Category: economics

  • Globalization

    Is still on the march. Only the US is falling behind. Kevin Drum, previously of Mother Jones, a liberal magazine, has taken to data analysis and reporting after his retirement while he battles cancer. His blog is a treasure trove of data showing how little things are changing, even as the rhetoric around change is going haywire. In any case, those afraid of a decline in globalization should not be worried, unless you are in the US.

  • First Taxi Drivers, Now Nurses. Teachers next?

    Take nurses: increasingly, American hospitals are firing their waged nurses and replacing them with gig nurses who are booked in via an app. There’s plenty of ways that these apps abuse nurses, but the most ghastly is in how they price nurses’ wages. These apps buy nurses’ financial data from data-brokers so they can offer lower wages to nurses with lots of credit card debt, on the grounds that crushing debt makes nurses desperate enough to accept a lower wage:

    Pluralistic: Nurses whose shitty boss is a shitty app (17 Dec 2024)

  • Player drain for Japan Soccer

    NYTimes article about the economics of football and how the exchange rate matters.

    The third factor is that they are relatively affordable. The transfer fees asked for Japanese players are usually in the hundreds of thousands rather than in the multiple millions. The ones who sign straight from Japan are usually cheaper than those from other European or South American countries.

  • You are the product

    Even when you buy the product. In this case, Apple owners. Apple has been listening and sharing data with third parties (selling). Get in line, you can get up to $100 when they get things set up. From Ars Technica.

  • Seaweed for Cows

    Got too much red algae? Feed it to the cows. It reduces methane by 40%.