Category: Economy

Impact Lab > Economy
Analysis, Business, Economy, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Workers find freedom and uncertainty in the sharing economy

sharing economy

Piecemeal labor has taken on a shinier veneer under new rubrics: the sharing economy, the peer economy, the collaborative economy, the gig economy.

Jennifer Guidry was in the driveway of her rental apartment just after 4 a.m. on a Friday while most of the neighbors in her leafy Boston suburb were still asleep. Her blond hair pulled back in a tidy French braid she was vacuuming the inside of her car.  A Navy veteran and former accountant, Ms. Guidry uses the early time to mitigate the uncertainty of working in what’s known as the sharing economy.

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Big Problems, Business, Economy, Latest Trend

Abandoned luxury cars become a big problem in Dubai

abandoned car 1

Thousands of luxury cars are being abandoned every year since Dubai’s financial meltdown.

Dubai over the last several years has been facing an unusual problem of high end sports cars being abandoned and left to gather thick layers of dust at airport parking lots and on the roadside across the city. If you’ve ever been to Dubai or anywhere in the United Arab Emirates, you will have noticed they have a serious car culture out there, with a particular preference for the latest and greatest in high-end super cars. (Pics)

 

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Analysis, Business, Economy, Latest Trend

How the collaborative economy will change the way we travel

opendoorbedroom

Airbnb doesn’t need to build or own inventory, it facilitates access to existing assets, such as spare rooms, holiday houses, entire islands or treehouses.

At the annual Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals conference (HITEC) in Los Angeles, Rachel Botsman, Founder of Collaborative Labs, talked about how the collaborative economy will transform the hospitality ecosystem. She was talking to a group whose sector was getting hit hard and fast by the ideas she was going to share. How do hoteliers really feel about Airbnb?

 

 

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Analysis, Economy, Latest Trend

More middle-aged moving back in with parents

middle-aged moving in with parents

Older people are quietly moving in with their parents at twice the rate of their younger counterparts.

Debbie Rohr, her husband, and twin teenage sons live in a well-tended three-bedroom home in Salinas. The ranch-style house has a spacious kitchen that looks out on a yard filled with rosebushes. It’s a modest but comfortable house, the type that Rohr, 52, pictured for herself at this stage of life.

Analysis, Business, Economy, government, Historical Perspectives, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

What job creation looked like under the last six presidents

presidents

There are many differences between the president’s terms. Overall employment was smaller in the ’80s, so a different comparison might be to look at the percentage change. Of course the participation rate was increasing in the ’80s (younger population and women joining the labor force), and the participation rate is declining now. But these graphs give an overview of employment changes.

 

 

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Analysis, Business, Economy, Latest Trend

Sharing is the new buying: Insights into the Collaborative Economy

collaboration

A new report, Sharing is the New Buying, offers important insight for big brands who are grappling with the emergence of the Collaborative Economy, and for the startups that are driving this growth. The collaborative economy is a powerful movement in which people are getting the things from each other, it’s a combination of trends like the sharing economy, maker movement, and co-innovation. (Infographic)

 

 

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Analysis, Business, Economy, Internet, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

The Internet is the greatest facilitator of inequality in history

internet inequality

The Internet affects the economy differently than the new businesses of the past did.

John Doerr, a venture capitalist, predicted in the 1990’s that the Internet would lead to the “the largest legal creation of wealth in the history of the planet.”  The Internet has created a tremendous amount of personal wealth. Just look at the rash of Internet billionaires and millionaires, the investors both small and large that have made fortunes investing in Internet stocks, and the list of multibillion-dollar Internet companies—Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Amazon. Add to the list the recent Twitter stock offering, which created a reported 1,600 millionaires.

 

 

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Analysis, Business, Economy, Historical Perspectives, Latest Trend, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

The Disruptive Nature of the Sharing Economy: Finding the Next Great Opportunities

Sharing-Economy-1

Futurist Thomas Frey: Many of us suffer from a sinister and often contagious disorder, something I call just-in-case disease.

We own toolboxes full of tools, just in case we need to fix something. We have kitchens full of appliances just in case we want to prepare a meal. We have cars in our garages just in case we need to go somewhere. We even have closets full of clothes we know we’ll never wear just in case we get desperate.

 

 

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