spending

24Oct

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

BUSINESS, POLITICS

State Politics And Election Corporate Spending Can Affect Everything From Your Wallet To Your Health

Political spending by corporations is big business. As one corporate executive with experience in business-government relations says, “A company that is dependent on government that does not donate to politicians is engaging in corporate malpractice.” Our research group heard that statement during a series of interviews with industry insiders that we conducted for a study on corporate political strategy and involvement in U.S. state politics. In the 2020 election cycle, private interests spent US$486 million on campaign contributions to U.S. federal election candidates and over $7 billion to lobby Congress and federal agencies. The 2022 cycle could be a record period if recent trends are any indication. At the federal level, nine of the 10 most expensive Senate races to date happened du...

A Pandemic Solution Left Out Of A New Federal Spending Package – Schools Will Stop Serving Free Lunch To All Students

14Mar

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

EDUCATION

A Pandemic Solution Left Out Of A New Federal Spending Package – Schools Will Stop Serving Free Lunch To All Students

Public schools have been serving all students free meals since the COVID-19 pandemic first disrupted K-12 education. In March 2022, Congress rejected calls to keep up the federal funding required to sustain that practice and left that money out of a US$1.5 trillion spending package that President Joe Biden signed into law on March 11, 2022. We asked food policy expert Marlene Schwartz to explain why free meals make a difference and what will happen next. How did the COVID-19 pandemic initially affect the school lunch program? In March 2020, nearly all U.S. K-12 school buildings closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the federal government’s National School Lunch Program, quickly granted waivers to increase program flexibility and accommo...

Infrastructure Spending Into Trillions Of Dollars Could Mean Hundreds Of Billions In Fraud

28Sep

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS

Infrastructure Spending Into Trillions Of Dollars Could Mean Hundreds Of Billions In Fraud

Jetson Leder-Luis, Boston University The U.S. government may be on the verge of spending as much as US$4.5 trillion in what could be one of the biggest investments in infrastructure and the social safety net in decades. The House plans to vote on a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill on Sept. 30, 2021 – which was already approved by the Senate – and may soon follow that with up to $3.5 trillion in other investments. The measures’ passage – and the total to be spent – are still up in the air. But if either or both bills do become law, they would not only reflect massive new government spending that lawmakers see as investment, but also a serious target for fraud. Most government spending does reach the intended targets – like mass transit, clean energy and broadband internet – but...

Spending Millions On What’s Essentially A Link To A JPEG File – Why Would Anyone Buy Crypto Art

15Mar

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

CRYPTOMARKET

Spending Millions On What’s Essentially A Link To A JPEG File – Why Would Anyone Buy Crypto Art

As an academic researcher, developer of artistic technology and amateur artist, I was quite skeptical about crypto art when I first read about it several years ago. However, I follow a community of artists on social media, and some of the artists there whom I respect, like Mario Klingemann and Jason Bailey, embraced and advocated for crypto art. Within the past few months, activity and prices seemed to snowball. I started thinking it deserves to be taken seriously. Then the Beeple sale happened. On March 11, Beeple, a computer science graduate whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, auctioned a piece of crypto art at Christie’s for US$69 million. The winning bidder is now named in a digital record that confers ownership. This record, called a nonfungible token, or NFT, is stored in a share...

To Get Kids Moving, Reading And Talking Focus On Positive Goals – Not Spending So Much Time Staring At Screens

10Mar

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

EDUCATION

To Get Kids Moving, Reading And Talking Focus On Positive Goals – Not Spending So Much Time Staring At Screens

As vaccines become more available and life begins returning to so-called normal, caregivers and educators may have to contend with dramatically increased screen habits that kids developed during the pandemic. My research offers a positive – dare I say joyful – way to wean a child off of a screen habit. Instead of focusing on the excessive screen time, my approach focuses on the healthy activities that kids could be doing instead. Displaced activities Two theories explain the risks of excessive recreational screen time: the content theory and the displacement theory. The content theory – that what the children are watching or doing online is problematic – has received disproportionate attention. Most solutions that caregivers are familiar with, including co-viewing and being a media mento...

The US economy is reliant on consumer spending – can it survive a pandemic?

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

VIDEO REELS

The US economy is reliant on consumer spending – can it survive a pandemic?

The COVID-19 pandemic has radically affected the American economy, reducing spending by American households on materials goods, air travel, leisure activities as well as the use of automobiles. As a result, greenhouse gas emissions have temporarily fallen dramatically. While this may be a positive for the environment, the social price is high: Since the U.S. economy depends heavily on consumer spending, the country is experiencing the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression, the threat of homelessness for tens of thousands of people and a failure of businesses large and small. How did the U.S. arrive at the point whereby mass consumption – and the greenhouse gas emissions associated with it – is necessary for economic and social well-being? Are greenhouse gas reductions and a...

Trillions in coronavirus spending is putting AOC’s favorite economic theory to the test

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19

Trillions in coronavirus spending is putting AOC’s favorite economic theory to the test

French philosopher Voltaire famously quipped: “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” Something similar can be said of modern monetary theory, also known as MMT, because it may be the economy’s only hope to get through the pandemic. Coined by Australian economist Bill Mitchell and popularized recently by Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to fund programs such as the Green New Deal, MMT holds that a country with its own currency can spend almost unlimited sums of money. While government spending is normally financed by either taxes or borrowing, MMT suggests that governments can also do this by simply creating money. I’m currently working on a book chapter that examines various economic theories about government debt, including MMT. I believe this theory is...

Federal spending covers only 8% of public school budgets

15Jul

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

EDUCATION

Federal spending covers only 8% of public school budgets

State and local tax dollars cover the bulk of U.S. public school funding. The federal government spends just under US$55 billion per year on K-12 education, in addition to outlays for early childhood education and post-secondary programs like loans and grants for college tuition. CC BY-SA That’s just 8% of the total $720 billion it costs to run the nation’s public schools during the 2017-18 school year, the most recent national data available. This amounts to around $1,100 per K-12 student. Federal funding has never surpassed 10% of total public school funding, except from 2010 to 2012 when the federal government sought to reduce the school spending cuts local and state governments made during the Great Recession. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 sent $54 bill...