Friday, January 10

BUSINESS

As The Ever Given Fiasco Illustrates, Today’s Global Economy Runs On Standardized Shipping Containers
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BUSINESS

As The Ever Given Fiasco Illustrates, Today’s Global Economy Runs On Standardized Shipping Containers

Take a look around you. Perhaps you’re snacking on a banana, sipping some coffee or sitting in front of your computer and taking a break from work to read this article. Most likely, those goods – as well as your smartphone, refrigerator and virtually every other object in your home – were once loaded onto a large container in another country and traveled thousands of miles via ships crossing the ocean before ultimately arriving at your doorstep. Today, an estimated 90% of the world’s goods are transported by sea, with 60% of that – including virtually all your imported fruits, gadgets and appliances – packed in large steel containers. The rest is mainly commodities like oil or grains that are poured directly into the hull. In total, about US$14 trillion of the world’s goods spend some ti...
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Echoing A History Of Calls For Companies To Chip In When Times Are Tough, Biden Wants Corporations To Pay For His $2 Trillion Infrastructure Plans
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BUSINESS

Echoing A History Of Calls For Companies To Chip In When Times Are Tough, Biden Wants Corporations To Pay For His $2 Trillion Infrastructure Plans

President Joe Biden just proposed a roughly US$2 trillion infrastructure plan, which he ambitiously compared to the interstate highway system and the space race. He aims to pay for it solely by taxing companies more, including the first increase in the corporate tax rate since the 1960s. Biden said he wants to increase the rate from 21% to 28% – which would still be below the 35% level it was at before the 2017 tax cut – and strengthen the global minimum tax to discourage multinational corporations from using tax havens. Together, he estimates it would raise the necessary funds to finance his plan over 15 years. “No one should be able to complain about” raising the rate to 28%, Biden said in a speech announcing the plan. “It’s still lower than what that rate was between World War II and ...
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A Cryptocurrency Expert Explains NFTs – How Nonfungible Tokens Work And Where They Get Their Value
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BUSINESS, CRYPTOMARKET, TECHNOLOGY

A Cryptocurrency Expert Explains NFTs – How Nonfungible Tokens Work And Where They Get Their Value

Nonfungible tokens prove ownership of a digital item – image, sound file or text – in the same way that people own crypto coins. · Unlike crypto coins, which are identical and worth the same, NFTs are unique. · An NFT is worth what someone is willing to pay for it, which can be a lot if the NFT is made by a famous artist and the buyer is a wealthy collector. An attorney friend recently asked me out of the blue about nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. What prompted his interest was the sale of a collage composed of 5,000 digital pieces, auctioned by Christie’s on March 11, 2021, for a remarkable US$69 million. Mike Winkelmann, an artist known as Beeple, created this piece of digital art, made an NFT of it and offered it for sale. The bidding started at $100, and the rest of the auctioning pr...
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‘Myth Of The Founder’ Puts Tremendous Power In Hands Of Big Tech CEOs Like Zuckerberg – Posing Real Risks To Democracy
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BUSINESS

‘Myth Of The Founder’ Puts Tremendous Power In Hands Of Big Tech CEOs Like Zuckerberg – Posing Real Risks To Democracy

Coinbase’s plan to go public in April highlights a troubling trend among tech companies: Its founding team will maintain voting control, making it mostly immune to the wishes of outside investors. The best-known U.S. cryptocurrency exchange is doing this by creating two classes of shares. One class will be available to the public. The other is reserved for the founders, insiders and early investors, and will wield 20 times the voting power of regular shares. That will ensure that after all is said and done, the insiders will control 53.5% of the votes. Coinbase will join dozens of other publicly traded tech companies – many with household names such as Google, Facebook, Doordash, Airbnb and Slack – that have issued two types of shares in an effort to retain control for founders and insid...
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Instead Of A Place Where You Can Lose Your Life Savings In A New York Minute – Robinhood App Makes Wall Street Feel Like A Game To Win
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BUSINESS, VIDEO REELS

Instead Of A Place Where You Can Lose Your Life Savings In A New York Minute – Robinhood App Makes Wall Street Feel Like A Game To Win

Wall Street has long been likened to a casino. Robinhood, an investment app that just filed plans for an initial public offering, makes the comparison more apt than ever. That’s because the power of the casino is the way it makes people feel like gambling their money away is a game. Casinos are full of mood lighting, fun noises and other sensory details that reward gamblers when they place coins in slots. Similarly, Robinhood’s slick and easy-to-use app resembles a thrill-inducing video game rather than a sober investment tool. The color palette of red and green is associated with mood, with green having a calming effect and red increasing arousal, anger and negative emotions. Picking stocks can seem like a fun lottery of scratching off the winning ticket; celebratory confetti drops from...
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Cash Payments: Why They Aren’t Always The Best Tool To Help The Poor
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BUSINESS, IN OTHER NEWS

Cash Payments: Why They Aren’t Always The Best Tool To Help The Poor

The concept is simple and seductive: Give people cash, lift them out of poverty. It’s a strategy increasingly being used in both lower- and higher-income countries to help poor people. International organizations such as the World Bank, USAID and the United Nations are funding more projects that focus on giving people cash, while charities like GiveDirectly have been set up to do only that. Mexico, Brazil and Kenya are leading examples of countries that have already implemented ambitious guaranteed income programs of their own. The U.S. is also experimenting more with cash payments. The US$1.9 trillion relief package, for example, will give recurring payments to most families with children. Stockton, California – the first U.S. city to give low-income people cash with no strings attached...
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Freedom Of The Press: Why Lawsuits Against The Media May Not Hurt
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BUSINESS

Freedom Of The Press: Why Lawsuits Against The Media May Not Hurt

Free speech advocates have long believed that suing a news organization threatens free speech. Democracy needs a press to be free to report, without fear or favor, the facts as it sees them. But two recent legal actions against news organizations indicate that the First Amendment provides sufficient free speech protection, even when punishing lawsuits are filed against the press. Falsehoods have flooded public discourse in recent years through outlets including talk radio, cable TV channels and social media such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit and Instagram. The proliferation of these falsehoods has seemingly normalized the practice of spreading lies. Earlier this year Smartmatic, a little-known voter technology firm, sued cable channel Fox News for US$2.7 billion alleging defamat...
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It’s Designed To Encourage But The Patent System Often Stifles Innovation
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BUSINESS

It’s Designed To Encourage But The Patent System Often Stifles Innovation

Over his career Thomas Edison garnered more U.S. patents than anyone in his time. Edison profited from his patents, but he was also exposed to the dark side of the patent system. He had to contend with lawsuits by other patentees who sought – and sometimes won – a piece of his success. While the patent system is designed to spur innovation like Edison’s, it also hampers it. Easy copying and imitation discourage innovation, because why make the effort if someone else will profit from it? The patent system works by enabling inventors to block unauthorized use of patented technology. Most technologies are developed by many inventors over many years, a process called “cumulative” innovation. Too often, however, early inventors get a patent on a small and perhaps insignificant piece of the te...
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4 Essential Reads: A Jolt Of Economic Relief – The US Delivers $1.9 Trillion
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BUSINESS

4 Essential Reads: A Jolt Of Economic Relief – The US Delivers $1.9 Trillion

The U.S. economy and millions of people struggling because of the pandemic are about to get a US$1.9 trillion jolt of stimulating relief. On March 10, the House of Representatives approved a version of President Joe Biden’s coronavirus package that barely squeezed through the Senate. Both votes were almost entirely along party lines. Biden signed the bill into law on March 11. The legislation includes $1,400 relief checks for most Americans, an extension of the $300 supplement for the unemployed, a more generous child tax credit and much more. We turned to our archive to provide some context on this historic legislation. 1. About those $1,400 checks Among the signature – and most popular – features of the package are the $1,400 payments most Americans will soon receive. There was some w...
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4 Questions Answered: A Monthly Allowance For Millions Of American Parents Soon
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BUSINESS

4 Questions Answered: A Monthly Allowance For Millions Of American Parents Soon

The federal government’s US$1.9 trillion relief package Congress passed on March 10 will temporarily expand the child tax credit. This credit, currently pegged at up to $2,000 a year per child until they turn 17, will instead total $3,600 for children under 6 and $3,000 for kids up to the age of 18 over the next 12 months. Starting in July, the Internal Revenue Service will distribute half this money to most families with children in monthly payments of either $250 or $300 per child. The IRS will deliver the balance at tax time in 2022. The Conversation U.S. asked Joya Misra, a sociologist who studies how public policies influence inequality, four questions about this new temporary benefit. 1. Why are families with children getting these benefits? This program builds on the existing chil...
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