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November 22, 2017
Every Entrepreneur Should Make The Time To Read These 5 Classics
Nicolas ColeFollow
Writer | Founder of Digital Press | 3x Top Writer on Quora | Top 30 Inc Magazine columnist | 50M+ Views http://www.nicolascole.com
Nov 20
Every Entrepreneur Should Make The Time To Read These 5 Classics
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There are a few books out there that have stood the test of time in the business world.
They helped shape the industry years ago, and they continue to remain true to this day.
If you have high aspirations for yourself and haven’t read these five books, you are doing yourself a disservice.
They are well worth the time.
1. “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill
This is, undoubtedly, the single greatest book about business ever written.
There is a reason why it is one of the best-selling books of all time.
It is a culmination of lessons learned from some of the world’s greatest thinkers and innovators, and Hill breaks down the lessons in easily digestible chapters that focus on so much more than just “motivational language.”
He gives clear and concise instructions for how you can begin implementing what he’s saying, right now.
The best part is, although this book was written in 1937, its lessons are as true today as they were back then. It is the quintessential example of what it takes to become truly successful.
As Hill says, “What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
2. “How To Win Friends And Influence People” by Dale Carnegie
When it comes to personal development, nobody quite succeeds as eloquently as Dale Carnegie.
This book breaks down the game of life in astounding detail, admitting the simple truths many of us don’t want to acknowledge — for example, “People do business with their friends.”
He instructs in careful detail how to become more likable, how to create report, and the value of prioritizing the interpersonal element of business.
This reason this book has remained relevant for so long and cemented itself as a classic is because it relates to so much more than just business. This book will make you a better person.
3. “The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey
If you’re new to the self development game then this is a great place to start.
Covey does an amazing job at breaking down the pillars of industry leaders and explaining the importance of practice.
He focuses far less on theory and far more on daily discipline and accountability.
For Covey, effectiveness is not a talent or a trait, it is a practice — and this book explains how you can implement that sort of daily discipline into your life.
4. “Leadership and Self Deception” by The Arbinger Institute
This isn’t one of the more well-known books out there, but it is a gem to those that discover it.
This book is a narrative that teaches some of the toughest lessons in business by showing a relationship between a boss and an up-and-coming manager.
One of the themes in this book is the idea of not being “in the box” — in other words, maintaining a level of self awareness that allows you to see the bigger picture of what’s happening in any given moment.
This is a fast and enjoyable read, and not quite as heady as some of the other business books out there. It’s also a fantastic book to help you come to terms with whether you are working with or for a true leader, or a dictator.
5. “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki
And finally, a classic when it comes to personal finance, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” will change the way you approach money forever.
It takes what many people consider to be a confusing topic and makes it so painfully simple that you’ll wonder how you didn’t understand it sooner.
When it comes to business of any kind, finance is a pillar that requires the utmost attention and mastery. According to Kiyosaki, it all starts with your habits and the way you treat money. In order to be successful, you need to have a positive relationship with your finances, and that means acting out of discipline instead of impulse.
All five of these books need to be on your bookshelf.
Even if you aren’t a big reader (which you should be), they will serve as reminders to their enclosed principles — and sometimes, a reminder is all you need to stay on track.
This article originally appeared in Inc Magazine.
Thanks for reading! 
November 21, 2017
Help Ban Elephant Trophies from Zimbabwe!
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Last week, President Trump made it easier for hunters to kill imperiled African elephants in Zimbabwe and bring the trophies back to the U.S. Due to the overwhelming public backlash, Trump did put the decision “on hold,” but that hold is only temporary — the President could quietly begin issuing elephant trophy permits any time.
To protect elephants, the U.S. suspended elephant trophy imports from Zimbabwe in 2015 because the country failed to protect its elephants. Now, Zimbabwe is embroiled in political turmoil under a military coup, making it even more difficult for the country to take the necessary action to save this majestic species from extinction.
A “hold” is not enough. Tell President Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to completely revoke their decision allowing elephant trophy imports from Zimbabwe.
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In search of common ground on school discipline reform
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In search of common ground on school discipline reform
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Michael J. Petrilli
November 20, 2017
The controversy brewing over Obama-era school discipline policy has all the makings of a polarizing debate. For progressives, it taps into deeply held beliefs about fairness and justice. And for conservatives, it taps into deeply held beliefs about order and safety. Throw in race, Donald Trump, and Betsy DeVos, and you have a potentially toxic stew.
That’s a shame because this is an issue that desperately needs pragmatism and a good-spirited search for common ground. Let me propose how we might find it.
First a little background: In 2014, the Department of Education and Department of Justice published a “dear colleague” letter addressing discipline disparities by race and special education status in public schools. It was lauded by civil rights groups—and bemoaned by conservatives—for applying “disparate impact theory” to the issue of school discipline. In effect, it said that districts could be investigated for violating students’ civil rights if data collected by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights showed significant disproportionality—as would happen when, for example, African Americans were suspended by their schools at higher rates than whites. It also stated that districts could be found in violation of civil rights laws even if their discipline policies were race-neutral and applied evenhandedly. As with other Obama-era policy moves, this one never went through the formal regulatory process; rather, it took the form of a very long letter that local education leaders were expected to treat as official enough to guide their actions.
This particular policy change was part of a larger movement led by groups such as the NAACP and the Advancement Project to push schools to dramatically reduce suspensions and other types of “exclusionary discipline.” Dozens of large districts took up the cause of their own volition. Some states got into the action, too, such as by including suspension rates in their ESSA accountability systems as a way to nudge schools to find other approaches. All of this is motivated by national data showing big gaps in suspensions by race, and by the belief that exclusionary discipline can put students into a “school-to-prison pipeline.”
The Trump Administration now faces a decision—namely whether to rescind the 2014 guidance. Many of us conservatives have been urging them to do so, and on Friday I helped to arrange a listening session at the Education Department with some former teachers and parents from the Twin Cities region who came to Washington to share their personal stories about the unintended consequences of school discipline reform. To my surprise, this became big news both nationally and in Minnesota. Upon reflection, I should have known that when I told Politico’s Morning Education about the meeting it would be irresistible to the wider press. And sure enough that one little meeting—where teachers and former teachers spoke and Education Department staffers mostly just listened—has already inflamed passions, both here in Washington and back in the teachers’ hometowns.
***
That’s the backstory. Now, how can we search for solutions—and maybe lower the temperature?
First, we need to acknowledge the legitimate concerns of partisans on both sides of this debate.
Conservatives need to recognize that when African American and Latino students are suspended or expelled at three to four times the rate of their white peers, it is bound to raise suspicions about discrimination and systemic racism. We cannot ignore the possibility that some of this is caused by bias, implicit or otherwise.
And progressives need to understand that conservatives have a valid point when we worry about schools responding badly to new discipline mandates and becoming unsafe and disorderly. Teachers and students need to feel secure in their classrooms, and all kids deserve an environment that’s conducive to learning.
Where we can find common ground is in the view that suspensions and expulsions should be as rare as possible and that schools need to be as safe as possible. These values may feel like they are competing, but many great schools have found ways to thread this needle.
It starts with creating a culture where students feel safe, respected, and engaged. Everyone is held to high expectations—both in terms of work effort and behavior—but every adult’s goal is to help students meet those expectations almost all the time. In the rare cases when students fall short and act out (or worse), the schools have a clear, fair, and constructive process in place to handle the situation.
That’s what great schools do—and have always done. The problem is that too many schools are not like this. They have weak cultures, lackluster leadership, and low expectations. They respond reactively to misbehavior, and especially violence, and end up suspending or expelling many students. Most such schools—let’s call them “Suspension Factories”—serve high populations of poor and minority children, and thus they account for a big portion of the racial disparities we see in discipline rates nationwide.
How to deal with such dysfunctional schools is the heart of the problem. And here we should recognize that (as in everything else pertaining to dysfunctional schools, including academic achievement) there are no simple answers. Many progressives have concluded that it would help if we held such schools accountable for reducing suspension and expulsion rates. And thus they have supported moves to do exactly that, whether at the federal, state, or local level.
We conservatives, meanwhile, worry about the law of unintended consequences and what Daniel Patrick Moynihan once called “maximum feasible misunderstanding.” We worry that dysfunctional schools will respond to discipline mandates in the most thoughtless ways possible: not by building a stronger school culture or creating more engaging learning environments, but by simply throwing out a tool that has helped them avoid total chaos.
We are not surprised, then, when we hear stories like I (and the education department staffers) heard last week from teachers who were verbally and physically attacked by studentsand who got no support from higher-ups fearful of violating new discipline mandates. It’s impossible to avoid feeling empathy for such teachers, who are trying to uphold high standards and some degree of adult authority, and who are frustrated by policymakers who did not see such outcomes coming and betrayed by administrators who were cowed by those policies. We also worry about young peers of the disruptive students, who are equally likely to suffer—physically, emotionally, and in terms of lost opportunities for learning and upward mobility.
As Randi Weingarten tweeted last week, perhaps channeling her inner Al Shanker, “Safe and welcoming environments, clear codes that are equitably (not discriminatively) enforced are key—with resources that back it up. Not top-down mandates from superintendents or threats to teachers that if they report or take action they will be disciplined.”
If there’s anything the past two decades have taught us, it’s that some schools will respond to well-intentioned mandates with boneheaded stupidity or worse. Tell dysfunctional schools to get all students to proficiency, or else, and they will teach to the test or cheat. Tell dysfunctional high schools to get all students to graduation, or else, and they will pay for dubious “credit recovery” programs. And tell dysfunctional high schools—Suspension Factories—to reduce suspensions, and they will tie teachers’ hands and turn into war zones.
Policymakers can’t wish these realities away.
***
What’s next? In my view, the 2014 guidance needs to go because, whether intentional or not, it is scaring schools into reducing suspensions even when they haven’t done the hard work of improving their culture or of training their staff on other approaches. This is a recipe for disaster.
At the same time, all of us should embrace the work to help schools—especially the Suspension Factories—get better. Such efforts have a better chance of success if they are motivated by a bottom-up desire for continuous improvement, not a fearful response to top-down mandates.
Meanwhile, the Office for Civil Rights should continue to investigate individual complaints of discrimination and hold districts accountable when they treat students differently because of their race or other protected class.
Those three steps make for an agenda that should garner widespread support—if we can learn to trust one another again.
MICHAEL J. PETRILLI is the President of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
Archive @MichaelPetrilli
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November 20, 2017
Tarnishing the Golden and Empire States: Land-Use Restrictions and the U.S. Economic Slowdown
Kyle F. Herkenhoff, Visiting Scholar
Lee E. Ohanian, Consultant
Edward C. Prescott, Senior Monetary Advisor
November 2017 | Journal of Monetary Economics, In Press
This paper studies the impact of state-level land-use restrictions on U.S. economic activity, focusing on how these restrictions have depressed macroeconomic activity since 2000. We use a variety of state-level data sources, together with a general equilibrium spatial model of the United States to systematically construct a panel dataset of state-level land-use restrictions between 1950 and 2014. We show that these restrictions have generally tightened over time, particularly in California and New York. We use the model to analyze how these restrictions affect economic activity and the allocation of workers and capital across states. Counterfactual experiments show that deregulating existing urban land from 2014 regulation levels back to 1980 levels would have increased US GDP and productivity roughly to their current trend levels. California, New York, and the Mid-Atlantic region expand the most in these counterfactuals, drawing population out of the South and the Rustbelt. General equilibrium effects, particularly the reallocation of capital across states, account for much of these gains.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmoneco.2017.11.001
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