This article in the Washington Post presents 40 maps that explain the world. They are all interesting and easy to digest. The three maps below are examples which illustrate key issues the world grapples with now. This map shows where the wealth is. It shows national wealth and density of people, but not individual income. …
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Category:3 The World of Money
Winning without trying.
Sun Tzu’s philosophy was to avoid conflict if possible. He recognised the waste of resources and the cost of the risk that aggression creates. Many modern managers think that he was all about fighting, but his philosophy was much ore about fighting without fighting, as Bruce Lee said, and if you have to fight, do …
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85 richest people as wealthy as poorest half of the world
That’s a shocking fact. The timing of that headline is appropriate as the rich gather to enjoy the luxuries that Davos, in the Swiss Alps, has to offer the World Economic Forum. Anyone reading this is unlikely to be one of those 85 people, but you are definitely in the top 10%. And everyone at …
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The work climate, like the weather, is changing .
The world is changing. Not just volatile weather – snow in Florida, tempest in Ireland – but in the socio-economic dynamic that has borne humanity to this position in civilisation. We are running out of jobs. Technology is taking over all employment, except the lowest paid, menial tasks and the highest paid, bespoke services. Even …
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We are still not prepared to pay for our planet.
In the past decade there has certainly been a huge increase in awareness and care about sustaining nature in the face of overconsumption by humanity. Now, most people have heard the terms “sustainable”, “organic”, “eco”, “green” and associate positive initiatives with these terms. Sadly we also associate a cost with these terms, a cost we …
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Obama: The idea that so many children are born into poverty in the wealthiest nation on Earth is heartbreaking
Barack Obama gave a speech in Washington DC which described economic themes for the rest of his term. “The combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the American Dream, our way of life, and what we stand for around the globe,” he said. “The idea that so many children …
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You are twice as likely to pay a bribe if you live in a poor country
That’s a simple summary of Transparency International’s 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index. A big headline this year was the drop in Spain’s ranking because of a number of public scandals. But do not imagine that corruption in Spain has actually gone up or down, just because perception has changed. Actual corruption is pretty much the same …
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Yahoo, Bing, Scroogle, Scraper, and anonymous search
How embarrassing! I knew it, but forgot it. But luckily was reminded yesterday that Yahoo doesn’t offer search any more. In mid-2009 Yahoo gave up on search and contracted with Bing to supply teh service. I was reminded when I saw the confession at the bottom of a Yahoo search page. Further investigation reminded me …
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The truth about hedge funds: Expensive and limp.
BloombergBusinessweek’s picture says it all: Hedge funds talk big, but results are limp. Sheelah Kolhatkar reported back in July on the poor performance and high cost of specialist investor funds. The follow up for the 3rd quarter tells the same story: Hedge Funds Continue to Be for Suckers If the fund managers had to suffer …
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Fossil fuel subsidies: over $ 500,000,000,000 a year.
That’s about $112 for each adult in the world. It’s a lot of money for any industry. It’s a huge commitment of resources for a sunset industry. Subsidies must be eliminated. The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) report notes that “these subsidies outweigh the support provided to fast-start climate finance by a ratio of 7:1”. That …
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