Kruse Kronicle

The Birth of Religion

National Geographic: The Birth of Religion

We used to think agriculture gave rise to cities and later to writing, art, and religion. Now the world’s oldest temple suggests the urge to worship sparked civilization.

... At the time of Göbekli Tepe's construction much of the human race lived in small nomadic bands that survived by foraging for plants and hunting wild animals. Construction of the site would have required more people coming together in one place than had likely occurred before. Amazingly, the temple's builders were able to cut, shape, and transport 16-ton stones hundreds of feet despite having no wheels or beasts of burden. The pilgrims who came to Göbekli Tepe lived in a world without writing, metal, or pottery; to those approaching the temple from below, its pillars must have loomed overhead like rigid giants, the animals on the stones shivering in the firelight—emissaries from a spiritual world that the human mind may have only begun to envision.

Archaeologists are still excavating Göbekli Tepe and debating its meaning. What they do know is that the site is the most significant in a volley of unexpected findings that have overturned earlier ideas about our species' deep past. Just 20 years ago most researchers believed they knew the time, place, and rough sequence of the Neolithic Revolution—the critical transition that resulted in the birth of agriculture, taking Homo sapiens from scattered groups of hunter-gatherers to farming villages and from there to technologically sophisticated societies with great temples and towers and kings and priests who directed the labor of their subjects and recorded their feats in written form. But in recent years multiple new discoveries, Göbekli Tepe preeminent among them, have begun forcing archaeologists to reconsider. ...

... As important as what the researchers found was what they did not find: any sign of habitation. Hundreds of people must have been required to carve and erect the pillars, but the site had no water source—the nearest stream was about three miles away. Those workers would have needed homes, but excavations have uncovered no sign of walls, hearths, or houses—no other buildings that Schmidt has interpreted as domestic. They would have had to be fed, but there is also no trace of agriculture. For that matter, Schmidt has found no mess kitchens or cooking fires. It was purely a ceremonial center. If anyone ever lived at this site, they were less its residents than its staff. To judge by the thousands of gazelle and aurochs bones found at the site, the workers seem to have been fed by constant shipments of game, brought from faraway hunts. All of this complex endeavor must have had organizers and overseers, but there is as yet no good evidence of a social hierarchy—no living area reserved for richer people, no tombs filled with elite goods, no sign of some people having better diets than others.

"These people were foragers," Schmidt says, people who gathered plants and hunted wild animals. "Our picture of foragers was always just small, mobile groups, a few dozen people. They cannot make big permanent structures, we thought, because they must move around to follow the resources. They can't maintain a separate class of priests and craft workers, because they can't carry around all the extra supplies to feed them. Then here is Göbekli Tepe, and they obviously did that." ...

... If these archaeologists were correct, these protovillages provided a new explanation of how complex society began. Childe thought that agriculture came first, that it was the innovation that allowed humans to seize the opportunity of a rich new environment to extend their dominion over the natural world. The Natufian sites in the Levant suggested instead that settlement came first and that farming arose later, as a product of crisis. Confronted with a drying, cooling environment and growing populations, humans in the remaining fecund areas thought, as Bar-Yosef puts it, "If we move, these other folks will exploit our resources. The best way for us to survive is to settle down and exploit our own area." Agriculture followed. ...

Jane Jacobs argued decades ago the cities preceded agriculture. It appears she may have been partly vindicated.

This is simply amazing find. I become totally engrossed in it everytime I read about. I suspect it will become the archealogical discovery of the century.

The Danish language's irritable vowel syndrome

The Copenhagen Post: The Danish language's irritable vowel syndrome

An overabundance of vowel sounds makes Danish a difficult language to learn – even for Danish children, say linguists.

A 15-month-old Croatian child understands approximately 150 words, while a Danish child of the same age understands just 84 on average.

It’s not because Danish kids are dumb, or because Croatian kids are geniuses. It’s because Danish has too many vowel sounds, says Dorthe Bleses, a linguist at the Center for Child Language at the University of Southern Denmark.

“The number of vowels has big significance for how difficult it is to learn a language. Many vowels makes a difficult language,” Bleses told Weekendavisen newspaper recently.

The official number of vowels in Danish is nine: a, e, i, o, u, æ, ø, å and y.

“‘Y’ isn’t a vowel,” you say? Well, in Danish it is. In Danish, even consonants are vowels.

But written Danish is not the issue. The problems start when Danes speak. In spoken speech, Danish actually has some 40 vowel sounds, says Bleses, depending upon where the vowels are placed in words and sentence strings.

o make matters worse, modern Danes ‘swallow’ lots of the remaining consonants that would create more audible definition, or annunciation, between words. Linguists call it ‘reduction’ or ‘ellision’. It is how ‘probably’ becomes ‘probly’ in American English. In Danish, it is how ‘spændende’ becomes ‘spen-nă’, and how a simple, little sentence like 'Det er det' becomes ‘dā-ă-dā’. ...

I'm sure it is challenging but I can't imagine it is anything like a Westerner trying to learn Chinese.

Space photos lead to stunning discoveries in Egypt

The Star: Space photos lead to stunning discoveries in Egypt

Images from a satellite perched hundreds of kilometres above Earth have fused modern technology and ancient wonder, leading to discoveries that experts are hailing as some of the great archeological finds in a century.

“Seventeen lost pyramids!” exclaimed Kathlyn Cooney, an assistant professor of Egyptology at the University of California at Los Angeles. “That would be one of the most important discoveries in the last 100 years. That's amazing.”

Cooney was referring to a series of infrared images and high-resolution photographs taken from a satellite suspended 700 kilometres above Egypt, in a project directed by University of Alabama archeologist Sarah Parcak.

What those images have revealed nearly boggles the mind — 17 previously undiscovered pyramids, more than 1,000 antique tombs and at least 3,000 ancient settlements.

All of them are invisible to the human eye, all buried beneath the countless layers of sediment that have been deposited over the millennia by the annual flooding of the Nile River. But they are real — or they certainly seem to be. ...

Capitalism

Presbyterian Outlook: Capitalism

Back when I was a social work major at SIU-Carbondale, I believed that government spending, a higher minimum wage, and higher taxes on the rich were the answer to everything. Even in my years at Gordon-Conwell, I believed that capitalism was basically evil, thanks to Steve Mott, my professor of social ethics. I was never a socialist, but I have never been enamored with the capitalist system, either. I have never believed that the invisible hand of the free market could be trusted to restrain the injustice caused by human greed.

God has not endorsed any economic system. While the Biblical portrait of the early Jerusalem church (why is this story never alleged to have been a myth?) may appear to be an endorsement of a collectivist economic system, it can better be explained as a provisional exhibit of the reign of God. It required an ironclad commitment to the community on a level with the kind practiced at Qumran, where property of incoming initiates was itemized, communal ownership was practiced, and demanding oaths were taken to keep members from walking away. And the Jerusalem commune only functioned successfully for a short time (it had to be rescued by aid from Gentiles outside of Judea). ...

I can't say I agree with everything Hobson has to say here but a BIG time bravo to him as a pastor raising the discussion of capitalism and economics in a postive light in a major Mainline publication. I may have to consider submitting a piece or two for the Outlook.

The Story of Economics

The Story of Economics from Kate Burn on Vimeo.

Less Active at Work, Americans Have Packed on Pounds

New York Times: Less Active at Work, Americans Have Packed on Pounds

Looking beyond poor eating habits and a couch-potato lifestyle, a group of researchers has found a new culprit in the obesity epidemic: the American workplace.

A sweeping review of shifts in the labor force since 1960 suggests that a sizable portion of the national weight gain can be explained by declining physical activity during the workday. Jobs requiring moderate physical activity, which accounted for 50 percent of the labor market in 1960, have plummeted to just 20 percent.

The remaining 80 percent of jobs, the researchers report, are sedentary or require only light activity. The shift translates to an average decline of about 120 to 140 calories a day in physical activity, closely matching the nation’s steady weight gain over the past five decades, according to the report, published Wednesday in the journal PLoS One.

Today, an estimated one in three Americans are obese. Researchers caution that workplace physical activity most likely accounts for only one piece of the obesity puzzle, and that diet, lifestyle and genetics all play an important role.

But the new emphasis on declining workplace activity also represents a major shift in thinking, and it suggests that health care professionals and others on the front lines against obesity, who for years have focused primarily on eating habits and physical activity at home and during leisure time, have missed a key contributor to America’s weight problem. The findings also put pressure on employers to step up workplace heath initiatives and pay more attention to physical activity at work. ...

Who Gives A Crap? Sanitation, Energy and Entrepreneurship in Kenya

Forbes: Who Gives A Crap? Sanitation, Energy and Entrepreneurship in Kenya

... The toilet they threw open is Sanergy, a year-old for-profit social enterprise that manufactures high-quality, yet low-cost and compact toilets for urban slums in the developing world and then uses human waste to produce energy and fertilizer. It is an “affordable, accessible and hygienic sanitation” solution for millions that live in places without sewage or electricity. They are places where the street is the bathroom. And that’s precisely the problem.

According to the World Toilet Organization, (yes, there really is one) 2.5 billion people worldwide lack access to a toilet. Relieving themselves in rivers, roadsides and impromptu and poorly built latrines, this results in high levels of disease, notably diarrhea and cholera. The recent cholera scourge in Haiti that killed thousands is sobering evidence. It is estimated that 1.6 million children die as a result of these diseases. Statistics show that hundreds of millions lose approximately 60 days of work.

David Auerbach and Ani Vallabhaneni, two of Sanergy’s young entrepreneurs, didn’t need stats to know how the absence of toilets affected the poor. The two graduating MIT-Sloan of Management school students experienced first hand the challenges of no sewage or sanitation when they lived and worked in rural China and India respectively. “Going to the bathroom isn’t a popular topic that comes up at the dinner table in the West,” Auerbach, a former policy hand at the Clinton Global Initiative (and my former colleague at Endeavor), says. “It’s flush and forget for us. That’s not the case in much of the developing world.” ...

... What they found was that Kenya’s poor were interested in having compact stalls that could fit into the tight spaces of their usually one-room homes, rather than large community outhouses. They wanted a “permanent” feel to the stalls rather than the flimsy feel of a porta-potty. As a result, Auerbach, Vallabhaneni and their Sanergy team that includes engineers, architects and designers drew up plans for a 3×5 toilet made out of thin shell cement that is locally produced for $200 per unit. Each toilet is designed for a 100 uses per day. They are units, which also collect waste in double-sealed 30L containers, rather than pits, or septic tanks “that are then drained into waterways.” It is this waste collection that is key.

More than where to go to the bathroom, how to dispose of human waste is, as Auerbach points out, a primary reason that no one touches the issue of toilets. That was Sanergy’s opportunity. Recognizing that, though “messy,” human waste can be converted through anaerobic digestion to produce fertilizer or electricity. It is also where the Sanergy team recognized that it could generate revenue.

Sanergy produces toilets that are franchised to local operators who charge around $0.06 per use. Currently the company has two toilets serving approximately 150 each day.  One is at Bridge International school (a for-profit school supported by the Omidyar Network), the other in Kibera, Kenya’s largest slum. These local operators keep all revenues. That, Auerbach says, is an incentive for them to clean, maintain and “market” the toilets. The operators then work with groups who collect the waste daily and bring it to facilities where it is converted to energy. “The waste from each toilet generates Sanergy revenues of $1250 per year.” The waste from 10 million creates a potential market of $178 million per year. Brown gold. ...

Sanergy Overview from Ani Vallabhaneni on Vimeo.

When is the Kingdom of God Coming? Then? Now? Neither? Both?

Mark D. Roberts: When is the Kingdom of God Coming? Then? Now? Neither? Both?

... In two recent posts, I cited examples of Jesus’ speaking of the kingdom of God as either future or present. In a few instances, however, he indicated that the kingdom has both present and future dimensions. Take this parable for example:

“With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade” (Mark 4:30-32)

Jesus invites us to look at the mustard seed from two perspectives. In the present – and it is really present – it is small and insignificant. In the future, however, the mustard seed will be great and notable. Similarly, God’s reign has truly come on earth in the ministry of Jesus. When blind eyes are opened, when deaf ears hear, when demons are cast out, when the hungry are fed, when sinners are forgiven, the kingdom of God is truly present on earth. Yet it’s relatively small, and won’t reach its full, glorious extent until later.

Many New Testament scholars today realize that Jesus proclaimed the kingdom as both present and future. You can find a refreshingly concise statement of this perspective in the now classic little book by G. E. Ladd, The Gospel of the Kingdom. Scholars who hold together both dimensions of the reign of God sometimes speak of it as “already and not yet.” The kingdom is already present in the ministry of Jesus and it is not yet fully present. If you read through the Gospels with this thought in mind, much begins to make sense. The sayings of Jesus and his actions demonstrate both the real presence and the future glory of the kingdom of God. ...

Searching for a Way to Share History

New York Times: Searching for a Way to Share History

KALININGRAD, RUSSIA — On a balmy Saturday afternoon, there was a real sense of anticipation among the hundreds of students sitting in a lecture theater at Immanuel Kant State University, awaiting a rare chance to quiz the foreign ministers of Germany, Poland and Russia — Guido Westerwelle, Radek Sikorski and Sergey V. Lavrov.

Kaliningrad was once called Königsberg, the first capital of Prussia and birthplace of Kant. In 1945, it was conquered and annexed by the Soviets. Since the end of the Cold War and the independence of Lithuania from the Soviet Union, Kaliningrad has been an exclave of Russia. It is 320 kilometers, or 200 miles, from Russia proper and sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland, both E.U. and NATO members.

Here, the students witnessed the establishment of a German-Polish-Russian forum designed to encourage a rapprochement among three countries with fundamentally different historical narratives of World War II.

Any such process would ultimately mean Russia confronting its past, particularly Stalinist crimes and the gulags, and reassessing its role as victim and victor during and after World War II. It would also mean Russia embracing the European idea of dealing with memory and the past, now so much a part of the European identity.

“Being European is about being aware of what we did,” said Ivan Krastev, historian and chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia. ...

Abortion rates fall, except among poor women

USA Today: Abortion rates fall, except among poor women

Abortion rates fell among most groups of women from 2000 to 2008, but rose for those classified as poor, finds an analysis conducted by the non-profit Guttmacher Institute and published Monday in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.

The rate for poor women increased 18%, while the national rate dropped 8%, finds Guttmacher, which has been tracking abortions since 1974.

Low-income women (earning $17,170 or less in a three-person household, for example) accounted for 514,040 abortions — 42% of all U.S. abortions in 2008. The rate for low-income women ages 15 to 44 rose from 44.4 abortions per 1,000 women in 2000 to 52.2 in 2008, the highest of all subgroups studied. The national rate in 2008 was 19.6 per 1,000, a drop from 21.3 in 2000. ...

Latin America's middle class grows, but with a tenuous grasp on status

Christian Science Monitor: Latin America's middle class grows, but with a tenuous grasp on status

Although 56 million households have joined Latin America's middle class, many lack the benefits and job security to ensure stability.

With a regular salary as a beauty salon manager, Edgar Ladino supports his two children, leases a compact car, and is able to make rent payments on time.

“It’s not my dream job, but it’s OK,” he says with a shrug, sipping a latte at a Bogotá shopping mall.

Mr. Ladino may not love his job, but it has landed him a spot in the burgeoning Latin American middle class. Millions across the region are finally setting up new companies, buying cars and homes, and helping to further stabilize democracies. In the world’s most unequal region, their rise has dominated policy documents, academic papers, and press reports.

Fifty-six million households have joined the Latin American middle class in the past decade and a half, according to new analysis by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), which studied 10 countries in the region representing 80 percent of the population. The growth mirrors trends in the rest of the world, the group says, with 1.3 billion people today calling themselves middle class.

But behind good news lies a troubling reality. While new members of Latin America's middle class might be better off than their parents, the benefits often taken for granted by their Western counterparts remain far from their grasp. Many are barely holding on to their new status, with insecure jobs and poor access to quality education for their children. In most cases, they are more likely to fall into poverty again than rise into affluence. ...

When is the Kingdom of God Coming? In the Future?

Mark D. Roberts: When is the Kingdom of God Coming? In the Future?

In my previous posts in this series (May 16, May 19), I considered the question: Where is the kingdom of God? I showed that in the teaching of Jesus, the kingdom of God is not just in heaven or in our hearts, though it touches both heaven and hearts. Rather, the kingdom of God is not so much a place as it is the reality of God’s sovereignty and power. The kingdom of God ultimately embraces all of creation, including both heaven and earth, including hearts and minds and even bodies (in a new form).

Perhaps even more intriguing than the question “Where is the kingdom of God?” is the question “When is the kingdom of God coming?” This is especially relevant these days, given the recent hubbub over the prediction by Harold Camping that the Day of Judgment would come two days ago on May 21, thus beginning the final restoration of God’s kingdom over all creation. The fact that you’re reading this piece today indicates that Mr. Camping wasn’t quite right in his prediction. But, still, you might wonder when the kingdom of God is coming?

Jesus proclaimed that the reign of God was coming to earth, but when? Did Jesus preach the coming of the kingdom as a future reality, as many Christian affirm? Or did he believe that the kingdom of God was truly present in his earthly ministry, as many other Christians affirm? In this post I want to lay out some of the basic evidence from the Gospels, focusing on the future kingdom. Then, in my next post, I’ll examine passages that suggest the kingdom of God is present. Finally, I’ll try to make sense of what Jesus teaches about the timing of the coming of the kingdom. ...

In China, middle-class affluence, not political influence

Christian Science Monitor: In China, middle-class affluence, not political influence

... These are the sort of people whose historical equivalents in 18th- and 19th-century Europe developed political ambitions to match their economic status and fueled the rise of democracy.

Mr. Liu laughs at the suggestion that the same thing might happen in 21st-century China. "Undeniably, the people in power hope the country will develop and people will have a better life," he says. "But the bottom line is that the people should not challenge their power. We have given up hope of changing the government." ...

... Money, he believes, is the only possible passport to some sort of personal autonomy in the absence of political freedom. ...

... "In theory, the Constitution gives everyone the right to vote; but in reality, the law is not enforced," adds her husband. "Nobody has ever asked me to vote, and I've never even seen a ballot paper. Even my class monitor in elementary school was not elected." ...

Fix aid delivery to India's poor

Christian Science Monitor: Fix aid delivery to India's poor

This article summarizes a new World Bank study highlighting the challenges posed by corrupt officials and middle men in targeting poverty reduction aid to the poor in India. To quote the NY Times,

"The World Bank on Wednesday recommended a radical overhaul of India’s social programs. “Marginal changes alone may not deliver the kind of safety net which a changing India needs for its poor and for its economy,” Mr. Blomquist wrote.
One of the primary problems, the World Bank said, was “leakages” — an often-used term in development circles that refers to government administrators and middle men stealing money, food and benefits. The bank said that 59 percent of the grain allotted for public distribution to the poor does not reach those households."

The good news is 59% is lower than what many U.S charities grab in administrative fees!

So, how can the donor and the Indian poor "cut out the middlemen" and transact their transfer transaction? If the poor had direct deposits, then the donor could directly wire in the resources. I realize that the poor do not have bank accounts. An alternative would be if the Donor could "helicopter drop" the equivalent of "debit cards" that would have a fixed amount of $ on them and could be used for food purchases at any time. In both cases, improvements in technology allow the donor to connect with the poor without having to trust some government or middle man to distribute the food.

There could also be more randomized field audits to test for corruption in India and those who are caught could be punished in a high profile setting. Such "shock and awe" examples might deter some corruption and thus help the poor. ...

Getting Rich Doing Good

Time: Getting Rich Doing Good

As Ben Franklin noted, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure — and that's true not only for health care but also for a host of social problems, including crime, homelessness and teen pregnancy. But governments aren't particularly good at funding preventive services. Spending tax dollars on programs whose outcomes are not immediately obvious — or guaranteed — is a hard sell for politicians, even though these investments may eventually save big bucks years down the road by, say, cutting crime and prison populations.

The market may overcome the prevention predicament with the social-impact bond (SIB), a new investment product created by Social Finance, a London private-equity firm that backs social entrepreneurs. Funded by private investors (including charities), SIBs — which are also gaining traction among U.S. investors and policymakers — aim to finance long-term preventive programs run by nonprofit groups to tackle tough social issues that cost taxpayers money. But investors can also gain a financial return. How? Governments pay for a program's success. If an SIB-funded program mitigates a problem by meeting measurable targets, that saves the government money, and a portion of the savings is used to repay the bondholders with interest. But the bonds are not government backed: if the social project fails to meet its targets, investors are out of pocket, and the government doesn't pay a penny.  ...

Corn-ucopia

Carpe Diem: Corn Yields Have Increased Six Times Since 1940

Contrasting corruption: Bribery in Mexico

Economist: Contrasting corruption: Bribery in Mexico

St. Clement of Alexandria on the Value of Wealth

John Armstrong: St. Clement of Alexandria on the Value of Wealth

... Commenting on Mark 10:17-22 Clement addressed some of the common interpretations of this text by saying:

1. Our Lord was not telling Christians to get rid of their wealth. He was telling them to banish from their souls the primacy of riches. “Unfettered greed can suffocate the seed of true life.”

2. It is not something new to renounce riches and distribute them to the poor. This, said Clement, was done long before Jesus came. Some did this to devote themselves to the arts and in search of vain knowledge while others sought fame and glory by this means.

3. What our Lord does command here is something new, something proper to God who alone gives life. Clement writes:

He does not command what the letter says and what others have already done. He is asking for something greater, more divine, more perfect than that which is stated –that we denude the soul itself of its disordered passions, that we pull out the roots and fling away what is foreign to the spirit. Here, then, is the teaching proper to a believer, and the doctrine worthy of the Savior. Those, who before Christ’s coming despised material goods, certainly gave up their riches and lost them, but the passions of the soul increased even more. For having believed that they had done something superhuman, they came to indulge in pride, petulance, vainglory, despising others.

Clement wrote that a person could give everything away only to doubly regret his decision. To teach that Jesus intends for every disciple to give up everything contradicts statements like those of Luke 16:9, which urges us to make friends by the use of wealth. “Riches then should not be rejected if they can be of use to our neighbor. They are accurately called possessions because they are possessed by people, and goods or utilities because with them one can do good and because they have been ordained by God for the use of men.”

What Clement is saying is that goods and possessions can be instruments in the hands of skilled servants who use them to bless others and advance great good. “Riches, then, are also an instrument.” If rightly used they can bring about justice and service. He added, “In themselves riches are blameless.” ...

Amazon now sells more Kindle ebooks than printed books

Tech Radar: Amazon now sells more Kindle ebooks than printed books

Amazon has announced that it now sells more Kindle ebooks than all print books – that's hardcover and paperback combined – through the Amazon.com site.

Introduced less than four years ago, the Kindle has quickly become Amazon's top selling product, and now digitised books for the reader have become more popular with its customers than their paper and ink fore-runners.

In the UK, we're still a little more attached to the humble tome, with Amazon.co.uk still selling more printed books than ebooks – although the Kindle versions are out-selling hardcover books two to one.

That's including all hardcover books that aren't available on Kindle, and excluding all free Kindle books – Amazon says if these were included, the number would be "even higher".

Need Job? Try Church

Wall Street Journal: Need Job? Try Church

... Across the nation, local churches and other religious organizations have stepped up their recession-busting efforts with free career workshops, résumé clinics and networking functions. The latter can generate quick leads if leveraged properly since religious-centered networks tend to have very invested members, says Elliot Lasson, executive director of Joblink of Maryland, a job matching service that works with the Jewish community in Baltimore. "It's a community that wants to help each other," he says. But netting results requires effort. ...

 

Religious belief is human nature, huge new study claims

CNN: Religious belief is human nature, huge new study claims

London (CNN) – Religion comes naturally, even instinctively, to human beings, a massive new study of cultures all around the world suggests.

"We tend to see purpose in the world," Oxford University professor Roger Trigg said Thursday. "We see agency. We think that something is there even if you can't see it. ... All this tends to build up to a religious way of thinking."

Trigg is co-director of the three-year Oxford-based project, which incorporated more than 40 different studies by dozens of researchers looking at countries from China to Poland and the United States to Micronesia.

Studies around the world came up with similar findings, including widespread belief in some kind of afterlife and an instinctive tendency to suggest that natural phenomena happen for a purpose.

"Children in particular found it very easy to think in religious ways," such as believing in God's omniscience, said Trigg. But adults also jumped first for explanations that implied an unseen agent at work in the world, the study found. ...

Gambling: The biggest Loser

Economist

The world in 2100 (Population

Economist

 

Multinational manufacturers: Moving back to America

Economist: Multinational manufacturers: Moving back to America

The dwindling allure of building factories offshore.

“WHEN clients are considering opening another manufacturing plant in China, I’ve started to urge them to consider alternative locations,” says Hal Sirkin of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). “Have they thought about Vietnam, say? Or maybe [they could] even try Made in USA?” When clients are American firms looking to build factories to serve American customers, Mr Sirkin is increasingly likely to suggest they stay at home, not for patriotic reasons but because the economics of globalisation are changing fast.

Labour arbitrage—taking advantage of lower wages abroad, especially in poor countries—has never been the only force pushing multinationals to locate offshore, but it has certainly played a big part. Now, however, as emerging economies boom, wages there are rising. Pay for factory workers in China, for example, soared by 69% between 2005 and 2010. So the gains from labour arbitrage are starting to shrink, in some cases to the point of irrelevance, according to a new study by BCG.

“Sometime around 2015, manufacturers will be indifferent between locating in America or China for production for consumption in America,” says Mr Sirkin. That calculation assumes that wage growth will continue at around 17% a year in China but remain relatively slow in America, and that productivity growth will continue on current trends in both countries. It also assumes a modest appreciation of the yuan against the dollar. ...

... Many multinationals will continue to build most of their new factories in emerging markets, not to export stuff back home but because that is where demand is growing fastest. And companies from other rich countries will probably continue to enjoy the opportunity for labour arbitrage for longer than American ones, says Mr Sirkin. Their labour costs are higher than America’s and will remain so unless the euro falls sharply against the yuan. ...

Americans shed mortgage debt at record pace

USA Today: Americans shed mortgage debt at record pace

Americans are reducing mortgage payments at a record clip, directing cash that once went for debt into consumer spending and savings.

Low interest rates, defaults and refinancings have shaved more than $100 billion off the nation's annual mortgage bill — an amount comparable to all unemployment benefits for one year or this year's Social Security payroll tax cut.

"This is a form of economic stimulus that goes to Main Street rather than Wall Street," says Nicholas Carroll, a journalist on consumer finance and author of Walk Away From Debt for a Better Future. When freed from a mortgage payment, people's first purchases tend to be necessities, such as socks and underwear, he says....

... Economic effects of lower mortgage debt:

•Savings. For the first time since 1998, households are saving more than they're spending on mortgage interest.

•Interest. Mortgage interest consumes 5.27% of the nation's after-tax income, the lowest since 2004 and comparable to the 1980s and '90s.

•Rates. The average interest rate on all mortgages — not just new ones — has fallen for 16 consecutive quarters to 5.96%, the lowest since the government started keeping track in 1977. The tumbling rate reflects borrowers restructuring loans to become better credit risks and shortening 30-year mortgages to 15-year loans.

Kids Moving Out Are a Boon to the Economy

BusinessWeek: Kids Moving Out Are a Boon to the Economy

As employment picks up, more young people are setting up house. That's lifting consumer spending.

... About 20 million adult children in the U.S. live with their parents, and most are eager to move, says Peter Francese, a demographic analyst for advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather. "Most guys who live at home beyond some young age walk around with a great big 'L' [for "loser"] on their forehead," Francese says. "As more young people feel they will be able to keep a job, bingo, they're gone."

This year, nearly 1 million new households will be created, UBS Securities (UBS) predicts, up from the 357,000 in the year ended March 2010, the lowest number for a 12-month period on record since the Census Bureau started tracking household starts in 1960. New households will help increase housing starts to about 648,000 this year and to nearly 900,000 in 2012, vs. 586,800 last year, estimates researcher Metrostudy. U.S. household formation in the three years ended March 2010 was roughly 40 percent of the long-term average, or about 500,000 annually, according to Census data. "Household-formation rates are already tipping back upward" as job gains allow some people "to spread out," says Brad Hunter, Metrostudy's chief economist. "The demographic component of housing demand is strong; it's just the economic and psychological components that are holding things back."

When people move into a new home, they tend to spend. A typical new renter spends $600 to $1,900 on furniture, appliances, and other stuff related to setting up housekeeping in the first six months, says C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America's Research Group in Charleston, S.C. ...

... Another demographic shift should play a role as well: more divorces, which also create new households. The number of divorces dropped to 6.8 per 1,000 people in 2009 from 7.4 in 2006, prior to the recession, government figures show. A survey this year by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia found that 38 percent of people considering a divorce or separation put aside those plans because of the recession. St. Louis-based divorce-law specialist Cordell & Cordell says its customer count rose by about 20 percent in the first quarter. "We see things moving in a positive direction, from our perspective," says principal partner Joseph E. Cordell.

Where is the Kingdom of God? Is It Heaven?

Mark D. Roberts: Where is the Kingdom of God? Is It Heaven?

... Part of our confusion comes from the fact that the Gospel of Matthew records Jesus as speaking about “the kingdom of heaven” rather than “the kingdom of God.” Where Mark 1:15 reads “the kingdom of God has come near,” Matthew 3:2 has “the kingdom of heaven has come near” (literally in Greek, “the reign of the heavens,” he basileia ton ouranon, mirroring the Aramaic spoken by Jesus, malkuta’ dishmaha’). Matthew’s phraseology doesn’t mean that the kingdom is literally up in the heavens. Rather, he is using a common circumlocution for God, much as my grandmother did when she said “Good heavens” rather than “Good God.” So, the kingdom of heaven is not the kingdom that exists in heaven, but the reign of God over both heaven and earth. ...

... Sometimes when I have taught people that the kingdom of God is not equal to heaven, they have responded negatively because they assume I’m saying things I am not in fact saying. Some fear I’m denying the reality of life after death. So, let me be clear in saying that I believe there is indeed life beyond this life and that we enter this realm through faith in Jesus Christ. Moreover, our life beyond this life will include a much more immediate and pervasive experience of God’s reign.

Others fear that talking about the kingdom of God as an earthly reality necessarily leads to a liberal political agenda. This fear is stoked by the fact that many Christians who are politically and socially left of center have often used kingdom language for their political and social agendas. I believe that there is no necessary or sacred connection between the kingdom of God and any political agenda, left, right, or center. All human visions, platforms, and programs must be laid at the feet of the King of kings, who calls his followers to a surprising and utterly counter-cultural way of making a difference in the world. Perhaps I’ll have more to say about this later. ...

Megachurches grow without building on

The Tennessean: Megachurches grow without building on

Seven years ago, Bethel World Outreach Center was bursting at the seams. Sunday services drew 1,200 people to Bethel’s building at Old Hickory Boulevard and Granny White Pike, and there was no more room in the pews.

So the multicultural church made plans to expand. Those plans failed when neighbors objected.

That turned out to be good news, said Rice Broocks, Bethel’s pastor.

Instead of building a bigger church, Bethel became what’s known as a multisite congregation. On Sunday mornings, the church’s 3,500 members meet in six locations in Middle Tennessee, from Clarksville to Murfreesboro. Bethel members also have begun meeting in the suburbs of Phoenix and Dallas, trying to re-create what they experienced when attending services in Nashville.

It’s part of a movement among megachurches to expand their reach across state lines. Several Middle Tennessee churches are expanding to locations around Nashville, into Kentucky and beyond.

“We have a desire to take our brand and expand it,” Broocks said.

For Bethel, their brand comes down to what he calls the three Ds — diversity, devotion and discipleship. When Brooks became pastor at Bethel in 2000, the congregation was mostly white. Today, about 60 percent of the church is African-American or from other ethnic backgrounds. ...

 

A Message about Amendment 10-A to the Constitution of the PC(USA)

For an extensive list of responses to these developments go here.

Personally, I don't have much to say that hasn't already been said. I think the moderator's message is perfect.

Three Cheers for the Cheapeners and Cost-Cutters

Wall Street Journal: Three Cheers for the Cheapeners and Cost-Cutters

... A feature of innovation is that the greatest impact of a new idea comes not when the light bulb goes on over the geek's head, but when the resulting technology eventually becomes cheap enough for many people to use—perhaps decades later. The first plane at Kitty Hawk had zero impact on the world economy, but budget airlines have a huge impact; the first computer was a curiosity, but cheap laptops changed the world.

With some technologies, the cheapening happens almost immediately. The Post-it note springs to mind. With others, the cheapening takes a surprisingly long time: Lasers remained the preserve of labs for five decades before suddenly showing up in consumer goods. With some technologies, like helicopters, the cheapening has never happened at all.

Most of us consider the original idea rare and noble, the later cheapening inevitable and dull. Who would imagine today that Napoleon III of France reserved his newfangled aluminum cutlery for only his most honored guests, leaving commoner folk to eat with silver?

We also disrespect the people who achieve the cheapening. The robber barons of the late 19th century generally made their fortunes by drastically cheapening new technologies, grabbing market share by undercutting rivals—and ending up with terrible reputations. Cornelius Vanderbilt cut the price of rail freight 90%, Andrew Carnegie slashed steel prices 75% and John D. Rockefeller cut oil prices 80% between 1870 and 1900. Malcom McLean, Sam Walton and Michael Dell did roughly the same for container shipping, discount retailing and home computing a century later, and were also unloved for it.

Yet it's the cheapening that raises the world's living standards. And cheapening is often mighty hard work. ...

There are two ways our standard of living improves. Our earnings rise and the cost of what we consume goes down. Walmart stores and big box stores drive prices down through their volume business model. This makes many of the things that would otherwise be affordable only for the upper-middle class available to those with lower incomes. For everyday goods, like food and clothing, Walmart has been so effective at keeping prices low that economists from across the political spectrum say that Walmart has been the single biggest contributor to the improving standard of living for the poor compared to all other contributors combined. Yes, there are losers. It typically is other small chain retailers (not mom and pop locally owned businesses). Yes, there can be a slight downward pressure on wages but the impact on the overall regional economy is negligable. The opening of a Walmart in a depressed neighborhood can also serve as an attraction for other businesses and services, leading to economic renewal. When a Walmart opens there are always far more applicants than jobs being offered. The greatest oppostion comes from unions and from upper class folks whose aesthetic sensibilities violated by the presence of such stores. Poor neighborhoods generally show 80-90% support for such retailers.

It is a bit maddening to hear people who say they side with the poor vilify the cheapeners as archenemy purveyors of consumerism. Without the cheapeners, the standard of living for the poor would be far worse and we would not have most of the goods we take for granted today (including the device on which you are reading this post) available to us.

All the Care that Money Will Buy

John Goodman: All the Care that Money Will Buy

I believe we could spend our entire national income on health care. Not by frittering money away, but by spending it on goods and services that even in small ways could improve the odds of better health. (Examples below.)

I find that most people in health policy agree with that assessment, but rarely do they see its logical (and I would say obvious) implication. If we spent all our income on health, we would have nothing to eat, nothing to wear, no place to sleep. There would be only health care. Since that’s clearly an undesirable state of affairs, it must be good for people to refrain from obtaining all the useful care that money will buy. Further, such restraint needs to be exercised quite often.

What brings this to mind is a new RAND study finding that people with Health Savings Account plans consume less care than people with conventional insurance and have lower health care costs. The people who were studied cut back on such “useful care” as mammograms, screenings for cervical and colorectal cancer and even childhood vaccinations.

Some critics pounced on this result and claimed that consumer-directed care is bad for patients. The critics are, of course, very wrong. ...

... In fact, the patients’ behavior is exactly what you would expect from a rational consumer of any product. When something is free the temptation is to take everything that is offered. The incentive to distinguish between what is “necessary” or “useful” and “unnecessary” or “unuseful” is largely nonexistent. When you have to pay market prices, however, you have an incentive to pay more attention — figuring out what’s “unnecessary” and dropping that as well as those “necessary” items whose value is less than their price. ...

... Spending all of other peoples’ money on health care is easy, like taking candy from a baby.  To prevent that from happening, public or private bureaucracies can ration your care and tell you what services you can and cannot have.  Or, you could manage more of your own health care dollars and make you own choices between health care and other uses of money. ...

A New Way to See Sicily (Mafia Free)

New York Times: A New Way to See Sicily

... But on a stoop right next to our cheerfully oblivious children sat our tour guide, Edoardo Zaffuto, chatting away loudly about how “the Mafia has robbed Sicily of its dignity.” To underscore that point, across Mr. Zaffuto’s chest was a T-shirt reading “Addiopizzo!” The catchphrase means “Goodbye, protection money” and is the name taken by an organization determined to use tourism as a means to return some of that stolen dignity to Sicily.

Don’t you ever get nervous, I asked, nodding at the glarers. “Never,” Mr. Zaffuto said. “There are too many of us.”

“Us” are fellow Addiopizzo members, part of a social movement that, according to Mr. Zaffuto, now covers more than 700 businesses, including a travel agency whose mission is to guide tourists toward establishments that refuse to pay the Mafia’s protection money.

Given the duration and reach of the Mafia’s influence on Italy (and on Sicily, in particular, where it is said to have started), trying to quantify the group’s economic impact is an inexact science. That said, a 2007 study by SOS Impresa, the anti-rackets office of the retailers’ association, found that 70 percent of Sicilian retailers pay the Cosa Nostra protection money. The average payment is about 880 euros (about $1,275) a month, according to the anti-Mafia research foundation Fondazione Rocco Chinnici.

And if they didn’t pay?

“Arson, vandalism, harassment,” said Mr. Zaffuto. By whom? “The Mafia,” he said with a laugh, finishing his ice cream.

In July 2004, a group of Mr. Zaffuto’s friends wanted to open a bar without paying protection money (or pizzo, in Italian). Outraged that this seemed nearly impossible, they plastered Palermo’s walls and phone booths with black-and-white stickers and fliers reading, in Italian: “An entire people that pays the pizzo is an entire people without dignity.” The group then formed Addiopizzo, enlisting businesses that refused to pay, and showing up en masse at Mafia trials to cheer police cleanup efforts. ...

Presbyterians to allow gay ministers

StarTribune: Presbyterians to allow gay ministers

...Twin Cities Presbyterians cast a historic vote on Tuesday to allow openly gay and lesbian members to be ordained ministers.

Presbyterian leaders say the Twin Cities vote of 205 to 56 was the final action needed to end the 2.1 million-member denomination's national ban on gay clergy. A majority of the 173 U.S. presbyteries had to vote in favor of the new policy adopted last summer at the group's national assembly. The Twin Cities Presbytery happened to cast the 87th, and deciding, vote.

"It's very exciting," said the Rev. Timothy Hart-Andersen, pastor of Westminster Presbyterian in downtown Minneapolis and founder of advocacy group Covenant Network of Presbyterians, which supports the ordination of openly gay clergy. "I found myself welling up with tears. Up until now they've had to be closeted. Now they'll be able to come out. It will honor them as individuals and as full human beings like anyone else serving the church."

Hart-Anderson spoke in favor of the change was among the 264 elders and ministers within the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area, who cast votes at Peace Presbyterian Church Tuesday afternoon. Three voters abstained.

During the meeting, supporters and opponents of the change spoke to the assembled voters.

"It's very unfortunate we have to have this discussion today," said Peter Hwang, a member of the Korean Presbyterian Church. "I think we should be ashamed of ourselves. This homosexual issue is breaking our church. We need to abide by Scripture."

The denomination, based in Louisville, Ky., is the latest mainline Protestant group to move toward accepting same-gender relationships. ...

Technically, the change does not take affect until July on the one year anniversary for the end of the 2010 Assembly. Theoretically, presbyteries could reconsider and change their votes between now and then. But for practical puproses, the change has occurred.

What this means at this point is that the denomination takes no position on the issue. It is up to presbyteries to decide about ordination of pastors, and sessions about ordination of elders and deacons, on a case-by-case basis.

German exports rise to all-time high

BBC: German exports rise to all-time high

German exports surged in March to their highest level since records began, as the growing global economy lifted demand for its products and services.

The country's exports for the month totalled 98.3bn euros ($142bn; £87bn), 7.3% higher than February.

Its imports also reached an all-time high, up 3.1% to 79.4bn euros. Both imports and exports are the most since data started to be collected in 1950.

Germany is the world's second-largest exporter.

Only China exports more than the European nation, and the latest monthly figure for German exports was much higher than market expectations. ...

 

The distribution of poverty in poor countries

Economist

 

How Christianity and capitalism can 'heal' the world

USA Today: How Christianity and capitalism can 'heal' the world

... This is why it's fascinating to see a rising current of people of faith and spirituality not taking poverty vows, not separating finance and faith, but embracing capital as a potent vehicle for the expression of their belief.

You've heard of values voters; these are your values investors. Microfinance providers, venture capitalists who fund only people and projects enhancing the common good, everyday church people who make sure their investments promote the same values as their donations — they are all part of an increasingly visible contagion trying to transform how we deploy our dollars.

"You can transform the world," says Olivia Teter, a vice president at the spirituality-based RSF Social Finance, "if you can change the way people work with their money." ...

... Instead of obsessing over how little we possess and how much more we need, faith- and spirit-based investment advisers urge investors to be grateful for how much they have and imagine the good they could accomplish if they invested it generously. "There's enough for everybody's need," Loving says, "just not for everybody's greed." ...

... And consider the success of Oikocredit. Founded by the World Council of Churches, Oikocredit has grown to the point where it now encompasses 43,000 investors, 863 capital recipients, some 500 participating church organizations and the equivalent of $700 million invested around the globe.

There's something about the way this plays out that subverts the long-standing dichotomy between "hard-headed" business people and naive "do-gooders." The causes and projects that benefit from values- and faith-based investing might often sound liberal — sustainable development in Latin American "biosphere reserves," to cite one Oikocredit project, or women merchant cooperatives in Africa — but the strategy is capitalism through and through, the art and science of doing well and doing good with one fell private-finance swoop. Try starting a political argument over that. ...

The Small-Time Landlord vs. Big-Time Tenants’ Rights

The Bay Citizen: The Small-Time Landlord vs. Big-Time Tenants’ Rights

San Francisco's strong renter protections are a big reason why the city has the region's highest vacancy rate.

In San Francisco, one of the toughest places in the country to find a place to live, more than 31,000 housing units — one of every 12 — now sit vacant, according to recently released census data. That’s the highest vacancy rate in the region, and a 70 percent increase from a decade ago. (Scroll down to see a map of vacant housing units in the Bay Area.)

To know one big reason why, ask Wayne Koniuk. By trade, Koniuk fashions artificial limbs for amputees. By habit, he fits prostheses at no charge for people who cannot pay. This has left him a less-than-wealthy man.

But he does have one substantial asset: a Divisadero Street building that his father, Walter, an orthotist, bought in 1970 and gave to his only son in 2001 so Wayne could run his business on the ground floor and Wayne’s adult children would always have a place to live.

“For eternity,” Koniuk recalls his father saying, “my grandkids will always have a place they can go. No matter whatever happens, that building should stay in the family.”

Koniuk, who himself lives in suburban Belmont, gave a half-interest in the building to his older son in 2007 so he could evict a tenant and move in himself. But under San Francisco’s extraordinarily pro-tenant housing laws, landlords can do this only once per building.

So while Koniuk desperately wants to move his younger son into the building’s other four-bedroom apartment, he cannot. He is exploring legal options. Robert Murphy, who has lived there for 30 years without a lease, remains, paying $525.82 a month.

Last spring, Koniuk offered Murphy $45,000 to move out. Murphy’s lawyer demanded $70,000, a sum Koniuk says he does not have. Meanwhile, the city’s Rent Board notified Koniuk that he was allowed to increase Murphy’s monthly rent this year by $2.63. ...

... “Vacancy rates are going up because owners have decided to take their units off the market,” said Ross Mirkarimi, a progressive member of the Board of Supervisors. He attributes that response to “peaking frustrations in dealing with the range of laws that protect tenants in San Francisco that make it difficult for small property owners to thrive.”

Perversely, that is hurting the city’s renters as well, as a large percentage of the city’s housing stock is allowed to just sit vacant, driving up rents that newcomers pay for market-rate housing. ...

I took a graduate class in urban economics at Eastern University back in 1988. Several times we looked at case studies of urban policy that had bad unitended consequences. The poster child for this type of policy was rent control. There is direct coorelation between degree of rent control and homelessness. Rent controls generally end construction of new rental properties, take existing rental properties off the market, and drive the cost of housing up for everyone except those who manage to hang on to rent controlled apartments the held when rent control went into affect.

This consequnce of rent control had been known for more than a decade when I was studying it in 1988. Something like 90%+ of economists believe rent control to be a seriously flawed public policy. Yet here we are 23 years later and progressive legislators don't still refuse to "get it." It is truly remarkable how this bullwark of well intentioned activism can keep such traction in the face of at least forty years of overwhelming evidence for its failure.

In San Francisco, one of the toughest places in the country to find a place to live, more than 31,000 housing units — one of every 12 — now sit vacant, according to recently released census data. That’s the highest vacancy rate in the region, and a 70 percent increase from a decade ago. (Scroll down to see a map of vacant housing units in the Bay Area.)

To know one big reason why, ask Wayne Koniuk. By trade, Koniuk fashions artificial limbs for amputees. By habit, he fits prostheses at no charge for people who cannot pay. This has left him a less-than-wealthy man.

But he does have one substantial asset: a Divisadero Street building that his father, Walter, an orthotist, bought in 1970 and gave to his only son in 2001 so Wayne could run his business on the ground floor and Wayne’s adult children would always have a place to live.

“For eternity,” Koniuk recalls his father saying, “my grandkids will always have a place they can go. No matter whatever happens, that building should stay in the family.”

Koniuk, who himself lives in suburban Belmont, gave a half-interest in the building to his older son in 2007 so he could evict a tenant and move in himself. But under San Francisco’s extraordinarily pro-tenant housing laws, landlords can do this only once per building.

So while Koniuk desperately wants to move his younger son into the building’s other four-bedroom apartment, he cannot. He is exploring legal options. Robert Murphy, who has lived there for 30 years without a lease, remains, paying $525.82 a month.

Last spring, Koniuk offered Murphy $45,000 to move out. Murphy’s lawyer demanded $70,000, a sum Koniuk says he does not have. Meanwhile, the city’s Rent Board notified Koniuk that he was allowed to increase Murphy’s monthly rent this year by $2.63.

Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/12lM2)

In San Francisco, one of the toughest places in the country to find a place to live, more than 31,000 housing units — one of every 12 — now sit vacant, according to recently released census data. That’s the highest vacancy rate in the region, and a 70 percent increase from a decade ago. (Scroll down to see a map of vacant housing units in the Bay Area.)

To know one big reason why, ask Wayne Koniuk. By trade, Koniuk fashions artificial limbs for amputees. By habit, he fits prostheses at no charge for people who cannot pay. This has left him a less-than-wealthy man.

But he does have one substantial asset: a Divisadero Street building that his father, Walter, an orthotist, bought in 1970 and gave to his only son in 2001 so Wayne could run his business on the ground floor and Wayne’s adult children would always have a place to live.

“For eternity,” Koniuk recalls his father saying, “my grandkids will always have a place they can go. No matter whatever happens, that building should stay in the family.”

Koniuk, who himself lives in suburban Belmont, gave a half-interest in the building to his older son in 2007 so he could evict a tenant and move in himself. But under San Francisco’s extraordinarily pro-tenant housing laws, landlords can do this only once per building.

So while Koniuk desperately wants to move his younger son into the building’s other four-bedroom apartment, he cannot. He is exploring legal options. Robert Murphy, who has lived there for 30 years without a lease, remains, paying $525.82 a month.

Last spring, Koniuk offered Murphy $45,000 to move out. Murphy’s lawyer demanded $70,000, a sum Koniuk says he does not have. Meanwhile, the city’s Rent Board notified Koniuk that he was allowed to increase Murphy’s monthly rent this year by $2.63.

Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/12lM2)

In San Francisco, one of the toughest places in the country to find a place to live, more than 31,000 housing units — one of every 12 — now sit vacant, according to recently released census data. That’s the highest vacancy rate in the region, and a 70 percent increase from a decade ago. (Scroll down to see a map of vacant housing units in the Bay Area.)

To know one big reason why, ask Wayne Koniuk. By trade, Koniuk fashions artificial limbs for amputees. By habit, he fits prostheses at no charge for people who cannot pay. This has left him a less-than-wealthy man.

But he does have one substantial asset: a Divisadero Street building that his father, Walter, an orthotist, bought in 1970 and gave to his only son in 2001 so Wayne could run his business on the ground floor and Wayne’s adult children would always have a place to live.

“For eternity,” Koniuk recalls his father saying, “my grandkids will always have a place they can go. No matter whatever happens, that building should stay in the family.”

Koniuk, who himself lives in suburban Belmont, gave a half-interest in the building to his older son in 2007 so he could evict a tenant and move in himself. But under San Francisco’s extraordinarily pro-tenant housing laws, landlords can do this only once per building.

So while Koniuk desperately wants to move his younger son into the building’s other four-bedroom apartment, he cannot. He is exploring legal options. Robert Murphy, who has lived there for 30 years without a lease, remains, paying $525.82 a month.

Last spring, Koniuk offered Murphy $45,000 to move out. Murphy’s lawyer demanded $70,000, a sum Koniuk says he does not have. Meanwhile, the city’s Rent Board notified Koniuk that he was allowed to increase Murphy’s monthly rent this year by $2.63.

Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/12lM2)

E-Readers Fail At Education

Fast Company: E-Readers Fail At Education

Is our desire for gadgetry getting ahead of what our brains actually need?

... A recent University of Washington study interviewed 39 first-year graduate students in the university's Department of Computer Science & Engineering, which participated in a pilot study of Amazon's Kindle DX (a large-screen e-reader). By seven months into the study, fewer than 40% of the students did their schoolwork on the Kindle. The problem: the Kindle has poor note-taking support, doesn't allow for easy skimming, and makes it difficult for students to look up references (in comparison with computers and textbooks). As a result, some of the students interviewed kept sheets of paper with their Kindle case to take notes, and other read near computers so that they could easily look up references.

There's another, larger problem, according to the U of W:

The digital text also disrupted a technique called cognitive mapping, in which readers used physical cues such as the location on the page and the position in the book to go back and find a section of text or even to help retain and recall the information they had read.

Except for the cognitive mapping issue, these are all are technical problems that could all be fixed in future Kindle upgrades. The other problem is larger: Are we getting excited about a future that our brains aren't ready for? Could books have developed not simply because they were the available technology, but because they actually convey information to our brains in a more efficient way? If we're pushing technologies for learning that, cognitively, make it harder to learn, we need to take a step back. ...

Growing pains: World Population Projections

Source: Economist

One in three Africans is now middle class, report finds

Guardian: One in three Africans is now middle class, report finds

Findings challenge view of continent as a place of famine and poverty.

One in three Africans is middle class, a rising group of consumers to rival those of China and India, researchers have found (pdf).

Record numbers of people in Africa own houses and cars, use mobile phones and the internet and send their children to private schools and foreign universities, according to the African Development Bank.

Mthuli Ncube, the bank's chief economist, said the findings should challenge long-held perceptions of Africa as a continent of famine, poverty and hopelessness.

"Hey you know what, the world please wake up, this is a phenomenon in Africa that we've not spent a lot of time thinking about," Ncube said. "There is a middle class that is driven by specific factors such as education and we should change our view and work with this group to create a new Africa and make sure Africa realises its full potential."

Ncube said the study used an absolute definition of middle class, meaning people who spend between $2 and $20 a day, which he believed was appropriate given the cost of living for Africa's nearly 1 billion people.

The study found that, by last year, Africa's middle class had risen to about 34% of the continent's population, or about 313m people – up from around 111m (26%) in 1980 and 196m (27%) in 2000. ...

A Case Study in Opportunity Costs for Sweatshop Workers

The following is the conclusion from a forthcoming paper to be publised in the Jounal of Economics and Sociology titled, Sweatshops, Opportunity Costs, and Non-Monetary Compensation: Evidence from El Salvador (HT: Modled Behavior)

Conclusion

Few people in developed countries would enjoy working in a third-world “sweatshop” factory, as the pay and working conditions are generally much worse than opportunities in developed countries. The options available to unskilled labor in developing world are context dependent, influenced by the interaction between a variety of institutional and historical factors. Our study privileges the workers’ own perceptions and narratives about what the relevant alternatives are for their labor. As a result, this method better allows the subjects (not the researchers) to impart their own understanding about the nature and scope of their labor supply choices. In contrast to more opaque quantitative analysis, these narratives more easily convey the beneficial and perverse outcomes that can result from spontaneous orders (Martin and Storr 2008; Dugger 1996).

Field interviews reveal that subjects perceive their alternatives, including agricultural work and street vending, as less desirable when compared to sweatshop labor. Non-monetary benefits are an important part of this appraisal. The interviews provide information about the margins along which subjects’ compensation improves and identifies factory employment as one means of improving intergenerational mobility, educational attainment, and improved economic opportunities for women. This analysis suggests two implications for sweatshop-related policy and economic development more broadly.

First, policies for developing countries that are based on legal standards in developed countries can undermine development because they differ from the actual community’s relevant opportunity sets.11 Hall and Leeson (2007) investigate the claim that government-mandated labor standards currently in place in developed countries are appropriate for developing economies. Finding that the United States was much wealthier at the time the country adopted different labor regulations, they conclude that imposing similar labor standards on developing countries involves an income tradeoff inappropriate for their current level of wealth. Our research similarly finds that sweatshop labor policy based on Western standards may be inappropriate because workers in developing countries have fewer opportunities and are less productive than workers in developed countries are.

Focusing on the actual opportunity sets of employees (and potential employees) in these countries can improve policy by recognizing a ‘do no harm’ approach to adopting labor standards. While labor regulations in the United States may be tolerable, requiring employers to meet certain wage levels, working conditions, or benefits programs can do substantial harm to poor workers by eliminating their most preferred employments. For example, Harrison and Scorse (2010) find large, negative effects on aggregate manufacturing employment from the imposition of a higher minimum wage motivated by the U.S. government’s threat to withdraw special tariff privileges because of human rights issues.

Second, our study of the employment opportunities of sweatshop workers is relevant to understanding the process of economic development more generally.12 Jeffrey Sachs (2005: 11) argues that factory manufacturing is an important step in developing a more prosperous economy, noting, “sweatshops are the first rung on the ladder out of extreme poverty.” In fact, we find that sweatshops are several rungs higher on the ladder. By showing that subjects are indeed choosing employment opportunities that improve their wellbeing and capabilities, our results are consistent with Sachs’ arguments about the benefits of sweatshop employment.

How a Business Can Change the World

Inc: How a Business Can Change the World

A special report on the innovative business models social entrepreneurs are inventing.

Start a company. Change the world.

It used to be that if you wanted to make a difference, you joined a nonprofit. And if you wanted to make money, you launched a business. These days, it's not so simple. More nonprofits are being run like fast-growth start-ups. And more traditional companies are being built around social missions.

In the pages that follow, we shine a light on this new universe of social entrepreneurship. First, we meet Fred Keller, the founder of Cascade Engineering, a $250 million Michigan plastics manufacturer, who recently turned his business into a B Corporation, the highest standard for socially responsible businesses. Then we investigate five more business models—and meet the entrepreneurs who have adopted them. ...

Researchers study return on short-term missions

Associated Baptist Press: Researchers study return on short-term missions

WACO, Texas (ABP) -- Research has revealed students who participate in short-term mission trips tend to have lower levels of materialism, greater appreciation for other cultures and a better understanding of missions as a lifestyle, says a Baylor Uiversity professor studying whether short-term mission trips are good stewardship.

The number of United States Christians taking part in trips lasting a year or less has grown from 540 in 1965 to more than 1.5 million annually, with an estimated $2 billion per year spent on the effort. That investement of time and money has sparked debate whether the money might better be spent giving directly to a country’s Christian partners for spreading the gospel and offering medical aid, construction assistance or other help. Some long-term missionaries complain that culturally insensitive short-term mission participants do more harm than good by damaging relationships that had taken years to build.

Dennis Horton, associate professor of religion at Baylor says the answer to whether volunteers missions "is worth it" is a qualified “yes.”

Two-thirds of short-term trips last two weeks or less, with a host of purposes ranging from evangelism to digging wells or teaching English-as-a-Second-Language classes. On the surface, Horton said, the trips seem a win-win-win situation -- for those who send participants, for team members who make the trips and for host countries.

“It is very much worthwhile. But I’m qualifying that by saying I think a lot of churches and groups need more follow-up to help mission team members incorporate what they’ve learned on their trips into their daily lives,” Horton said. “Long-term involvement, whether global or local, is where you see transformation taking place.” ...

Business Models Aren't Just For Business

Harvard Business Review: Business Models Aren't Just For Business

... One epiphany from my immersion into the non-private sector is how strenuously social sector organizations resist the notion they have a "business model." Non-profits, government agencies, social enterprises, schools, and NGOs consistently proclaim that they aren't businesses, and therefore business rules don't apply.

Well, I'm sorry to break the news, but if an organization has a viable way to create, deliver, and capture value, it has a business model. It doesn't matter whether an organization is in the public or private sector. It doesn't matter if it's a non-profit or a for-profit enterprise [or might I add, church]. All organizations have a business model. Non-profit corporations may not be providing a financial return to investors or owners, but they still capture value to finance activities with contributions, grants, and service revenue. Social enterprises may be mission-driven, focused on delivering social impact versus a financial return on investment, but they still need a sustainable model to scale. Government agencies are financed by taxes, fees, and service revenue, but are still accountable to deliver citizen value at scale.

The idea that business models are just for business is just wrong. Any organization that wants to be relevant, to deliver value at scale, and to sustain itself must clearly articulate and evolve its business model. And if an organization doesn't have a sustainable business model, its days are numbered.

It may be, however, that the model is implicit rather than explicit. ...

 

About that MLK quote

Christian Century: About that MLK quote

... The problem is that the first sentence of this quote didn't come from King. It's by a woman named Jessica Dovey, who posted it Monday along with the other three sentences, which she (correctly) attributed to King. A prominent Twitter user misread the post before tweeting it, at which point we all started seeing the fake quote on our Facebook walls.

It's interesting that so many people reposted this without noticing that the first sentence's relevance is oddly specific. If that raised suspicion, 30 seconds and some intermediate Google skills would have confirmed it. Yet some people got pretty upset about the initial tweeter's inaccuracy, as if one person's mistake or license can be blamed for others' credulity. Nobody tell them about pseudo-Paul, okay?

While this incident couldn't have happened even ten years ago, putting words in the mouths of beloved and influential people is nothing new. And the frustrated reactions seem particularly odd given that in this case--unlike many others--there's little question that the quote represents the attributed source in spirit....

Neither a porn borrower nor a lender be

Boston.com: Neither a porn borrower nor a lender be  Jonah Goldberg

Of course you’ve heard some version of this tale before. Winston Churchill says to a woman at a party, “Madam, would you sleep with me for 5 million pounds?”

The woman stammers: “My goodness, Mr. Churchill. Well, yes, I suppose ...”

Churchill interrupts: “Would you sleep with me for five pounds?”

The woman responds immediately: “What? Of course not! What kind of woman do you think I am?!”

To which the British bulldog replied: “Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.”

The story comes to mind upon hearing the news that the New York Public Library has gotten into the porn business. “With adults, anything that you can get on the Internet, you can legally get on a computer in the library,” explained an official. “It’s difficult, but we err on the side of free and open access.”

What does this have to do with the Churchill story? Well, imagine you went to your local library in, say, 1989 — or some other year before Al Gore invented the Internet. ...

... The marginal cost of obtaining pornographic materials in libraries, once prohibitively high, is now nearly nonexistent [due to the internet]. In fact, it’s actually cheaper just to let it all flood in. Who wants to deal with the filters, blockers and monitors? Just proclaim that the First Amendment requires unfettered access to porn.

But, again, just imagine there was no Internet, and all two-dimensional smut was still on paper, celluloid or magnetic tape. Now imagine trying to argue before a cash-strapped city council that the public library must not only provide some porn — free of charge! — to the public, but that it must provide mountains of it free of charge to the public, all because the First Amendment says so. You’d be laughed out of the room.

Did the First Amendment change with the invention of the Internet? Of course not. What changed is that librarians lost both the “scarce resources” excuse and the backbone to invoke any other rationale — decency, child welfare, hygiene, safety, etc. — for barring it from public libraries.

Technological progress poses such challenges. Don’t get me wrong: I love technological progress. But technology makes life easier, and when life is easier, it’s harder to stick to the rules that were once essential to getting by in life. ...

The Solution to America's Financial Problems?

And a child shall lead them. ;-)

Inspirtation, innovation, and ingenuity. Susie has got it figured out. I always get a kick out of this commercial.

Rich and poor, growing apart

The Economist: Rich and poor, growing apart

Budget Cuts of Biblical Proportions

First Things: Budget Cuts of Biblical Proportions Jordan Ballor

... But in the final analysis the Call must be judged to suffer from the same fatal flaw that mars its less sophisticated and more strident cousins. Christian campaigns to make particular federal programs immune from funding reductions sends the wrong basic message both to politicians and to Christian citizens.

The reality of our debt crisis is that the federal government has been trying to do too much for too many for too long. Instead of focusing on ways to empower other institutions and levels of government and galvanize them to relieve the burden of the federal government, these efforts simply feed into the fundamentally false dilemma of federal action or no action at all.

This dichotomy is reinforced by both major political parties. We have only two solutions at our disposal, we are told: cut spending or raise taxes. We are faced with the basic choice: pay for the federal government to do it (raise taxes) or it won’t get done (cut spending).

What we don’t have in any of these efforts is a framework for determining which programs and types of spending the government should prioritize. All we are provided with is the directive that “effective” federal welfare programs cannot be cut, as if some absolute level of spending on a particular program, like Pell Grants or Head Start, is a clear moral, even scriptural, imperative. ...

... While privatization and localization will not always be the appropriate solution, such efforts can often advance the Christian social principle of subsidiarity, which emphasizes the sovereignty and legitimacy of the responsibilities of lower and decentralized forms of organization and social life.

There are at least two basic threats that undermine the viability of such an approach, however, and they come from the government and the church, respectively. From the government there is an increasingly disturbing trend that locates the solution to social problems simply either in business or in government.

The logic of this either/or mentality places us between market and state, restricting the vitality and independence of mediating institutions, particularly private charities. ...

... Even more troubling is the mounting evidence that Christians have adopted this mentality, too. We see this in giving patterns among American Christians. ...

... Douglas LeBlanc, author of Tithing: Test Me in This, recently described the importance of tithing as “the beginning of breaking out of that self-indulgent life, primarily because it says to you that your money is not your own. And it’s a small sacramental way of saying that your money in your life is coming to you through the grace of God, through the gifts that He’s given you.” ...

Dimming Optimism for Today’s Youth

New York Times - Economix: Dimming Optimism for Today’s Youth

Unfortunately, this data set only goes back to 1983. I'm quite certain that if you asked this question in the 1979-1981 era you would see similar low numbers. In fact, I'm pretty sure I remember such survey data being reported by other groups at that time.

I think the response to this question is more reflective of a mood than an indicator of what the future will be. I have virtually now doubt that youth will live better than their parents over the course of their respective lives. I'm doubtful they will live happier lives. (See yesterday's post.)