Bộ mặt thật của những công ty bình phong

dùng phần mềm phân tích dữ liệu sổ sách kế toán: ít vay ngân hàng, các khoản chi bất hợp pháp, quá nhiều vốn lưu động, tuổi và giới tính lãnh đạo công ty... là ra hết

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Seeking the devil in details

New software helps uncover Mafia crime masked as ordinary business

Suspicious patterns are revealed by crunching financial data

...Crime&tech’s software identifies not pizzo (protection payments) schemes as such, but firms that may be under mafioso control or involved in Mafia crimes such as illegal gambling and trafficking in people, drugs or arms. Its algorithms look at many variables. Businesses with little or no bank financing are more likely to have taken out a Mafia loan. Borrowers who struggle to repay may “convert the debt into stock” held by the Mafia creditor, often behind the smokescreen of a figurehead administrator, says Michele Riccardi of Crime&tech. The software considers the age and sex of a firm’s administrators. Those who are old, young or female are more likely to be figureheads.

It also looks for anomalies in payroll and invoice data that may reveal attempts to conceal illicit payments, especially in sectors where Mafia activity is strongest: construction, retail, waste removal, food services and transport. A high share of a firm’s wealth kept liquid is a red flag.

...In an effort to curb Mafia involvement in public contracts, Italy’s finance ministry is using the software to keep an eye on more than 10,000 bank accounts. Computer says no, mafioso.

Bài trước: Chỉ số Waffle House nghĩa là gì?

Vào mùa trái cây, du lịch miệt vườn hút khách

tính 6 usd/cân dâu tây, mà khách cứ vặt ăn thoải mái rồi mới mang giỏ ra tính tiền đúng 1 cân -> lỗ, chẳng nhẽ nói khách làm vậy có khác nào ăn trộm, phải làm sao?

-> tính vé vào cửa đủ hòa vốn, nhưng nhớ gọi tên là vé vào cửa chứ đừng gọi tên là tiền ăn dâu, vì nếu vậy thì họ càng ăn nhiều hơn (để bù tiền đã bỏ ra),

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Dear Dan,

I have a farm where people come to pick blueberries, and I charge $3 per pound. The problem is that people think it is an open buffet and eat a lot of blueberries while in the field, and then they come back to the payment station with just $3 worth of blueberries. Without being rude, how can I let them know that they are stealing?

—Michelle

I must admit that when I’ve picked blueberries I too ate a few in the process. It’s just so tempting that I think it’s inhuman to ask people not to eat any. So if we accept that people will eat some blueberries in the process of picking, maybe the best approach is to charge an entrance fee to cover the cost of the snacking. But make sure to call it an entrance fee and not a snacking fee—otherwise people will try to maximize their benefit by eating even more blueberries.

Bài trước: Đóng góp từ thiện năm 2018 vẫn ươm mầm nảy lộc

Du lịch dưới vườn nho Ninh Thuận - Sự ngọt ngào giữa nắng

Một người đi

Chỉ số Waffle House nghĩa là gì?

Waffle House là chuỗi nhà hàng bán đồ ăn sáng ở Nam Mỹ, nổi tiếng về độ tin cậy, luôn nhanh chóng mở cửa kể cả ngay sau khi bão tố, lũ lụt xảy ra, dù chỉ phục vụ một vài món hạn chế,

chỉ số Waffle House do Craig Fugate - cựu Cục trưởng Cục Quản lý tình huống khẩn cấp liên bang Mỹ - nghĩ ra vào năm 2004: nếu nhà hàng đóng cửa, thì tai ương thật sự tồi tệ -> chỉ số màu đỏ; nếu mở cửa và phục vụ một vài món -> màu vàng; nếu hoạt động bình thường -> màu xanh = tai họa ko nặng nề lắm, cửa hàng, sạp tạp hóa, (chi nhánh) ngân hàng mở cửa trở lại -> nền kinh tế địa phương nhanh chóng phục hồi kinh doanh...

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What is the Waffle House Index?

WAFFLE HOUSE, a breakfast chain from the American South, is better known for reliability than quality. All its restaurants stay open every hour of every day. After extreme weather, like floods, tornados and hurricanes, Waffle Houses are quick to reopen, even if they can only serve a limited menu. That makes them a remarkably reliable if informal barometer for weather damage.

...The index was invented by Craig Fugate, a former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 2004 after a spate of hurricanes battered America’s east coast. “If a Waffle House is closed because there’s a disaster, it’s bad. We call it red. If they’re open but have a limited menu, that’s yellow,” he explained to NPR, America’s public radio network. Fully functioning restaurants mean that the Waffle House Index is shining green. The company is leaning into its reputation. On September 11th the company tweeted that the Waffle House Storm Centre “had been activated” and was monitoring Florence.

New Orleans lost over half its population after Hurricane Katrina—and 40% of its jobs.

Swiss Re, an insurance firm, estimates that global disasters inflicted $306bn in economic losses last year—almost twice the losses seen in 2016.

Bài trước: Lợi ích khi HĐQT có nữ ủy viên

Lợi ích khi HĐQT có nữ ủy viên

California sẽ là bang đầu tiên áp dụng quota, yêu cầu các công ty đại chúng có ít nhất 1 thành viên là nữ trong HĐQT vào cuối năm nay, và đến năm 2021, tỷ lệ nữ thành viên trong HĐQT ít nhất là 40%,

đây là sáng kiến do Na Uy áp dụng lần đầu tiên kể từ năm 2008, khi đó có phản đối là HĐQT các công ty đại chúng sẽ buộc phải bổ sung thành viên nữ ít kinh nghiệm, cho có danh nghĩa; hoặc các nữ lãnh đạo giỏi (được gọi là "váy vàng") sẽ phải tham gia quá nhiều HĐQT ở các công ty khác nhau; tuy nhiên, nghiên cứu sau đó cho thấy nỗi lo này không có cơ sở.

nhìn qua, các công ty có nữ ủy viên trong HĐQT thì có lợi nhuận tốt hơn, không có gian lận, và cũng không có tranh chấp giữa các cổ đông; tuy nhiên, mối tương quan chưa chắc có nghĩa là hệ quả, có lợi hay ko ko kết luận được.

nghiên cứu ở ý thấy khi nữ ủy viên HĐQT được bổ nhiệm thì (ban đầu) giá cổ phiếu có tăng, nhưng các chỉ số khác như: lợi nhuận, sản lượng, nợ và tỷ suất lợi nhuận trên tài sản không có ảnh hưởng mấy; nghiên cứu ở pháp kết luận là gender quota thay đổi cách hđqt thông qua quyết định (chủ yếu do họ là người ngoài công ty/ngoài ngành chứ không phải bản thân họ là nữ), nhưng không thay đổi bản chất các quyết định đó...

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Are gender quotas good for business?

Nearly two-thirds of public firms in California have fewer than two female directors. Opponents of quotas say that this reflects the scarcity of women in upper management. A quota, they warn, would see boards being stuffed with inexperienced, token women. Another concern is that a small number of highly qualified women, known as “golden skirts”, would be stretched thinly across too many boards.

...Does any of this affect how well companies do? Some “snapshot” studies show that companies with more women on their boards have better returns and are less likely to be beset by fraud or shareholder battles. But causation is hard to prove. Studies comparing firms’ performance before and after quotas were introduced have been inconclusive. Some have found positive effects on firms’ results; others the opposite. One Italian study found an initial increase in stock price when female directors were elected to firms affected by the quota. But it found no effect on any of seven measures of firms’ performance, including profit, output, debt and return on assets. A French study offers one clue for why the addition of more women has not made a consistent difference. It concluded that the country’s new quota system led to changes in the way the boards made decisions. But there was no change in the substance of the decisions. It also found that the process did not change because the new members were women. It was because they were likely to be outsiders.

Bài trước: Nhập cư làm thay đổi nhà nước phúc lợi Thụy Điển như thế nào?

Giai cấp trung lưu và tương lai của nền dân chủ

tới năm 2020, lần đầu tiên hơn một nửa dân số thế giới sẽ là 'giai cấp trung lưu'

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Wash Post: The world is on the brink of a historic milestone: By 2020, more than half of the world’s population will be “middle class,” according to Brookings Institution scholar Homi Kharas.

Kharas defines the middle class as people who have enough money to cover basics needs, such as food, clothing and shelter, and still have enough left over for a few luxuries, such as fancy food, a television, a motorbike, home improvements or higher education.

It’s a critical juncture: After thousands of years of most people on the planet living as serfs (nông nô), as slaves (nô lệ) or in other destitute (thiếu thốn, nghèo túng, cơ cực) scenarios (kịch bản, viễn cảnh, viễn tưởng), half the population now has the financial means to be able to do more than just try to survive.

“There was almost no middle class before the Industrial Revolution began in the 1830s,” Kharas said. “It was just royalty (hoàng gia) and peasants (nông dân). Now we are about to have a majority middle-class world.”

(Kharas’s definition of middle class takes into account differences in prices across countries.)

It’s interesting that middle class values are also expanding, especially in Asia, even as they may be declining in the United States:

According to the World Values Survey (2015), people in countries with burgeoning middle classes do not feel that governments are responsible for their success, but rather that it is thrift (tiết kiệm, tằn tiện), hard work (lao động cần cù), determination (quyết tâm), and perseverance (bền chí) that count.

Bài trước: Có nên đánh thuế robot?

Có nên đánh thuế robot?

lý do vì robot lấy mất jobs,

thật vậy ư, như bảng tính điện tử lấy mất việc của kế toán viên(?), như vậy cần đánh thuế những ai sử dụng microsoft excel, hay đánh thuế vì sở hữu smart phone...

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...Spreadsheet software redefined what it meant to be an accountant. Spreadsheets were once a literal thing: two-page spreads in a paper ledger. Fill them in, and make sure all the rows and columns add up. The output of several spreadsheets would then be the input for some larger, master spreadsheet. Making an alteration might require hours of work with a pencil, eraser, and desk calculator.

Once a computer programmer named Dan Bricklin came up with the idea of putting the piece of paper inside a computer, it is easy to see why digital spreadsheets caught on almost overnight.

But did the spreadsheet steal jobs? Yes and no. It certainly put a sudden end to a particular kind of task — the task of calculating, filling in, checking and correcting numbers on paper spreadsheets. National Public Radio’s Planet Money programme concluded that in the 35 years after Mr Bricklin’s VisiCalc was launched, the US lost 400,000 jobs for book-keepers and accounting clerks.

Meanwhile, 600,000 jobs appeared for other kinds of accountant. Accountancy had become cheaper and more powerful, so people demanded more of it.

What does a robot accountant look like? Not C-3PO with a pencil sharpener, that’s for sure. One might say that Microsoft Excel is a robot accounting clerk...

Bài trước: Mặc áo chơi game

Mặc áo chơi game

dòng quần áo và phụ kiện mới của Tommy Hilfiger có gắn chip thông minh để theo dõi mức độ mặc thường xuyên và những nơi bạn đến, cũng có trò chơi ảo tương tự Pokémon Go đổi điểm thưởng lấy thẻ quà tặng và vé xem nhạc...

-> bao giờ Nike áp dụng với những đôi giày nhỉ? :)

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This week, Tommy Hilfiger introduced Tommy Jeans XPLORE , a new line of clothes and accessories that all come bugged with “smart chip technology,” which tracks how often you wear them and where you go with them on.

There’s even an exclusive game, sort of like Pokémon Go, that you can use to earn rewards like gift cards and concert tickets.

“It’s all of your must-have Tommy Jeans favorites with smart chip technology,” the brand’s website reads…

The company said in its announcement for the line that it hopes the chipped clothes and game will help create a “micro-community of brand ambassadors.” In essence, they’re rewarding you for wearing the products more often.

Bài trước: Cấm Facebook mở canteen cho nhân viên

Cấm Facebook mở canteen cho nhân viên

để bảo hộ các hàng quán xung quanh trong vùng :)

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When Facebook moves into its new offices in Mountain View this fall, a signature Silicon Valley perk will be missing — there won’t be a corporate cafeteria with free food for about 2,000 employees.

In an unusual move, the city barred companies from fully subsidizing meals inside the offices, which are part of the Village at San Antonio Center project, in an effort to promote nearby retailers. The project-specific requirement passed in 2014, attracting little notice because the offices were years away from opening.

It came in response to local restaurants that said Google, the city’s biggest employer, was hurting their businesses by providing free meals, according to John McAlister, a Mountain View councilman.

Bài trước: Cấm ống hút bằng nhựa

Cấm ống hút bằng nhựa

để bảo vệ môi trường

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On Tuesday, the Santa Barbara City Council unanimously (nhất trí, đồng lòng) passed (thông qua) a bill (dự luật) that prohibits (ngăn cấm) restaurants (nhà hàng), bars, and other food service businesses from handing out plastic straws (ống hút bằng nhựa) to their customers (khách hàng). …Santa Barbara… has banned even compostable straws, permitting only drinking tubes made from nonplastic materials such as paper, metal, or bamboo. The city also has made a second violation* of its straw prohibition both an administrative infraction (sự vi phạm (luật, hiệp định...)) carrying a $100 fine and a misdemeanor (tội nhẹ, khinh tội), punishable by a maximum fine of $1,000 and up to six months in jail. Each contraband (buôn lậu) straw or unsolicited plastic stirrer counts as a separate violation, so fines and jail time could stack up quickly.

…Assistant City Attorney Scott Vincent tells me criminal charges would be pursued only after repeat violations and if there were aggravating circumstances.

Bài trước: Dự án nạo vét sông 'đội vốn'

Dự án nạo vét sông 'đội vốn'

thanh toán theo khối lượng nạo vét, nên nhà thầu đào sâu hơn mức cần thiết,

-> tạo thành hố to, rồi chủ đầu tư lại phải bỏ thêm tiền lấp lại

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Lesson one in our textbook chapter on managing incentives is “You get what you pay for (even when what you pay for is not exactly what you want)”. Case in point is the California cleanup of the 2017 wildfires, at $280,000 per site it’s four times more expensive than similar past cleanups and by far the costliest cleanup in CA history. The state emphasized speed and farmed the job out to the Army Corp of Engineers who hired contractors who were paid by the ton excavated! Paying by the ton created highly u̶n̶p̶r̶e̶d̶i̶c̶t̶a̶b̶l̶e̶ predictable consequences as KQED reports:

…Dan said he saw workers inflate their load weights with wet mud. Sonoma County Supervisor James Gore said he heard similar stories of subcontractors actually being directed to mix metal that should have been recycled into their loads to make them heavier.

“They [contractors] saw it as gold falling from the sky,” Dan said. “That is the biggest issue. They can’t pay tonnage on jobs like this and expect it to be done safely.”

…Krickl pointed to where his home used to stand. It’s a 6-foot deep depression that he affectionately called his “pond”.

That “pond” was created when contractors removed the foundation, soil and an entire concrete pad for Krickl’s garage, leaving behind a large hole.

Here’s my favorite part:

So many sites were over-excavated that the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services recently launched a new program to refill the holes left behind by Army Corps contractors. That’s estimated to cost another $3.5 million.

Bài trước: Nơi bán vị vanilla giá rẻ, uy tín, chất lượng nhất?

Nơi bán vị vanilla giá rẻ, uy tín, chất lượng nhất?

khó kiếm lắm, giờ đắt hơn bạc rồi

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The price of vanilla has hit a record high (cao kỷ lục) of $600 (£445) per kilogram for the second time since 2017 when a cyclone (bão) damaged many of the plantations (vùng trồng) in Madagascar, where three quarters of the world’s vanilla is grown. Silver by comparison currently costs $538/kg.

Demand for vanilla has kept the prices high, leading some ice cream manufacturers to cut back and even halt production of the flavour (vị), sparking fears of shortages over the summer.

Here is the full story, and note this:

Replacement printer ink cartridges can cost between $8 and $27, depending on the type of printer you have. A single black ink jet cartridge (ống mực) from one major manufacturer can cost $23 for just 4ml of ink – enough to print around 200 pages.

Manufacturers argue they need to charge this to cover the loss they are selling the printer hardware at, together with the research and development they do on ink technology. But cut open an ink cartridge and you will see that most of the space inside is taken up with sponge (bọt biển, cao su xốp), designed to help preserve and deliver the ink.

And when you are paying what works out to be around $1,733/kg of ink, you might be better off printing with pure silver instead.

Bài trước: Siêu phẩm Galaxy S9+

Đóng góp từ thiện năm 2018 vẫn ươm mầm nảy lộc

đến tham gia các sự kiện quyên góp từ thiện thì sẽ đóng góp nhiều hơn là được mời qua điện thoại

-> là lý do các quỹ tổ chức nhiều sự kiện hơn

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Hello!

What makes people show up at charity events and donate? Do they just want to promote themselves as virtuous, or are they genuinely altruistic?

—Alexandra

Many factors come into play at charity events. If you attend, you’re signaling that you’re part of a group and committed to its cause. But the social signaling doesn’t stop there. Numerous studies have shown that the more public people’s charitable behavior is, the more they donate. In a 1984 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Joel Brockner and his colleagues showed that people were more willing to donate to a charity when they were solicited in person compared with a phone call. So altruism no doubt motivates many donors—but social factors can boost their giving.

Bài trước: Siêu phẩm Galaxy S9+

Siêu phẩm Galaxy S9+

đợi điện thoại đời mới ra, rồi đi mua điện thoại đời cũ

-> thế là đúng ý của họ rồi,

ví dụ dưới đây, những năm 1990, công ty đồ gia dụng Williams-Sonoma tăng gấp đôi doanh số bán máy làm bánh mỳ, bằng đúng thủ thuật như vậy, tung ra dòng máy đời mới hơn :)

đặt 2 máy đứng cạnh nhau, người tiêu dùng sẽ tự nghĩ: 'tôi chẳng cần máy xịn như thế làm gì, như này bla bla là vừa đủ'

-> tưởng là 'người tiêu dùng thông thái', hóa ra đều bị manipulated hết :D

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Imagine that you sell bread-making machines. Your task is complicated by the fact that most people have only a hazy grasp of what a bread-making machine does, let alone the joys and sorrows of owning one.

Nevertheless, there is a simple trick that will help these machines to fly off your shelves: next to what seems to be a perfectly adequate $150 bread-maker, place a $250 bread-maker with a long list of bewildering extra functions. Customers will think to themselves: “I don’t need all that nonsense. The cheaper, simpler bread maker is the better option.” Some of them will buy it, even though they would not have otherwise.

Itamar Simonson, a marketing professor at Stanford University, attests that the kitchenware company Williams-Sonoma doubled their sales of bread-makers in the early 1990s using this sort of technique. Mr Simonson, along with Amos Tversky, one of the fathers of behavioural economics, demonstrated similar preference reversals in a laboratory setting.

Mr Simonson and Tversky showed that when people are wavering between two options, you can change what they choose by offering a third, unattractive option. A $1,000 camera might seem extravagant unless there’s a $5,000 camera sitting next to it. The grande sized cup at Starbucks seems restrained when put next to the venti, a Brobdingnagian vat of flavoured warm milk.

Bài trước: Quá nhanh quá nguy hiểm

Quá nhanh quá nguy hiểm

nhờ có điện thoại thông minh, giờ đây, giao ma túy còn nhanh hơn giao pizza

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the “technology” of illicit retail drug distribution has been transformed by the introduction of mobile phones.

...Thirty years ago, illicit retail drug transactions were characteristically carried out either in public locations (parks or street corners) or in dedicated drug-dealing locations (e.g., crack houses). Those locations tended to cluster heavily in low-income, high-crime urban neighborhoods where police had other priorities and neighbors were reluctant to call the police. Having to travel to such a location – risking arrest or robbery – constituted a significant barrier to illicit acquisition. Moreover, for open-air transactions, a buyer had to search for a willing seller–usually, a seller with whom he had an established connection – and that search took time (45 minutes was not uncommon) and sometimes failed entirely. Search time and risk constituted a second kind of “price” of illicit drugs, perhaps as significant (especially to new consumers) as the money price.

From the retailer’s point of view, that style of dealing meant exposure to both enforcement risk and the risk of robbery. It also greatly decreased the number of transactions a dealer could consummate in an hour, since most of his time was spent waiting for customers to arrive. Much of the retail price of illicit drugs represented compensation to the retail dealer for those risks and costs.

But with mobile phones, texting, and social media, transactions can now be arranged electronically and completed by home delivery, reducing the buyer’s risk and travel time to near zero and even his waiting time to minimal levels. In the recent Global Survey on Drugs, cocaine users around the world reported that their most recent cocaine order was delivered in less time, on average, than their most recent pizza order.

Bài trước: Mây, sao còn bay mãi không quay về đây

Mây, sao còn bay mãi không quay về đây

Microsoft đặt một trung tâm dữ liệu dưới đáy biển scotland để tiết kiệm chi phí điện,

-> làm sao để các hãng nước ngoài đặt server ở việt nam ta?

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...Microsoft has placed a data center in the Scottish sea to determine whether it can save energy by cooling it in the sea. Data centers typically generate a lot of heat, and big providers try to move them to cooler countries to save on energy bills. Microsoft has been experimenting with subsea data centers for around five years, and previously sunk a data center on the Californian coast for five months back in 2015.

Today’s underwater data center will be deployed for five years, and includes 12 racks with 864 servers and 27.6 petabytes of storage. That’s enough storage for around 5 million movies, and the data center is as powerful as thousands of high-end desktop PCs. The data center will be powered by an undersea cable and renewable energy from the Orkney Islands. The cable will also connect the servers back to the internet.

Bài trước: Người dân phấn khởi vì điện mặt trời vừa dùng vừa bán được

Liệu có chiến tranh thương mại Mỹ-Hoa?

Không.

phân tích của nhà kinh tế Tyler Cowen trên bloomberg.

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Will there be a trade war with China?

No.

Keep in mind that the U.S. is a relatively large buyer in many markets; in economic lingo, it has some monopsony (tình trạng độc mãi, thị trường một người mua) power. So if it cuts back purchases of, say, Chinese toys, China cannot simply reroute those now-surplus toys and sell them to Canada or Indonesia at the same price. This gives the U.S. significant (đáng kể) power in trade conflicts (xung đột thương mại). And China cannot throw around its weight as a buyer in similar fashion because it does not import on the same scale (quy mô).

The Chinese don’t have that many ready American targets (mục tiêu) for economic retaliation (trả đũa kinh tế). Aircraft (máy bay) are one of the major U.S. exports (hàng xuất khẩu) to China, where market demand (nhu cầu thị trường) for domestic flights (các chuyến bay nội địa) is rapidly growing. Beijing has a backlog (khối lượng đơn hàng) of about 400 orders (đơn đặt hàng) with the Boeing Co. It could try to switch some or all of those orders to Airbus SE, but that would mean delays (chậm giao hàng). Airbus would also know it could increase its prices and the Chinese would have to pay. As a buyer, China doesn’t have as much leverage in this market as it might appear.

The U.S. has many more targets when it comes to restricting foreign investment, as there is plenty of Chinese capital (vốn, tư bản) that would love to flee (đào thoát, bỏ chạy). The Chinese government already limits the activities of the big technology companies and many other U.S. multinationals in China, so they don’t have as many extra sticks in this regard.

The reality is China has margins for responding to the U.S., but they are mostly not in the economic realm.

Bài trước: Trái đắng của 'cơn lốc' du khách Trung Quốc tại Phần Lan

Người dân phấn khởi vì điện mặt trời vừa dùng vừa bán được

chớ vội mừng, nhà kinh tế Severein Borenstein ở đại học UC Berkeley cho rằng năng lượng mặt trời trên mái nhà vừa đắt đỏ, vừa không hiệu quả...

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Noted UC Berkeley energy economist Severein Borenstein writes against the proposal to make solar required on all new residential construction:

Dear Commissioner Weisenmiller:

I just became aware in the last few days of the proposal in the new building energy efficiency standards rule making to mandate rooftop solar on all new residential buildings. I want to urge you not to adopt the standard. I, along with the vast majority of energy economist, believe that residential rooftop solar is a much more expensive way to move towards renewable energy than larger solar and wind installations. The savings calculated for the households are based on residential electricity rates that are far above the actual cost of providing incremental energy, so embody a large cross subsidy from other ratepayers. This would be a very expensive way to expand renewables and would not be a cost-effective practice that other states and countries could adopt to reduce their own greenhouse gas footprints.

Because I, and most other economists studying California’s energy policy, just became aware of this proposal, we have not had time to participate in the policy process or write public documents on the subject. At the least, I would urge you to delay adopting such a rule until independent analysis from energy experts can be made part of the record.

I will add that I have no financial interest in any energy company. I am expr essing my views purely in the interestof moving forward with California’s fight against climate change in a cost-effective way that can be exported to other states and countries.

Sincerely, Severin Borenstein

I agree and would add that allowing more building near transit and other hubs as with California’s rejected SB827 would not only lower housing prices, rather than raise them as with this proposal, it would also be a much better way of reducing carbon emissions and saving energy.

Bài trước: Chuỗi bán lẻ trở lại

Chuỗi bán lẻ trở lại

các cửa hàng truyền thống sẽ dễ thở hơn khi tiền thuê bất động sản giảm,

các cửa hàng online (qua mạng) sẽ lại đắt đỏ hơn khi phí quảng cáo (trả cho google, facebook...) và phí vận chuyển tăng...

đây mới là tạm phân tích với dữ liệu năm 2017, khi thương mại điện tử mới chỉ chiếm 10% tổng doanh thu bán lẻ toàn cầu, trong tương lai, khi tỷ lệ này tăng, thì những thách thức này còn cao nữa...

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The Return of the Brick-and-Mortar Store

Commercial rents are falling, just as ad rates and shipping costs make e-commerce prohibitive.

...In the first six months of 2017 alone, ad rates on Facebook are said to have more than doubled (chỉ riêng 6 tháng đầu năm 2017, phí quảng cáo facebook được cho là tăng hơn gấp đôi). A glance at Facebook's quarterly earnings shows that in North America, user growth has just about flatlined (đi ngang) while revenue per user (doanh thu trên mỗi người dùng) continues to surge (dâng lên, tràn (như) sóng), implying that the cost of reaching users is rising at a rapid rate.

The other challenge facing e-commerce firms, which is a broader challenge in the economy right now, is the rising cost of shipping. UPS is adjusting its business model, including raising rates, because shipping to home consumers isn't as efficient as shipping to businesses. Higher shipping costs are plaguing Amazon as well, which is one of the reasons it's raising pricing for Amazon Prime membership by 20 percent in May.

…the future of the relative cost advantage between e-commerce and physical retail is looking less clear. For much of physical retail, there’s the prospect of falling rents, making running a brick-and-mortar store more viable. For e-commerce, it’s a surge in ad rates, or customer acquisition costs, plus shipping bottlenecks that will make “free shipping” more onerous (nặng nề, khó nhọc, phiền hà) to offer. And profit margins on an e-commerce sale were lower than the profit margin on an equivalent brick and mortar sale to begin with. All of this is happening when e-commerce is only around 10 percent of total retail sales. Presumably, these challenges will be even greater as that share grows.

In his view, we should look for a renewed focus on bricks and mortar. Here is the full column.

Chuỗi bán lẻ lớn bậc nhất thế giới phá sản

Cướp của thiên hạ

Cướp của thiên hạ

hơn một nửa tổng tài sản của Đức ngày nay là thừa kế (những năm 1960s, 70s, phần thừa kế chỉ khoảng 20%)

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Thomas Piketty, the French economist, calculates that more than half of total wealth in Germany today is inherited — an estimate confirmed by German economists. In the 1960s and 1970s, the share was just a little over 20 per cent.

That is from Tobias Buck at the FT.

Bài trước: Tương lai của toàn cầu hóa

Tương lai của toàn cầu hóa

trước diễn ra trong ngành sản xuất, sắp tới sẽ là ngành dịch vụ chuyên nghiệp, tư vấn..., nhờ công nghệ số làm giảm chi phí di chuyển con người, hay tương tác mặt đối mặt

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To date, the gains and pains of globalization and automation have been felt mostly by the manufacturing sector. In the future, the gains and pains will be felt by professional and service-sector jobs. That’s because digital technology is going to lower the third constraint to globalization as arbitrage: the cost of moving people around, or facilitating face-to-face interaction.

Telemigration.

...As remote work becomes more technologically and culturally mainstream, perhaps we won’t be offshoring entire jobs, but rather the stages of production of white-collar jobs—specific tasks that can be done remotely for cheaper than they’re done locally.

Virtual globalization websites.

With the growth of the gig economy, there’s been a corresponding growth in online hubs where people can say, “I’m a freelancer. I can make logos. I can design web sites. I can copyedit articles.” But the gig economy can also apply to what have been traditionally thought of as office jobs, so you might also see “I can do your accounting. I can process your expense forms.” Upwork, Freelancer, Amazon Mechanical Turk, and Fiverr are all in this business, and LinkedIn is getting into it as well.

Machine translation. ngày càng tốt lên, và những người trước kia có kỹ năng nhưng không có ngoại ngữ, thì giờ đã có thể cung cấp dịch vụ của mình.

Advanced telecommunication technologies.

“telepresence”—immersive videoconferencing environments that use high-resolution, life-size screens, dozens of speakers and microphones, and often tables that look the same on both sides, so a group in New York and a group in Mumbai, India, could have the feeling that they’re almost in the same room.

Bài trước: Toàn cầu hóa kiểu mới