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hannahcarter11

Illinois gun sales are outpacing the rest of the country amid nationwide surge - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

illinois gun surge background check

shared by hannahcarter11 on 04 May 21 - No Cached
  • Concerns about looming gun control legislation and rising crime continued to fuel gun sales in America throughout the month of April, according to industry observers.
  • The FBI conducted more than 3.5 million gun-related background checks last month, a 20% year-over-year increase from April 2020, according to the latest FBI figures released Monday.
  • Nearly 1.7 million of those gun background checks were specifically for gun purchases,
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  • "Firearm sales spiked in March 2020 and have remained at unprecedented levels since. It's a remarkable feat of firearm manufacturers to keep pace with this blistering demand."
  • No state has seen more gun sales this year than Illinois.
  • Illinois' FOID Act, which requires gun purchasers to obtain a special ID from state police, was established in 1968, but the system was overwhelmed with requests a year ago when the pandemic fueled a national surge in first-time gun buyers.
  • "We continue to sell everything that comes into the store within a couple of days," Eldridge said. "When people that live in high crime areas hear a lot of talk and even legislative action to defund the police, it's reasonable for them to take steps to protect themselves."
  • Eldridge and Oliva said gun sales have been limited by supply. Since the panemic began, Americans buying firearms faster than gun makers can manufacture them.
  • April gun sales across the nation were down 25% from March, which set a new record for monthly gun sales thanks to a series of high-profile mass shootings that spurred President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress to push for passing new federal gun control measures that would expand background check requirements and limit or ban future sales of so-called assault weapons.
mariedhorne

U.S. Retail Sales Fell 0.7% in December as Covid-19 Cases Rose - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...ronavirus-recovery-11610676272

covid-19 economy

shared by mariedhorne on 18 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Retail sales, a measure of purchases at stores, restaurants and online, declined a seasonally adjusted 0.7% in December from the prior month, the Commerce Department said Friday. That marked the third consecutive month of declines, and November’s retail sales were revised lower to a 1.4% drop, after a stretch of growth last spring and summer.
  • According to the National Retail Federation, holiday sales rose 8.3% compared with the same period a year ago, exceeding the trade group’s estimate of a 3.6% to 5.2% increase. Home-improvement and online retailers posted big gains, while sales at apparel chains and department stores—which historically tend to do well during the season—continued to decline. Holiday sales exclude restaurants, gasoline and auto sales, and measure the year-over-year gains in the combined November-December period.
  • Recent private-sector data suggested a mixed start to this year. NPD Group, which tracks retailers, said Thursday that sales at retailers focused on items such as apparel and personal-care products increased 27% in the week ended Jan. 9—the largest increase in that category since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s tracker of 30 million credit and debit cardholders recorded a 2.7% decline in spending from a year earlier in the week through Jan. 11.
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  • Physical traffic to retail stores fell sharply this holiday season, according to firms that use sensors and cameras to track in-store shopping. Between Nov. 22 and Jan. 2, store traffic dropped 33% year-over-year, according to Sensormatic Solutions, which uses cameras and software to track visits to thousands of malls and shopping centers. By contrast, in November and December online sales grew 32.2% year-over-year to $188.2 billion,
katyshannon

Connecticut to Ban Gun Sales to Those on Federal Terrorism Lists - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...n-federal-terrorism-lists.html

ban gun sales federal terrorism lists new york times politics us crisis

shared by katyshannon on 11 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • “Like all Americans, I have been horrified by the recent terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and Paris,” Mr. Malloy, a Democrat, told reporters. “This should be a wake-up call to all of us. This is a moment to seize in America, and today I’m here to say that we in Connecticut are seizing it.”
  • Connecticut to Ban Gun Sales to Those on Federal Terrorism Lists
  • While Democrats in Congress have been calling almost daily for a fix to the so-called watch list loophole, Republicans have succeeded in defeating measures that would prevent people on the lists from buying guns. Democrats say they intend to keep pushing the issue, and on Thursday the House Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, introduced a motion demanding a vote to restrict the sale of guns from anyone on a federal terrorism watch list. House Republicans swiftly shelved it.
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  • “What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semiautomatic weapon?” Mr. Obama said. “This is a matter of national security.”
  • “Seems to me that the greatest importance of this is to get the ball rolling so more people follow, and ideally the federal government,” Mr. Webster said. “I suspect more states will do this.”
  • own a gun.
  • Connecticut has passed some of the strictest gun laws in the country, including measures enacted after the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, when a gunman killed 20 schoolchildren and six staff members before killing himself.
  • The National Rifle Association “does not want terrorists or dangerous people to have access to weapons,” said Jennifer Baker, a spokeswoman for the organization’s lobbying arm. “But this is a constitutional issue,” she said, adding that mere suspicion should not be enough to take away the righ
  • The no-fly list is a subset of the watch list.
  • Correction: December 10, 2015 An earlier version of this article, using information from state officials, erroneously attributed a distinction to the proposed measure in Connecticut. It would not be the first such law in the nation; at least one other state has such a ban.
  • “These are everyday Americans that have nothing to do with terrorism,” Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a Republican candidate for president, told CNN. “They wind up on the no-fly list, there’s no due process or any way to get your name removed from it in a timely fashion, and now they’re having their Second Amendment rights being impeded upon.”
  • Abe Mashal, a former Marine and a Muslim of mixed Palestinian-Italian background who lives in the Chicago area, was on the no-fly list until last year, for reasons he said were still a mystery to him.
  • “Never had any trouble with that,” he said of the gun purchase.
  • Since 2004, there have been 2,233 people who, like Mr. Mashal, landed on the government’s no-fly list because of terrorism suspicions and applied to buy a gun, according to a recent review of F.B.I. data by the Government Accountability Office.
  • But only rarely are legal reasons found to prohibit the sale, according to federal auditors. Since the F.B.I. began tracking the data, only 190 gun sales to people on the list — or 8.5 percent of all the attempted sales — have been blocked for other reasons, including mental illness or criminal convictions, auditors found.
  • But Democrats say increased fears of domestic terrorism stoked by the recent gun attacks in San Bernardino and in Paris are reason enough to stop people on a watch list from being able to buy a gun.
  • Mr. Malloy has lobbied federal lawmakers on the issue. “I have previously written to Congress on this matter,” he said. “But inaction is not an option. So here in Connecticut, we are acting.
  • The federal government’s terrorism watch list is a database maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center, an arm of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
  • “Like all Americans, I have been horrified by the recent terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and Paris,” Mr. Malloy, a Democrat, told reporters. “This should be a wake-up call to all of us. This is a moment to seize in America, and today I’m here to say that we in Connecticut are seizing it.”
  • With his decision, Mr. Malloy has stepped into a fiery debate that has stretched from the Oval Office to the contest to become its next occupant: Should being a terrorism suspect prohibit a person from buying firearms? At the moment, it does not.
  • With the mass shooting in California last week focusing attention on terrorism and guns, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut announced on Thursday that he intended to sign an executive order barring people on federal terrorism watch lists from buying firearms in the state.
  • President Obama has moved it to the front of his continuing push for stricter gun restrictions. “Congress should act to make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun,” he said in
  • While Democrats in Congress have been calling almost daily for a fix to the so-called watch list loophole, Republicans have succeeded in defeating measures that would prevent people on the lists from buying guns. Democrats say they intend to keep pushing the issue, and on Thursday the House Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, introduced a motion demanding a vote to restrict the sale of guns from anyone on a federal terrorism watch list. House Republicans swiftly shelved it.
  • What some critics have called a startling gap in the law has gnawed at counterterrorism officials for years. But it has now emerged as a flash point following the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., in which a married couple who the authorities believe were inspired by foreign extremists killed 14 people using legally obtained firearms.
  • But the argument, gun rights advocates say, is a matter of due process. They say that the no-fly list — with tens of thousands of names on it — is unreliable, with innocent people like Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts senator who died in 2009, and other well-known Americans wrongly placed on the list.
  • While federal gun control legislation has gone nowhere in recent years, certain states have had more success. Connecticut has passed some of the strictest gun laws in the country, including measures enacted after the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, when a gunman killed 20 schoolchildren and six staff members before killing himself.
  • Daniel Webster, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, said it was unclear what the practical implications of Connecticut’s proposed ban would be in stopping someone who is determined to carry out an act of terrorism. That person could simply travel to another state.
Javier E

How OnlyFans top earner Bryce Adams makes millions selling a sex fantasy - Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ms-top-earners-creator-economy

fantasy sex onlyfans social media

shared by Javier E on 09 Nov 23 - No Cached
  • In the American creator economy, no platform is quite as direct or effective as OnlyFans. Since launching in 2016, the subscription site known primarily for its explicit videos has become one of the most methodical, cash-rich and least known layers of the online-influencer industry, touching every social platform and, for some creators, unlocking a once-unimaginable level of wealth.
  • More than 3 million creators now post around the world on OnlyFans, which has 230 million subscribing “fans” — a global audience two-thirds the size of the United States itself
  • fans’ total payouts to creators soared last year to $5.5 billion — more than every online influencer in the United States earned from advertisers that year,
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  • If OnlyFans’s creator earnings were taken as a whole, the company would rank around No. 90 on Forbes’s list of the biggest private companies in America by revenue, ahead of Twitter (now called X), Neiman Marcus Group, New Balance, Hard Rock International and Hallmark Cards.
  • Many creators now operate like independent media companies, with support staffs, growth strategies and promotional budgets, and work to apply the cold quantification and data analytics of online marketing to the creation of a fantasy life.
  • The subscription site has often been laughed off as a tabloid punchline, a bawdy corner of the internet where young, underpaid women (teachers, nurses, cops) sell nude photos, get found out and lose their jobs.
  • pressures to perform for a global audience; an internet that never forgets. “There is simply no room for naivety,” one said in a guide posted to Reddit’s r/CreatorsAdvice.
  • America’s social media giants for years have held up online virality as the ultimate goal, doling out measurements of followers, reactions and hearts with an unspoken promise: that internet love can translate into sponsorships and endorsement deals
  • But OnlyFans represents the creator economy at its most blatantly transactional — a place where viewers pay upfront for creators’ labor, and intimacy is just another unit of content to monetize.
  • The fast ascent of OnlyFans further spotlights how the internet has helped foster a new style of modern gig work that creators see as safe, remote and self-directed,
  • Creators’ nonchalance about the digital sex trade has fueled a broader debate about whether the site’s promotion of feminist autonomy is a facade: just a new class of techno-capitalism, selling the same patriarchal dream.
  • But OnlyFans increasingly has become the model for how a new generation of online creators gets paid. Influencers popular on mainstream sites use it to capitalize on the audiences they’ve spent years building. And OnlyFans creators have turned going viral on the big social networks into a marketing strategy, using Facebook, Twitter and TikTok as sales funnels for getting new viewers to subscribe.
  • many creators, she added, still find it uniquely alluring — a rational choice in an often-irrational environment for gender, work and power. “Why would I spend my day doing dirty, degrading, minimum-wage labor when I can do something that brings more money in and that I have a lot more control over?”
  • it is targeting major “growth regions” in Latin America, Europe and Australia. (The Mexican diver Diego Balleza said he is using his $15-a-month account to save up for next year’s Paris Olympics.)
  • “Does an accountant always enjoy their work? No. All work has pleasure and pain, and a lot of it is boring and annoying. Does that mean they’re being exploited?”
  • Adams’s operation is registered in state business records as a limited liability company and offers quarterly employee performance reviews and catered lunch. It also runs with factory-like efficiency, thanks largely to a system designed in-house to track millions of data points on customers and content and ensure every video is rigorously planned and optimized.
  • Since sending her first photo in 2021, Adams’s OnlyFans accounts have earned $16.5 million in sales, more than 1.4 million fans and more than 11 million “likes.” She now makes about $30,000 a day — more than most American small businesses — from subscriptions, video sales, messages and tips, half of which is pure profit
  • Adams’s team sees its business as one of harmless, destigmatized gratification, in which both sides get what they want. The buyers are swiped over in dating apps, widowed, divorced or bored, eager to pay for the illusion of intimacy with an otherwise unattainable match. And the sellers see themselves as not all that different from the influencers they watched growing up on YouTube, charging for parts of their lives they’d otherwise share for free.
  • “This is normal for my generation, you know?
  • “I can go on TikTok right now and see ten girls wearing the bare minimum of clothing just to get people to join their page. Why not go the extra step to make money off it?”
  • the job can be financially precarious and mentally taxing, demanding not just the technical labor of recording, editing, managing and marketing but also the physical and emotional labor of adopting a persona to keep clients feeling special and eager to spend.
  • enix International Limited, is based, the company said its sales grew from $238 million in 2019 to more than $5.5 billion last year.
  • Its international army of creators has also grown from 348,000 in 2019 to more than 3 million today — a tenfold increase.
  • The company paid its owner, the Ukrainian American venture capitalist Leonid Radvinsky, $338 million in dividends last year.)
  • portion of its creator base and 70 percent of its annual revenue
  • When Tim Stokely, a London-based operator of live-cam sex sites, founded OnlyFans with his brother in 2016, he framed it as a simple way to monetize the creators who were becoming the world’s new celebrities — the same online influencers, just with a payment button. In 2019, Stokely told Wired magazine that his site was like “a bolt-on to your existing social media,” in the same way “Uber is a bolt-on to your car.”
  • Before OnlyFans, pornography on the internet had been largely a top-down enterprise, with agents, producers, studios and other middlemen hoarding the profits of performers’ work. OnlyFans democratized that business model, letting the workers run the show: recording their own content, deciding their prices, selling it however they’d like and reaping the full reward.
  • The platform bans real-world prostitution, as well as extreme or illegal content, and requires everyone who shows up on camera to verify they’re 18 or older by sending in a video selfie showing them holding a government-issued ID.
  • OnlyFans operates as a neutral marketplace, with no ads, trending topics or recommendation algorithms, placing few limitations on what creators can sell but also making it necessary for them to market themselves or fade away.
  • After sending other creators’ agents their money over PayPal, Adams’s ad workers send suggestions over the messaging app Telegram on how Bryce should be marketed, depending on the clientele. OnlyFans models whose fans tend to prefer the “girlfriend experience,” for instance, are told to talk up her authenticity: “Bryce is a real, fit girl who wants to get to know you
  • Like most platforms, OnlyFans suffers from a problem of incredible pay inequality, with the bulk of the profits concentrated in the bank accounts of the lucky few.
  • the top 1 percent of accounts made 33 percent of the money, and that most accounts took home less than $145 a month
  • Watching their partner have sex with someone else sometimes sparked what they called “classic little jealousy issues,” which Adams said they resolved with “more communication, more growing up.” The money was just too good. And over time, they adopted a self-affirming ideology that framed everything as just business. Things that were tough to do but got easier with practice, like shooting a sex scene, they called, in gym terms, “reps.” Things one may not want to do at first, but require some mental work to approach, became “self-limiting beliefs.”
  • They started hiring workers through friends and family, and what was once just Adams became a team effort, in which everyone was expected to workshop caption and video ideas. The group evaluated content under what Brian, who is 31, called a “triangulation method” that factored their comfort level with a piece of content alongside its engagement potential and “brand match.” Bryce the person gave way to Bryce the brand, a commercialized persona drafted by committee and refined for maximum marketability.
  • One of the operation’s most subtly critical components is a piece of software known as “the Tool,” which they developed and maintain in-house. The Tool scrapes and compiles every “like” and view on all of Adams’s social network accounts, every OnlyFans “fan action” and transaction, and every text, sext and chat message — more than 20 million lines of text so far.
  • It houses reams of customer data and a library of preset messages that Adams and her chatters can send to fans, helping to automate their reactions and flirtations — “an 80 percent template for a personalized response,” she said.
  • And it’s linked to a searchable database, in which hundreds of sex scenes are described in detail — by price, total sales, participants and general theme — and given a unique “stock keeping unit,” or SKU, much like the scannable codes on a grocery store shelf. If a fan says they like a certain sexual scenario, a team member can instantly surface any relevant scenes for an easy upsell. “Classic inventory chain,” Adams said.
  • The systemized database is especially handy for the young women of Adams’s chat team, known as the “girlfriends,” who work at a bench of laptops in the gym’s upper loft. The Tool helped “supercharge her messaging, which ended up, like, 3X-ing her output,” Brian said, meaning it tripled.
  • Keeping men talking is especially important because the chat window is where Adams’s team sends out their mass-message sales promotions, and the girlfriends never really know what to expect. One girlfriend said she’s had as many as four different sexting sessions going at once.
  • Adams employs a small team that helps her pay other OnlyFans creators to give away codes fans can use for free short-term trials. The team tracks redemption rates and promotional effectiveness in a voluminous spreadsheet, looking for guys who double up on discount codes, known as “stackers,” as well as bad bets and outright fraud.
  • Many OnlyFans creators don’t offer anything explicit, and the site has pushed to spotlight its stable of chefs, comedians and mountain bikers on a streaming channel, OFTV. But erotic content on the platform is inescapable; even some outwardly conventional creators shed their clothes behind the paywall
  • Creators with a more hardcore fan base, meanwhile, are told to cut to the chase: “300+ sex tapes & counting”; “Bryce doesn’t say no, she’s the most wild, authentic girl you will ever find.”
  • The $18 an hour she makes on the ad team, however, is increasingly dwarfed by the money Leigh makes from her personal OnlyFans account, where she sells sex scenes with her boyfriend for $10 a month. Leigh made $92,000 in gross sales in July, thanks largely to revenue from new fans who found her through Adams or the bikini videos Leigh posts to her 170,000-follower TikTok account
  • “This is a real job. You dedicate your time to it every single day. You’re always learning, you’re always doing new things,” she said. “I’d never thought I’d be good at business, but learning all these business tactics really empowers you. I have my own LLC; I don’t know any other 20-year-old right now that has their own LLC.”
  • The team is meeting all traffic goals, per their internal dashboard, which showed that through the day on a recent Thursday they’d gained 2,221,835 video plays, 19,707 landing-page clicks, 6,372 new OnlyFans subscribers and 9,024 new social-network followers. And to keep in shape, Adams and her boyfriend are abiding by a rigorous daily diet and workout plan
  • They eat the same Chick-fil-A salad at every lunch, track every calorie and pay a gym assistant to record data on every rep and weight of their exercise.
  • But the OnlyFans business is competitive, and it does not always feel to the couple like they’ve done enough. Their new personal challenge, they said, is to go viral on the other platforms as often as possible, largely through jokey TikTok clips and bikini videos that don’t give away too much.
  • the host told creators this sales-funnel technique was key to helping build the “cult of you”: “Someone’s fascination will become infatuation, which will make you a lot of money.”
  • Adams’s company has worked to reverse engineer the often-inscrutable art of virality, and Brian now estimates Adams makes about $5,000 in revenue for every million short-form video views she gets on TikTok.
  • Her team has begun ranking each platform by the amount of money they expect they can get from each viewer there, a metric they call “fan lifetime value.” (Subscribers who click through to her from Facebook tend to spend the most, the data show. Facebook declined to comment.)
  • The younger workers said they see the couple as mentors, and the two are constantly reminding them that the job of a creator is not a “lottery ticket” and requires a persistent grind. Whenever one complains about their lack of engagement, Brian said he responds, “When’s the last time you posted 60 different videos, 60 days in a row, on your Instagram Reels?”
  • But some have taken to it quite naturally. Rayna Rose, 19, was working last year at a hair salon, sweeping floors for $12 an hour, when an old high school classmate who worked with Adams asked whether she wanted to try OnlyFans and make $500 a video.
  • Rose started making videos and working as a chatter for $18 an hour but recently renegotiated her contract with Adams to focus more on her personal OnlyFans account, where she has nearly 30,000 fans, many of whom pay $10 a month.
  • One recent evening this summer, Adams was in the farm’s gym when her boyfriend told her he was headed to their guest room to record a collab with Rose, who was wearing a blue bikini top and braided pigtails.
  • “Go have fun,” Adams told them as they walked away. “Make good content.” The 15-minute video has so far sold more than 1,400 copies and accounted for more than $30,000 in sales.
  • Rose said she has lost friends due to her “lifestyle,” with one messaging her recently, “Can you imagine how successful you would be if you studied regularly and spent your time wisely?”
  • The message stung but, in Rose’s eyes, they didn’t understand her at all. She feels, for the first time, like she has a sense of purpose: She wants to be a full-time influencer. She expects to clear $200,000 in earnings this year and is now planning to move out of her parents’ house.
  • “I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. And now I know,” she said. “I want to be big. I want to be, like, mainstream.”
ethanshilling

U.S. Home Sales Are Surging. When Does the Music Stop? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...us-home-sales-surge.html

US new york housing

shared by ethanshilling on 22 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • In the first week of April, U.S. search interest in the phrase “when is the housing market going to crash” jumped 2,450 percent compared to the previous month, and is now more popular than anytime since 2004, according to Google. The search terms “should I buy a house” and “sell my house” also reached record interest.
  • Market watchers are right to be wary. The median sale price of an existing home in the U.S. was $313,000 in February, up nearly 16 percent from a year earlier, when a 3 to 5 percent annual increase is considered healthy, according to a report from the National Association of Realtors, a trade group.
  • The answer will depend largely on where you live and how the pandemic continues to reorder buyer priorities, but it will hinge on two trends: rising mortgage rates and incredibly tight inventory in some markets, which will likely keep demand strong through the rest of 2021, even as price growth moderates, several analysts said.
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  • What awaits at the end of this frenetic period is not likely to resemble the 2008 housing bubble, which brought on a drawn-out crash when it finally burst, they said.
  • Nationwide, housing inventory was at a record-low 1.03 million units at the end of February, down 29.5 percent from a year earlier, a record decline, according to the National Association of Realtors.
  • “It gives the feel of a bubble,” Mr. Yun said, recalling the run-up to the subprime mortgage crisis that cratered prices after 2008. “But the fundamental factors are different.”
  • “We don’t have the reckless lending that we had before,” said Mr. Miller, and so even as market conditions get frothy, some may find that they overpaid for their property, but the ebb and flow will be more in line with regular economic cycles.
  • He also expects home prices to keep rising in the short term, because of more than a decade of sluggish housing construction, hobbled by restrictive zoning and high labor costs.
  • Unlike much of the country, New York had a glut of luxury inventory before the pandemic, and prices had been softening since around 2017. From 2018 to the end of 2019, Manhattan saw a roughly 15 percent drop in sale prices, Mr. Miller said.
  • In the week ending April 11, there were 783 new signed contracts citywide, the highest since the company began tracking weekly pending sales in 2019, when the peak was 491 contracts, she said.
  • “The rate at which homes are selling nationally is not sustainable, but in New York, the uptick is just getting started,” said Nancy Wu, an economist for StreetEasy, a listing website.
  • The price cuts have been a boon to a broader range of people. First-time buyers made up 41.9 percent of sales in Manhattan last quarter, the highest share in at least seven years, Mr. Miller said.
  • “It does have the potential to last for a while, because the results are only based on a half-tank of gas,” Ms. Olshan said, referring to the fact that most of these signings were from domestic and local buyers, as international buyers remain mostly on the sidelines with travel restrictions.
  • New York’s revival also challenges one of the early assumptions during the pandemic — that the suburbs would benefit at the expense of big cities, where buyers, untethered from office commutes, could choose to live farther from work.
  • So far, thanks to limited supply, many suburbs remain in high demand. Fairfield County, Conn., for instance, recorded 3,045 sales last quarter, the most in that period in more than 16 years, along with the lowest inventory in 25 years, according to a report from the brokerage Douglas Elliman.
  • “Manhattan finally joined the party,” he said, referring to the city’s sales turnaround. “But we’re not sure if this is the party we want to be in — because there’s uncertainty about how this plays out.”
Javier E

A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society? | WIRED - 0 views

www.wired.com/...due-has-tech-destroyed-society

bet catastrophe tech society collapse

shared by Javier E on 24 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Sale believed society was on the verge of collapse. That wasn’t entirely bad, he argued. He hoped the few surviving humans would band together in small, tribal-style clusters. They wouldn’t be just off the grid. There would be no grid. Which was dandy, as far as Sale was concerned.
  • “History is full of civilizations that have collapsed, followed by people who have had other ways of living,” Sale said. “My optimism is based on the certainty that civilization will collapse.”
  • Sale was a bit taken aback—he’d never put a date on it. Finally, he blurted out 2020. It seemed like a good round number.
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  • Kelly then asked how, in a quarter century, one might determine whether Sale was right.Sale extemporaneously cited three factors: an economic disaster that would render the dollar worthless, causing a depression worse than the one in 1930; a rebellion of the poor against the monied; and a significant number of environmental catastrophes.
  • “I bet you $1,000 that in the year 2020, we’re not even close to the kind of disaster you describe,” he said.
  • Twenty-five years later, the once distant deadline is here. We are locked down. Income equality hasn’t been this bad since just before the Great Depression. California and Australia were on fire this year.
  • When Sale and Kelly made the bet, they had assumed that by 2020 the winner would be obvious. Maybe all it would take was a look around: Is civilization still here, or not? It clearly is still kicking around. But the pandemic, its economic consequences, and the worsening climate crisis have made things interesting. What would Patrick say?
  • That’s what Patrick had to determine. In early December he began writing up his decision. Despite his wariness toward tech, he had no intention of jumping on the current techlash bandwagon. Instead, the bet was constructed on three clear conditions, and Patrick would consider each one separately, as if judging a boxing match round by round.
  • Round by round, the outcome would seem to make it a draw. But when making the final call, Patrick stuck to the language of the original bet. In that fateful Greenwich Village encounter, Sale called for a convergence of three disasters. “Kirk must hit the trifecta to win, meaning that all three horses of his apocalypse must come through,” Patrick wrote. “Only one of his predictions was a winner; one came in neck and neck; and one was way back in the pack.”
  • So on December 31, Patrick declared Kelly the winner in an email to the bettors. “But it’s a squeaker and not much cause for celebration,” he concluded.
saberal

Senate Rejects Attempted Blockade of Weapons Sale to U.A.E. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...senate-weapons-sale-uae.html

politics US Trump history

shared by saberal on 10 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • The Senate endorsed the Trump administration’s last-minute push to sell a $23 billion arms package including armed drones and stealth fighter jets to the Emirati military.
  • The Senate on Wednesday rejected efforts to block the sale of munitions worth $23 billion to the United Arab Emirates, overcoming concerns about sending weapons to Gulf Arab nations.
  • “This would continue the 20 years of growth in our relationship, working side by side against common concerns and common enemies,” Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, said.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Administration officials have insisted that the arms sale — particularly the transfer of the coveted F-35 fighter jets — is not a direct reward for the Emirates’ recognition of Israel. But they have acknowledged that it is linked to the broader diplomatic initiative, and Mr. Kushner briefed Senate Republicans on Tuesday on his work with the Emiratis, according to a person familiar with the discussion.
  • Democrats had accused Trump administration officials of rushing the sales through in the final months of Mr. Trump’s term, and pointed to reports indicating the Emirates had previously misused American-made weapons.
  • Congressional efforts to block arms sales are rarely successful. After the administration last year circumvented Capitol Hill to allow the sale of billions of dollars of munitions to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, lawmakers tried to derail the deal but were unable to override the president’s veto.
ethanmoser

Gipper's memento: Reagan's signed oath of office goes up for sale | Fox News - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...h-office-goes-up-for-sale.html

reagan oath trump sale president usa office

shared by ethanmoser on 16 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Gipper's memento: Reagan's signed oath of office goes up for sale
  • Even Ronald Reagan needed most of January to begin signing the correct year, and the proof is in a one-of-a-kind document inscribed by the Gipper and given to a trusted aide the day the 40th president took the oath of office.  
  • After giving the 41-word oath to Chief Justice Warren Burger on Jan. 20, 1981, Reagan inscribed and dated the printed version he'd used for practice for a trusted aide. Expand / Contract The written oath was used by Reagan to practice for his swearing-in ceremony in 1981. (Raab Collection) “To Nancy – who ‘brightens the corner where we are,’ Ronald Reagan 1/20/80,” he wrote to Nancy Clark Reynolds, a longtime friend, aide and member of the Reagan transition team.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The document is now up for sale for $62,500,
  • It is up for sale at the fixed price just days before President-elect Donald Trump takes the same oath, some 36 years later.
  • “It was very special to be able to celebrate his election and the presidency -- those were great years, and my mom was up on the main stage with him,” he said. “It was kind of overcast and cloudy that day, but pretty much as soon as he took the oath and gave his inaugural address, the skies opened up and it became sunny, leaving people joking, 'wow, is this a sign?'”
rachelramirez

What Drives Gun Sales: Terrorism, Obama and Calls for Restrictions - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...rorism-obama-restrictions.html

gun control restrictions politics policy

shared by rachelramirez on 10 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • What Drives Gun Sales: Terrorism,Obama and Calls for Restrictions
  • When a man shot and killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., gun sales did not set records until five days later, after President Obama called for banning assault rifles and high-capacity magazines.
  • Pushing for new restrictions can lead to an influx of new guns.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Gun sales rose in New Jersey in 2013 after Gov. Chris Christie proposed measures that included expanding background checks and banning certain rifles.
  • Gun sales have more than doubled in a decade, to about 15 million in 2013 from about seven million in 2002.
  • when the Supreme Court invalidated a ban on handguns in Washington, estimated handgun sales recorded in the city went from near-zero to about 40 every month.
woodlu

Daily Chart - FBI background checks, a proxy for gun sales, surged in 2020 | Graphic de... - 0 views

www.economist.com/...y-for-gun-sales-surged-in-2020

shared by woodlu on 15 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), America's national police force, the number of firearm background checks conducted by the bureau—a loose proxy for gun sales—rose to 39m in 2020, an all-time high.
  • rising steadily for decades, growing at a rate of about 8% per year, with occasional spikes in sales after mass shootings and other events
  • federal government does not track gun sales, though background checks offer a useful, if imperfect, gauge.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • he true figure is probably somewhere in-between. Many states allow at least some gun sales to proceed without a background check—for example, in transactions conducted by private sellers.
  • he National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun-industry trade group, adjusts the FBI’s figures to filter out background checks unrelated to the sale of a firearm.
  • Because such checks are used for other purposes—including issuing permits and selling gun accessories—they may overstate the true number of guns sold in a given period
  • FBI’s data suggest that Americans’ interest in guns surged in 2020,
  • Numbers spiked in March as the coronavirus outbreak spread and Americans worried that the government might be unable to cope with increased crime caused by economic hardships
  • designation of gun shops as “essential” in some states, allowing them to stay open during lockdowns,
  • After dipping back down over the summer, the number crept up again as America geared up for the election.
  • So 2021 may turn out to be another record year.
clairemann

F-16 Sale Could Mend U.S., Turkey Ties, but Tension With Russia Intrudes - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...th-russia-intrudes-11642847406

Turkey politics economics technology

shared by clairemann on 22 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • The Biden administration is weighing a Turkish proposal to buy a fleet of F-16 jet fighters that officials in Ankara say would mend ruptured security links between the countries, but the sale faces opposition from members of Congress critical of Turkey’s growing ties to Russia.
  • Senior Turkish officials say the deal could be a lifeline for their relationship with the U.S., which has suffered for years over Turkey’s purchases of Russian arms, clashing interests in the war in Syria and U.S. criticism of Ankara’s human-rights record. And in both countries, analysts say blocking the sale could push Ankara closer to Russia.
  • U.S. arms export control laws require the administration to notify Congress of proposed foreign military sales, giving lawmakers a chance to review and oppose or try to block a deal. The administration hasn’t formally notified Congress about the proposed F-16 sale.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The S-400 purchase drove a rift between the two countries that has resisted repair. Mr. Cevik said the country hasn’t yet deployed the missile batteries, though Mr. Erdogan has said he wants to buy more.
  • “The United States and Turkey have longstanding and deep bilateral defense ties, and Turkey’s continued NATO interoperability remains a priority,” a State Department spokesman said. Several NATO member states fly F-16s, including Turkey.
  • The proposed deal illustrates the complex national-security issues in the U.S. relationship with Turkey, a NATO ally and regional power that hosts thousands of American soldiers.
  • The deal faces significant skepticism among key senators who object to Turkey’s purchase of the Russian missile system, according to congressional aides. The leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sens. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) and James Risch (R., Idaho), have yet to take public positions on the deal.
  • “Our concern is, if we’re giving them military equipment, if they are going to be continuing to act in this aggressive manner towards Cyprus, toward the Greek islands,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R., N.Y.). “We’re concerned about our intellectual property being shared with Russia. [Turkey] is acting in many ways like an adversary.”
  • British sanctions over Turkey’s incursion into Syria would hinder Ankara’s purchase of the Eurofighter Typhoon, and France is unlikely to approve a sale of its Dassault Rafale fighters, in part because it sold planes to Turkey’s rival Greece last year, said Mr. Forrester.
  • “They may go to the Russians,” Mr. Jeffrey, the former ambassador, said. “And then you’ll have a descending spiral of accusations and bad feelings, and it will just reinforce going in the wrong direction. That’s why the F-16 is so important.”
Javier E

A Murky Road Ahead for Android, Despite Market Dominance - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-despite-market-dominance.html

OS tech platform mobile phone economics

shared by Javier E on 19 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • About one of every two computers sold today is running Android. Google’s once underappreciated side bet has become Earth’s dominant computing platform
  • Google’s version of Android faces increasing competition from hungry rivals, including upstart smartphone makers in developing countries that are pushing their own heavily modified take on the software. There are also new threats from Apple, which has said that its recent record number of iPhone sales came, in part, thanks to people switching from Android.
  • Hanging over these concerns is the question of the bottom line. Despite surging sales, profits in the Android smartphone business declined 44 percent in 2014
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Over the holidays last year, according to the research firm Strategy Analytics, Apple vacuumed up nearly 90 percent of the profits in the smartphone business.
  • How will the search company — or anyone else, for that matter — ever make much money from Android?
  • Google is sanguine about Android’s prospects and said the company’s original vision for Android was never solely about huge profits. “The bet that Larry, Sergey and Eric made at the time was that smartphones are going to be a thing, there’s going to be Internet on it, so let’s make sure there’s a great smartphone platform out there that people can use to, among other things, access Google services
  • The fact that Google does not charge for Android, and that few phone manufacturers are extracting much of a profit from Android devices, means that much of the globe now enjoys decent smartphones and online services for low prices
  • at the same time, given the increasing threats to Google’s advertising business, we might also wonder how long that largess can continue.
  • The situation is especially painful for Google in China, the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market, where Google’s apps are blocked. Even in the rest of Asia, where many low-cost phone manufacturers do include Google’s apps on their phones, there’s growing interest in finding some alternative to Google’s version of Android. About 30 percent of Android smartphones shipped in the last quarter of 2014 were actually modified, or forked, versions of the OS that may not be very hospitable to Google’s services, according to the firm ABI Research
  • even if hot Silicon Valley start-ups still create apps for iOS first, app makers in other parts of the world see Android as a surer path to the masses. “The reality is that folks like you should play a role in educating the Silicon Valley,” she said.
  • Google’s strategy of giving Android to phone makers free has led to a surge of new entrants in the phone business, several of which sell high-quality phones for cut-rate prices. Among those is Xiaomi, a Chinese start-up making phones that have become some of the most popular devices in China.
  • Because Xiaomi and others don’t make much of a profit by selling phones, they’re all looking for other ways to make money — and for many, the obvious business is in apps offering mail, messaging and other services that compete with Google’s own moneymaking apps.
  • A brighter spot for Google is the revenue it collects from sales via Android’s app store, called Google Play. For years, Android apps were a backwater, but sales have picked up lately. In 2014, Google Play sold about $10 billion in apps, of which Google kept about $3 billion (the rest was paid out to developers). Apple makes more from its App Store. Sales there exceeded $14 billion in 2014, and rising iPhone sales in China have led to a growing app haul for Apple. Still, Google’s app revenue is becoming an increasingly meaningful piece of its overall business, and it is also growing rapidly.
  • Cyanogen, has raised about $100 million from several investors — and has signed a “strategic partnership” with Google’s arch-competitor Microsoft — to sell phone makers an alternative user interface that works on top of Google’s Android.
  • “We share services revenue with the phone makers — and today they get very little of that from Google,” said Kirt McMaster, Cyanogen’s chief executive. “There are very few companies in the world today that really like Google. Nobody wants Google to run the table with this game. So it’s a good time to be a neutral third party. We’re Switzerland, and we want to share that revenue with our ecosystem partners in a meaningful way.”
  • in the long run, the rise of Android switching sets up a terrible path for Google — losing the high-end of the smartphone market to the iPhone, while the low end is under greater threat from noncooperative Android players like Xiaomi and Cyanogen.
martinelligi

Trump Sets Up Sale Of Oil Drilling Rights In Arctic Wildlife Refuge : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ale-for-arctic-wildlife-refuge

trump oil climate

shared by martinelligi on 03 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • In a last-minute push, the Trump administration announced Thursday that it will auction off drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in just over a month, setting up a final showdown with opponents before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.
  • After finishing its environmental review in August, the Trump administration then launched a "call for nominations" on Nov. 17. That's a 30-day window for oil companies to confidentiality tell the government which pieces of land they'd like included in a lease sale. But the BLM did not wait 30 days before going ahead and scheduling a sale date, which will take place just two weeks before President Trump leaves office.
  • Already, conservation and tribal groups, as well as a coalition of 15 states, have filed lawsuits challenging the Trump administration's environmental reviews. And drilling opponents blasted Thursday's announcement of the lease sale.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • President-elect Biden has said he opposes drilling in Alaska's Arctic refuge. But if leases are finalized before he takes office Jan. 20, they could be difficult to revoke.
  • The coastal plain, also known as the 1002 Area, covers about 1.6-million-acres, making it roughly the size of Delaware.
  • "There is huge uncertainty now as to how quickly oil consumption and natural gas consumption will peak and start to decline," says Philip Verleger, a Colorado-based energy economist. "I do not think ANWR is ever going to be produced."
anonymous

States sue to undo Biden pause on US oil & gas lease sales - ABC News - 0 views

abcnews.go.com/...iden-pause-us-oil-gas-76657181

shared by anonymous on 25 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Thirteen states sued the Biden administration Wednesday to end a suspension of new oil and gas leases on federal land and water and to reschedule canceled sales of leases in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska waters and western states.
  • The suit specifically seeks an order that the government go ahead with a sale of oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico that had been scheduled for March 17 until it was canceled; and a lease sale that had been planned for this year in Alaska's Cook Inlet.
  • Biden and multiple federal agencies bypassed comment periods and other bureaucratic steps required before such delays can be undertaken, the states claim in the lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday in the federal court's Western District of Louisiana.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The lawsuit notes that coastal states receive significant revenue from onshore and offshore oil and gas activity.
  • At a news conference, Landry accused the Biden administration of “effectively banning oil and gas activity that supports businesses, employees our workers and, also, as importantly, funds our coastal restoration projects.”
  • But a long-term halt to oil and gas sales would curb future production and could hurt states like Louisiana that are heavily dependent on the industry.
  • “This will not affect oil and gas production or jobs for years to come,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said when asked about the lawsuit's claims at a Wednesday briefing.
  • “Just as you're starting to have the communications get you to a point where you're feeling better about things and the permits are being issued probably isn't the best time to file litigation,” Edwards said.
  • Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and West Virginia are the other plaintiff states.Western Energy Alliance, an industry lobbying group based in Colorado, sued over the leasing suspension in federal court in Wyoming on the same day it was announced. The Biden administration had not responded to the complaint as of Wednesday.
tsainten

War Crimes Risk Grows for U.S. Over Saudi Strikes in Yemen - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...crimes-yemen-saudi-arabia.html

politics us history crisis trump yemen

shared by tsainten on 15 Sep 20 - No Cached
  • the White House ceremony will also serve as tacit recognition of Mr. Trump’s embrace of arms sales as a cornerstone of his foreign policy.
  • The president sweetened the Middle East deal with a secret commitment to sell advanced fighter jets and lethal drones to the Emirates
  • stemming from U.S. support for Saudi Arabia and the Emirates as they have waged a disastrous war in Yemen, using American equipment in attacks that have killed thousands of civilians
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • the United States has provided material support over five years for actions that have caused the continuous killing of civilians.
  • prosecutors in a foreign court could charge American officials based on them knowing of the pattern of indiscriminate killing
  • chief prosecutor could open an investigation into the actions of American forces in the Afghanistan war — the first time the court has authorized a case against the United States. The Trump administration this month imposed sanctions on that prosecutor and another of the court’s lawyers, a sign of how seriously the administration takes the possibility of prosecution.
  • When an internal investigation this year revealed that the department had failed to address the legal risks of selling bombs to the Saudis and their partners, top agency officials found ways to hide this.
  • it had put in place a strategy to lessen civilian casualties before the last major arms sale to the Saudi-led coalition, in May 2019.
  • $8.1 billion in weapons and equipment in 22 batches, including $3.8 billion in precision-guided bombs and bomb parts made by Raytheon Company, to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
  • he would end U.S. support for the war.
  • “I have a very good relationship with them,” Mr. Trump said during an interview in February. “They buy billions and billions and billions of dollars of product from us. They buy tens of billions of dollars of military equipment.”
  • But over three months, officials eager to push through the weapons deals pared back the guidelines.
  • That August, a coalition jet dropped an American-made bomb on a Yemeni school bus, killing 54 people, including 44 children, in an attack that Mr. Trump would later call “a horror show.”
  • senior State Department political appointees were discussing a rarely invoked tactic to force through $8.1 billion in weapons sales without congressional approval: declaring an emergency over Iran.
  • From that position, Mr. String tried to pressure Steve A. Linick, the inspector general, to drop his investigation, Mr. Linick, who was fired in May, said in congressional testimony in June. Mr. String’s office also handled the redacting of the report.
  • About $800 million in orders is now pending, held up in the same congressional review process that had frustrated Mr. Pompeo and the White House.
  • From July to early August this year, at least three airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition in northern Yemen killed civilians, including a total of nearly two dozen children, according to the United Nations, aid workers and Houthi rebels.
nrashkind

Australian retailers suffer record sales slump, backs grim outlook for second-quarter G... - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...cond-quarter-gdp-idUSKBN23B095

shared by nrashkind on 04 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • Australian retail sales suffered a historic plunge in April while the trade surplus narrowed as the coronavirus battered the economy, leaving the nation facing its worst ever contraction in the current quarter.
  • Retail sales slumped a seasonally adjusted 17.7% in April, their biggest on record, from an 8.5% jump in March, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showed on Thursday.
  • Separate data showed exports dropped 11% and imports 10% in some of the largest declines in years.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • With much of the world in recession, exports of everything from iron ore to coal to gold took a hit in the month.
  • On the import side the biggest swing was in tourism as globe-trotting Australians were barred from going abroad due to the pandemic.
  • That saw debits on tourism shrink to just A$49 million in April from A$2.8 billion in March and A$4.3 billion in February, boosting the monthly trade balance.
  • Analysts are predicting Australia’s gross domestic product (GDP) could fall roughly 8% in the current quarter, with the dive in April retail sales alone subtracting 2.1 percentage point off GDP.
  • That would leave the economy facing its first recession in nearly three decades following the 0.3% contraction last quarter.
julia rhodes

North Korea's Lesson - Nukes for Sale - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...eas-lesson-nukes-for-sale.html

north korea lesson nukes sale nytimes US politics history crisis obama

shared by julia rhodes on 26 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • HE most dangerous message North Korea sent Tuesday with its third nuclear weapon test is: nukes are for sale.
  • Testing a uranium-based bomb would announce to the world — including potential buyers — that North Korea is now operating a new, undiscovered production line for weapons-usable material.
  • North Korea’s latest provocation should also remind us of the limits of Western policies, led by the United States, that focus on “isolating” the hermit kingdom.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Hence the grim conclusion that North Korea now has a new cash crop — one that is easier to market than plutonium. Highly enriched uranium is harder to detect and therefore easier to export
  • American experts therefore believe that Pyongyang must have another still-undiscovered parallel plant that has been operating for several years. That plant by now could have produced several bombs’ worth of highly enriched uranium.
  • American policy makers’ attention has been consumed by Iran’s attempt to build its first nuclear weapon. During those years, American officials believe, North Korea has acquired enough plutonium to make an arsenal of 6 to 10 nuclear bombs,
  • history shows that the North Koreans will “sell anything they have to anybody who has the cash to buy it.” In intelligence circles, North Korea is known as “Missiles ‘R’ Us,” having sold and delivered missiles to Iran, Syria and Pakistan, among others.
  • With what consequences for North Korea? Pyongyang got paid; Syria got bombed; and the United States was soon back at the negotiating table in the six-party talks.
  • Given America’s failure to hold Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, accountable when he sold Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, the technology from which to make a bomb, could the younger Mr. Kim imagine that he could get away with selling a nuclear weapon or bomb-making material?
Javier E

The Internet Is the Greatest Legal Facilitator of Inequality in Human History - Bill Da... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...283422

internet jobs inequality competition global

shared by Javier E on 01 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • the Internet has created a tremendous amount of personal wealth. Just look at the rash of Internet billionaires and millionaires,
  • Then there’s the superstar effect. The Internet multiplies the earning power of the very best high-frequency traders, currency speculators, and entertainers, who reap billions while the merely good are left to slog it out.
  • In the past, the most efficient businesses created lots of middle class jobs.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • As the Internet goes about its work making the economy more efficient, it is reducing the need for travel agents, post office employees, and dozens of other jobs in corporate America. The increased interconnectivity created by the Internet forces many middle and lower class workers to compete for jobs with low-paid workers in developing countries. Even skilled technical workers are finding that their jobs can be outsourced to trained engineers and technicians in India and Eastern Europe.
  • The new news is that Internet-based companies may well be the businesses of the future, but they create opportunities for only a select few. Google has a little over 54,000 employees and generated revenues of around $50 billion in sales or about $1.0 million per employee.
  • in order to justify hiring an employee, a highly productive Internet company must create five to ten times the dollars in sales as the average domestic company.
  • will the Internet also create the greatest economic inequality the global economy has ever known?
  • One reason we are failing to create a vibrant middle class is that the Internet affects the economy differently than the new businesses of the past did., forcing businesses and their workers to face increased global competition. It reduces the barriers for moving jobs overseas. It has a smaller economic trickle-down effect.
  • Doing some of the obvious things like raising the minimum wage to fight the effects of the Internet will probably worsen the problem. For example, it will make it more difficult for bricks-and-mortar retailers to compete with online retailers.
  • Surprisingly, the much-vilified Walmart probably does more to help middle class families raise their median income than the more productive Amazon. Walmart hires about one employee for every $200,000 in sales, which translates to roughly three times more jobs per dollar of sales than Amazon
  • two things are certain: the Internet is creating many of those in the ultra-wealthy 1%; and it forces businesses to compete with capable international competitors while providing the tools so that businessmen can squeeze inefficiency out of the system in order to remain competitive.
  • If the government is going to be in the business of redistributing wealth, a better approach would be to raise the earned income tax credit and increase taxes to pay for it. Not only would this raise the income of low paid workers, but also it would subsidize businesses so they would be more competitive in world markets and encourage them to create jobs
Javier E

Simon & Schuster to Sell Online Courses Taught by Popular Authors - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...taught-by-popular-authors.html

publishing media

shared by Javier E on 12 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • book sales have flagged. Simon & Schuster’s sales fell 11 percent in the third fiscal quarter of last year. Sales of digital content, which accounted for 28 percent of the company’s sales, were flat.
  • Simon & Schuster also recently announced plans to feature some of its authors on podcasts on Play.it, a new podcast network from CBS, the publisher’s parent company.
  • Simon & Schuster plans to release 12 to 15 more courses this year, and is focusing on writers who have established, dedicated fan bases and a well-defined philosophy or message to deliver. Eventually, the online courses, which are planned as stand-alone products rather than supplements to books, could include videos by entertainers and experts who have not yet published books.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Authors will be able to set their own prices. Dr. Agus, whose course is titled “A Short Guide to A Long Life,” decided to make his classes cost the same as a typical co-pay for a doctor’s office visit: $25.
qkirkpatrick

U.S. Clears Iraq Arms Sales but Congress Could Block - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...ongress-could-block-1419384147

politics

shared by qkirkpatrick on 16 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • qkirkpatrick on 16 Jan 15
     
    US  approves sale of weapons to Iraq.
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