Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Illustration by Alex Eben Meyer Much ink has been spilled railing against vaccine skeptics—you know, those people who don’t get their kids immunized against catastrophic childhood diseases because they believe the shots can cause autism and other serious problems. In a recent Parade magazine piece, reporter Seth Mnookin, author of The Panic Virus: A True…
WOODINVILLE, Wash.—Five years ago, Quadrant Homes churned out starter houses in the Seattle area with an average sales price of $269,000 and the marketing slogan, “More House, Less Money.” But facing a debt-burdened middle class and rising land prices, Quadrant has since exchanged entry-level buyers for customers free of credit worries and ready to splurge….
article start American families have made big strides repairing their balance sheets from the economic crash, but their finances remain disturbingly vulnerable to emergencies—a major obstacle to economic mobility, a new report says. About 70% of U.S. households are struggling with at least one of three problems with their balance sheets—low incomes, insufficient savings or…
Economist Edward Wolff’s latest paper on household wealth during the Great Recession has some really startling data on who gained and lost ground between 1983 and 2013. Alisha Ramos turned it into this striking chart: US net worth rose considerably over that period, which is what you would expect to see. Technology has improved and productivity…
Memo: From Nick Hanauer To: My Fellow Zillionaires /.shifty-wrapper You probably don’t know me, but like you I am one of those .01%ers, a proud and unapologetic capitalist. I have founded, co-founded and funded more than 30 companies across a range of industries—from itsy-bitsy ones like the night club I started in my 20s to…
Eighty people hold the same amount of wealth as the world’s 3.6 billion poorest people, according to an analysis just released from Oxfam. The report from the global anti-poverty organization finds that since 2009, the wealth of those 80 richest has doubled in nominal terms — while the wealth of the poorest 50 percent of…
The UK is becoming a nation of grafters. With living standards at their lowest in a decade and real-term wages falling 8 per cent since the financial crisis, more people are cramming extra work into evenings, weekends and even their lunch hours to supplement their main incomes. Officially, the average number of hours Britons work each week…
ECB QE launch boosts European debt, stocks and pummels euro By Marius Zaharia LONDON Thu Jan 22, 2015 3:26pm GMT A trader reacts in front of the German DAX Index board at the Frankfurt stock exchange January 22, 2015. Credit: Reuters/Ralph Orlowski LONDON (Reuters) – European government borrowing rates plummeted to record lows, the…
Three-year-old Saria Amaya waits with her mother after receiving shoes and school supplies during a charity event in October to help more than 4,000 underprivileged children at the Fred Jordan Mission in the Skid Row area of Los Angeles. Children from low-income families now make up a majority of public school students in the nation,…
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