BUSINESS – Page 9

Questions Answered: Can The World Hunger Problem Be Solved By Elon Musk And His $6 billion?

10Nov

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

BUSINESS

Questions Answered: Can The World Hunger Problem Be Solved By Elon Musk And His $6 billion?

Jessica Eise, The University of Texas at San Antonio Elon Musk hinted on Oct. 31, 2021, perhaps jokingly, that he might be willing to donate US$6 billion of his fortune to pay for hunger relief. But there was a catch: The United Nations would have to prove that it can solve world hunger “right now.” His comments responded to a challenge U.N. World Food Program director David Beasley lobbed at Jeff Bezos and Musk — to “step up now, on a one-time basis” to help solve world hunger. “$6 billion to help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don’t reach them. It’s not complicated,” Beasley said in an October 2021 CNN interview, a year after he called on billionaires to pitch in with $5 billion. Here, social scientist Jessica Eise, who edited a book titled “How to Feed the Worl...

Biden Tried Taxing US Billionaires’ Wealth – Why It Will Never Work

2Nov

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BUSINESS

Biden Tried Taxing US Billionaires’ Wealth – Why It Will Never Work

Beverly Moran, Vanderbilt University The speed with which a tax on billionaires came and went as a means to pay for President Joe Biden’s economic agenda shows why it’s so hard to tax wealth in the U.S. Democrats unveiled their proposal on Oct. 27, 2021, and it was nixed that same day, replaced with a surcharge on millionaire incomes. The idea of taxing the richest Americans’ fortunes has been batted around for some time, and perhaps with good reason from a tax perspective. The total wealth of U.S. billionaires soared by US$1.8 trillion during the COVID-19 pandemic as of mid-August. And recent reporting has found that despite their massive riches, billionaires tend to pay very little in taxes. As an expert on tax policy, I have observed that there’s a big obstacle standing in the way o...

Using Sportslike Rankings To Guide Development Goals – The Scandal Involving World Bank’s ‘Doing Business’ Index

18Oct

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

BUSINESS

Using Sportslike Rankings To Guide Development Goals – The Scandal Involving World Bank’s ‘Doing Business’ Index

Fernanda G Nicola, American University The World Bank, a behemoth of an organization that provides tens of billions of dollars in aid to mostly developing countries, is in the middle of one of its biggest scandals since being founded in 1944. The crux of the crisis relates to its Doing Business Index, which ranks the ease of opening and operating companies in 190 countries. In September 2021, an investigation alleged that senior leadership at the bank manipulated the index’s data in response to pressure from China and Saudi Arabia. The scandal has already caused the bank to suspend publication of the index and prompted calls for further investigations. Some have also demanded the resignations of officials identified in the report, such as Kristalina Georgieva, who was formerly CEO at th...

The Latest Jobs Data May Look Disappointing, But Leisure And Transportation Sectors Give Reason For Cheer

11Oct

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BUSINESS

The Latest Jobs Data May Look Disappointing, But Leisure And Transportation Sectors Give Reason For Cheer

Edouard Wemy, Clark University On first glance, October’s jobs report may not be anything to cheer about. Released on Oct. 8, 2021, it shows that just 194,000 jobs were added in the month – well short of the 400,000-plus figure that many economists had predicted. But when you delve deeper, the latest employment data shows encouraging signs for the future of the U.S. economy. Yes, job creation does appear to be slowing down. And this could be a result of ongoing concerns over the COVID-19 delta variant, with companies unsure of where the pandemic will head next. But with the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of a booster shot and figures showing that cases for delta have begun to fall, the forecasts from companies may be turning rosier in the coming months. And even with job creat...

How Facebook’s Algorithms Are Dangerous And Can Manipulate You – Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen Testified

3Apr

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BUSINESS, VIDEO REELS

How Facebook’s Algorithms Are Dangerous And Can Manipulate You – Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen Testified

Filippo Menczer, Indiana University Former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen testified before the U.S. Senate on Oct. 5, 2021, that the company’s social media platforms “harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy.” Haugen was the primary source for a Wall Street Journal exposé on the company. She called Facebook’s algorithms dangerous, said Facebook executives were aware of the threat but put profits before people, and called on Congress to regulate the company. Social media platforms rely heavily on people’s behavior to decide on the content that you see. In particular, they watch for content that people respond to or “engage” with by liking, commenting and sharing. Troll farms, organizations that spread provocative content, exploit this by copying high-engagement con...

Here Are 10 Tips For Staying Safe And Avoiding Scams While Shopping Online During The Pandemic

7Oct

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BUSINESS

Here Are 10 Tips For Staying Safe And Avoiding Scams While Shopping Online During The Pandemic

The holiday season is already a booming time for online shopping. The COVID-19 pandemic only increases the likelihood that when people shop this holiday season, they will choose online shopping over brick-and-mortar stores. However, this also means there is likely to be a boom in online scams. Already, multiple companies from outside the U.S. are advertising relatively unchecked on the internet, selling – or even just pretending to sell – all manner of products. The items are typically advertised using designs stolen from legitimate businesses and artists, often ripped off from Etsy, especially if those designs have been featured on popular sites like Bored Panda. When people buy these scam products, what arrives is typically of low quality. That’s if anything ever arrives. Often the com...

Sen. Joe Manchin’s Support For Natural Gas Could Derail Biden’s US Climate Plan

3Apr

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BUSINESS, VIDEO REELS

Sen. Joe Manchin’s Support For Natural Gas Could Derail Biden’s US Climate Plan

Michael Oppenheimer, Princeton University President Joe Biden has a goal for all U.S. electricity to come from zero-carbon sources by 2035. To get there, he’s counting on Congress to approve an ambitious package of incentives and penalties designed to encourage utilities to clean up their power sources. That plan, part of the Democrats’ proposed budget package, may be in trouble. Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat who has close ties to the coal, oil and gas industries and concerns about the speed of Biden’s planned emissions cuts, will oversee that part of the budget as chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Manchin has emphasized using “all energy sources” as “cleanly as possible” and described the idea of eliminating fossil fuels as “very, very disturbing.”...

Getting Goods To Amazon Warehouses, Store Shelves And Your Door In Time For Christmas Highlights The Importance Of The Global Shortage Of Shipping Containers

21Sep

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BUSINESS

Getting Goods To Amazon Warehouses, Store Shelves And Your Door In Time For Christmas Highlights The Importance Of The Global Shortage Of Shipping Containers

Anna Nagurney, University of Massachusetts Amherst 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 – once were 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, abo...

America’s First Known Black Master Distiller – The Story Of Nearest Green

5Apr

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BUSINESS

America’s First Known Black Master Distiller – The Story Of Nearest Green

On The Record Stefanie Benjamin, University of Tennessee When you hear the name Jack Daniel, whiskey probably comes to mind. But what about the name Nathan “Uncle Nearest” Green? In 2016, The New York Times published a story about the distiller’s “hidden ingredient” – “help from a slave.” In the article, the brand officially acknowledged that an enslaved man, Nearest Green, taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey. Since then, scholars, researchers and journalists have descended upon Lynchburg, Tennessee, hoping to learn more about a man who, until then, had appeared as a mere appendage in the story of the country’s most popular whiskey brand. As a scholar of tourism whose research involves highlighting marginalized populations and counternarratives, I followed these developments with k...

Great For Anyone In Need Of Cheap Legal Assistance But Bad For Tomorrow’s Attorneys – Robots Are Coming For The Lawyers

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

Great For Anyone In Need Of Cheap Legal Assistance But Bad For Tomorrow’s Attorneys – Robots Are Coming For The Lawyers

Elizabeth C. Tippett, University of Oregon and Charlotte Alexander, Georgia State University Imagine what a lawyer does on a given day: researching cases, drafting briefs, advising clients. While technology has been nibbling around the edges of the legal profession for some time, it’s hard to imagine those complex tasks being done by a robot. And it is those complicated, personalized tasks that have led technologists to include lawyers in a broader category of jobs that are considered pretty safe from a future of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence. But, as we discovered in a recent research collaboration to analyze legal briefs using a branch of artificial intelligence known as machine learning, lawyers’ jobs are a lot less safe than we thought. It turns out that you don’t ne...