Sunday, October 19, 2014

MILLONAIRES AROUND THE WORLD: HOW MANY, WHO AND HOW ARE THEY?



4 Things Millionaires Have in Common, Backed by Research
ERIC BARKER, TIME,  OCTOBER 16, 2014
Eric B
What do millionaires do differently?
Are they harder workers? Do they have brains that can bend spoons? Do they exhibit Bond Villain levels of cunning?
80% were self-made, accruing all their wealth in one generation. And they were doing a number of things you and I probably aren’t.For their books The Millionaire Next Door and The Millionaire Mind the authors surveyed over 700 millionaires to find out.
Here are a few patterns the researchers saw:

1) Most Millionaires Are Self-Employed

Got a great idea for a business? Make sure the profits are going in yourpocket, not your boss’s.
Twenty percent of the affluent households in America are headed by retirees. Of the remaining 80 percent, more than two-thirds are headed by self-employed owners of businesses. In America, fewer than one in five households, or about 18 percent, is headed by a self-employed business owner or professional. But these self-employed people are four times more likely to be millionaires than those who work for others.
Sound risky? It is. Less than a third of new companies survive 10 years.
…no matter how you measure new firms, and no matter which developed country you look at, it appears that only half of new firms started remain in business for five years, and less than one-third last ten years.
But millionaires have a different perspective. They think it’s risky to work for someone else. You could get laid off. Your boss could make a bad decision.
They want to be in control of their own destiny and yes — they’re quite confident. And research shows confidence boosts your income.
But not only is entrepreneurship risky, it’s also hard work.
In only two countries out of all the ones surveyed did the self-employed not work harder than salaried employees:
millionaires
Why do something so risky and difficult? Research shows one of the main things that makes us love our work is autonomy.
And this is definitely true here. You’d need to earn 2.5 times as much money to be as happy as someone who is self-employed.
These studies have found that people are more satisfied with their jobs when they are working for themselves than when they are working for others. In fact, the studies show that to be as satisfied when he is working for others as he is when he is working for himself, the average person needs to earn two-and-a-half times as much money!
(For more on what the most successful people have in common, clickhere.)
So these aren’t salaried employees. But how do they decide what kind of companies to start?

2) Millionaires Choose Their Careers Strategically

They don’t start a business they’re necessarily passionate about. They don’t even do something they necessarily understand or have experience in.
They start a business that they think is going to make money. They look for areas of big demand and small supply.
Some of you are saying, “Duh. Of course that’s how you should pick a business.” Yeah, but that’s not what the vast majority of people do.
…there is no evidence that entrepreneurs select industries in which profits, profit margins, or revenues are higher.
63% of new business owners admit their venture doesn’t have a competitive advantage. Only a third say they really did a search for good business ideas.
And the industry you start a business in is very important: some industries are over 600 times more likely to be successful than others.
…between 1982 and 2002, start-ups in the software industry were 608 times more likely than start-ups in the restaurant industry to become one of the 500 fastest growing private companies in the United States—608 times more likely!
One of the authors of The Millionaire Mind is a business school professor. Every year he asks his students what the most profitable businesses are.
And every year the students can’t even name one correct answer. If smart, educated business students don’t know, why would the average person?
But millionaires pride themselves on thinking differently and looking for underserved markets and hidden opportunities.
And, frankly, the companies they start usually aren’t sexy. They fall into the category of “dull-normal.” But they make bank.
Many of the types of businesses we are in could be classified as dull-normal. We are welding contractors, auctioneers, rice farmers, owners of mobile-home parks, pest controllers, coin and stamp dealers, and paving contractors.
Despite thinking differently and doing things their own way, they’re not jerks. 94% of millionaires said “getting along with people” was key.
(For more on how not following your passion can be the smartest career strategy, click here.)
So they run their own shop and choose wisely what type of business to be in. But to make it a success don’t they have to be brilliant? Nope.

3) They’re Not Geniuses But They Have A Strong Work Ethic

We’ve all heard the old saying, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” What was the average college GPA of an American millionaire?
2.9 out of 4.0.
(Not a lot of Phi Beta Kappa keys jangling around here, folks.)
Few were ever called intellectually gifted and many were explicitly told they didn’t have what it takes for medical school, law school or MBA school.
But what most people don’t know is that GPA is a very poor predictor of success.
I find no substantial statistical correlation between the economic-productivity factors (net worth and income) and SATs, class rank in college, and grade performance in college…
And this may be part of the reason they’re so successful as entrepreneurs: “smarter” people are less likely to take such risks.
Overall, there is an inverse relationship between taking financial risk and various measures of analytical intelligence such as SAT scores.
And maybe this is why former drug dealers are more likely to start businesses.
…people who dealt drugs as teenagers are between 11 and 21 percent more likely than other people to start their own businesses in adulthood. And their higher rate of self-employment isn’t the result of wealth accumulated dealing drugs, greater likelihood of having a criminal record, or lower wages.
In entrepreneurship, you’re the boss. So it requires leadership. And some research shows being super-smart actually makes you worse at being a leader.
Cognitive ability tests have been notoriously poor predictors of leadership performance…. Leader intelligence under certain conditions correlates negatively with performance.
(Though research shows if you want to be a successful terrorist, definitely study hard in school.)
But future millionaires do work hard. When asked what their teachers did compliment them on, what was the most common response?
“Most dependable.”
When asked what they did learn in college, 94% replied “a strong work ethic.” And research shows self-discipline trumps IQ when it comes to success.
(To see the type of schedule successful people follow every day, clickhere.)
So we know how they bring their money in. Is there another part to the equation? Yeah. Don’t let that money out.

4) They’re Cheap

When the authors of The Millionaire Mind interviewed the wealthy, they didn’t want them to feel uncomfortable.
So they rented a penthouse in Manhattan, loaded it with four types of pâté, three kinds of caviar and plenty of fine wine.
The millionaires arrived… and felt completely out of place. All they ate were the gourmet crackers.
When offered the fancy wine one interviewee said he only drank two types of beer: free and Budweiser.
The researchers were stunned. They quickly realized the media images we see of millionaires aren’t representative.
Expect a millionaire to be a fancy dresser? 50% have never paid over $399 for a suit. (10% had never paid $195.)
In fact, if you do see someone wearing a $1000 suit, it’s more likely they’re not a millionaire.
For every millionaire who owns a $1,000 suit, there are at least six owners who have annual incomes in the $50,000 to $200,000 range but who are not millionaires.
Fancy car? More than half have never paid over $30,000 for a car.See someone in a Mercedes? They are probably not a millionaire.
…approximately 70,000 Mercedes were sold in this country last year. This translates into about one-half of 1 percent of the more than fourteen million motor vehicles sold. At the same time, there were nearly 3.5 million millionaire households. What does this tell us? It suggests that the members of most wealthy households don’t drive luxury imports. The fact is that two out of three purchasers or leasers of foreign luxury motor vehicles in this country are not millionaires.
Most millionaires live a lot more like you and me than Jay Z, Elon Musk or Donald Trump.
They’re thrifty, not very materialistic, and they think a great deal about how much they spend.
There is an inverse relationship between the time spent purchasing luxury items such as cars and clothes and the time spent planning one’s financial future.
And the more materialistic people are, the less satisfied they are with their lives.
Among participants in one study, those whose values were the most materialistic rated their lives as the least satisfying. – Ryan and Dziurawiec 2001
Research shows people are better with their money when they think long term. Experts say you should have a system.
Are you as money-conscious as a millionaire? Most millionaires answer “yes” to these four questions. Can you?
  1. Does your household operate on an annual budget?
  2. Do you know how much your family spends each year on food, clothing and shelter?
  3. Do you have a clearly defined set of daily, weekly, monthly, annual and lifetime goals?
  4. Do you spend a lot of time planning your financial future?
(For more on research-backed ways to spend your money so it increases your happiness, click here.)
So it’s clear how millionaires make their money. But what should we take away from all of this?

Sum Up

Being a millionaire must be nice. But we won’t all get there. And that’s okay. Money isn’t everything.
So even if you don’t get rich, what lessons can we all learn from millionaires?
  1. Take control of your life as best you can.
  2. Plan and be strategic, whatever your career might be.
  3. Work hard.
  4. Watch your money.
That’s advice anyone can follow and everyone can benefit from.
This piece originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.
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KOSOVO, AMERICAN ALLY, ALSO IN PROBLEMS WITH ISIS

DISPATCH

The One Muslim Country That Loves America Is Developing an Extremist Problem

Kosovars are traveling to the Middle East to fight the same U.S.-led forces that once helped secure their country’s freedom.

FOREIGN POLICY, OCTOBER 16. 


PRISTINA, Kosovo — Musli Musliu's Facebook page looks much like any other 20-something's profile: He posts selfies along with videos uploaded from YouTube, and he has an app for playing Texas Hold 'Em with his friends. But his profile is not actually one of a typical millennial. The videos Musli posts call for jihad, urging his friends to join the fight against the enemies of Islam. One photo shows a man with a balaclava covering his face. In another, a man holds an assault rifle with a bullet belt wrapped like a scarf around his nec

His family says that the photos were likely taken in the Middle East, where Musli and his brother, Valon, both natives of Kosovo, traveled to join militant groups. In April, Musli called home to inform his family that Valon had been killed during the Islamic State's campaign in Fallujah. Valon, who would have been 22 now, studied in a madrasa, or Islamic high school, in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, before moving to Egypt to study at Al-Azhar University. (The family did not discuss Musli's background.) Eight months after leaving for the Middle East, Valon came home to visit his family, who tried to talk him out of going back.
"We discussed this with him, and so did our uncles," Selman, another brother, said in an interview in his village of Tushile, about 30 miles from Pristina. "We explained to him that there are manipulative people out there, and that it is usually the innocent ones who suffer."
The family has not received any notification of Musli's death, but they are nervous, because as of late September, they had not heard from him in three months.
Valon and Musli are two of the 150 Kosovo Albanians -- the ethnic majority in the Balkan country of nearly 2 million, where Islam is the dominant religion -- who, according to the Kosovo officials, have traveled to Iraq or Syria to fight alongside various groups. Forty have reportedly died. Fifteen years ago, Kosovo was embroiled in its own war: Led by the United States, NATO waged a bombing campaign that paved the way for Kosovo to declare independence from Serbia in 2008.
"Though he did not explicitly order people to take up arms," says local journalist Artan Haraqija, who has received death threats for his reports about the Islamic community in Kosovo, "to me [it] is a clear call for anyone to join the fighters in Syria."From the start, this concern was focused on mosques and, before long, the worry became that some religious leaders might be influencing Kosovars to go fight in Syria. In 2012, for example, Enes Goga, a Kosovar imam, delivered a fiery sermon about Syria, with quotes from the Prophet Muhammed. "I command you to go to the Sham lands because it's a chosen land from Allah and in that land live all the great believers of Allah," Goga said, referencing Muhammed. "Allah's angels have spread their wings above the lands of Sham."
Names began emerging around the same time: In September 2012, a Kosovar named Naman Demolli, who had served in the guerilla Kosovo Liberation Army in the war against Serbia, died in Syria. Later, in March 2014, a German-born Kosovar, Blerim Heta, who went to fight with extremist rebels in Syria in August 2013, allegedly killed 52 people in a suicide attack in Baghdad, where he was known as Abu Al Khabab Kosovo, according to the news portal Balkan Insight.
In June 2014, footage appeared online of Lavdrim Muhaxheri, a Kosovo Albanian fighting with the Islamic State, giving an impassioned speech in Arabic before a cheering crowd in what is purported to be Fallujah. He vowed to conquer Jerusalem, Rome, and Andalusia before ripping up his Kosovo passport and piercing it with a saber. The following month, Muhaxheri uploaded gruesome images on Facebook allegedly depicting him preparing to decapitate a Syrian teenager. Another photo showed him holding the severed head.
In September, the U.S. government included Muhaxheri, who for a time was thought to be dead, on its list of "specially designated global terrorists," a distinction that comes with financial sanctions. Muhaxheri reportedly has a history with Americans: He once worked at the U.S. military base in Kosovo, Camp Bondsteel, where 800 American service members are deployed on active duty. He later worked as a contractor for two years in Afghanistan, according to local media reports.
Many Muslim leaders have been outspoken in denouncing those who have joined extremist groups in the Middle East. The Kosovo Islamic Community, an independent religious organization, has called for Kosovar fighters in Syria "to go back to their families and the country as soon as possible." The organization has also criticized groups that have recruited in Kosovo.
Meanwhile, the government, which remains intensely loyal to Western countries, has sought to weed out alleged supporters of radical groups. In an op-ed in the Guardian on Sept. 30, Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci vowed to "crush any cells that believe, wrongfully, that they can find cover in Kosovo." 
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USA`S VISION: RUSSIA WAS NOT HUMILIATED

THE MYTH OF RUSSIAN HUMILIATION
THE WASHINGTON POST, Anne Applebaum, October 17th.
Looking back over the past quarter-century, it isn’t easy to name a Western policy that can truly be described as a success. The impact of Western development aid is debatable. Western interventions in the Middle East have been disastrous.
But one Western policy stands out as a phenomenal success, particularly when measured against the low expectations with which it began: the integration of Central Europe and the Baltic States into the European Union and NATO. Thanks to this double project, more than 90 million people have enjoyed relative safety and relative prosperity for more than two decades in a region whose historic instability helped launch two world wars.
Anne Applebaum writes a biweekly foreign affairs column for The Washington Post. She is also the Director of the Global Transitions Program at the Legatum Institute in London. 
These two “expansions,” which were parallel but not identical (some countries are members of one organization but not the other), were transformative because they were not direct leaps, as the word “expansion” implies, but slow negotiations. Before joining NATO, each country had to establish civilian control of its army. Before joining the European Union, each adopted laws on trade, judiciary, human rights. As a result, they became democracies. This was “democracy promotion” working as it never has before or since.
But times change, and the miraculous transformation of a historically unstable region became a humdrum reality. Instead of celebrating this achievement on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is now fashionable to opine that this expansion, and of NATO in particular, was mistaken. This project is incorrectly “remembered” as the result of American “triumphalism” that somehow humiliated Russia by bringing Western institutions into its rickety neighborhood. This thesis is usually based on revisionist history promoted by the current Russian regime — and it is wrong.
For the record: No treaties prohibiting NATO expansion were ever signed with Russia. No promises were broken. Nor did the impetus for NATO expansion come from a “triumphalist” Washington. On the contrary, Poland’s first efforts to apply in 1992 were rebuffed. I well remember the angry reaction of the U.S. ambassador to Warsaw at the time. But Poland and others persisted, precisely because they were already seeing signs of the Russian revanchism to come.
When the slow, cautious expansion eventually took place, constant efforts were made to reassure Russia. No NATO bases were placed in the new member states, and until 2013 no exercises were conducted there. ARussia-NATO agreement in 1997 promised no movement of nuclear installations. A NATO-Russia Council was set up in 2002. In response to Russian objections, Ukraine and Georgia were, in fact, denied NATO membership plans in 2008.
Meanwhile, not only was Russia not “humiliated” during this era, it was given de facto “great power” status, along with the Soviet seat on the U.N. Security Council and Soviet embassies. Russia also received Soviet nuclear weapons, some transferred from Ukraine in 1994 in exchange for Russian recognition of Ukraine’s borders. Presidents Clinton and Bush both treated their Russian counterparts as fellow “great power” leaders and invited them to join the Group of Eight — although Russia, neither a large economy nor a democracy, did not qualify.
During this period, Russia, unlike Central Europe, never sought to transform itself along European lines. Instead, former KGB officers with a clearly expressed allegiance to the Soviet system took over the state in league with organized crime, seeking to prevent the formation of democratic institutions at home and to undermine them abroad. For the past decade, this kleptocratic clique has also sought to re-create an empire, using everything from cyberattacks on Estonia to military invasions of Georgia and now Ukraine, in open violation of that 1994 agreement — exactly as the Central Europeans feared.
Once we remember what actually happened over the past two decades, as opposed to accepting the Russian regime’s version, our own mistakes look different. In 1991, Russia was no longer a great power in either population or economic terms. So why didn’t we recognize reality, reform the United Nations and give a Security Council seat to India, Japan or others? Russia did not transform itself along European lines. Why did we keep pretending that it had? Eventually, our use of the word “democracy” to describe the Russian political system discredited the word in Russia itself.
The crisis in Ukraine, and the prospect of a further crisis in NATO itself, is not the result of our triumphalism but of our failure to react to Russia’s aggressive rhetoric and its military spending. Why didn’t we move NATO bases eastward a decade ago? Our failure to do so has now led to a terrifying plunge of confidence in Central Europe. Countries once eager to contribute to the alliance are now afraid. A string of Russian provocations unnerve the Baltic region: the buzzing of Swedish airspace, the kidnapping of an Estonian security officer.
Our mistake was not to humiliate Russia but to underrate Russia’s revanchist, revisionist, disruptive potential. If the only real Western achievement of the past quarter-century is now under threat, that’s because we have failed to ensure that NATO continues to do in Europe what it was always meant to do: deter. Deterrence is not an aggressive policy; it is a defensive policy. But in order to work, deterrence has to be real. It requires investment, consolidation and support from all of the West, and especially the United States. I’m happy to blame American triumphalism for many things, but in Europe I wish there had been more of it.
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TAIWAN NO ES HONG KONG

Taiwán no es Hong Kong

El ‘tigre’ asiático exhibe su democracia y su poderío económico frente a la crisis de la excolonia británica

 DIARIO EL PAIS, MADRIDtaipei 18 OCT 2014 - 3:55 CEST

Hasta 2008, volar de Taiwán a Shanghái, en la China continental, suponía pasar por Hong Kong y tardar, en vez de los 90 minutos de un vuelo directo, más de seis horas. Tras la llegada a la presidencia ese año de Ma Ying-jeou, Taipéi y Pekín no sólo establecieron vuelos regulares y enlaces marítimos directos, interrumpidos desde 1949;también han estrechado lazos, sobre todo en el ámbito económico: el 40% de las exportaciones de la isla van a la República Popular China, y de allí proceden el 60% de sus importaciones. Hoy, los taiwaneses pueden viajar directamente a más de 40 destinos en la China comunista, y cientos de empresas producen desde el continente.
Sobre esta aparente luna de miel, sustanciada en la firma de 21 acuerdos de cooperación en sectores como el transporte, el turismo o la educación y en un evidente deshielo diplomático, se ha cernido el fantasma de las protestas de Hong Kong, que muchos pensaron podrían afectar a Taiwán. Sin embargo, las movilizaciones en la excolonia no han tenido un efecto inmediato ni visible en la antigua Formosa, o China nacionalista, que se separó de la Popular (comunista) al término de la guerra civil en 1949 y desde entonces se comporta –y sobre todo comercia- como si fuera un país independiente: soberano ‘de facto’, ‘tigre’ asiático (la 25ª economía del mundo en 2013, según el FMI), tiene Ejército, pero no dispone de asiento en la ONU y sí sin embargo en la Organización Mundial del Comercio. Para Pekín, Taiwán sigue siendo un territorio rebelde.

"Taiwán no es Hong Kong, son dos casos muy distintos. Hong Kong es una antigua colonia británica retornada a China en 1997 y Taiwán es un país que no está dispuesto a convertirse en un segundo Hong Kong”, es decir, en un territorio teledirigido por Pekín, explica Chu-chia Lin, viceministro del Consejo de Asuntos Continentales. En un encuentro con periodistas extranjeros invitados por el Ministerio de Exteriores, el viceministro subraya: “Somos un país democrático, con sufragio universal directo, y apoyamos sin fisuras los anhelos de libertad de Hong Kong, siempre que se manifiesten de forma pacífica. Pero esas protestas no van a afectar a Taiwán porque el contexto es distinto. Aun así, esperaremos a ver qué sucede.
De hecho, Taiwán vivió su particular ‘primavera’ en marzo, la llamada “revolución de los girasoles”, cuando cientos de estudiantes ocuparon el Parlamento en protesta por la firma de un importante acuerdo comercial con China que consideran demasiado propenso a Pekín. La movilización surtió efecto, y no sólo propició la visita de mayor nivel político de una delegación china, en junio, sino también la adopción de una ley que velará por la transparencia en la aplicación del convenio, el penúltimo en la agenda de liberalización económica del país y en su apuesta por la integración en el área Asia-Pacífico, como demuestran los acuerdos de libre comercio suscritos recientemente con Nueva Zelanda y Singapur.
El principal cortafuegos que Taiwán interpone ante su ‘amenazador’ vecino –que multiplica por millones su extensión y población y además tiene innumerables baterías de misiles apuntando a la isla- es hacer valer su excepcionalidad como ejemplo de democracia y, a la vez, de desarrollo pujante (o, al revés, de cómo se puede avanzar hacia la democracia a partir del éxito económico, un mensaje palmario para Pekín); nada que ver, reitera el Ejecutivo, con la fórmula “un país, dos sistemas” que consagró la reincorporación de Hong Kong a China. Al segundo mandato del presidente Ma, del partido Kuomintang (nacionalista) y más cercano a Pekín que sus predecesores, le quedan dos años, y las relaciones transfronterizas resultarán cruciales en las elecciones de 2016, subraya Chu-chia, “mucho más que las cuestiones internas. Pero gane quien gane, no habrá cambios. Según los últimos sondeos, sólo un grupo muy pequeño está a favor de la independencia total; un porcentaje similar, por la unificación, y entre el 80% y el 85% de la población, defiende que se mantenga el ‘statu quo’”, explica. “El asunto es muy sensible en Taiwán tanto para el partido en el Gobierno como para la oposición [Partido Democrático Progresista], así que cualquiera de ellos mantendrá el mismo rumbo. Como mucho podrán cambiar los pasos que se den, pero no la dirección de la política”.
No obstante, Taipéi deja claro que su desconfianza se dirige al régimen de Pekín, no a sus ‘conciudadanos’ (el 95% de los taiwaneses son chinos han, la etnia mayoritaria en el continente). Sin las reservas políticas que presiden las relaciones bilaterales, la comunicación entre ambas sociedades es capilar, cotidiana, fluida: “Hay miles de matrimonios mixtos, el año pasado nos visitaron tres millones de turistas [chinos] y 22.000 estudiantes cursaron estudios aquí”, explica Chu-chia. “Todos ellos pueden apreciar nuestro sistema de vida, ver los programas de debate político en la televisión, comparar… algunos de esos estudiantes se han convertido en líderes y activistas… Ese es nuestro poder, un ‘soft power’ que, estamos convencidos, acabará influyendo a medio plazo en el entorno”. Como el agua que horada la piedra, la pequeña isla de Taiwán persevera frente a los vientos de cambio.Taiwán permite a empresarios chinos invertir en algunos sectores, como la restauración y determinadas manufacturas, pero se cuida mucho de abrir campos estratégicos como la banca o los medios de comunicación. “Tememos que puedan controlar la opinión pública, por eso somos especialmente cuidadosos, al igual que frente al ciberespionaje [de Pekín]: cada día somos objeto de miles de ataques virtuales, sobre todo las páginas oficiales”, subraya Chu-chia.
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Saturday, October 18, 2014

ARTICULOS DE MI AUTORIA

- ARTICULO SOBRE EL PAPA - MARZO 2013

 - SOBRE CRIMEA Y UCRANIA - MARZO 2014
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