The online world has clearly and systematically changed the rules of business, and companies must adapt or risk irrelevance. This often seemed self-evident to many of us, even if the ranks of the Fortune 500 and Global 2000 didn’t actually seem to change very much as a result. But the times, they have recently changed.
Continue reading… “Social business remade the economy while most companies weren’t looking”
The number of violent crimes has fallen by 32% since 1990 across America as a whole.
The capital of Estonia, Tallinn, does not look like a den of thieves. On a summer afternoon, herds of elderly tourists—American, Japanese, British—wander between the gift shops and sip lagers at pavement cafés beneath the gothic town hall. In a park, teenagers chat and smoke cigarettes in the sun.
Continue reading… “The world is seeing less crime, so where have all of the burglars gone?”
Job fair in China for college graduates.
College students in the U.S. facing the misery of an anemic post-graduation job market have company in an unlikely-seeming place: China. Despite entering a robust economy that seemed to weather the financial crisis as if were it a middling squall, China’s college graduates on average make only 300 yuan, or roughly $44, more per month than the average Chinese migrant worker, according to statistics cited over the weekend by a top Chinese labor researcher and reported today by the Beijing Times (in Chinese).
Continue reading… “Value of a college degree in China – $44”
Here’s what an astonishing graph (via Brookings) says. Job growth in America’s non-health-care economy has been dreadful during the last ten years. Just 2.1 percent total — or barely 0.2 percent per year. (Yes, that’s point-two percent annual growth.) In that time, the U.S. health care sector has grown more than ten-times faster than the rest of the economy, adding 2.6 million jobs.
Continue reading… “Growth of healthcare jobs in America: Graph”
Business in China are swamped with job applications from college graduates but have few jobs to offer.
The headline in he New York Times read “Degrees, but No Guarantees.” However, the story was not about the students graduating from American universities this season. Instead, it was about Chinese grads. Chinese businesses are swamped by job applications from graduating students but have few jobs to offer. As bad as our economy seems for our own grads, their prospects are better than China’s.
Continue reading… “The Chinese skills disconnect may be an opportunity for us”
Flying robots are going to become a lot more common in the U.S.
Investors and entrepreneurs are betting on a future full of flying robots that can be programmed to do anything from survey crops or wildlife to delivering vaccines to remote villages in Africa.
Continue reading… “Entrepreneurs and investors bet on the future of the drone economy”
China’s economy is undergoing a structural slowdown.
China has been way out front as the world’s most important source of economic growth for years. China has the world’s second largest economy and it continues to grow at a rapid clip but it is cooling as other enormous economies heat up.
Continue reading… “China is no longer the world’s most important source of growth”
Baxter is a robot meant to work with people in small manufacturing facilities.
Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and his collaborator and coauthor Andrew McAfee have been arguing for the last year and a half that impressive advances in computer technology—from improved industrial robotics to automated translation services—are largely behind the sluggish employment growth of the last 10 to 15 years. Even more ominous for workers, the MIT academics foresee dismal prospects for many types of jobs as these powerful new technologies are increasingly adopted not only in manufacturing, clerical, and retail work but in professions such as law, financial services, education, and medicine.
Continue reading… “How new technology is destroying jobs”
America could do with some Californication when it comes to clean tech. California is beating everywhere else hands down, from public policy and capital invested to adoption of electric vehicles and smart meters.
Continue reading… “Clean Edge ranks the states and cities in the clean-tech economy”
Will the McMansion ever die?
The McMansion with a giant SUV parked in the driveway were pretty much the epitome of middle class excess during the housing bubble. Then gas prices spiked, the crash came, and both houses and cars shrank a bit as Americans turned thrifty.
Continue reading… “Are McMansions making a comeback?”
Job quality is worsening around the globe, even where the unemployment rate is falling.
The “World of Work” annual report has been released by the UN’s International Labor Organization, and boy the results are depressing.
Continue reading… “Wealthy countries are creating more jobs by creating worse jobs”
The rich got richer, and the poor kept on getting poorer.
In 2010, Zero Hedge started an annual series looking at the (re)distribution in the wealth of nations and social classes. What they found then (and what the media keeps rediscovering year after year to its great surprise) is that as a result of global central bank policy, the rich got richer, and the poor kept on getting poorer, even though as they predicted the global political powers would, at least superficially, seek to enforce policies that aimed to reverse this wealth redistribution from the poor to the rich (a doomed policy as the world’s legislative powers are largely in the lobby pocket of the world’s wealthiest who needless to say are less then willing to enact laws that reduce their wealth and leverage).
Continue reading… “The 0.6% world: Who owns what of the $223 trillion in gobal wealth”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.