Thoughts

Shopping in the Internet Age: Let’s Make a Deal

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Consumers love their online dealsI hear the complaint often that e-mail has become the preserve of “deal a day” promotions and communications from brands that have devolved into little more than breathless announcements about discounts that are “too good to pass up,” coupled with the obligatory “free shipping” pot-sweetener.

And then the next day, another deal shows up that’s practically the same as the last one …

But how surprising is this, really? Let’s not forget that daily newspaper advertising – the equivalent antecedent to e-mail marketing, has always had a similar focus on price, sales and deals.

It’s just that with e-mail, it seems more ubiquitous because they’re being pitched to us hourly on any number of digital platforms and mobile devices, rather than just once a day with the newspaper delivery.

And there’s no doubt that the sheer volume of deal activity is growing – the low cost of e-mail marketing makes sure of that. Not only is seemingly every consumer brand out there working the e-mail channel like they did catalogues and newspaper advertising in the past, there’s also the bevy of coupon marketers like LivingSocial, Groupon, Yipit and Gilt City, to name just the top few.

Some have discerned a decline in the “quality” of the information that is being provided; whereas there may have once been some educational, informative or “cool” content included along with the special deals, now it’s often devolved into nothing but “price, price, price” and “savings, savings, savings.”

The extent of consumer interaction with “deal-a-day” websites and e-mail offerings was quantified recently in consumer research conducted by Yahoo and Ipsos OTX MediaCT. The survey, fielded in February 2011, discovered that U.S. adults who are on the Internet subscribe to an average of three daily or weekly shopping e-mails or e-newsletters. (And more than half subscribe to two or more.)

How often are people reading these e-communiqués? With daily regularly, it turns out.

Nearly two-thirds of the respondents who subscribe to at least two of these “daily deal” e-mails or e-newsletters report that they read all of the messages that are sent. Here’s how reading frequency breaks out:

 Read several times per day: ~22% of respondents
 … Once per day: ~38%
 … A few times per week: ~23%

 Read once per week: ~7%
 … A few times per month: ~5%
 … Once per month or less: ~5%
The same Yahoo/Ipsos survey measured the degree of pass-along activity, which is one of the most potent aspects of e-mail marketing. Most recipients reported doing this – about 45% doing so on a weekly basis or more frequently:

 Forwarding deals to friends or family several times per week: ~17%
 … Several times per day: ~12%
 … Once per day: ~10%
 … Once per week: ~6%

 Forwarding once per month or less frequently: ~19%
 … Never doing so: ~22%

Despite the complaint commonly heard about groaning e-mail inboxes, the Yahoo/Ipsos survey gives little indication that consumers are in reality becoming all that tired of the onslaught of daily deal promos. In fact, over six in ten respondents in the survey reported that they subscribe to more of them today compared to last year.

Moreover, nearly half of the survey respondents reported that they’re excited to receive them … and that they “can’t wait” to see the latest deals being offered each time.

There’s another way we know that these deals are retaining their relevance: Three-fourths of the respondents reported that these types of e-mails come to their main inbox rather than to a separate account they’ve set up to receive such offers. So there’s little doubt that when people say that these deals are desirable, they actually mean it.

We consumers do like our deals, don’t we? And if you think that the popularity of deals and discounts is due to the recession, that’s belied by the fact that even America’s super-affluent are on the deal bandwagon. Unity Marketing’s recent survey of the wealthiest 2% of Americans — those earning $250,000+ per year — finds that value-priced Amazon is the top shopping destination for ~45% of them. Not only that, ~10% use Groupon for coupons and ~8% use Craigslist.

No, it seems bargain-hunting is the thing for practically everyone.

Car Company Conundrum: Auto Companies Try to Preserve Brand Loyalty

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Big Three Automotive Manufacturers
The “Big Three” auto makers: Exactly how loyal are their customers?

Those of us “of a certain age” can remember the days of the Big Three U.S. auto makers. Each of them had a full brand lineup of vehicles designed to accompany a car owner’s pursuit of the American dream. For each step up the corporate or status ladder, there was a car perfectly suited for the event.

General Motors had its five “ascending” brands: Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac. Rival Chrysler Corporation had its five auto brands that tracked neatly with GMs: Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler and Imperial.

Ford Motor was a bit different in that it had only three flagship brands – Ford, Mercury and Lincoln – but the idea was the same. Capture the consumer at the very beginning … and stay with him or her for years thereafter. When I was growing up, I can recall friends who came from a GM family, a Ford family or a Chrysler family – such was the affinity and loyalty people felt for “their” car companies.

Fast-forward to today, and the picture is completely scrambled. Not only has the prestige – and market share – of the U.S. car companies plummeted in the face of strong competition from foreign-based car rivals, but the brand offerings of the Big Three [sic] have been telescoped severely.

GM is now down to three flagship car brands (Chevy, Buick and Cadillac), while Ford and Chrysler are down to two each (Ford and Lincoln … Chrysler and Dodge).

The rationale for the recent decisions to jettison brands was to gain better control over operating expenses. Moreover, the amount of true difference between some of the brands was modest at best. So the goal of the auto makers has been to retain the loyalty of buyers and shift them to the remaining brands, thereby controlling operating costs while keeping customers in the fold

How’s that working out for everyone?

Well … not exactly as planned. General Motors dropped Pontiac, Saturn and Hummer in the latest round of brand downsizing in 2009, but had hoped to keep most of the buyers of those vehicles in the GM family. Reportedly, there are ~3 million of these vehicles on the roads today. However, the Detroit News is reporting that a majority of these owners are opting for non-GM products when they’re in the market for a new vehicle – brands such as Honda, Nissan and Toyota.

In fact, statistics from auto research company J.D. Power & Associates show these sorry retention rates for GM during 2010:

 Hummer owners staying with GM: ~39%
 Pontiac owners staying with GM: ~36%
 Saturn owners staying with GM: ~26%

These figures compare to an industry-wide brand retention rate of ~48%.

The statistics on Saturn are probably the least surprising. After all, Saturn was promoted as “a new kind of car company” – presumably in stark contrast to other GM car brands as much as any rivals. It stands to reason that Saturn owners would probably find almost any other company preferable than staying with GM.

GM has certainly tried to keep its customers from straying – including offering special deals such as one-year free maintenance programs, discounts on new GM auto purchases, offers to test-drive GM cars, and special invitations and events to introduce customers to new GM dealers.

Some industry observers feel that GM miscalculated to a degree, in that the three brands dropped by the company had a measure of distinctness that is difficult to replicate in the remaining GM brands. J.D. Power’s Executive Director of U.S. Automotive Research, Steve Witten has noted, “The truth of the matter is they didn’t have many options for people to stay in the GM family. Now, there are holes.”

[It didn’t help either that some Saturn dealerships jumped the GM ship when the brand went away – taking many of their customers with them.]

What about Ford Motor’s experience in dropping the Mercury brand from its lineup? It turns out the news for them has been better. In fact, Ford has managed to hold on to ~46% of Mercury customers.

Ironically, the company has benefited from what might normally be considered a brand weakness: the Ford and Mercury lines had very little differentiation between them. Thus, it has proven easier to shift Mercury owners to Ford vehicles as an alternative.

Chrysler went through its auto brand downsizing a bit earlier … the Imperial nameplate disappeared back in the 1980s (I know: I owned one of the last models manufactured) … while the Plymouth brand bit the dust seven years prior to the 2009 economic near-meltdown.

Instead, the big news at Chrysler has been its shift from one foreign parent company (Germany’s Daimler-Benz) to another (Italy’s Fiat). For many, the jury may still be out on the long-term viability of Chrysler – the next two or three years will be the acid test.

How Are Social Media Behaviors Changing?

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Social mediaWith the steady growth of social networking sites – particularly Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – the characteristics and behaviors of their users continue to evolve.

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has been studying these changes in recent years through conducting a variety of consumer research surveys, and its lateest findings have just been released. And some of these key findings are quite revealing.

For starters, Pew finds that nearly eight in ten Americans are now using the Internet. Of these, nearly 60% are also using at least one social media site. And social media users now skew more heavily female (~56%), which represents something of a shift in recent years.

The Pew research also finds that among those people who engage with social media sites, Facebook is the 500 pound gorilla; more than nine in ten respondents reported that they are on Facebook, compared to only ~18% who are on LinkedIn and an even smaller ~13% who are on Twitter.

Moreover, engagement with Facebook is at a higher level. About half of the Facebook users report that they are on Facebook every day. By contrast, only one-third of Twitter users engage with that social media platform on a daily basis.

The Pew study also found that the average number of Facebook friends a user has is nearly 230 – a figure that frankly surprised me a bit. What constitutes “friends” break down as follows:

 Friends from high school: ~22%
 Extended family members: ~12%
 Coworkers: ~10%
 Friends from college: ~9%
 Immediate family members: ~8%
 People from affinity groups: ~7%
 Neighbors: ~2%

Interesting, on average about 10% of Facebook users’ friends are people that they’ve never actually met, or met only once.

Another interesting finding from the Pew survey is that Facebook users tend to be more trusting of others and more active in the extent of their social interaction on a personal level. This would seem to refute the notion that Facebookers may be more susceptible to pursue “cyber” relationships in lieu of old-fashioned personal relationships. To the contrary, the Pew report observes:

“The likelihood of an American experiencing a deficit in social support, having less exposure to diverse others, not being able to consider opposing points of view, being untrusting, or otherwise being disengaged from their community and American society generally is unlikely to be a result of how they use technology.”

And what about LinkedIn? Clearly, it operates on a completely different plane than Facebook and even Twitter. It has become the de facto Human Resources clearinghouse on the Web … an employment fair on steroids.

LinkedIn’s unique position in the social media sphere is reflected in characteristics like the educational level of its users. Whereas only ~20% of Facebook users have a four-year college degree – and just ~15% have post-graduate education – those percentages on LinkedIn are ~37% and ~38% respectively. (Twitter’s educational demographics are nearly identical to Facebook’s.)

LinkedIn’s age demographics also tend to skew older. This means is that even though LinkedIn users may not be engaging with the platform on a daily basis — in fact, only ~6% do so according to the Pew survey — they do represent a highly attractive professional audience that offers good potential for many companies in marketing their products and services.

Additional information on the Pew Research survey findings is available here. Check it out and see if your own social media behaviors mirror the Pew market findings.

Big Branding News on the Internet Domain Name Front

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ICANN logoIt was only a matter of time. Internet domain names are now poised to move to a new level of branding sophistication.

This past week, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) decided to broaden domain name suffixes to encompass pretty much anything. Instead of being restricted to suffixes like .com and .net that we’re so used to seeing, beginning in January 2012, companies will be able to apply for the use of any suffix.

At one level, there’s a practical reason for the change in policy. As happened with telephone lines in an earlier era when a host of new FAX numbers and cellphones came onstream, the inventory of available web addresses under the original system of .com, .edu, .gov and .org has been drying up. Recent moves to authorize the use of .biz, .us and .xxx have been merely stopgap measures that have done little to alleviate the pending inventory crunch.

But the latest ICANN move will likely have ripple effects that go well beyond the practical issue of available web addresses. Industry observers anticipate that the new policies will unleash a flurry of branding activity as leading companies apply for the right to use their own brand names as suffixes.

In fact, Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of ICANN’s board of directors, believes the move will “usher in a new Internet age.”

It’s expected that major consumer brands like Coca Cola and Toyota will be among the first to nab new domain suffixes like .coke or .toyota.

It’s a natural tactic for companies to employ as a defensive step against unscrupulous use of their brand names by other parties. But it’s also an effective way to gain more control over their overall online web presence via the ability to send visitors more directly to various portions of their world in cyberspace.

Of course, we can’t expect these new suffixes to be acquired on the cheap. Gone are the days when someone could purchase an address like “weather.com” for a just few dollars … and then sell it later on for hundreds of thousands.

In fact, it’s being reported by the Los Angeles Times that the cost to secure a new domain will be in the neighborhood of $185,000 – hardly chump change. At that price tag, only well-established organizations will be in a position to apply – and those applications must also be able to show that they have the technical capabilities to keep the domain running. So no cyber-squatters need apply.

Bloomberg Businessweek predicts that leading companies may invest upwards of $500,000 each to secure their brand identities online and to prevent them from being “hijacked” by others. It certainly gives a fresh new meaning to the term “eminent domain”!

Online Display Ad Effectiveness: Skepticism Persists

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Online Display AdvertisingAs the variety of options for online advertising have steadily increased over the years, the reputation of display advertising effectiveness has suffered. Part of this is in the statistics: abysmal clickthrough rates on many online display ads with percentages that trend toward the microscopic.

But another part is just plain intuition. People understand that when folks go online, they’re usually on a mission – whether it’s information-seeking, looking for products to purchase, or avocational pursuits.

Simply put, the “dynamic” is different than magazines, television or radio — although any advertiser will tell you that those media options also have their share of challenges in getting people to take notice and then to take action.

The perception that online display advertising is a “bad” investment when compared to search engine marketing is what’s given Google its stratospheric revenue growth and profits in recent years. And that makes sense; what better time to pop up on the screen than when someone has punched in a search term that relates to your product or service?

In the B-to-B field, the knock against display advertising is even stronger than in the consumer realm. In the business world, people have even less time or inclination to be distracted by advertising that could take them away from their mission at hand.

It doesn’t take a swath of eye-tracking studies to prove that most B-to-B practitioners have their blinders on to filter out extraneous “noise” when they’re in information-seeking mode.

This isn’t to say that B-to-B online display advertising isn’t occurring. In fact, in a new study titled Making Online Display Marketing Work for B2B, marketing research and consulting firm Forrester Research, Inc. reports that about seven in ten B-to-B interactive marketers employ online display advertising to some degree in their promotional programs.

And they do so for the same reasons that compelled these comparnies to advertise in print trade magazines in the past. According to the Forrester report, the primary objectives for online display advertising include:

 Increase brand awareness: ~49% of respondents
 Lead generation: ~46%
 Reaching key target audiences: ~46%
 Driving direct sales: ~41%

But here’s a major rub: Attitudes toward B-to-B online display advertising are pretty negative — and that definitely extends to the ad exchanges and ad networks serving the ads. Moreover, most don’t foresee any increased effectiveness in the coming years.

That may explain why Forrester found that fewer than 15% of the participants in its study reported that they have increased their online display advertising budgets in 2011 compared to 2010 – even as advertising budgets have trended upward overall.

When you look closer at display, there’s actually some interesting movement. Google has committed to a ~$390 million acquisition of display ad company Admeld. And regardless of the negative perceptions that may be out there, Google’s Ad Exchange and Yahoo’s Right Media platforms have created the ability for advertisers to bid on ad inventories based on their value to them.

Moreover, new capabilities make it easier to measure and attribute the impact of various media touchpoints — online display as well as others — that ultimately lead to conversion or sales.

But the negative perceptions about online display advertising continue, proving again that attitudes are hard to change — even in the quickly evolving world of digital advertising.

Remembering Ace Fighter Pilot John Alison (1912-2011)

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This past week, the world lost one of the greatest combat pilots of all time when Major General John R. ‘Johnny’ Alison died at the age of 98.

While John Alison may not be well-known to today’s public, he was quite a famous and impressive personality during the years of World War II and beyond. Although best-known for his activities in the Pacific Theaters including China-Burma-India, he also advised General Dwight Eisenhower on the use of gliders to ferry troops during the D-Day invasion of Continental Europe.

The first 35 years of General Alison’s life reads like a thriller novel. He became interested in flying during his high school years in Florida. A prodigy at flying, his first military stint was at Langley Field in Virginia in the late 1930s where he excelled at flying every form of aircraft.

Upon the outbreak of World War II, Alison was sent as a military attaché to England to support the Royal Air Force’s efforts to assemble and fly the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk aircraft that were being supplied by President Roosevelt under the Lend-Lease Act.

It was a mission he would repeat in the Soviet Union in 1941 after that country had been invaded by the Axis forces. He would later recount the frightening-yet-thrilling sensation of standing on the rooftop of the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Moscow, watching the German armies as they approached the city.

Alison was to escape the chaos of the Eastern Front by venturing through Iran to reach the port city of Basra in Iraq. From there, he ventured on to China and the Pacific campaigns in the Allies’ war with Japan.

In 1942, General Alison was tapped to be deputy commander of the 75th Flying Squadron, famous as the “Flying Tigers” whose pilots defended Chinese cities from Japanese air assaults. Commenting on his prowess in the sky, David Lee ‘Tex’ Hill, Alison’s commanding officer, would later write:

“John Alison had the greatest pure flying skill of any pilot in the theater – a touch on the controls that knew no equal. His talents were matched only by his eagerness for combat.”

As the war ground on, in 1944 Alison became a co-commander of the first Air Commando Force, which he organized as an ingenious operation to establish fortified bases behind Japanese enemy lines in Burma (Myanmar). This endeavor was to make the frontal army assault on Burma from British India far more effective.

And General Alison was by no means just an armchair strategist in carrying out this initiative; he led a force of 15 men, personally piloting a glider to an improvised landing strip on a teakwood plantation in establishing one of the Burma bases.

At the conclusion of World War II and with so many spectacular adventures behind him, Alison was all of 33 years old. What to do for an encore after such an eventful life already?

Not one to fly off into the sunset, Alison served as an assistant secretary of commerce during the administration of Harry Truman, and later participated in the Korean War. He retired from military service in 1955, beginning a second 3–year career working in the private sector for Northrop Corporation, from which he would retire as a senior vice president in 1984.

It’s been noted that many prominent aviators have lived extraordinarily long lives. During the near-century span of General Alison’s noteworthy life and career, he was honored on numerous occasions times for his record of military service, including receiving the Distinguished Service Cross and the Silver Star.

In 1994, he was inducted into the Air Commando Hall of Fame, and in 2005 was given the same distinction by the National Aviation Hall of Fame.

These honors rightly memorialize the extraordinary life of John Alison. But there is a small anecdote about the man that neatly sums it all up. In 1940, Alison was participating in a demonstration of P-40 planes for Nationalist Chinese General Chiang Kai-Shek … who, duly imprsssed, promptly declared that he needed 100 of the aircraft for his war effort against the Japanese.

Pointing to Alison, the leader of the U.S. delegation responded to Chiang saying, “No, sir! You need 100 of those!”

Getting the Message on Retirement Savings

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401(k) plan balances are actually increasing.
401(k) plan contributions -- and balances -- are back on the increase.
Have Americans finally gotten the message about saving for retirement? Judging from the most recent published stats on 401(k) savings, it would seem so.

Last month, it was reported that 401(k) retirement savings have hit a 12-year high, with an increase of ~3.5% in contributions being charted during the first quarter of 2011.

What about average account balances? Today, those stand at about $75,000. That’s still woefully inadequate considering what (little) people can expect to receive from Social Security as they reach retirement age. But it’s a darn sight better than the ~$41,000 average 401(k) plan balance that existed in 2002.

Of course, averages can be misleading, since the figures can be skewed by some very hefty balances held by a very few highly compensated workers at the top of the heap. In fact, more than 55% of workers have less than $25,000 in their 401(k) plans.

On top of that, nearly one in four plan participants has outstanding loans against their plans.

Clearly, the recession has had a big impact on contribution behavior – even as workers have become more sensitized than ever about the inability of Social Security to cover their retirement needs.

Making 401(k) contributions are not an option for the unemployed, of course, but there are many other workers who were forced to reduce their contributions to cover for losses of family income because of a spouse losing his or her employment.

And some have had to borrow against their plan assets in the more serious circumstances. Those loans are actually up by double digits.

Still, it’s heartening to see the latest numbers … as it appears that “awareness” is now being translated into “action.” Would that we could rely on our local and national politicians to do the same thing …

For U.S. Households, the $534,000 Elephant in the Room

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It doesn’t matter where you may be on the political spectrum, the most recent financial figures about the U.S. economy and our financial obligations have to be stunning in their import.

It turns out that the federal government’s financial condition has deteriorated much more rapidly and significantly than is commonly understood – far more than the ~1.5 trillion in new debt that was incurred to finance the budget deficit.

Instead, USA Today is reporting that the government took on some $5.3 trillion in new financial obligations during 2010. Not surprisingly, a big chunk of these unmet obligations fell under Medicare and Social Security.

Adding these new obligations to the existing ones translates into a record of nearly $62 trillion in financial promises not paid for.

And if that particular number isn’t striking enough, perhaps putting it this way will get your attention: It translates into ~$534,000 in unfunded obligations for each individual household in the United States.

In addition to $534,000 being a breathtaking number in and of itself, it represents more than five times what Americans have borrowed for everything else (mortgages, car loans, college loans, etc.).

Now there’s certainly a big difference between the government and the private sector, of course. Corporations would be required to account for these new liabilities when they are taken on – and thereby report big losses to their shareholders. But unlike businesses, Congress can conveniently stave off recording these commitments until it’s ready to write the check. “See no evil … hear no evil …”

And here’s another big difference between the federal government and everyone else: the ability to “manufacture” greenbacks to pay for debt obligations. Whether we call it euphemistically “quantitative easing” or more bluntly “printing money,” that’s a solution that comes dangerously close to the famous quip attributed to H. L. Mencken: “For every problem, there’s a solution that is simple, elegant, and wrong.”

Sheila Weinberg, founder of the Chicago-based Institute for Truth in Accounting advocacy organization, raises another key point: “The [federal] debt only tells us what the government owes to the public. It doesn’t take into account what’s owed to seniors, veterans and retired employees. Without accurate accounting, we can’t make good decisions.” She has a good point.

The blind leading the deaf: It certainly doesn’t portend well for the future. But there’s always the hope that if we can somehow create robust future annual economic performance in the 4-5% range, we’ll grow our way out of the problem.

We’ll have to see about that.

Oh, S#\@*!! Facebook’s Not for Prudes

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Profanity on Facebook: More than you might imagine.In the “anything goes” world of social media, it stands to reason that the language we find there isn’t exactly reserved for polite company.

And now we have some quantifiable data that confirms those suspicions. Reppler, a Palo Alto, CA-based social media monitoring service, recently scanned some 30,000 Facebook members’ walls … and what they found wassn’t exactly the language of choirboys.

Here are two interesting stats from what Reppler discovered:

 Nearly half of the Facebook walls contain some form of profanity.

 Four out of five users with profanity on their Facebook wall have at least one comment or post from a friend that contains profanity.

What’s the most common profane terms used? Not surprisingly, the “f-word” comes out on top. That’s followed by various derivations of the word the French know as merde. Runner-up among the top three is the “b-word.”

It’s important to note that people don’t have complete control over the language their Facebook friends use. But the prevalence of profanity on Facebook walls comes at a time when many employers are increasingly looking at the online presence of their prospective hires and noting the degree of professionalism – or lack thereof – that they see.

And there’s a related issue that’s becoming increasingly significant as well. With more companies and brands creating Facebook pages and other social networking sites, monitoring the discussion that takes place on them takes on even more importance.

It’s critical for brands not to offend even a small percentage of their customers. But with the general “race to the bottom” in what’s deemed acceptable language, there are real differences in what some people think is legitimate expression … and what others would consider to be gross indecency.

These differences are a factor of not only of age, but of acculturation.

Third-party tools from Reppler and others that automatically flag certain language or phrases can alleviate some of the problem, but there’s really no substitute for good, old-fashioned site monitoring. Which is why so many companies are finding the whole social media thing to be pretty labor-intensive, when done properly.

The Fortunes of the Fortune 500

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Global Business: 28% of the 500 largest multinational companies are U.S.-based.Time was when the United States accounted for the largest contingent of the Fortune 500 global companies. Not so anymore. According to stats reported recently by international business expert Ted Fishman in USA Today, only about one-fourth of the 500 largest global enterprises are based in the U.S.

And those that remain on the list aren’t behaving particularly “American,” either. This group of ~140 companies has eliminated nearly 3 American million jobs since 2000.

Is that a consequence of the recent global recession? Hardly … the same companies added ~2.4 million jobs overseas during the same period.

The particulars behind each company’s employment choices are varied, of course. But certain factors seem to come up often in the analysis, including:

 Gaining closer geographic proximity to the world’s fastest-growing economies such as India, China and other Far Eastern countries.

 The availability of workforces that are “cheaper” to hire and require fewer employee benefits.

 A relatively unattractive U.S. corporate tax rate compared to other countries – hard to believe, but America’s 35% top corporate rate is eclipsed only by Japan’s (39.5%).Going forward, it would be nice if America’s largest corporate entities could be more sensitive to the need for additional investment here at home. Then again, it would be equally gratifying if government adopted policies of lower tax rates and easing regulations to make business growth and job creation in America easier.

The truth is, both parties will continue to pursue their own self-motivated interests, which is only natural.

The problem is, it’s a lopsided game. With a big wide world out there, the multinationals have a host of options at their disposal … and thus hold the winning cards. Tax laws and new regulations can be put on the books time and again, but the multinational crowd continues to float above it all, seemingly unaffected by anything – at least not to any great extent.

Meanwhile, U.S. small business gets hammered.