Young workers see pay shrink in United States. The Economic Policy Institute think tank found that the average inflation-adjusted hourly wage for male college graduates aged 23 to 29 dropped 11% over the past decade to $21.68 in 2011. For female college graduates of the same age, the average wage is down 7.6% to $18.80. For the entire working population, average hourly wages have risen modestly over the past 10 years. But that is partly because many of the lowest-paid workers have lost their jobs and are no longer included in the average.”People who normally make below-average wages are...
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A row has blown up between the US Congress and Nasa over people-carriers. Congress is insisting that Nasa stick to its plan of developing a rocket capable of taking manned missions beyond low earth orbit by 2016, which Nasa sniffily says it can’t do (New Scientist, 22 Jan). Presumably Congress doesn’t want Richard Branson or SpaceX to corner the space tourism market, but the warring parties seem to have overlooked what the US Air Force is up to. The military has just lobbed a highly classified 13-ton satellite into space aboard a Delta IV rocket (BBC News, 21 Jan)...
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Junk food companies are making customers fat, then selling them the cure, health experts claim. Deals between producers of junk foods and slimming groups and health charities are allowing the industry to cash in on both ends of the obesity epidemic. Partnerships between KFC and the McGrath Foundation, Nestle and Jenny Craig, McDonald’s and Weight Watchers, and Domino’s Pizza and the weight-loss show The Biggest Loser have been criticised for trying to make brands famous for selling burgers, fries and lollies appear more healthy. Jane Martin, of the Obesity Policy Coalition, called this ”weightwashing” – a tactic to convince...
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Every Hollywood romantic screenplay and lots of popular songs depict the magic of love, but for many members of the working class the reality is much more sordid. “A fifth of homeless people have committed “imprisonable offenses” to spend a night in the cells, and more than a quarter of women rough sleepers took an “unwanted sexual partner” to escape their plight, new research out today shows. A survey of more than 400 rough sleepers by Sheffield Hallam University reveals the desperate steps taken by the homeless to find shelter. Unwanted sex has become a way out of homelessness...
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In a 2005 report to investors three analysts at Citigroup advised that “the World is dividing into two blocs—the Plutonomy and the rest … In a plutonomy there is no such animal as “the U.S. consumer” or “the UK consumer”, or indeed the “Russian consumer”. There are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take. There are the rest, the “non-rich”, the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie.” The rise of the new plutocracy is inextricably connected to two phenomena: the revolution in...
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Wikileaks is currently under heavy attack. In order to make it impossible to ever fully remove Wikileaks from the Internet, Wikileaks is currently mirrored on 1426 up-to-date sites (from WikiLeaks website) Once upon a time, if you wanted to keep a secret, you locked it in a drawer and held the only key. When states wanted to keep secrets, they used huge underground warehouses with security locks and armed guards to store the vast quantity of information compiled by their spies, spooks and secret police. Most of this information was useless, and most of it never saw the light...
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Between 3.5 million and 5.5 million Americans work in the telephony industry, a loose estimate made more difficult by the industry’s high turnover rate. Georgia actively recruits the telephony industry, tallying more than 320 call center and virtual marketing companies statewide. Atlanta ranks fifth nationwide with 105,000 customer care, corporate solution or telemarketing jobs. Thirteen call center operations have located or expanded in Georgia since July 2008 — the depth of the recession. Twenty-two Georgia colleges offer customer service certificate programs. The state’s military bases lure call center operators keen to hire the spouses of active-duty service members. A...
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A total of 64 people from the Chinese mainland made the Forbes magazine list of the world’s richest billionaires, moving up to take second place for the first time. The US led the list, released Wednesday, with 403 billionaires. The Chinese mainland was followed by Russia with 62 billionaires. Of the world’s 97 new billionaires, 62 were from Asia. Among the super-rich from the Chinese mainland, 27 made the list for the first time. In addition, 25 people from Hong Kong made it into the billionaires club, while 18 Taiwan people entered the list. More than 10 percent of...
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Food intended for poor Indian families have been siphoned off and sold locally and abroad in a corruption scandal involving hundreds of local government officials, investigators said. Police and federal agents in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh are probing allegations that from 2001 to 2007, millions of tonnes of rice and wheat were diverted to other parts of the country and smuggled across the border to Nepal and Bangladesh. The food was meant to be sold at subsidised rates to households living below the poverty line. The investigation was on-going, but preliminary estimates suggested that around three million...
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$52 billion of American aid, and Afghans are still dying of starvation. $52bn (£33bn) in US aid since 2001 has made almost no impression on devastating poverty made worse by spreading violence and an economy dislocated by war. That enormous aid budget, two-thirds for security and one-third for economic, social and political development, has made little impact on 9 million living in absolute poverty, and another 5 million trying to survive on $43 (£27) a month. The remainder of the population often barely scrapes a living, having to choose between buying wood to keep warm and buying food. As...
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