May 2012
188 posts
7 tags
In 1950, 10 percent of union contracts offered pensions and 30 percent included health insurance. Five years later, 45 percent of medium-sized and large companies gave their workers pensions, and 70 percent provided a range of insurance—life, accident, and health that included hospitalization and maternity care. Such benefits were attractive both to employers and employees because, although...
3 tags
3 tags
4 tags
Greenwashing 101
buypositively:
Today, two camps of companies are rapidly evolving in response to a call for greater transparency – the one’s that do good and the one’s that do good marketing.
In order to help mitigate this noise and provide a guide for conscious consumers, we found this FastCoExist infographic to be especially insightful. It illustrates seven common ways that companies greenwash; explains how...
3 tags
Brownwashing: Why Green Consumers Buy Brown Things...
buypositively:
Manufacturers have found a new way to appeal to eco-friendly consumers: Brown it. The Wall Street Journal lays out the trend: Dunkin’ Donuts, Cinnabon, and Target are swapping their white napkins for brown ones. Seventh Generation dyes its translucent diapers brown. Cascade has introduced a new, fiber-heavy beige toilet paper it’s dubbed “Moka.”
When asked why they went brown,...
3 tags
"America Washing" Is The New Greenwashing
buypositively:
Illustration via MadeInTheUSABrand.com
By Tim Devaney via The Washington Times
U.S. consumers may be surprised to learn many products bearing the label “Made in America” are largely built outside of the United States. The practice exploits a little-known loophole in the product-label system that one California businessman says he is determined to expose.
Oftentimes, as much...
5 tags
1 tag
“Almost 50 percent of the consumers surveyed in a 2002 poll said they wanted the...”
– Robert Reich - Supercapitalism, p. 178
3 tags
“The Sherman Act of 1890 was the nation’s first antitrust law. Both...”
– Robert Reich - Supercapitalism, p. 23
4 tags
“Unlike many “public interest” advocacy groups today—huddled in...”
– Robert Reich - Supercapitalism, p. 41
2 tags
3 tags
“Wages rose far too quickly during the boom years of the last decade. Labour unit...”
– Spanish economy: Who is to blame for its problems?
(via brosephstalin)
5 tags
Jack Welch, the legendary former chief executive of GE, names by Fortune “manager of the century,” had the good luck to become CEO in 1981, near the start of the long bull market. But he did his bit to cut costs and add to GE investors’ good fortunes. At the start of his reign, the company was valued by the stock market at less than $14 billion. When he retired in 2001, it was...
3 tags
2 tags
3 tags
“Tuition fee rallies in Toronto are known as a model of peaceful public...”
– Every year, the Canadian Federation of Students holds a ‘Drop Fees’ rally to let the province know that the country’s highest tuition rates still belong to Ontario and these rates should be reduced. They almost say `please’, such is their eagerness not to offend.
Now look at the unprecedented...
4 tags
2 tags
3 tags
Professors Lucien Bebchuk of Harvard and Yaniv Grinstein of Cornell took a close look at the $83 billion the top .1 percent of earners reported on their 2001 taxes and found that more than half that sum—$48 billion—was the combined incomes of the top five executives at American companies. Executive pay averaged $6.4 million, including stock options and perks; CEO pay, $14.3 million....
3 tags
Researchers Margarethe Wiersema of Rice University and Mark Washburn of the University of California at Berkeley looked at what happened to the top executives at Fortune 500 companies between 1996 and 2000, after analysts covering a company downgraded their recommendations about buying its stock. Wiersema and Washburn found that when recommendations dropped by just one notch—from, say, a...
2 tags
“On the market-place no one believes in higher men.”
– Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Ch. 73, §1
1 tag
The digital lives of American youths
cocollected:
Source: McKinsey
4 tags
“Even in provincial cities like Kunming, the rich routinely expect luxury shops...”
– Economist
A new report from CLSA, a stockbroker, forecasts that more than half of this year’s growth in luxury goods will come from China, where sales are set to soar by 24% in 2012. The country is already the largest market for jewellery after America, and for gold after India, and is gaining fast...
3 tags
“New intelligent algorithms could help robots to quickly recognize and respond to human gestures. Researchers at A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research in Singapore have created a computer program which recognizes human gestures quickly and accurately, and requires very little training. “Since many social robots will be operated by non-expert users, it is essential for them to be equipped with...
2 tags
“As regulators have been writing the details of the Volcker Rule, there has been...”
– Jacob Goldstein in JPMorgan’s $2 Billion Loss, Explained : Planet Money : NPR (via quotingthecrisis)
The main article is a clear and concise description of what happened.
3 tags
CEOs and CIOs Are Increasingly Disconnected →
infoneer-pulse:
Companies foresee new technologies transforming their businesses, but they are not sure how. Not surprisingly, they are unsure how to invest or what to expect.
That is the conclusion of a survey published Monday by McKinsey & Company, culled from 1,469 chief executive officers, chief financial officers, and chief information officers. The survey attempted to gauge how they...
1 tag
2 tags
2 tags
Global CO2 Price of $50 May Avert Climate... →
3 tags
2 tags
Green Economy: 'World Bank calls on countries to... →
plantedcity:
From The Guardian:
Countries must take urgent steps to value their natural capital – such as forests, peatlands and coastal areas – as part of their economic development, the World Bank has urged.
Placing a monetary value on natural ecosystems is a key step on the road to “green” economic growth, according to the World Bank, which published a report on green growth on Wednesday...
3 tags
“There is a facile view that our green commitments – to tackling climate change,...”
– Former UK Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne this week in the Guardian.
(via benvironment)
4 tags
2 tags
4 tags
105 million Americans—over one in three—live on... →
1 tag
The Unabridged And Illustrated Federal Budget For...
scigui:
This is probably the best primer for understanding the current state of the US economy. I would highly recommend at least reading one part of this series to get a better grasp of our current debt crisis.
Part 1: Spending
Part 2: Revenues
Part 3: Debt & Deficits
Part 4: Entitlements
3 tags
3 tags
prepaidafrica:
The Tortoise and the Hare: How African economies withstand the financial crisis
You know the story and its underlying message: slow and steady wins the race. You probably don’t know the story of African economic under-development and Western economic growth, which is not quite as exciting. But the message, as outlined in a new IMF report, is similar – and it’s good news for the...
3 tags
His friend, Maurice Duplay tells us that what Marcel [Proust] most liked reading when he couldn’t get to sleep was a train timetable. The document was not consulted for practical advice; the departure time of the St-Lazare train was of no immediate importance to a man who found no reason to leave Paris in the last eight years of his life. Rather, this timetable was read and enjoyed, as though it...
4 tags
9 tags
Piero Sraffa’s Non-Economics: An Introduction,... →
After researching and writing at sporadic intervals since late December, I’ve at last finished a general outline of the economic theories of Piero Sraffa, which will be the focus of my honors thesis.
In a nutshell: Sraffa not only refuted Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and provided the pens, paper, and reading material with which Antonio Gramsci wrote the Prison Notebooks, but he also developed an...
2 tags
5 tags
6 tags
I recall a short but striking conversation with the formidable Piero Sraffa at the Economics Faculty cocktail party after Dennis Robertson’s Marshall Lectures. I well knew that it was Sraffa whom Wittgenstein had described as his mentor during the gestation of the Philosophical Investigations, but I still ventured a rather simple-minded remark about the obvious importance of the fact-value...
2 tags
minimum wage- and cost of living. '50s-2010 →
6 tags
“I foresee that the ultimate result will be a restatement of Marx, but...”
– Sraffa (D3/12/4: 15) describing his intended lebensprojekt
5 tags
174. Notes by P. Sraffa, [4.3.1934]
The error is to regard intuition as a provisional substitute for science: “when you will produce a satisfactory science, I shall give up intuitions.” ― Now the two things cannot be set against one another they are on entirely different planes. Intuitions are a way of acting, science one of knowing (Physician)
Actions do not require a rational justification ― they are objects of...
