Remarkable stories from the web in a new, easier format.
As EPI noted in this recent paper on the ratio of CEO to average worker pay, from 1978–2011, CEO compensation grew more than 876 percent, more than double the growth of the stock market and remarkably faster than the growth of annual compensation of a typical private-sector worker, up a meager 5.4 percent.
Several states had already released their data. With this report, HHS provided premium information for most of the rest. Overall, the numbers are pretty consistent with previous reports, albeit with some new and interesting wrinkles. It seems like mostly good news, though the law’s critics would argue it vindicates some of their arguments, as well.
Obamacare Insurance Premiums Beat Expectations, HHS Says | New Republic
As the name suggests, the ThinkPad 9 Slim is very skinny indeed, measuring a mere 9.9mm thick. That’s around half the size of the MacBook Air, and is closer to smartphone territory than it is to ultrabooks. In addition, it weighs just 990 grams, thanks in no small part to its space-age carbon fibre construction. Continuing the Apple comparison, that’s considerably lighter than the 1.62 kg MacBook Pro 13-inch with Retina Display. Despite this slight frame, the ThinkPad 9 Slim appears to pack a punch. Its 13-inch display crams in an incredible resolution of 3200 x 1800. By way of a comparison, the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display has a resolution of 2560 x 1600.
Lenovo working on super-thin MacBook Pro with Retina Display beater – News – Trusted Reviews
These “academic freedom” laws are not aimed solely at evolution. They often also take on climate change, another field of science with a body of evidence that is accepted by the scientific community. That the planet is warming and that the burning of fossil fuels over the past 150 years explains the current rapid rate of change are virtually indisputable in the scientific community.
A Move Is Afoot to Keep Climate Science Out of Classrooms: Scientific American
This man wants a teen bride to share his gold and fur with
Internet Dating a la Russe | New Republic
A 2012 IEEE study estimates that widespread adoption of autonomous-driving technology could increase highway capacity fivefold
Technology: The third industrial revolution | The Economist
So anti-market sentiment is no friend of poverty reduction. But neither is free-market fundamentalism. Economic growth and poverty reduction can’t be achieved by free markets alone. Disease control, public education, the promotion of new science and technology, and protection of the natural environment are public functions that must align with private market forces.
The End of Poverty, Soon – NYTimes.com
he asked me to come in and explain to his graduate students what I have learned from spending 30 years talking to, researching and writing about entrepreneurs. Here’s what I said.
23 Things Every Entrepreneur Must Know – Forbes
In brief, there is a case for believing that the problem of maintaining adequate aggregate demand is going to be very persistent – that we may face something like the “secular stagnation” many economists feared after World War II.
Bubbles, Regulation, and Secular Stagnation – NYTimes.com
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that almost 60% of the rise in government debt since 2008 stems from collapsing revenues, more than twice the cost of stimulus and bail-outs combined.
Stimulus v austerity: Sovereign doubts | The Economist
In August, National Geographic caught incredible footage of a large male jaguar stalking and lunging onto the back of caiman
Video Of A Jaguar Attacking A Caiman – Business Insider
Twenty-eight people have died and hundreds have been injured in a wave of attacks by giant hornets in central China, according to reports. Victims described being chased for hundreds of metres by the creatures and stung as many as 200 times.
Hornet attacks kill dozens in China | World news | theguardian.com
Dozens of Nepalese migrant labourers have died in Qatar in recent weeks and thousands more are enduring appalling labour abuses, a Guardian investigation has found, raising serious questions about Qatar’s preparations to host the 2022 World Cup.
Revealed: Qatar’s World Cup ‘slaves’ | Global development | The Guardian
In the early hours of the morning, the Soviet Union’s early-warning systems detected an incoming missile strike from the United States. Computer readouts suggested several missiles had been launched. The protocol for the Soviet military would have been to retaliate with a nuclear attack of its own. But duty officer Stanislav Petrov – whose job it was to register apparent enemy missile launches – decided not to report them to his superiors, and instead dismissed them as a false alarm.
BBC News – Stanislav Petrov: The man who may have saved the world
This kind of madness helped to produce the idiotic sequester — the $1.2 trillion in automatic, arbitrary and across-the-board budget cuts from 2013 to 2021 — that is already undermining one of our strongest assets. Ask Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, the crown jewel of American biotech innovation. In fiscal 2013, the sequester required the N.I.H. to cut $1.55 billion across the board: 5 percent at each of its 27 institutes and centers, irrespective of whether one was on the cusp of a medical breakthrough and another was not.
But solving the immediate problem of a depressed labor market will not be sufficient by itself to reliably lift middle-class living standards. Over most of the past generation (at least since the late 1970s), middle-class living standards have been held back by the sharp rise in wage and income inequality that has resulted in vastly disproportionate shares of income growth accruing to the very richest households. Ensuring acceptable growth of middle-class living standards means braking, or even reversing, this rise in inequality. Fiscal policy is not the only tool that can do this, but it is one powerful measure that has not been used to its fullest potential.
Taking ‘Middle-Out Economics’ Seriously in this Fall’s Fiscal Debates | Economic Policy Institute
