DailyDirt: Getting Ahead Is Getting Harder

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

More and more stories about economic inequality appear to be written more frequently. There are all sorts of statistics about the 1% versus the other 99% and how much wealth the top 1% controls compared to the rest of the population. The numbers vary all over the world. Russia apparently has 110 individuals who control 35% of the country's wealth, while worldwide, the top 1% controls 39% of the world's wealth. If you're not feeling rich now, check out a few of these links if you have the spare time.

• Is overtime pay really that important for middle class prosperity? Decades ago, American workers earned more time-and-a-half pay than they do today, and there's a billionaire who points out that raising the overtime threshold income to $69,000 (from $23,660) would bring back overtime pay rules to over 10 million workers. [url]
• A few retailers like Costco, Trader Joe's and QuikTrip pay their workers more than other low-cost retail firms. But can productivity gains from hiring and treating employees better actually work across the retail sector? [url]
• Between 1997 and 2013, childcare providers' wages hardly grew at all, according to the National Child Care Staffing Study. It may not be too surprising to see that childcare workers earn near poverty-level wages, but it's a bit disconcerting to see that adults who take care of animals earn more. [url]
• It costs money to save money, so it's not so easy to bootstrap your way out of poverty. Getting sick, having a car break down, getting a parking ticket... are all unlucky events that could ruin your life if you have no savings and a low-paying job. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: childcare providers, income gap, inequality, middle class, overtime pay, poor, poverty, productivity, rich, savings, wages, wealth
Companies: costco, quiktrip, trader joe's

Bayer's CEO: We Develop Drugs For Rich Westerners, Not Poor Indians

from the refreshingly-honest dept

We've covered the continuing efforts of emerging economies to provide key medicines for their populations at affordable prices. To do that, they often invoke their right to use compulsory licensing to bring down costs. For understandable reasons, the big pharma companies aren't happy with that approach, but usually dress it up as a concern about the supposed threat to "innovation" that it represents -- their claim being high prices are needed to fund expensive research. But as Techdirt has noted, pharma's estimates of expenditure here tend to be hugely inflated, which rather undercuts that argument.

One of the companies that has been affected by compulsory licensing moves in India is Bayer. Here's what its CEO said on the subject according to a report in Bloomberg Businessweek:

Bayer Chief Executive Officer Marijn Dekkers called the compulsory license "essentially theft."

"We did not develop this medicine for Indians," Dekkers said Dec. 3. "We developed it for western patients who can afford it."

That's a refreshingly honest admission that rather than wanting to save lives around the world, what Bayer is interested in is maximizing its profits by selling expensive drugs to "western patients who can afford it," and that those who can't pay can just, well, drop dead -- which, of course, is precisely what many of them will do without Bayer's drugs.

Some might say that's a perfectly reasonable position -- after all, Bayer and the other pharmaceutical companies are for-profit concerns. But they weren't always so dismissive of humanitarian concerns. Here's what George Merck, who became president of his father's eponymous chemical manufacturing company in 1929, said on the subject, as quoted on the Today in Science History site:

We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear. The better we have remembered it, the larger they have been.

Bayer's CEO obviously disagrees.

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Filed Under: drugs, india, marijn dekkers, pharmaceuticals, poor, rich
Companies: bayer, merck

DailyDirt: Scams To Get Rich Quick

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are all kinds of ways to make a little bit of extra cash -- and some methods are more unsavory than others. Maybe you think you can convince a bunch of people to join your new multi-level marketing scheme. Or maybe you think you've outsmarted an insurance company with your own (better!) actuarial formula. Here are a few stories on the topic of making some easy money, as long as you don't mind being a bit of a sleazeball.

• Dmitry Argarkov didn't like the terms and conditions in a letter offering him a new credit card, so he modified the agreement, signed it, sent it back to the bank, and the bank accepted it and sent Argarkov a new credit card. According to Argarkov's terms, that card had a 0% interest rate, no fees and no limit -- and obviously there are pending lawsuits over this agreement. [url]
• An extortion scheme that seems to work: step 1 -- publish public domain mugshots, step 2 -- ask for money to stop publishing aforementioned mugshots, step 3 -- profit. States like Florida seem to make it pretty easy to obtain mugshots... (so don't get arrested in Florida!) [url]
• Billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens and 27 other wealthy individuals already had enough money to live comfortably, but rich people live longer than the average Joe -- and taking out a life insurance policy could be an interesting way to finance a significant endowment to Oklahoma State University. The 'Gift of a Lifetime' plan fell through, but Pickens is rich enough that he's covering the financial hit for the university. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: credit card, endowment, extortion, fraud, gift of a lifetime, life insurance, money, mugshots, oklahoma state university, plot, public domain, rich, scams, scheme, t boone pickens

Is Being Rich And Arrogant Against The Law? The RIAA & MPAA Seem To Think So

from the guilt-by-arrogance? dept

I'm planning to do some more thorough coverage of many of the comments that were submitted to the IP Enforcement Coordinator for next year's "Joint Strategic Plan." I just need to find an open block of time to go through a bunch of them. However, the folks over at TorrentFreak have highlighted one of the more ridiculous claims made in the combined filing from the RIAA & MPAA -- suggesting that people like Kim Dotcom are guilty of breaking the law because they're rich, arrogant and are trying to influence public opinion:

In this case, the Justice Department and other federal agencies are now grappling with a set of wealthy and arrogant defendants who are leaving no stone unturned in their efforts to sway public opinion against efforts to hold them accountable...

This reminds me of the debate I had with Jonathan Taplin, in which he referred to Kim Dotcom's (rented) yacht, and asked where were the musicians' yachts. Thing is, if I wanted to, I could easily find evidence of various rock stars with yachts. I could easily point to evidence of record label and movie studio execs with yachts, or who are phenomenally wealthy. Hell, I could just point you to the fact that the RIAA's boss, Cary Sherman made $3.2 million in salary in 2009 -- a number that I imagine is more than what nearly every single person reading this site makes in a year (or, in their lifetimes). Being wealthy is certainly no sign of guilt. And he got this amount even as he's leading the RIAA through it's clear decline in relevance phase, where he's still fighting the wrong war.

Similarly, it's not hard to find examples of massive arrogance on the part of these execs -- from the RIAA and MPAA putting down the public (repeatedly) or ignoring valid concerns about SOPA and PIPA, to decades of arrogant efforts to destroy all kinds of innovations they don't like, from radio to cable TV to the VCR to the mp3 player to the DVR.

Finally, these are the guys who run the media, and they're complaining about a few execs trying to influence public opinion? The MPAA's largest members are Universal (who owns NBC), Disney (who owns ABC), Viacom (who owns a bunch of TV stations and spun off CBS). And they're going to complain that some tech folks have an undue influence on public opinion? Really? And, let's not forget that these same groups have also "left no stone unturned" for decades in trying to influence public opinion. "Home taping is killing music." Remember that? You know those "FBI warnings" on every single movie you watch?

I'd say that if we're going to stack up which side of the debate has involved more "wealthy and arrogant" individuals "who are leaving no stone unturned in their efforts to sway public opinion"... it has to start with the RIAA and the MPAA. But, of course, they're allowed to do all of that, because none of it is illegal. But to try to associate such activity with illegality seems to be a stretch way beyond anything reasonable. Is Kim Dotcom loud, arrogant, crass and tacky in his displays of wealth? Absolutely. I doubt he's the kind of person I'd care to spend any amount of time with, personally. But just because his style is so outlandish, it doesn't automatically make him a criminal, as the RIAA and MPAA imply. Similarly, I don't automatically assume that super wealthy, arrogant individuals who work for the entertainment industry are obviously criminals either.

It is really quite obnoxious and demeaning for these large trade agencies to go around smearing people based on superficial items like arrogance and wealth. Kim Dotcom may eventually be found guilty of criminal activity. And, at that point, they're free to publicize that his actions here were criminal. But in the meantime, they're acting like cliquish high school girls, tarring and feathering people because they don't like the way they look or act.

Filed Under: arrogant, cary sherman, copyright, entertainment industry, kim dotcom, rich
Companies: mpaa, riaa

DailyDirt: Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Money can't buy happiness, but if you have enough of it, you can get all kinds of publicity (whether or not you want it). Here are just a few folks that have been named on the various "these people are rich" lists.

• Justin Bieber made $53 million last year, making him the highest paid teenager. Just wait until he starts licensing his hairdo... [url]
• James Patterson was named the world's highest-paid author by Forbes. A Harvard professor described the experience of hearing Patterson give a talk to MBA students: "It was like listening to a can of Coca-Cola describe how it would like to be marketed." [url]
• Politifact rates Warren Buffett's statement that the rich have a lower tax rate than the middle class as "true." Warren Buffett has been saying this for a while, but maybe even though he's rich, people will listen to him, but not actually hear what he's saying. [url]
• To read up on building up your own business, check out some interesting entrepreneurial articles on StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: james patterson, justin bieber, money, rich, warren buffet

Does Open Data Help The Rich Exploit The Poor?

from the sounds-a-little-alarmist dept

JNomics points us to a Marshall Kirkpatrick post on ReadWriteWeb about "How Open Data is Used Against the Poor," in which Kirkpatrick discusses an article and research about the effects of the digitization of land records in Bangalore. Apparently, as a result of the increased access to the data (for those with computers), middle and upper income people were able to exploit details found in the records as leverage for gaining land ownership from the poor.

Kirkpatrick and the author of the original article, Mike Gurstein, use this example to make the point that simply opening up data is often not really enough to benefit the broader population, and further, that it can simply promote the widening of the divide between the rich and the poor. Both argue for coupling open data with efforts that insure "effective use" for the most people - i.e., leveling the playing field by essentially controlling access to the data or delaying openness until tools and policies are put in place to insure equal footing for everyone. Kirkpatrick concludes his post with the following warning:

... if you want all parts of society to benefit from the opening of public data, then simply opening it up and allowing the most ferociously competitive people in society to grab a hold of it may not be a good way to impact the world positively.

This seems like a bit of an overstatement. There are always going to be those who are better positioned to take advantage of the opportunities presented by new technologies. An example from history would be the invention of the printing press. Of course the greater availability of books that followed initially provided a much bigger benefit to the educated than to the illiterate. However, not only were more people able to take advantage of cheaper, more abundant, books as literacy rates increased -- the abundance itself helped to drive that increase. Similarly, while this example from Bangalore shows that, initially, the more well connected have been able to take better advantage of the opening up of land record data, it is not difficult to imagine how the less fortunate will also benefit. The opening up of the data has exposed many problems with the records, allowing for the possibility that those issues will be addressed, and more care will be taken to guard against such issues in the future. Also, there will certainly be opportunities for some enterprising people among the poor to take advantage of the newly available data -- opportunities which did not exist at all when the information was effectively hidden. After all, the "ferociously competitive people" didn't actually "grab hold of" the data -- it's still open for access by anyone.

This case does demonstrate how the growing divide between the digital haves and have-nots is self-perpetuating, and it is certainly worthwhile to pursue efforts to close that gap by promoting education and the development of more widely available, cheaper technology. And efforts should be made to insure that access to open data is not abused by the better off to gain advantage over the poor. But in the end, the open data itself is not the culprit.

Filed Under: digital divide, open data, poor, rich