (Soft drinks, I imagine, are a legal classification of consumer goods, but I cannot confirm that.)

The proposal to tax pizza is likely a hypothesis argued by academics that would likely never see the light of a legislature’s day, but the probable economic and taxation implications are interesting to consider.

Related posts:

1. Advertising or Porn?
2. Higher Education
3. Pricing and Marketing

JERUSALEM — If you build it, they will come. And by “it,” the authors of “Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs” mean a quality online-presence supported by effective Internet-marketing.

In the olden days of marketing — say, before 2000 — most marketers and public-relations professionals used some type of a “push” strategy. They would send press-releases en masse (through something called a fax, and perhaps even through e-mail in later years) and then call reporters and editors to beg them — politely, of course — to cover their story. People needed to convince the media gatekeepers that their story worth covering. Journalists — always a cynical-and-skeptical bunch — made the rules and held the power.

When I was a journalism major at Boston University, I worked for six months as a full-time editorial assistant for the Metro desk of the Boston Globe in 2000. I was the person who, among other tasks, took the calls and faxes from local public-relations firms. My editorial-assistant colleagues and I would receive hundreds of press releases every day, and we would quickly sort through them by giving less than a half-second thought to each one. We would rip through the pile like a robotic sorting-machine, chucking ninety percent of them into the trash without a second thought. (What a waste of paper!) We looked only at the headline (and sometimes the first line as well).

We placed the few that may have been newsworthy in a bin on the city editor’s desk. In theory, he would have taken it from there. But he rarely did. Most of the releases that we put on his desk also went into the trash. After all, as the city editor, he already knew the news of the day from his assistant editors who each covered specific subjects like crime, politics, and the courts; from radio and television-news updates; and from his own sources as well. The city editor did not need the press releases.

Those marketers who were slightly more savvy would call people like me directly. The public-relations flunkies would try to sweet-talk us (especially if it were a woman talking to a male editorial-assistant) into passing the call to the city editor, but we never did. (The often-repeated lie: “Sorry, he’s in a meeting right now.”)

The city editor once joked — to a tour group visiting the Globe, no less — that people could tell when he was in the newsroom because there would be a black cloud following him. Years later, when I was a Boston journalist and then editor and publisher of Spare Change News, I understood what he had meant. Newspaper, magazine, and television journalists simply do not have time to listen to PR pitch after PR pitch. I cannot find the exact scene from my favorite movie — “The Paper” — that demonstrates the hectic lives of reporters, but here is the trailer:

In case you have not been paying attention, the world of public-relations professionals pushing their stories onto journalists effectively disappeared long ago. David Meerman Scott (no relation) first brought this new reality to the general public with “The New Rules of Marketing and PR,” and now, “Inbound Marketing” takes it one step further.

The book — authored by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah (pictured), co-founders of the Boston, high-tech-marketing firm HubSpot — starts where the general, philosophical overview of Scott’s “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” left off and goes into more detail. Whereas Scott’s book — the author wrote the forward to “Inbound Marketing” — introduces the reader to the new world on online marketing, Halligan and Dharmesh’s tome provides the nuts-and-bolts to implementing an Internet-marketing strategy. The latter book is surprisingly short for its depth, but it is still a dense, quick read.

“The New Rules of Marketing and PR” drove a single point home: Marketers no longer need to go to journalists and customers; instead, reporters and clients come to them through blogs, websites, social media, Internet advertising, online video, podcasts, white papers, and search engines. “Inbound Marketing” tells companies — and individuals — how to make that happen. (Disclosure: I received a review copy of the second book from the publisher.)

“Inbound Marketing” discusses the practical steps that marketers can take with regards to optimizing websites for search engines, using social-network websites effectively, developing videos, airing podcasts, and gaining website visitors and sales leads through using natural, “pull” strategies rather than “push” ones that interrupt (and annoy) journalists and consumers. The beauty of inbound marketing is indeed that reporters and people in general are already using search engines, social media, and blogs to find that content that interests them. If you use online marketing well, then there is little additional effort required on your part to attract them.

However, there are many websites and books that offer the same advice. “Inbound Marketing” surpasses the competition by containing:

• A to-do list at the end of each chapter that inspires direct action
• A section focusing on optimizing conversion pages specifically (a frequently-ignored topic)
• Another chapter with numerous charts and graphics showing readers how to analyze website metrics and make better marketing decisions
• An appendix with links to online tools — located, of course, at Hubspot — that can help marketers rate and improve their websites; and
• A section offering tips on hiring PR agencies and marketing staff in the age of inbound marketing

Now, many people — especially those who already understand this paradigm shift — will read this book and say, “Duh.” But the fact remains that there are marketers who are stuck in the old rules and do not understand the new world. (“Inbound Marketing” seems to be meant for them.)

Since I was a Boston journalist, my biography and blog still appear in Google searches and online databases for Boston journalists. As a result, I still receive spam from Boston that is irrelevant since I now live in Israel. After the death of Senator Ted Kennedy, I was placed on e-mail lists for the press releases coming from the campaigns of several candidates in the Democratic primary before the special election to replace him. Because I was going to cover the campaign from 12,000 miles away, of course.

The campaign volunteer or intern who compiled the PR database was stuck in the old mentality, and his efforts were likely wasted. As I described above, the rate of return on mass press-release distribution is extremely low. If there is a single benefit to marketers using inbound marketing techniques rather outbound ones, it will be that we all receive less spam.

Still, there is just a minor problem with the book. Halligan and Shah focus primarily on the need to create quality content rather than placing the marketing of that content on an equal footing as well.

Based on my experience, I learned that content by itself rarely brings significant traffic — at least within a relatively quick length of time. I started blogging on a whim in 2006 when I was editor of Spare Change News in Boston, and I discussed the same subjects I discuss now. It took me four years to reach 1,000 hits a day on my prior Wordpress blog. Even though I had changed careers from journalism to online marketing after moving to Israel and working in the high-tech sector here, I did not apply any of the strategies I had learned to the blog since it was only a hobby. In short, it took four years to build a decent audience by relying only on what the authors of “Inbound Marketing” call “remarkable content.”

How many companies want to wait four years for their sites to draw reasonable traffic?

In January, I changed the blog to the current URL and lost a lot of traffic, but I am hoping to rebuild it quickly through the use of effective online-marketing as well as producing interesting content. I wish Halligan and Shah had added at least a chapter on items including the building of backlinks through places like online directories, Yahoo! Answers, and blog-aggregating websites as well as the basics of optimizing HTML code and organizing a website’s structure for search engines. But this is a small point.

“The New Rules of Marketing and PR” and “Inbound Marketing” will undoubtedly open the eyes of many veteran marketers who are struggling to adapt to the digital world, and they are good refreshers for anyone who already knows about online marketing. Both books together are an effective introduction to Online Marketing 101.

Related posts:

1. Journalism Versus Marketing
2. Book Review: Schmoozing With Terrorists
3. Book Review: “The Kuzari,” An Introduction

As I wrote in a prior post, I have had extremely horrible bosses in the United States, Europe, and Israel. Now that I own a consulting business and have to deal with Excel spreadsheets, payrolls, and financial analyses, I can see the other side of the coin.

There are many articles on how to be a good boss, but now I think it boils down to one thing: When you pay your employees, do you grimace and think about the payroll cost — or do you smile and think about how you’re helping them to make a living and provide for their families (especially in a bad economy)? Much of your behavior towards your employees — and potential ones — likely stems from how you answer this question.

I hope that my consultants think that the second answer reflects my attitude, and I also hope that I never lose that mentality.

Related posts:

1. Bad Bosses
2. Men Living at Home
3. Modern Unemployment

I just published a new post on the Return of the Great Depression blog: “The EU’s Sovereign Debt Crisis.”

Related posts:

1. New Economics Post
2. New Economics Blog
3. Great Depression

JERUSALEM — Whenever I hear American or European Jews speaking Ashkenazi Hebrew on the bus or in synagogue, I go nuts. And I shake my head at the growing popularity and revival of Yiddish among some Western Jews:

Although no one knows exactly how many Yiddish speakers there are today, estimates range from a very realistic minimum of 1 million to a more fanciful 3 million. At the core of this population are the Hasidic and strictly orthodox Jews in New York, Israel, London, Paris, Antwerp and elsewhere for whom Yiddish is their first language. In the UK alone, where the strictly orthodox are growing in number, there are probably as many as 30,000 Yiddish speakers. The vast majority of these Jews live in relatively closed communities, but there is always some “leakage” into the wider Jewish world.

Beyond the very religious, Yiddish has been undergoing a marked revival, especially among young people, for more than 20 years. There are reportedly more than 100 colleges and universities around the world teaching Yiddish, although courses and posts are vulnerable in straightened times. The Zionist drive to stigmatise Yiddish has collapsed and the revival has spread to Israel.

There are many variants of English — American, British, Australian, southern American, South African — and there are two main dialects of Hebrew as well: Ashkenazi and Sephardi. As best as linguists can determine, the ancient Israelites (and later Judeans) spoke a Hebrew at religious services that would be considered Sephardi today. (However, the common, everyday language at the time of the Second Temple was Aramaic.)

After the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire in 70 C.E. and the expulsion of most of the Jews in Judea, many eventually relocated to eastern Europe and Russia after the newly-created kingdoms in western Europe expelled the Jews and the localities in the east offered protection in exchange for access to their trading connections in the Arab world. Over the centuries in eastern Europe, the Hebrew language eventually fused with German to create the hybrid known as Yiddish. It became the common language of everyday Jews. When European Jews emigrated to the United States, they brought Yiddish culture — and Yiddish-accented English, as this famous joke from “Coming to America” showed in 1988:

The differences are Ashkenazi and Sephardi Hebrew are mainly in emphasis, vocabulary, and pronunciation. Sephardi Hebrew, which was based on the Hebrew Bible, adheres to that form, and the last syllable of each word is emphasized. The standard greeting on Friday evenings is “ShaBAT shaLOM! (Peaceful Sabbath!)”

In Yiddish, however, the phrase is “GUT SHAbbes.” The first syllable is emphasized, “gut” is German for “good,” and the “t” sound at the end of the word “Shabbat” becomes an “s.” In Hebrew, “Shabbat ends with the letter “ת,” tav, but in Yiddish it becomes an “s.” Other words ending in “ת” also change to end in “s” like “Succos (rather then Succot)” and “beis (rather than beit).”

Although I grew up in the United States, I learned Hebrew first at Temple Israel in Boston — and the synagogue used Sephardi Hebrew. When I moved to Israel and studied more Hebrew in a language school, the form everyone learned was Sephardi Hebrew. Ashkenazi Hebrew was always foreign to me. It still sounds funny.

The reasons for the adoption of Sephardi Hebrew were political and religious in nature. A friend of mine, a Danish Jew who moved to Israel, told me that synagogues there had used Ashkenazi Hebrew but then switched after the State of Israel was founded in 1948. Israel itself adopted Sephardi Hebrew partly because Zionism rejected the idea that Jews could have a future in Europe after the Holocaust. Moreover, the flood of Mizrahi Jews to Israel from Middle Eastern countries after 1948 increased the prevalence of Sephardi Hebrew — after all, they were completely unfamiliar with Ashkenazi Hebrew for hundreds of years. In addition, Sephardi Hebrew is much closer to biblical Hebrew.

In Israel, most of the people who speak Yiddish or Ashkenazi Hebrew are ultra-Orthodox Jews who refuse to leave the European mindset. The reasons are complex. Some want to keep the old traditions — the great, European yeshivas — alive after they were destroyed by the Holocaust. Some think Ashkenazi culture is superior to other forms. Some are stuck in tradition and refuse to change — no matter how ludicrous it seems to speak Yiddish, wear furry hats, and wear clothes resembling eighteenth-century, Polish nobility in the middle of a steaming desert in the Middle East. Some refuse to recognize the State of Israel — and everything, like language, associated with the place — because the country was founded by men, not God Himself. A fringe group even actively works against Israel and sides with the Palestinians and countries like Iran.

The perseverance of Yiddish and Ashkenazi Hebrew is enraging because it symbolizes a major problem with Israeli society — the power and influence of fringe groups of ultra-Orthodox Jews. They refuse to accept that European Jewry has been on its deathbed since World War II and that the future of Judaism is in Israel. (Europe turned on its Jews, and many European countries and European people today are hostile to Israel and Judaism.) They refuse to integrate into general, Israeli society. They refuse to adapt to the times. They insist that other forms of Judaism — like that of traditional, Mizrahi Jews — is inferior at best or sinful at worst. (And many are extremely racists towards Ethiopian Jews.) Language is an important facet of culture, and a refusal to adopt to your country’s language is ignorant at best and insulting at worst.

I will never understand it — when a word ends with a “t,” why would someone pronounce it with an “s”?

Related posts:

1. Letter from Israel: What is Israel, Anyway?
2. Israel: Asia, Not Europe
3. Hebrew

People always ask me what it’s like in Israel. Since I don’t usually have hours to respond with a nuanced, lengthy discussion, I normally boil it down to one sentence: “This country is the perfect combination of heaven and hell.”

Bradley Burston, a local columnist, puts it another way: “Living in Israel is both vastly more rewarding and vastly uglier than we paint it here in Haaretz.”

Related posts:

1. Israel Hatred
2. Decade-Roundup from Israel
3. Letter from Israel: The Bright Side of Life

I’ve published a new post at the Return of the Great Depression blog on how the growing economic crisis in the European Union may fracture the nascent sense of continental unity.

Related posts:

1. New Economics Post
2. New Economics Blog
3. Great Depression

Ninth in an ongoing series of essays

BANGALORE, India -- While I was traveling to the Silicon Valley of the East in December 2006 with my Suffolk University M.B.A. class in Boston to study business there for a week, I popped into a local tourist trap to look at some Indian trinkets I had wanted to buy for my family.

As it turned out, the owners (above) were Indian Muslims from the disputed area of Kashmir. And they could not have been nicer. Part of the reason, I'm sure, was the fact that, to them, I was a "rich" American wanting to spend money. But the other half was the fact they were genuinely pleasant since India has a history of tolerance and civility rooted both in thousands of years of culture and also in British politeness from the colonial era. Moreover, at least in terms of Hindus and Buddhists, polytheistic religions tend to be more tolerant than monotheistic ones. (Still, I sometimes found Indian people to be infuriatingly polite -- even for someone with American background who is also an Anglophile and Israeli.)

Between haggling on the prices -- in retrospect, I was not very good since I had not yet moved to Israel and learned the art -- we discussed India and religion over coffee. Their family, so I was told, made rugs and clothing in Kashmir and then sold the products in Bangalore to Westerners like me.

During the trip, I usually hid the fact that I was Jewish -- even though we were there over Chanukah -- since India has 161 million Muslims, a few of whom would later attack the Chabad house in India in 2008. I only lit a hanukkia (menorah) in my hotel room, though it was probably against regulations.

(I did wear a kippah -- a yarmulke -- on the first night of the holiday, which the class spent in a restaurant, and I received only a few curious looks in response. India has always had a small Jewish population, but most moved to Israel in modern times.)

But since I was comfortable with the shop owners, I eventually told them on a second visit that I was Jewish because I was fascinated during our discussion of religion in India. (You can take the journalist out of a newspaper, but you can never take the journalist out of him.) The chief owner, the man, seemed merely bemused -- probably because he had likely never met a Jew before. (I also told an Egyptian doctor on a boat cruise on the Nile River that I was American, Jewish, and Israeli when I had traveled to Cairo in July 2008, and she was extremely cordial about it. But she added that I should not tell too many people in Egypt about the last two parts.)

So, as I walked with the owner to process my order after finalizing the purchase, we sat at a desk in a back room. (Many places in India, of course, do not have the same rapid-technology in regards to credit-card processing.) Out of politeness and small-talk, I told him that both he and his wife had been extremely nice.

The owner responded, "She's not my wife; she is my sister." I apologized for making an incorrect assumption. And then he said something -- in all seriousness -- that made me dumbstruck, especially since he knew that I was Jewish: "You know, she is not married." (I was 26 at the time, and I think she was roughly the same age.)

Several of my friends from Boston joined the U.S. Peace Corps after college, and I later heard stories of local men in remote countries offering vast amounts of livestock to the male volunteers in exchange for marrying their daughters. But this was the first time I had ever encountered anything personally. (A few years later, an Israeli girl offered me NIS 20,000 -- roughly $5,000 -- to marry her so she could obtain a Green Card. I declined.) I was shocked at the implicit offer and did not know how to respond. After a few seconds, I laughed nervously and changed the subject. And that was that.

I had not thought about this story in a long time, but it came mind as I have been observing how the dating world differs between the West (as well as secular Israelis) and Orthodox Jews in general. In essence, it may come down to the head versus the heart.

Modern marriage -- the view that two people love each other emotionally (and, if you believe, spiritually) and then decide to build a life and family together -- is a relatively new concept that seems to have begun in medieval Europe. Prior to that time, women -- at least those in the upper classes -- were viewed as property that were a part of business negotiations, familial alliances, and international politics.

In ancient Greece, women were essentially slaves that were viewed as inferior to men. (This is why Greece was not exactly the prototype of a free democracy.) In fact, the highest level of love was viewed at the time as only possibly existing between two men -- or even a man and a boy. (This is something they do not teach in high school.) Women were simply a biological necessity with whom it was required to sire offspring.

In medieval Europe, daughters of the upper class were essentially sold to cement alliances between countries and increase the wealth of the family that "sold" the woman to her future husband. (If your daughter was hot, she could be worth 1,000 acres of land!)

However, women were understandably dissatisfied with these arrangements. As a result, the idea of romantic love originated in the medieval West with suitors who attempted to woo wives while their husbands -- whom they rarely loved -- were away. When husbands were out fighting in the Crusades or charging into battles for months at a time, a troubadour would visit a castle, sing under the window, and hopefully engage in liaisons dangereuses -- under the threat of death if he was ever caught.

And this is where the modern construct of marriage -- marrying for love -- began. (Poor women -- those in the Middle Ages who, in the immortal words of Monty Python, "didn't have sh-t all over them" -- were more free to marry those whom they wanted because they had no chance to increase their family's wealth unless they were exceptionally beautiful. But the attitude of the upper class eventually filtered down the social ladder over decades and centuries.) And as the feminist revolution rightly emancipated women and made them completely equal under the law -- at least in Western countries -- in the last century, they were finally able to have their own say in whom they marry.

But today, traditional attitudes still remain in certain communities and countries. In places with endemic poverty -- and especially where women are still viewed as having lower status, if even unofficially -- family members still want their daughters, sisters, and nieces to marry someone with money simply because they want them to have a better life. And for all the headlines proclaiming India's high-tech revolution, the vast majority of people there are still destitute.

My M.B.A. class toured the facilities of companies like Intel in India, and nearby there was a tent city full of impoverished, unemployed people right next door to a glossy building with shiny windows and full of suit-wearing businessmen. The contrast was striking. I snapped the above picture of a beggar after giving her money, asking if I could take a photo, and then thanking her with the traditional, Indian pose of clasping hands with a slight bow from the waist. I was still in my journalist-mindset, and I thought that the documentation of the poverty was worth any exploitation that she may have felt. I have her 500 rupees -- a lot of money for India but worth $11 to me.

Look closely -- she has no hands. Her attempt at a smile still haunts me. Most Americans who consider themselves poor are not really poor.

The female shopkeeper was not as poor -- most likely, she and her brother were part of India's merchant middle-class. But I am sure that she would have married me in a heartbeat if I had been interested. It would have been a logical thing to do. In theory, we would have learned to love each other.

In a different way, marriage in Orthodox Judaism is also viewed from a logical standpoint. People consider potential partners first from a rational standpoint -- similarity in religious practice, personal goals, future plans, financial security, the number of desired children, and so on. (And as I wrote before, Orthodox Jews are officially shomer negiah as well -- no touching before marriage, not even a handshake -- even though it's a not-so-secret reality that few adhere to the practice.)

After they narrow the field down to people who would work rationally, most Orthodox Jews then see with which of those people they have a "connection." (Still, ultra-Orthodox Jews do not do the second part -- they become engaged after two or three dates.) And then, usually within six months or less, they agree to get married. This practice contrasts to that in the Western world -- and secular Israel -- in which people first decide with whom they have a "connection" and then try to make it work rationally with that person.

From India to Israel to the United States, the dating paradigm seems to consist of two, general approaches:

• first head, then heart (if even the heart)
• first heart, then head

I see benefits and drawbacks to each:

• Head before heart: Running a household is akin to running a small business -- every "manager" needs to be on the same page. Love and emotion cannot eliminate conflicts over concrete issues like money, children, religion, money, sex life, and jobs. The initial rush of emotion always dissipates over time and is (hopefully) replaced by a deeper, more-meaningful feeling anyway.

• Heart before head: No one wants to end up in a loveless, sexless marriage. Everyone wants the energetic connection to last forever. Two people can be compatible in every logical way, but sometimes the connection just never appears -- imagine a marriage in which both people move to the "friend zone" at best. It is important that such a feeling is present before even considering marriage.

Relations between men and women have always been complicated ever since we evolved into primates, and it is a luxury and issue that someone fortunate and lucky enough to have my life -- unlike, say, the destitute in India -- can afford to have and analyze. But the issue still exists.

As I reflect on the dating lives of myself and my friends, it becomes evident that men, of course, tend to be more logical while women are generally more emotional. Men make value judgments on a woman's attractiveness -- after all, the definition of beauty is fairly uniform across cultures -- and evaluate whether a woman is, to be blunt, crazy. Women, at least when they are younger, put more emphasis on the interpersonal chemistry. (Dates have told my male friends that they just do not "feel" anything -- but this is a statement that a man would rarely say.) Females, however, do begin to assign greater emphasis on rational issues like money and security when they begin looking for marriage rather than a so-called hook-up.

Everyone, of course, wants a perfect combination of the head and heart. But unless a person rates, say, eight or higher on the proverbial dating-scale, he or she must become more realistic and make a choice. So, the question still stands: what paradigm, in terms of marriage, should take priority -- the head or the heart?

In contrast to places like India, people in the West have the luxury to ponder these issues. But that does not mean it is still simple.

Prior essay: Moving to Israel. Related essay: The Battle of the Sexes.

Related posts:

1. Is Marriage Worth It?
2. Marriage in Modern Times
3. Men and Marriage

JERUSALEM — I just received an e-mail advertisement from the Jerusalem Post containing this subject line: “Support the Mossad! Exclusive T-shirts Offers!” (The grammar mistake was there as well.) Only $12.

Add this to my “Only in Israel” file. I can only presume it’s a response to the controversial assassination of a Hamas operative in Dubai in which Mossad may (or may not) have been involved.

Related posts:

1. Facebook Marketing
2. Advertising or Porn?
3. On Avigdor Lieberman

I am now a co-blogger on European and Middle East economics at the website in support of “The Return of the Great Depression” by libertarian, Austrian-school economist and political pundit Vox Day (blog, column archive).

Of course, I have complete freedom to write what I want, so I encourage my readers here to follow my thoughts (and those of the other bloggers) on that site as well. There is a second co-writer that will discuss U.S. economics as well. Anyone interested in the subject should find the site to be interesting.

My first post: “How Israel Beat the Recession.”

Related posts:

1. Nominated for Jewish & Israeli Blog Awards (Update)
2. New Economics Post
3. Personal News

Media Matters for America, a liberal, media-watchdog organization, reflects on how Fox News covered the one-year anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act:

On the one-year anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Fox & Friends purported to analyze the results of the bill and repeatedly shed doubt on the impact of the stimulus on the employment situation. But Fox & Friends ignored independent analyses of the stimulus, including those conducted by Moody’s Economy.com and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, that said the measure raised employment by 1 to 2.4 million jobs by the end of 2009.

First, I’m not going to comment directly on the various economic-stimulus bills. I have not learned enough about them to comment fairly. My point here is to discuss how business affects media, which then affects politics and society.

But as Dan Shelley, a former news-director in radio, noted in 2008, conservative media-outlets have succeeded in playing to their market:

To succeed, a talk show host must perpetuate the notion that his or her listeners are victims, and the host is the vehicle by which they can become empowered. The host frames virtually every issue in us-versus-them terms. There has to be a bad guy against whom the host will emphatically defend those loyal listeners.

This enemy can be a politician — either a Democratic officeholder or, in rare cases where no Democrat is convenient to blame, it can be a “RINO” (a “Republican In Name Only,” who is deemed not conservative enough). It can be the cold, cruel government bureaucracy. More often than not, however, the enemy is the “mainstream media” — local or national, print or broadcast.

With all due apologies to my idealistic, eighteen-year-old self when I was a journalism major at Boston University, the media — as I learned in my later, newspaper career in Beantown (see here for one example)  — is neither objective nor a non-profit business.

And Rupert Murdoch is a business genius.

Fox News was launched in 1996, in the middle of Bill Clinton’s two terms as U.S. president. Conservatives had always hated the president — often personally as well as politically, and many viewed the mainstream media as supporting Clinton as well as Democrats and liberals in general. The growing partisanship and animosity only grew through the contested 2000 presidential election; the following one in 2004; the two, polarizing terms of President George W. Bush; the 2008 election; and the current antagonism towards Barack Obama.

Over these years, Murdoch saw an opportunity, and he pursued it relentlessly. Roughly half of the market of media consumers were dissatisfied with the product (rightly or wrongly), and he hoped to provide them with a substitute product that would reinforce their views and cement their media allegiance. And he was successful. Today, it is fairly easy to predict someone’s political views based on whether he watches Fox News or CNN.

In marketing terms, Murdoch implemented both “push” and “pull” strategies. A “pull” strategy identifies a pre-existing need or demand in the market and tries to attract consumers to a product or service that fulfills that desire. A “push” strategy — often used in companies that invent or innovate something entirely new — provides a new product or service and then tries to create a new market and demand for it. (Who needs something called an iPod?)

A dissatisfaction with the mainstream media had already existed, so Fox News initially pulled those viewers into the network. And once they had taken the emotional bait, Fox News pushed more and more conservative rhetoric, talking points, and ideology onto them to keep them watching. And it worked.

But there were larger issues at play. As technology and the Internet shortened the public’s attention span, Fox News adapted by hiring bubble-blond anchors in miniskirts and replacing a half-hour of reading headlines and talking to reporters with ten minutes of news summaries and twenty minutes of talking heads shouting about the issues at hand. This was the natural result of shows like CNN’s “Crossfire,” and the phenomenon later evolved into news-as-comedy (or vice-versa) on “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.” After all, young people would no longer watch current events if there were not a joke every thirty seconds.

Still, the central significance of Fox News is its recognition of the segmentation of the marketplace in modern times. One of the first things I learned in my MBA classes was to identify which specific markets would be interested in a product and then create a different marketing strategy for each one accordingly. After all, a mass-market no longer exists.

Think about it. How many different brands of toothpaste exist? Do people really need one for whitening, another for tartar control, another for plaque, another for cavities, and another for bad breath? How many different breakfast cereals exist on a supermarket shelf? How many cable or satellite channels are on television? The world has become segmented and individualized. In journalistic terms, Fox News was the first to capitalize on this trend. Then, MSNBC followed by focusing on liberals.

But, in the end, society suffers. Decades ago, the desires to attract a mass market and report objectively (or at least fairly) on current events complemented and helped each other. For example: The New York Times wants to generate as much advertising revenue as possible. Therefore, the newspaper wants to attract as many readers as possible. To do that, the Times avoids alienating any readers, and, therefore, chooses to give only facts and analysis.

Today, however, the segmented, individualized, niche-driven market rewards those who target a chosen demographic intensely rather than a general market as a whole. In journalistic (and business) terms, how does one combat this trend?

(Hat tip: Crooks and Liars)

Related posts:

1. Journalism Versus Marketing
2. Neo-Yellow Journalism
3. Fox News’ Agenda for the Middle East

The Jerusalem Post has unveiled a revamped website with a Christian section that contains this interesting article: “Will Israel Obey God or Man?”

Related posts:

1. Christian Persecution
2. War on Christmas (in Israel)
3. A Christian Nation?

JERUSALEM — The first of a five-part British documentary on the state of men and manliness in modern, Western society:

Men and masculinity are being marginalised. Manly virtues are laughed at, even considered dysfunctional. Men are being edged out of the family, the workplace and wider society as the game of life is increasingly played by women’s rules…”

And here are some news updates: A court ruled that an adulterous wife must receive child-support from the her husband even though the child was not his. Many divorced men — who did nothing wrong — must fight tooth-and nail in court to see their children more than a few times a month. Media outlets use language — subconsciously and unknowingly — to hide men and highlight women. A judge admits to giving a woman a lesser sentence than a men would have received for the same crime. A “Psychology Today” article praises a woman who killed her cheating husband in front of their teenage daughter — and received countless sympathy from the media even though there would have been outrage if the roles had been reversed. Male victims of domestic violence are ignored. An Australian law looks to criminalize something called “economic abuse” in separated families. Female teachers who have sex with students receive lighter sentences than men — when both should have the judicial books thrown at them.

And here is a collection of anti-male advertisements and messages that permeate the media (see here as well):

Although, to be fair, I must note that the same is now occurring in Israeli commercials as well:

Enjoy. Although that’s probably not the correct term.

Earlier: When Men are Portrayed as Idiots.

Related posts:

1. Domestic Violence
2. Psychological Violence: A Response
3. Feminist Deception

Since Israeli is a collection of so many people from so many cultures and countries, people here love to poke fun at each other (and themselves). “Arsim” is a (plural), stereotypical, derogatory term for a certain subculture of Mizrahi Jews, those who came to Israel from the neighboring Arab countries.

The humorous video seems to stop abruptly, but I cannot find a longer version anywhere.

Related posts:

1. Israeli Settlements
2. Israeli Quote of the Day
3. Israeli Occupation

A new French advertisement aimed at stopping teenagers from smoking is drawing some controversial marketing buzz:

A new French antismoking advertisement aimed at the young that plays off a pornographic stereotype has gotten more attention than even its creators intended, and critics suggest that it offends common decency and creates a false analogy between oral sex and smoking...

The slogan is bland enough: “To smoke is to be a slave to tobacco.” But it accompanies photographs of an older man, his torso seen from the side, pushing down on the head of a teenage girl with a cigarette in her mouth. Her eyes are at belt level, glancing upward fearfully. The cigarette appears to emerge from the adult’s trousers.

Two other ads show young men in the same position as the girl, though the adult is wearing a suit jacket and a watch.

The advertisement -- "fumer, c'est etre l'esclave du tabac" -- is brilliant, but I doubt it will directly convince any young people to stop smoking or never start. (Only active, involved parents can do that.)

First, it is provocative enough to garner maximum publicity, which greatly increases the ad's attention, exposure, and resulting discussions about the topic at hand. Secondly, teenagers obsess about sex (as do most adults even though few will admit it), so this is playing to their natural inclinations and curiosities. Third, it subtly addresses another issue that has been gaining more attention thanks to journalists like Nicholas Kristof: the increase in sex-trafficking and slavery of girls and boys throughout the world. Both of these campaigns need all the help they can get. Fourth, it conveys the message that new smokers (young people) are being used and abused by tobacco companies (symbolized by older men in suits).

I expect that this advertisement will win several awards.

Related posts:

1. Israeli Advertising
2. Are Pizza and Soda Elastic?
3. Letter from Israel: A Tale of Two Childhoods

JERUSALEM — When I was a pre-teen and teenager, I took tennis lessons at Oak Hill Country Club (now closed) in Belleville, Illinois, and was later on my high school’s team for two years before my newfound passions for journalism and the Model U.N. took more of my time.

My favorite players at the time were Pete Sampras on the men’s side (since I also had a strong serve) and Mary Pierce on the women’s side (since she played for France, and I was learning French in school). But what struck me as weird at the time was the fact that Pierce seemed to be a native American who, for some reason, sided with the French flag. (As I learned later, she was born in Montreal to a French mother and American father, raised in America, and is a citizen of all three countries.)

Although I did not realize it at the time, Pierce was my first introduction to the globalization of identity that would become commonplace years later. In a globalized world, national identity is increasingly a fluid, matter of choice rather than fate — and many people, like myself, are choosing multiple identities. (I am an American who moved to Israel and became a dual-citizen.)

A perfect example is the Winter Olympics currently occurring in Vancouver, Canada. Israeli ice-dancers Roman and Alexandra Zaretsky were born in Belarus but emigrated to Israel as children and now perform for the Star of David. Skater Tanith Belbin (pictured at the top) was born in Canada but now skates for the United States. Cathy Reed and her brother, Chris Reed, were born in Michigan to a Japanese mother and American father, but they have competed for both Japan and the United States at various competitions. Their other sister, Allison Reed, competes for the country of Georgia. And these are just a few examples.

As I have written before, the idea of the nation-state — the foundation of the global order since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 — is slowly becoming irrelevant as a result of immigration and globalization. The populations of all countries are becoming more heterogeneous, and a worldwide market for labor means that people are increasingly moving elsewhere — as I noticed in Cairo — for work, education, and their personal lives.

And regardless of a person’s official number of citizenships, even the action of living in another country can impart a sense of belonging. After watching British television while I was a child and then living, working, and studying in London for a summer during college, I have some intangible connection to British culture as well. I’d describe my personality as part American, British, and Israeli — if that makes any sense. When I speak English in Israel, sometimes my accent turns part-British when I’m speaking to native Britons or non-Britons who learned English from a British teacher — and many Israelis think my Hebrew has a French accent (it’s all in the “r” or “ר”). I have several friends who are Francophiles after studying the language and living in French-speaking countries, and I would wager that they have some identity with that nationality as well.

It’s all messy and complicated — but fascinating and endearing as well.

Related posts:

1. Globalization and Immigration
2. Languages and Globalization
3. Soccer and Globalization

JERUSALEM — In prior posts, I discussed the frustrations of dealing the bureaucracy in Israeli customer-service. Now, Jonathan Degani, a former MBA classmate and colleague of mine, provides some similar — and, unfortunately, useful — information:

If you worked more than one job in the past seven years then you are probably owed some money by the government and bituach leumi.

When you work more than one job, you are taxed at the highest income bracket, without any deductions for points. Instead, the government leaves it up to you to demand your money back.

Let’s say Bob, a single man, works two jobs and earns ₪ 5,000 at each one.  His gross pay would be ₪ 10,000 and he’d pay ₪ 4,600 (46%) in taxes.  Once Bob does a tax alignment, it would be clear that Bob should only have paid ~₪ 956.  As a result, the tax authority would pay ~₪ 3,644 to Bob. (click here for more information including form 116 for a tax alignment).

The illogical insanity here spreads from corporate customer-service to the government as well.

Related posts:

1. Israeli Customer-Service
2. Israeli Banks, Again
3. Israeli Start-Ups

In a prior post, I analyzed the causes and consequences of student-loan debt among America’s young people. Now, the Huffington Post has unveiled a new, college section and introduced it with a story on student loans and another on student-loan abuse.

College graduates in 2008 carried an average student-loan debt of $23,200.  That figure likely rises when one considers graduate school — after all, the bachelor’s degree is the new high-school diploma. The number of student-loan accounts rose 29 percent over the last two years as well.

Related posts:

1. Cancel Student Loan Debt II
2. Student-Loan Collusion?
3. Student-Loan Debt

Don’t let the GDP growth of 5.7 percent in the last quarter of 2009 fool you even though the statistic means that the recession is officially over. (A recession is two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth.) Besides, government statistics may be misleading — or even wrong — as Karl Denninger cites in a review of recent CPI data.

As the above chart shows, the worst may be yet to come. More adjustable-rate mortgages are going to reset in the middle of this year and continue through the middle of 2012, meaning that more people will default, housing prices will continue a downward trajectory in general, bad debt will not disappear, and the entire economy will remain threatened. The downward trend in interest-rate resets right now is merely the eye of the fiscal storm.

The U.S. economy will likely get worse before it gets better for other reasons as well:

Just as they are contending with massive gaps in their operating budgets, states and localities must also deal with a $1 trillion deficit in public employees’ retirement benefits’ funds, a new report found.

The shortfall amounts to more than $8,800 for every household in the nation, according to the Pew Center on the States, which published its findings Thursday.

Just to drive the economic point home:

Here is a report from the National Governor’s Association:

In a survey conducted last week of 45 of the 50 states, the group found that states have $18.8 billion of budget gaps yet to be closed in fiscal 2010. This comes after they have already imposed measures to eliminate budget imbalances totaling $87 billion in the fiscal year, which for most started last summer.

In the budgets they are drafting for fiscal 2011, states foresee shortfalls of $53.6 billion and for fiscal 2012 $61.6 billion.

And, most scarily, the first hint of a possible run on banks is here. Citigroup told its Texas customers the following:

“Effective April 1, 2010, we reserve the right to require (7) days advance notice before permitting a withdrawal from all checking accounts. While we do not currently exercise this right and have not exercised it in the past, we are required by law to notify you of this change.”

I would love to see any data on the number of people who withdrew money from Citigroup branches in Texas in the days after the notice was sent. I would have withdrawn my money the next day.

What does it all mean? A New York Times headline says it all: Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs.

Related posts:

1. Another Housing Bust
2. ‘A Fiscal Meltdown’
3. Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

JERUSALEM — An city government official recently made an announcement that is realistically true in terms of Middle East peace:

Yakir Segev, who holds the East Jerusalem portfolio in the Jerusalem municipality, made an uncharacteristic remark on Friday, declaring that the Palestinian neighborhood east of the separation fence were “no longer part of the city.”

Some 50,000 Palestinians, identification card holding residents of Jerusalem, live outside the separation fence. Most of them reside in the northern Jerusalem neighborhoods which are currently under near anarchy due to the fact that Israeli authorities — municipality, police, service authorities — almost never enter this area and the Palestinian authorities also refrain from entering under Oslo guidelines forbidding them to operate within Jerusalem.

Speaking at Hebrew University, Segev, seen as a right-winger, said Thursday that the reality that has formed in the region is irreversible, and that the separation fence, which many Israelis credit with the dramatic drop in terror attacks perpetrated by Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, was built for political and demographic reasons — not just security concerns. “The Jerusalem municipality has no hand in managing these neighborhoods, and doesn’t have the power to address the difficult situation facing the 55,000 people who live there,” he said.

“The State of Israel has given up,” he went on to say. “[The neighborhoods] are outside the jurisdiction of the state, and certainly the municipality. For all practical purposes, they are Ramallah.”

There are three main obstacles to peace — at least as far as implementing a two-state solution is concerned — in the region: Palestinian hostility towards the very existence of Israel (especially as a Jewish state) and the terrorism that it inspires; settlements and the border between Israel and any future Palestinian state in the West Bank (and perhaps the Gaza Strip); and the status of Jerusalem.

But here is the question that no one addresses: What, exactly, is “Jerusalem”? It is an idea, of course, that is firmly planted in the minds of Christians and Jews — and, to a lesser extent, Muslims. But as far as a geographic entity, the physical location of “Jerusalem” has not always been constant — just like the areas of cities throughout the world:

The residents of Little Cambridge resolved to secede from Cambridge when the latter’s government made decisions detrimental to the cattle industry and also failed to repair the Great Bridge linking Little Cambridge with Cambridge proper. Legislative approval for separation was obtained in 1807, and Little Cambridge renamed itself Brighton.

In October 1873, the Town of Brighton voted to annex itself to the City of Boston, and in January 1874 Brighton officially became a neighborhood of the City of Boston.

Brighton, where I lived for a few years, is a neighborhood of Boston. Before that, it was independent. Before that, it was part of Cambridge. Now, imagine that Boston — for whatever reason — has carried the same religious meaning as Jerusalem since 1850 or thereabouts. Which areas, exactly, would have those religious connotations today?

Brighton was not a part of Boston when it became “holy.” So, say the city of Boston was divided like Jerusalem might be divided one day — and Brighton would no longer be part of Boston under this hypothetical scenario. I could imagine religious people arguing that “Boston” should not be divided because of its significance to them even though Brighton was not part of the city at the time. When Brighton joined the city of Boston, it acquired the religious significance as well.

Now, here is a brief history of the expansion of the City of Jerusalem:

The first neighbourhoods outside the Old City walls, built from the 1860s onward, were scattered chiefly along the main roads from the west and northwest leading into the city. These early Jewish suburbs were paralleled by non-Jewish expansion prompted by Christian religious or nationalistic motivation. The latter included the Russian Compound on the meydan (old Turkish parade ground), near what is today the commercial heart of west Jerusalem; the German Colony, near what became the railway station; and the American Colony, north of the Damascus Gate. Some early communities, such as Mishkenot Shaʾanannim and Yemin Moshe, with its famous windmill landmark, have been reconstructed and resettled or turned into cultural centres. Others include the Bukharan Quarter; Meʾa Sheʿarim, founded by Orthodox Jews from eastern and central Europe, with its scores of small synagogues and yeshivas; and Maḥane Yehuda, with its fruit and vegetable market, inhabited mainly by Jews of North African and Oriental origin. Residential quarters established between World Wars I and II include Reḥavya in the centre, Talpiyyot in the south, and Qiryat Moshe and Bet Ha-Kerem in the west. The old campus of the Hebrew University at Mount Scopus, northeast of the Old City, formed for some 20 years (1948–67) an Israeli exclave in the Jordanian sector; it was entirely rebuilt after the Six-Day War. Some Arab districts, such as Talbieh and Katamon (Gonen), whose residents fled during the fighting of 1947–48, are now Jewish neighbourhoods, and thousands of houses were built for new Jewish immigrants in districts to the west, newly incorporated into the city. Arab neighbourhoods outside the Old City include El-Sheikh (Al-Shaykh) Jarrāḥ, Wadi al-Jōz (al-Jawz), and Bayt Ḥanīnā in the north and villages such as Silwān and Bayt Ṣafāfāin the south.

Since 1967 large new housing developments for more than 200,000 Jews have been built on the southern, eastern, and northern edges of the city, both within and beyond the extended city boundary. Their construction on territory claimed by both Israelis and Arabs gave rise to repeated confrontations and controversy. Meanwhile, construction of housing for Arabs within the city has been severely limited, which has resulted in large-scale ribbon development of Arab housing, particularly along the road leading north to Ramallah.

As we can see, specific areas that are considered part of “Jerusalem” today was not part of the city — or much less even existed — hundreds, or even thousands, of years ago. The city limits expanded over time, and different areas were incorporated later. But any proposed division of Jerusalem can enrage religious Jews and Muslims, cause riots in the streets, and potentially bring down governments.

For example, the German Colony in south Jerusalem (the picture above is from Wikipedia) did not exist at the times of David, Jesus, and Mohammed. So why is that specific piece of land now considered a sacred part of Jerusalem? If the mayor officially incorporates an outlying neighborhood into the city, does that act of law spread the sacredness of Jerusalem to the new area?

If the German Colony were given solely to Israel or a Palestinian state, the opposing side would raise hell (pardon the pun). But why, exactly? “Jerusalem” seems to be just whatever the municipal government says it is. I’ve never quite figured this out. When Segev, the municipal official who stated that the section of Jerusalem east of the separation barrier was “no longer part of the city,”  he was being realistic — just like the fact that Israeli settlements inside the barrier will likely remain part of Israel.

If the part of land known as east Jerusalem were eventually given to a Palestinian state, could the city government not just deem the Western half to be “Jerusalem”?

Related posts:

1. The Future of Jerusalem
2. Changes in Jerusalem
3. Freedom of Religion