Sunday, January 15, 2012

What makes billionaires tick

What makes billionaires tick



By Jonathan Holburt

In the movie The Clearing, Robert Redford plays a one- percenter entrepreneur who is kidnapped and then killed for his money by a 99 percenter played by Willem Dafoe.

As the contented lives of Redford's character and his family are contrasted with the 'disappointed lives' of Dafoe, we see the divisions not just in wealth but in satisfaction between those who have and those who have not.

But Redford's character defends himself well: He worked hard for his success and didn't deserve the tragic end he was about to get.

The 2004 movie was ahead of its time - and is a lesson for these times. It was a harbinger of the 'Age of Resentment' that is now upon us.

However, billionaires - the top one percenters - didn't just get that way. They worked hard and followed certain principles to achieve success. In a world on the precipice of another economic downturn, it would be worth looking at what makes them tick.

Forbes magazine states that there are 1,210 billionaires, a quarter of them from the Bric (Brazil, Russia, India, China) nations, worth an estimated US$4.5 trillion (S$5.8 trillion). The following are some principles they follow to build their character first and the wealth that followed.

The first is: Do what you love. While many non-billionaires follow this tip and don't become wealthy, it's clear that passion is key to becoming one. Mr Peter Buffett, 53, the billionaire son of Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, 81, is a musician, not an investor like his father.

In China, his book, Life Is What You Make It: Find Your Own Path To Fulfilment, is a bestseller. During a recent tour there, he said: 'My father and I do, in fact, do the same thing for a living. We both do what we love.'

Which leads to the next principle: Age isn't a barrier. We know about the young wunderkinds who became billionaires and even transformed industries: Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, to name a few.

But where this principle gets interesting is what the octogenarian and nonagenarian billionaires do. Car, gaming and movie industry investor Kirk Kerkorian, still working at 94, said: 'When you're a self-made man, you start very early in life. In my case, it was at nine years old when I started bringing income into the family. You get a drive that's a little different, maybe a little stronger, than somebody who inherited.'

Mr Rupert Murdoch, age 80, though weakened by the phone hacking scandal, still uses his News Corporation media empire for political power.

This leads to the next principle: The more you risk, the more you live. Mr Sheldon Adelson, 78, CEO of Las Vegas Sands, continues to roll the dice on big projects such as Marina Bay Sands. As he said: 'Why do I need succession planning? I'm very alert, I'm very vibrant. I have no intention to retire.'

Mr Richard Branson is trying to be first in space tourism, with Virgin Galactic. These men could retire on their laurels but refuse to do so. Life without risk isn't the kind of life they want to live.

And a life steeped in risk leads to the next principle: Failure is a stepping stone to success. Ms Meg Whitman, founder of e-Bay, may have failed in last year's California governor election, but she is now the head of the world's largest IT company, HP.

Mr Sumner Redstone, chairman of Viacom and Paramount, summed it up well: 'Success is not built on success. It's built on failure. It's built on frustration. Sometimes it's built on catastrophe.' Getting it wrong now can lead to getting it right later. As long as you learn and evolve.

Which leads to the final life principle: Be unconventional. Fresh solutions don't necessarily emerge from conventional lives. Mr Denis O'Brien, Irish telecom billionaire, made 20 trips to Haiti after the earthquake to give US$35 million to charities there, determining personally how his money would be spent.

Nearly two-thirds of the staff at Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal's Kingdom Holdings are women who don't even wear the abaya at work. That's unconventional for Saudi Arabia. Perhaps money gives you the power to be you. Or maybe it's you being you which provides the character foundation for being a one percenter.

The five principles are by no means comprehensive. Mr Warren Buffett said: 'You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong.'

Following that wisdom could give many 99 percenters not only the financial security they crave, but also a life rich in all ways. Learning what makes one percenters tick might also provide a greater appreciation for their contribution to society. In that way, the tragedy

The purring tiger mums

LONDON EYE

The purring tiger mums



By Teresa Lim

THERE'S an awful lot of curiosity here about Chinese tiger mothers, when in fact English tiger mums exist too. They are simply a different species.

American law professor Amy Chua's Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mother, published last year, aroused considerable interest in Britain. It was timely: a study carried out between 2005 and 2007 had released its finding that Chinese children in Britain, whatever their social class, did better in the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examination than any other ethnic group.

But publicity of Chua's book played up the threats and demands she had made on her daughters and put off many English women. They preferred, somewhat self-deludingly, to think of themselves as pussycats to Chua's tigress.

Now the BBC has stirred up the debate again with a documentary last week, called Meet Britain's Chinese Tiger Mums, which focuses on three mothers whose young children attend a north London Chinese-language school on Sundays.

The three women are Sally from Guangzhou, Kate from Taiwan, and Vivian whose family left Taiwan for Canada. All are offspring of parents whose lives had been bitterly difficult and who instilled in them the necessity for hard work. As Kate pointed out, her parents had no safety net of health care or pensions. They could rely only on themselves.

These women believe in filling every hour of their children's time with something useful. Sally's timetable for her son accounts for every minute after school, including his play time.

Besides study and extra study, there is music practice. Kate expresses the certainty, rather than hope, that her daughter would learn at least one musical instrument when she starts infant school.

Are these children being hothoused in a peculiarly Chinese way? Actually, it is not very different from the way middle-class English children are brought up.

English boarding schools, which take in the children of the upper middle classes, aim to fill virtually every waking hour of their charges with something academically, intellectually or physically active. It certainly makes sense to leave boys, especially, with little energy to misbehave.

It is not too different in the day schools, where lessons and activities occupy children from morning to mid-afternoon. The boys at my sons' preparatory (private primary) day school were overwhelmingly English. Virtually every child played an instrument. Several played two. The school had its own orchestra, jazz band, woodwind band and held regular solo concerts in its music hall by every pupil who could play something, however badly. (Building confidence was as important as actual achievement. I loved the school for that.)

Both top private boarding and day schools coax their children not only to excel in academic work, but also to read widely, behave responsibly, attend clubs and be enthusiastic at sport - in response to what their parents want.

When Vivian, whose son practises music for two hours a day, was asked by the interviewer why she could not relax her grip on her children, her answer was: What exactly would they do with extra free time? Watch more TV?

I would agree with her that that is poor use of leisure time. The middle-class English tiger mum has constructive ways with her children's 'down' time. One is to arrange tea sessions - the basic building blocks of social skills - with schoolmates.

A child is invited to tea during the week. He is brought home from school with her son. The boys play a little, then have tea. They eat politely, make conversation with prompts from the adult in charge, seek permission 'to get down' when they finish and play a bit more. Then the child is picked up by his mother or nanny and thanks the hostess 'for having me' when he leaves. The invitation is reciprocated and the process repeated on another day at the child's home.

English children build up the social IQ that smooths everyday life in whichever field they find themselves in the future. It is the emollient that the Cantonese Sally's husband, a quiet chartered accountant, regrets he never acquired.

If anything, the English tiger mum is even more demanding than the Chinese one. She wants her child not only to be good academically, but also to excel at sport, music and drama and be well-mannered, articulate and popular. But she tries to achieve this by purring encouragement rather than growling demands.

Perhaps the real difference between the British and Chinese is that there are Chinese tiger mums through the entire social spectrum whereas English tiger mums exist mainly from the middle class upwards.

Poor Chinese people believe education provides the way out of poverty, whereas poor English folk do not. The latter assumes social immobility, so there is no perceived advantage in making sure their children do well in school.

The GCSE statistics that were revealing about the Chinese in Britain were most revealing in this: Nearly all the poorest Chinese students, who qualified for free school meals, did as well as their wealthier counterparts. Among the English, on the other hand, the academic achievement gap between the rich and poor was wide.

The education authorities would love to transform socially deprived English parents from pussycats into tigers. Can they? That is a story for another day.

The writer is a Singaporean based in London.

What's a parent to do when junior chooses to live in a tent?

What's a parent to do when junior chooses to live in a tent?



By Petula Dvorak

YOUR precious children? The ones who had violin lessons and SAT tutors and years of orthodontia and organic lunches? They are now sleeping under tarps, in the mud, rain and frigid temperatures, in an encampment that is home to an epic urban rat infestation. And their new neighbours are a sizeable portion of America's hardcore homeless population. Next week, hordes of them plan to Occupy Congress, a protest that could spark confrontations with the US Capitol Police and lead to arrests.

They eat donated or dumpster-scavenged food - peanut butter, bread and doughnuts (sorry, Hostess, no Twinkies) were lunch the other day - or they may even go on a hunger strike.

Take that, helicopter parents.

These are the mothers and fathers who demanded laws for bicycle helmets, car seats and warning labels on every plastic bag and bucket in the universe. They had the home number of every teacher from preschool to college. And they've even been known to call up their grown kids' new bosses after junior didn't get a promotion.

But what happens when these highly groomed offspring go off and join the hundreds living in the Occupy movement camps? To whom do you file a complaint? Who gets the irate phone call? 'She still keeps asking me to come home. I get the calls. And the texts. Every day,' answered one 18-year-old Occupier in Washington's McPherson Square.

The camps are full of a wide range of ages and socioeconomic backgrounds, sure. But the movement's biggest population and primary strategists are the 20- something Millennials forever burdened with their parents' insistence on participation trophies for every team member.

So now the Occuparents find themselves struggling with whether to support their child's participation in a sweeping, political protest movement and the fact that their cul-de-sac kids are living in total squalor.

Sam Jewler, one of the four protesters who staged a dramatic hunger strike in the name of DC voting rights, fasted for 11 days - until his parents nagged him into eating.

His dad, Bethesda resident Leonard Jewler, was featured in a Marc Fisher blog post years ago when he tried to answer parental school angst with a data analysis of whether kids from DC public schools ascend to the same calibre of colleges as kids who went to private schools.

After enough carping from the parents, young Jewler said he broke his fast last month with a glass of coconut juice and a bowl of miso broth.

'I was feeling pretty much the same way I was the last week, but my parents were becoming increasingly distressed,' Sam told The Post's Tim Craig. 'I didn't feel like it was fair anymore to put that burden on them.'

Eat. EAT!

SURE, there are some protesters whose parents are closing the door on them over this. One said his folks made it clear he doesn't have a home to come back to. Or there are guys like Chris, 18, who left his home in Maine 'pretty much because of my dad'. But for the most part, Occuparents aren't philosophically opposed to protesting. It's not the pearl-clutching that the hippies' parents did in the 1960s.

But it's just so, ick, out there.

'My mum thinks I'm insane. She keeps hoping I'll wake up some day. She's the one who needs to wake up!' said Rooj Alwazir, 23, who grew up in the Tysons Corner area and has to explain the Occupy movement almost daily to her 63-year-old mother.

The other day, she posted online that she's about to go 'Dumpster Diving for Occupy DC!' Her sister shot back, asking her why she had to go dumpster diving when she has a home and food and family so close by.

'They just don't get it,' said Rooj, who was laid off from a marketing job and hasn't been able to find work since.

Her 71-year-old father, a historian and poet, is down with the cause, she said. But he largely stays away from the tent city his daughter now calls home.

Mrs Annie Storr, however, has taken a full-immersion approach.

I met her the night that police encircled the camp last month and tore down a barn protesters built at one of the Washington camps. She was running along the line of the police barricade, trying to keep tabs on her son, Eli, and the other protesters being flex-cuffed.

'Eli has been arrested,' announced Mrs Storr, who stood out in the crowd like an L.L. Bean model at an Amsterdam body piercing convention.

At that point, her 20-year-old son had been at McPherson Square for just over two months. And she had visited him at least 45 of those days. She'd volunteered in the camp kitchen. And she'd spent one night in the camps. 'Just one,' she explained, grabbing her back.

Logistically, the visits were easy, since she works just a few blocks away, at the Corcoran College of Art + Design.

Extreme helicopter parenting? Maybe.

But Mrs Storr is also a Quaker, so peaceful protest jibes with her beliefs. And she decided to immerse herself in the protests after getting to know the folk there and deciding that most of them are righteous.

Yes, she is proud of him, she told me. But no, it's not easy to see your kid live in a tent, and even harder to see him hauled off to jail.

She walked over to the police officers to tell them her son had been arrested and 'Hi, I'm Annie' and to just thank them - ahead of time - for treating the arrestees well.

All she got was a stone face from the cops. Deadpan.

That's okay. Any parent is used to that face, right?

THE WASHINGTON POST

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Let the Kids Play: They’ll Do Better in School

rst Lady Michelle Obama may be on to something with her unflagging “Let’s Move” admonitions — the latest research shows that physical activity may help children do better in school.

Amika Singh, a senior researcher at VU University in the Netherlands, reports in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine that physical activity is associated with better academic performance, as measured by higher GPAs and better scores on standardized tests. She and her colleagues reviewed 14 studies, some of which simply recorded the amount of physical activity that children, parents or teachers reported that youngsters got over three days to seven days prior to the study, and some of which randomly assigned students to varying amounts of exercise a day. Taken together, the studies showed that the more physical activity the children had, the higher their scores in school, particularly in the basic subjects of math, English and reading.

The data support earlier research that linked exercise with more productivity and fewer sick days for adults, and could fuel the ongoing debate over whether physical education classes should be cut from school programs due to budget constraints. According to the Centers for Disease Control, students should have about one hour of physical activity every day to remain healthy; only 18% of high school students met this requirement in the week prior to a 2009 survey and 23% had not exercised at all during that period. The argument for reducing the amount of school time devoted to physical education is based on the fact that standardized test scores for US children have been dropping in recent years, and some administrators believe gym time can be better used to boost academic performance.

But Singh and her team show that rather than impairing school performance, physical activity may actually improve grades, which could help to retain gym programs throughout the nation. The studies considered physical activity as any exercise children received from either school-based physical education classes or organized sports both inside and outside of school. Being more active, says Singh, may improve blood flow to the brain, which provides more oxygen to cells involved in learning and attention. Exercise also boosts levels of certain hormones that can improve mood and fight stress, both of which can also provide a better learning environment for children.

Singh says that the benefits of physical activity may extend beyond academic performance, however. “Children learn by participating in sports, learning rules, and learning to act appropriately in a social environment,” she says. “And that translates into the classroom, where children who are physically active may adhere better to classroom rules and get along better with teachers and classmates. So academic performance may just be the short term benefit of exercise; there are a whole range of social and behavioral benefits that go beyond grades as well.”

Let the Kids Play: They’ll Do Better in School


Think that physical activity is just good for the body? Turns out exercise can help youngsters do better in school too


Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/03/let-the-kids-play-theyll-do-better-in-school/#ixzz1iTO2iLUN

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/03/let-the-kids-play-theyll-do-better-in-school/#ixzz1iTNrRd28
One limitation of the analysis, however, is the fact that Singh deemed only two of the 14 studies as being high quality, meaning that the studies were set up in such as way that the both physical activity levels and academic performance were measured in a reliably objective way. Some of the studies depended on either the students or parents and teachers recalling how much exercise the children got over a certain period, and these surveys are always subject to bias.

Still, the findings hint that getting active may have long term benefits not just for the body, but for the brain as well. And the physical activity doesn’t have to occur in a single bout of hour-long exercise. Shorter periods of activity that break up the hours-long school day may be just as effective as a single session, and may make it easier to work in physical education into school curricula.



Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/03/let-the-kids-play-theyll-do-better-in-school/#ixzz1iTNmy3mm