Legal marijuana is the fastest-growing industry in the United States and if the trend toward legalization spreads to all 50 states, marijuana could become larger than the organic food industry, according to a new report obtained by The Huffington Post.
Researchers from The ArcView Group, a cannabis industry investment and research firm based in Oakland, California, found that the U.S. market for legal cannabis grew 74 percent in 2014 to $2.7 billion, up from $1.5 billion in 2013.
The group surveyed hundreds of medical and recreational marijuana retailers in states where sales are legal, as well as ancillary business operators and independent cultivators of the plant, over the course of seven months during 2013 and 2014. ArcView also compiled data from state agencies, nonprofit organizations and private companies in the marijuana industry for a more complete look at the marketplace.
"In the last year, the rise of the cannabis industry went from an interesting cocktail conversation to being taken seriously as the fastest growing industry in America," Troy Dayton, CEO of The ArcView Group and publisher of the third edition of the State of Legal Marijuana Markets, said in the executive summary of the report. "At this point, it’s hard to imagine that any serious businessperson who is paying attention hasn’t spent some time thinking about the possibilities in this market."
Graph courtesy of ArcView Market Research.
The report also projects a strong year for legal marijuana in 2015 and projects 32 percent growth in the market. Dayton said that places "cannabis in the top spot" when compared with other fast-growing industries.
Over the next five years, the marijuana industry is expected to continue to grow, with ArcView predicting that 14 more states will legalize recreational marijuana and two more states will legalize medical marijuana. At least 10 states are already considering legalizing recreational marijuana in just the next two years through ballot measures or state legislatures.
To date, four states -- Colorado, Washington, Alaska and Oregon -- have legalized retail marijuana. Washington, D.C., voters also legalized recreational marijuana use, but sales currently remain banned. Twenty-three states have legalized medical cannabis. Still, marijuana remains illegal at the federal level.
The report projects that, by 2019, all of the state-legal marijuana markets combined will make for a potential overall market worth almost $11 billion annually.
Graph courtesy of ArcView Market Research.
The report also breaks out some interesting marijuana trends from around the nation. California still has the largest legal cannabis market in the U.S., at $1.3 billion. Arizona was found to have the fastest-growing major marijuana market in 2014, expanding to $155 million, up more than $120 million from the previous year. Medical marijuana is already legal in Arizona and California and recreational legalization measures are likely to appear on the 2016 ballots in both states.
More than 1.5 million shoppers purchased legal marijuana from a dispensary, either medical or recreational, in 2014. Five states now boast marijuana markets that are larger than $100 million, and in Colorado and Washington -- the first states to open retail marijuana shops in the U.S. -- consumers bought $370 million in marijuana products last year.
Oregon and Alaska are expected to add a combined $275 million in retail marijuana sales in their first year of operation, the report projects. And while D.C. has also legalized recreational marijuana use, ArcView couldn't project a market size in the District because of an ongoing attempt by congressional Republicans to block the new law.
Graph courtesy of ArcView Market Research.
The huge growth potential of the industry appears to be limited only by the possibility of states rejecting the loosening of their drug laws. The report projects a marijuana industry that could be more valuable than the entire organic food industry -- that is, if the legalization trend continues to the point that all 50 states legalize recreational marijuana. The total market value of all states legalizing marijuana would top $36.8 billion -- more than $3 billion larger than the organic food industry.
"These are exciting times," Dayton said in the executive summary, "and new millionaires and possibly billionaires are about to be made, while simultaneously society will become safer and freer."
Craving a Toffee Crisp? That just got a lot harder if you live in the U.S.
In settling a lawsuit with The Hershey Company, Let's Buy British Imports (LBB) -- the company responsible for sending U.K.-made Cadbury chocolate overseas -- has agreed to halt shipments to the U.S.
Hershey owns the rights to make and sell any chocolate products with the Cadbury name in the U.S., and will still do so in many cases. Cadbury eggs will still be around, for example -- but now they'll taste slightly different because British-made Cadbury chocolate is produced under a different recipe (the first ingredient in U.K. Cadbury chocolate is milk, while the first in American-made Cadbury chocolate is sugar, according to the New York Times). LBB is also halting their imports of British-made Kit Kats, but the American-made version will still be around.
Sadly, some classic British Cadbury favorites won't be made available at all, because Hershey says they're too easily confused with the company's established U.S. products. CNN reports Cadbury's Toffee Crisps are on the outs because their packaging too closely resembles that of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and Yorkie chocolate bars apparently sound a little too much like York Peppermint Patties.
Hershey's spokesman Jeff Beckman told The Huffington Post that the agreement was necessary, saying, "It is important for Hershey to protect its trademark rights and to prevent consumers from being confused or misled when they see a product name or product package that is confusingly similar to a Hershey name or trade dress... Given the immeasurable value of our brands, we work hard to protect these important intellectual assets and defend them against infringement."
Lovers of British-made Cadbury products are none too pleased with this new development, taking to Twitter to express their dismay:
Hey Hershey's great job blocking import of all British Cadbury's chocolate. Can't wait to gnaw on your chalky filth while my wife leaves me!
— Dan Telfer (@dantelfer) January 26, 2015
So hang on. There will be no more real actual Cadbury's chocolate allowed in the US? NOOOO! http://t.co/XSHfzlH7FQ
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) January 26, 2015
Cadbury is no longer importing their chocolate across the pond to America?!! Unbelievable!! @CadburyUK #Hersheys #Cadbury
— Victoria Vartan (@Vsvartan) January 26, 2015
Because the deal was struck between The Hershey Company and LBB, Cadbury declined to comment.
There’s a lot of uncertainty about how much money Uber drivers make and whether being an Uber driver is, as the company says, an ideal part-time job. Uber released a research paper on Thursday that claimed to give clear answers to those questions. It didn’t quite.
The paper’s biggest claim is simple, and headline-grabbing: Uber drivers make more money than regular taxi drivers. This, along with flexible hours, makes being an Uber driver a good part-time job, in the paper’s judgment.
On close reading, however, none of the data provided by the authors of the paper -- Uber Head of Research Jonathan Hall and Princeton economist Alan Krueger, working “under contract” with Uber -- support such claims.
Let’s start with the issue of how much Uber drivers make. Uber has a lot of good data on how much cash its drivers take in from customers. But that’s just gross pay: It does not take into account costs like gas, insurance, or car maintenance and ownership. Uber hasn’t provided pay data that nets out those costs, which are necessary for any driver.
In its marketing materials, Uber repeatedly presents gross pay data with language saying it shows how much drivers “take home (after deductions),” and then leaves it to a footnote to explain that those deductions do not include any of the most obvious costs of driving a car for money. As a result, Uber is blurring the line between gross and net pay.
And this study is no different. Here’s the chart that leads the authors to say Uber drivers make $6 more per hour, on average, than taxi drivers:
The problem is that these are all gross pay numbers, but the two sets of drivers pay out costs in different ways. Taxi drivers tend to pay leasing companies to use cabs maintained by medallion companies, and also pay for gas, while Uber drivers are responsible directly for paying and maintaining everything they need to keep their car on the road.
Simply comparing the gross pay of each set of drivers doesn’t tell you which set takes home more pay: You also need to know the costs of each set of drivers.
And this paper doesn’t address costs at all, aside from making this guess: “unless their after-tax costs average more than $6 per hour, the net hourly earnings of Uber’s driver-partners exceed the hourly wage of employed taxi drivers and chauffeurs, on average.” Krueger, who the report says had "full discretion" over the findings, told The Huffington Post that regarding gross wages, "The paper was careful to describe what data are available, and what was being compared to what."
The authors want to study driver costs, but just not yet: “A detailed quantification of driver-partner costs and net after-tax earnings is a topic of future research.” Fair, but without net earnings, the paper has no support for its most important claim -- that Uber drivers earn more money than taxi drivers.
Uber declined to respond to questions about why it did not include operating costs and fees in its examination of wages for the report.
Then there’s the thorny issue of just how good a part-time job driving for Uber is. The paper answers that question emphatically: It finds that average hourly earnings don’t change much based on how many hours per week drivers work. That would indeed make driving for Uber a good part-time job: It’s nice to be able to predict how much you’re going to make per hour and not be penalized for working fewer hours.
Here’s the table that claims to prove that part-time Uber driving is a good job:
In the bottom row, you’ll see that average hourly earnings stay roughly the same -- about $21 -- no matter how many hours you work.
The problem is that these are average gross earnings per hour. A different set of Uber data -- for drivers in New York -- shows that the fewer hours you work, the farther away from the average you are likely to fall.
Look at this chart. The little blue dots are individual Uber drivers in New York:
(In this set of data, Uber does deduct its fee from driver wages, but still does not take out much larger operating costs, like buying a car or gas.)
This is a chart of increasing predictability: The more hours you work, the more accurately you can estimate your gross pay. The less you work, the less you know. Extremely variable and unpredictable pay is not anyone’s idea of a good part-time job.
Another question is how realistic the figures are on a month-to-month basis. Krueger told The Huffington Post that the study does examine how drivers' hourly wages vary from month to month, and concluded they were "fairly steady across months” in Uber’s six largest markets, with a 13 percent standard deviation. However, the standard deviation across all markets in the study is 19 percent -- that means that assuming a normal distribution, 68 percent of drivers saw earnings swing somewhere between positive and negative 19 percent month to month. The rest of the drivers saw their earnings change even more dramatically.
All of this leaves us pretty much where we were before the paper was released. Uber's latest report offers plenty of information, without revealing anything important.
Clarification: This story has been updated to reflect that the study found the standard deviation in Uber's six largest markets was 13 percent. It was 19 percent across all markets.
You might think the perfect workday includes a promotion or a raise, or perhaps your evil boss getting fired. Sadly, such monumental events don't happen very often.
The good news is that there are plenty of little things you can do to improve both your productivity and your happiness if you feel stuck at your desk all day.
One simple trick is to structure your time better -- which includes taking more breaks. In fact, the highest performers work for 52 minutes consecutively before taking a 17-minute break, according to a recent experiment conducted by the productivity app DeskTime.
Other helpful habits are even easier to pick up: Just going outside or taking a few minutes to watch the latest cute cat video can help make you a better worker.
Sure, you might realistically not have enough time to incorporate all these suggestions in your daily routine, but every little bit helps. That's why we've pulled together research and anecdotal evidence from a variety of sources to build the perfect workday.
Check out HuffPost's perfect workday below:
See tips on how to set up your workspace here:
Plants
How to pick the perfect plant for your office >>
What the perfect office looks like >>
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Infographic by Alissa Scheller for The Huffington Post.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is moving closer to its goal of 9.1 million people signed up for private coverage under the president's health care law.
The Health and Human Services Department says at least 400,000 people signed up last week. That brought total enrollment in the 37 states served by HealthCare.gov to more than 7.1 million.
National figures should be significantly higher because the federal count doesn't include major states such as California and New York that are running their own markets.
Florida leads the federal marketplace states, with more than 1.2 million people enrolled. Texas has nearly 920,000.
The administration is expecting a surge near the Feb. 15 sign-up deadline.
The law offers subsidized private coverage to people who don't have health insurance on the job.
* Amounts to 60 bln euros a month together with existing schemes
* Program to run until end-September 2016
* National central banks to shoulder bulk of risk
* Euro tumbles in response
* Road to QE graphic: http://link.reuters.com/jum83w (Adds link to factbox, details Greek debt status)
FRANKFURT, Jan 22 (Reuters) - The European Central Bank took the ultimate policy leap on Thursday, launching a government bond-buying program which will pump hundreds of billions in new money into a sagging euro zone economy.
The ECB said it would purchase sovereign debt from this March until the end of September 2016, despite opposition from Germany's Bundesbank and concerns in Berlin that it could allow spendthrift countries to slacken economic reforms.
Together with existing schemes to buy private debt and funnel hundreds of billions of euros in cheap loans to banks, the new quantitative easing program will release 60 billion euros ($68 billion) a month into the economy, ECB President Mario Draghi said.
By September next year, more than 1 trillion euros will have been created under quantitative easing, the ECB's last remaining major policy option for reviving economic growth and warding off deflation. The flood of money impressed markets: the euro fell more than two U.S. cents to $1.14108 on the announcement, and European shares hit seven-year highs.
"All eyes were on Mario Draghi and he has delivered a bigger bazooka than investors were expecting," said Mauro Vittorangeli, a fixed income specialist at Allianz Global Investors, adding that the news marked "an historic crossroads for European markets."
The ECB and the central banks of euro zone countries will buy up bonds in proportion to its "capital key," meaning more debt will be scooped up from the biggest economies such as Germany than from small member states such as Ireland.
The prospect of dramatic ECB action had already prompted the Swiss central bank to abandon its cap on the franc against the euro. Denmark cut its main policy interest rate on Thursday for the second time this week after the ECB announcement, aiming to defend the Danish crown's peg to the euro.
Draghi has had to balance the need for action to lift the euro zone economy out of its torpor against German concerns about risk-sharing and that it might be left to foot the bill.
WILL IT WORK?
Economists noted that Draghi had said only 20 percent of purchases would be the responsibility of the ECB. This means the bulk of any potential losses, should a euro zone government default on its debt, would fall on national central banks.
Critics say this casts doubt over the unity of the euro zone and its principle of solidarity, and countries with already high debts could find themselves in yet deeper water.
"It is counterproductive to shift the risks of monetary policy to the national central banks," said former ECB policymaker Athanasios Orphanides. "It does not promote a single monetary policy. This path towards Balkanisation of monetary policy would signal that the ECB is preparing for a break-up of the euro."
A German lawyer who has been prominent in attempts to halt euro zone bailouts said he was already preparing a legal complaint against the bond-buying program.
Draghi said the ECB's Governing Council had been unanimous in agreeing that the step to print money was legally sound. There was a large majority on the need to trigger it now, "so large that we didn't need to take a vote."
"There was a consensus on risk-sharing set at 20 percent and 80 percent on a no-risk-sharing basis," he added.
One euro zone central banking source said five policymakers opposed the expanded asset-purchase plan: the central bank chiefs of Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Estonia, along with Executive Board member Sabine Lautenschlaeger, a German.
Guntram Wolff, head of the Bruegel think tank, said the plan's size was impressive. "But the ECB has given the signal ... that its monetary policy is not a single one. That's a bad signal to markets and a bad signal to everybody in the euro zone."
The ECB is trying to push euro zone annual inflation back up to its target of just below two percent; consumer prices fell last month, raising fears of a Japanese-style deflationary spiral. But there are doubts, and not only in Germany, over whether printing fresh money will work.
Most euro zone government bond yields are at ultra-low levels and the euro had already dropped sharply against the dollar. Lower borrowing costs and a weaker currency could both help to boost economic growth but there is a question about how much further either can fall.
The ECB could create the basis for growth, Draghi said, but he put the onus on governments to follow. "For growth to pick up ... you need structural reforms," he said. "It's now up to the governments to implement these structural reforms. The more they do, the more effective will be our monetary policy."
Draghi was echoing the view of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said: "Regardless of what the ECB does, it should not obscure the fact that the real growth impulses must come from conditions set by the politicians."
The ECB has already cut interest rates to record lows and left its refinancing rate, which determines the cost of euro zone credit, at 0.05 percent.
Greece and Cyprus, which remain under EU/IMF bailout programs, will be eligible for the ECB program but subject to stricter conditions.
In practice, Greek debt does not currently qualify as another rule stipulates that a maximum 33 percent of the bonds issued by any country may be bought. The ECB and other euro zone central banks already own more than this, although they may start purchases once enough of their Greek bonds have matured to take the total below the 33 percent threshold.
Greece votes on Sunday in an election where anti-bailout opposition party Syriza is on track to emerge as the biggest party in parliament.
($1 = 0.8752 euros) (Writing by Mike Peacock and Paul Carrel. Additional reporting by Noah Barkin in Davos. Editing by Jeremy Gaunt and David Stamp)
CNN's Fareed Zakaria sat down with HuffPost Live at Davos on Wednesday, where he called out Rupert Murdoch for his comments on the recent terror attacks in Paris.
"I think it was outrageous to claim that moderate Muslims, or Muslims in general, are responsible for the attacks," Zakaria said. "If you had a significant portion of the Muslim world up in arms against the West... we'd have a lot of attacks every day."
"We're talking about a small number," Zakaria added.
Tweeting after the terror attacks in France that left 20 dead, Murdoch said Muslims must "recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer," and "they must be held responsible."
"We don't hold Rupert Murdoch responsible for every crazy, radical, quasi-fascist statement made by a television host -- oh, wait a minute, I guess we do in the case of Rupert Murdoch because he hires most of them," Zakaria joked.
Zakaria pointed out the hypocrisy of Murdoch's comment.
"He has no responsibility for the hacking scandal that was done by his employees, but yet Muslims in Indonesia who are moderate are somehow responsible for what some guy in France does," Zakaria said.
Below, more updates from the 2015 Davos Annual Meeting:
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Today 6:48 AM ESTAnne-Marie Slaughter: The U.S. Needed To Be 'Front And Center' In Paris
New America President and CEO Anne-Marie Slaughter talks with HuffPost Live about how surprised she was that the U.S. didn't send a higher-ranking official to the Paris unity march.
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Today 6:42 AM ESTGuilherme Leal's Fight To Curb Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Guilherme Leal, Co-chairman of the board of directors of Natura Cosmeticos, talks about the B-Team's efforts on climate justice.
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Today 6:35 AM ESTAbousteit: More Women At Davos, Please
Abousteit said she thinks there should be more women at Davos.
"I just think there should be a very hard quota, 50/50, to make sure there's enough women there," she said. "[Davos should] also give women a chance who are not in that position yet, that they couldn't get to because there is a glass ceiling... give them a chance to get more visibility."
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Today 6:31 AM EST'It's Not About The Saving'
Abousteit said making clothes isn't about saving money.
"It's not about the saving," she said. "It's about doing something that makes you happy."
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Today 6:30 AM ESTNora Abousteit: Being Passionate About Work Makes It Easier To Get Through Hard Times
Nora Abousteit advocated for doing a job that you love.
"I studied what my passion was... but then I saw an opportunity at work that made my heart beat faster, and I pursued that, and it was always about a gut feeling," she said.
She said working in a field she's passionate about makes it easier to get through hard times.
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Today 6:28 AM ESTNora Abousteit Knitted The Sweater She's Wearing At Davos
Nora Abousteit, founder and CEO of Kollabora and the Kollaborator Network, said her company helps people "start making."
Abousteit said she knitted the sweater she wore on HuffPost Live while she was on her honeymoon.
Abousteit she grew up crafting, knitting with her mother and welding with her father. She said she saw growth in people wanting to know the origins of their products and wanting the experience of production, which is what inspired her company.
"I realized there was a lot of potential, because a lot of young people were staring to make things," she said.
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Today 6:18 AM ESTSuzanne DiBianca: Giving Back Should Be A Core Part Of All Companies' DNA
Salesforce Foundation President & Co-Founder Suzanne DiBianca talks about the success of her company's commitment to public service.
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Today 5:52 AM ESTHow InvestKL Has (Or Hasn't) Been Impacted By The News
Amanshah noted that InvestKL's goal is to get 100 companies to invest in Greater Kuala Lumpur/Klang Valley by 2020, and they're "just under halfway." He said this is a signal the business opportunities in Kuala Lumpur haven't been negatively impacted by the recent crises like the December AirAsia plane crash and the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
"In terms of impact on tourism, yes, perhaps [the planes had an impact], because people are human and they are all touched by such instances," he said.
"The investors look at the fundamentals of the opportunities," he added.
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Today 5:47 AM ESTZainal Amanshah On InvestKL's Goals
InvestKL CEO Zainal Amanshah spoke to HuffPost Live at Davos about the goals for his company, which aims to get other companies to invest in Greater Kuala Lumpur/Klang Valley.
While Amansha said traditional markets "are still of prime interest" to InvestKL, he said he hopes to branch out.
"We want to do better in our neighboring countries like China, India, perhaps even Indonesia... and we want to continue attracting companies that have high technology," he said. "We've moved up the value chain now."
"Substance is very important to us as opposed to numbers of companies," he added.
Guilherme Leal said the B-Team is issuing a challenge to companies to help eliminate greenhouse emissions and fight for climate justice.
"As a B-team group, we are challenging [companies] to reach a net zero greenhouse emission by 2050, because we want to take the leadership," Leal said. "We know that many companies will not reach this net zero emission [by 2050], but some of them need to reach it before the end of the century. If [they don't], we're facing many problems"
Leal said to get to net zero greenhouse emissions, all sectors need to be involved.
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Today 5:27 AM ESTGuilherme Leal At Davos
Guilherme Leal, co-chairman of the board of directors of Natura Cosmetics, on HuffPost Live at Davos
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Today 5:20 AM ESTAnstey On A 'Very Simple But A Very Powerful Idea'
Anstey said she is helping raise awareness about girls in Africa who must walk 6 kilometers go get to school each day by having Davos participants wear Fitbits.
"I think it was a very simple but a very powerful idea," she said.
Anstey said the goal is to give bikes to the students in Africa in order to make their daily commute a lot easier.
"We've challenged Davos participants to walk 6 km during their three-day stay we're recording how far they walk," Anstey said, noting that some children in Africa must walk that distance in one day to get to school.
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Today 5:18 AM ESTAnstey: 'We Have To Embrace' Public-Private Partnerships
Anstey spoke on impact investing and how it can be fostered by public-private partnerships.
"Impact investing, which is creating bonds, creating financial instruments to help the private sector come in and finance those things but finance them against the provision of results... I think is a very interesting concept, and I think these public-private partnership are going to be even more important for low-carbon growth, sustainable cities," she said.
"We tend as a society to have this divide between private and public," Anstey added. "We have to now recognize that, saying people can do well and do good... it something we have to embrace."
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Today 5:15 AM ESTCaroline Anstey: Millennials Aren't Waiting To Decide On A Legacy
Caroline Anstey, Global Head of UBS and Society, on HuffPost Live at Davos, said it's promising that younger people are wanting to invest in issues they care about as they grow, rather than waiting until old age to decide on what their legacy might be.
"The millennials are making it clear they want to invest alongside their values," she said. "Younger people are saying, 'I want my investments to reflect my beliefs, I want my workplace to reflect my beliefs,' and I think there is a big potential... to direct that."
Anstey said "despite all the gloom and doom," it's "very exciting" that people are looking to contribute to global issues.
"Imagine if you get 1, 2 percent of that money going into impact investing," Anstey added, noting that could mean billions of dollars going toward different causes.
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Today 5:12 AM ESTCaroline Ansety At Davos
Caroline Anstey, Global Head of UBS and Society, on HuffPost Live at Davos
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Today 5:05 AM ESTSlaughter On What Democrats Need To Do
Slaughter shared her thoughts on what Democrats need to do to get ahead in 2016.
"I think the Democrats have to be focused less on specific interest groups and specific issues and much more on a government that delivers," she said. "It's more the millennial, tech mentality of, deliver the services first."
"Show people that government can deliver, and show people other parts of government are listening and watching," she added.
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Today 5:01 AM ESTSlaughter On Syria
Slaughter criticized the Obama administration for not holding "an intervention to save as many Syrian lives as possible." She said the U.S. has focused too much on politics and not enough on people.
"I approve a lot of what the Obama administration has done... I approve of the way they handled Ukraine," she said. "With Syria, honestly, there was an intervention you could have made three years ago that would have avoided a huge amount, including the rise of ISIS."
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Today 4:59 AM ESTSlaughter: U.S. Absence In Paris Confirms Unfortunate Obama Narrative
Anne-Marie Slaughter said she thought the U.S. was wrong not to send a more high-profile official to a unity march to honor the victims of the recent terror attacks in Paris.
"I just couldn't believe that the United States was not front and center in that march. Yes, it's optics, but it was a moment in which the world came together to stand for [what are] certainly American values," she said.
"[U.S.] leadership would have been better advised to be front and center," Slaughter added. "I thought that was not only a moment missed, but it confirmed a narrative the Obama administration does not want confirmed, which is, you're not there."
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Today 4:56 AM ESTHow the Future of Work May Make Many of Us Happier
Anne-Marie Slaughter, president and CEO of the New America, writes on HuffPost:
We're headed towards a dramatically different economy in which most workers will be independent contractors. Freelancers will work on demand for whoever needs their services rather than for fixed periods of time for a single employer.
As The Economist describes, workers will be on a platform that matches them with customers and provides verification, security and payment systems. This is the world of Uber and will increasingly be the world of just about everything: handyman services, cooking, laundry, shopping, scheduling, personal training, coding, doctoring, lawyering, bossing and creating everything from television ads to Ebola suits. As these services spread, they will create the "on-demand economy" or the "platform economy."
Read more here.
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Today 4:45 AM ESTBassim Haidar On HuffPost Live
Bassim Haidar on HuffPost Live at Davos
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Today 4:44 AM ESTHaidar: When You Buy A Smartphone, 'You've Already Put Yourself On A List'
Haidar said consumers who aren't doing anything illegal shouldn't be worried about having personal devices like cell phones monitored.
"When you buy a smartphone, you've already put yourself on a list of someone wanting to watch your behavior," Haidar said. "You'll never be able to run away from this."
"Everything is commercialized, and therefore as a consumer, you must be very aware of this, and maybe accept it," Haidar added.
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Today 4:40 AM ESTHaidar On The Effect Of Boko Haram
Haidar said Boko Haram is "affecting certain parts" of his business, noting "there's a whole region that we can never go to anymore."
"What's happening is an outflow of people coming down, more south, causing more and more concentration with more infrastructure, that's also putting a lot of pressure on living standards... so yes it has an affect," he said.
"The region where Boko Haram's operating are extremely brutal areas," he said.
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Today 4:38 AM ESTBassim Haidar: 'Get Out Of The Living Room' And Go Experience A New Place
"Get out of the living room where you have a view of the world from a TV box, and go out there," Haidar said. "It's very easy for us to judge countries and cultures and people without actually being there, because of what we hear all the time."
"Living in Nigeria has a very, very different culture to Ethopia, or the other side," Haidar said. "The approach was, let's go there... speak to the people, speak to the bankers, and try to understand what this market needs."
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Today 4:37 AM ESTBassim Haidar On His Struggles Starting Out
Bassim Haidar, founder, chairman and CEO of Channel IT Group, spoke about the struggles he experienced when starting his company.
"It was a very simple thing: how do I get people outside this area to communicate using the infrastructure that is here? That was the first thing I did, and it was very, very successful," Haidar said.
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Today 4:24 AM ESTDiBianca On Workplace Community Service As A 'Retention Tool'
DiBianca said employees at her company, who get six days each year for community service, have given "incredible" feedback about the company's values of giving back, with many telling the leaders of the company the community service is a good "retention tool."
"It's really important that we not only attract the best employees, but we keep them," she said.
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Today 4:20 AM ESTSuzanne DiBianca On Giving Back
Suzanne DiBianca, president and co-founder of Salesforce Foundation, spoke with HuffPost Live at Davos on Thursday about incorporating public service into her company.
"When we started the company in 2000, we said we wanted to be a new kind of business," DiBianca said.
"We said, we're going to not wait until we reach some level of more comfortable success, we're going to make giving back part of our DNA from the beginning," she added.
DiBianca said it's a "return to values" and not something new that's prompting more companies to give back. She also said she thinks "the proliferation of the internet economy" is encouraging more people to incorporate philanthropy into their business model.
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Today 3:39 AM ESTWeymouth Happy With Bezos At The Post
When asked about "titans of tech" taking on more prominent roles in the media industry, Weymouth said she's been happy since Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, purchased the Washington Post.
"In the Besos case, at least so far, I think the Post is thriving which I'm very happy about," Weymouth said. "I am, of course, a member of the family... so we really want to see the paper thrive."
"I think it's great for the journalists, it's great for the institution and great for the paper," she added.
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Today 3:37 AM ESTWeymouth: Private Industry Could Be Vulnerable To Cyberattacks
Weymouth spoke on the dangers of cyberattacks and hacking on the private sector.
"I think private industry has actually been the victim of the latest cyberattack, in the sense of Sony," she said.
She said a friend of hers that works at Sony said "they actually melted down the hard drives of the computers."
"What other private sectors, the banking sectors? What other private sectors are the foreigners going to attack next?" Weymouth said.
"I think it's a frightening, alarming thing for all American cities," Weymouth added, saying many could be worried about what would happen if their bank was hacked.
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Today 3:34 AM ESTWeymouth Throws Support Behind Obama
Weymouth said she supports U.S. President Barack Obama's plans on dealing with the Islamic State.
"I thought the president's goal to degrade and destroy ISIS is the right, correct goal. And the question is, how do you do that?" Weymouth said.
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Today 3:33 AM ESTWeymouth On ISIS: 'It's Just Horrifying'
Speaking on the rise of the Islamic State, Weymouth said the situation is "horrifying."
"It's just horrifying, as you know from watching it day by day, I think we've never seen anything like ISIS that kills people, kills kids for singing songs, it's just horrible," she said.
Weymouth said she interviewed the president of Turkey while at Davos and offered insight into how he feels about the situation.
"Turkey believes the U.S. should have two aims -- to defeat President Assad, to remove him from power, and to defeat ISIS," she said.
WASHINGTON, Jan 20 (Reuters) - When President Barack Obama called attention on Tuesday to rising U.S. wages, he noted employers had not planned so many raises in years. But what he left out is that government data suggests actual wage increase are stuck in low gear.
"Today, thanks to a growing economy, the recovery is touching more and more lives," Obama said in his annual State of the Union address.
The president was not entirely triumphant in his speech, calling on Washington to help lift more Americans out of poverty by raising the minimum wage. He also said reforms to the country's education system were needed to help more people get high-paying jobs.
But in making a case that America had broken out of the economic doldrums, he said: "Wages are finally starting to rise again."
While it is true that earnings are rising, the problem with that statement is that multiple government surveys suggest income growth remains much slower than before the 2007-09 recession.
Average hourly earnings in the private sector rose just 1.7 percent in the year through December, according to the U.S. Labor Department.
On the eve of the recession, which began in December 2007, earnings were growing more than 3 percent every 12 months. Since 2010, they have averaged about 2 percent growth.
Obama also noted that a bigger share of small-business owners planned to raise wages than at any time since 2007.
That was an apparent reference to data from the National Federation of Independent Business from December, which genuinely lifted hopes workers were poised to get a pop in their paychecks.
But even relatively upbeat data on actual earnings suggests workers are not getting much in the way of raises.
A separate Labor Department survey on employment compensation showed wages growing 2.1 percent in the third quarter compared with a year earlier. That was the fastest pace since 2009, but still well below growth rates in 2007, when they were consistently above 3 percent. (Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Peter Cooney)
This story was originally published by 24/7 Wall St.
To be truly hated, a company must alienate a large number of people. It may irritate consumers with bad customer service, upset employees by paying low wages, and disappoint Wall Street with underwhelming returns. For a small number of companies, such failures are intertwined. These companies managed to antagonize more than just one group and have become widely disliked.
The most hated companies have millions of customers. With such a large customer base, it is critical to keep employees happy in order to promote high-quality customer service. Poor job satisfaction among employees can lead to unsatisfied customers. McDonald’s and Walmart have risked alienating workers, and therefore also customers, by not adequately addressing protests against their employees’ low wages. While pay may be low enough to put some workers below the poverty line, executives at these companies often make millions. The total compensation of McDonald’s CEO Donald Thompson, for example, was nearly $9.5 million in 2013 and nearly $13.8 million in 2012.
Layoffs, or even the prospect of layoffs, can also contribute to low employee morale. Sprint announced it would cut 2,000 jobs late last year. Workers at Comcast can reasonably expect layoffs should its planned merger with Time Warner Cable receives government approval.
Many of the most hated companies angered the public because of quality issues with their products.. Comcast has long been one of the worst companies in America in terms of customer service and satisfaction. Another example is the General Motors recall scandal. GM announced a recall in early 2014 due to faulty ignition switches in a number of its cars, now believed to have cost 42 people their lives. The company’s problems were compounded by the realization that it had known about the defect for over a decade.
Nothing harms the long-term reputation of a company in the eyes of investors more than a steep drop in its share price. In the past 12 months, shares of Sprint have fallen by more than 50%, as hopes for a tie-up with rival T-Mobile were dashed while the company had little success in retaining customers.
It is worth noting that some of the companies on the list may have performed very poorly by some measures but relatively well by others. A few of the most hated companies have had good stock performances. Others have relatively satisfied customers. All of these factors were taken into account in compiling the final list.
Click here to see America’s most hated companies
Several companies from last year list have improved their public perceptions enough to be removed from this year’s list. For example, J.C. Penney is in the midst of a modest turnaround. Abercrombie & Fitch’s controversial long-time CEO Michael Jeffries resigned last December. However, the retailer still has problems attracting teenage customers.
To identify the most hated companies in America, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed a variety of metrics on customer service, employee satisfaction, and share price performance. We considered consumer surveys from a number of sources, including the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) and Zogby Analytics. We also included employee satisfaction based on worker opinion scores recorded by Glassdoor.com. Finally, we reviewed management decisions and company policies that hurt a company’s public perception.
This post was originally published by Kaiser Health News (KHN). Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service.
In health insurance prices, as in the weather, Alaska and the Sun Belt are extremes. This year Alaska is the most expensive health insurance market for people who do not get coverage through their employers, while Phoenix, Albuquerque, N.M., and Tucson, Ariz., are among the very cheapest.
In this second year of the insurance marketplaces created by the federal health law, the most expensive premiums are in rural spots around the nation: Wyoming, rural Nevada, patches of inland California and the southernmost county in Mississippi, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has compiled premium prices from around the country. (KHN is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)
The most and least expensive regions are determined by the monthly premium for the least expensive “silver” level plan, which is the type most consumers buy and covers on average 70 percent of medical expenses. Premiums in the priciest areas are triple those in the least expensive areas.
Along with the three southwestern cities, the places with the lowest premiums include Louisville, Ky., Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania, Knoxville and Memphis, Tenn., and Minneapolis-St. Paul and many of its suburbs, the analysis found.
Highest and Lowest Premiums
Here are the 10 most and least expensive regions in the country – with the counties listed in parenthesis – based on premium prices for the lowest-cost silver plan. Regions are counties that share the same price for the same lowest-cost-plan and are either geographically contiguous or are part of the same rating area created by the state.
Premiums are listed for 40-year-olds; and for most states the difference in prices stays the same for people of any age. Vermont and two upstate New York areas— Ithaca and Plattsburgh—also are among the 10 most expensive places, although those states do not let insurers adjust premiums based on the consumer’s age, making comparisons inexact. Older residents in those states will end up getting better deals than in most places, while younger ones tend to pay more.
10 HIGHEST PREMIUMS
$488 Alaska (entire state)
$459 Ithaca, NY (Tompkins)
$456 Bay St. Louis, Mississippi (Hancock)
$446 Plattsburgh, NY (Clinton)
$440 Rural Wyoming (Albany, Big Horn, Campbell, Carbon, Converse, Crook, Fremont, Goshen, Hot Springs, Johnson, Lincoln, Niobrara, Park, Platte, Sheridan, Sublette, Sweetwater, Teton, Uinta, Washakie, and Weston)
$428 Vermont (entire state)
$418 Rural Nevada (Churchill, Elko, Eureka, Humboldt, Lander, Mineral, Pershing, and White Pine)
$412 Casper, Wyoming (Natrona)
$410 Inland California (Imperial, Inyo, and Mono)
$401 Cheyenne, Wyoming (Laramie)
10 LOWEST PREMIUMS
$166 Phoenix, Ariz. (Maricopa)
$167 Albuquerque, N.M. (Bernalillo, Sandoval, Torrance, and Valencia)
$167 Louisville, Ky. (Bullitt, Jefferson, Oldham, and Shelby)
$170 Tucson, Ariz. (Pima and Santa Cruz)
$170 Pittsburgh, Pa. (Allegheny and Erie)
$179 Western Pennsylvania (Beaver, Butler, Washington, Westmoreland, Armstrong, Crawford, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Lawrence, McKean, Mercer, and Warren)
$181 Minneapolis-St. Paul (Anoka, Benton, Carver, Dakota, Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott, Sherburne, Stearns, Washington, and Wright)
$184 Memphis and suburbs (Fayette, Haywood, Lauderdale, Shelby, and Tipton)
$189 North of Minneapolis (Chisago and Isanti)
Starting this month, the cheapest silver plan for a 40-year-old in Alaska costs $488 a month. (Not everyone will have to pay that much because the health law subsidizes premiums for low-and moderate-income people.) A 40-year-old Phoenix resident could pay as little as $166 for the same level plan.
That three-fold spread is similar to the gap between last year’s most expensive area — in the Colorado mountain resort region, where 40-year-olds paid $483—and the least expensive, the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, where they paid $154.
Minneapolis remained one of the cheapest areas in the region, although the lowest silver premium rose to $181 after the insurer that offered the cheapest plan last year pulled out of the market. Premiums in four Colorado counties around Aspen and Vail plummeted this year after state insurance regulators lumped them in with other counties in order to bring rates down.
Cynthia Cox, a researcher at the Kaiser foundation, said the number of insurers in a region was a notable similarity among both the most and least expensive areas. “In the most expensive areas only one or two are participating,” she said. “In the least expensive areas there tends to be five or more insurers competing.” She said that other factors, such as whether insurers need state approval for their premiums and the underlying health of the population, may play a role as well in premiums.
The national median premium for a 40-year-old is $269, according to the foundation’s analysis.
Alaska’s lowest silver premium rose 28 percent from last year, ratcheting it up from 10th place last year to the nation’s highest. Only two insurers are offering plans in the state, the same number as last year, but the limited competition is just one reason Alaska’s prices are so high, researchers said. The state has a very high cost of living, which drives up rents and salaries of medical professionals, and insurers said patients racked up high costs last year.
Ceci Connolly, director of PwC’s Health Research Institute, noted that the long distances between providers and patients also added to the costs. Restraining costs in rural areas, she said, “continues to be a challenge” around the country. One reason is that there tend to be fewer doctors and hospitals, so those that are there have more power to dictate higher prices, since insurers have nowhere else to turn.
By contrast, in Maricopa County, Phoenix’s home, the lowest silver premium price dropped 15 percent from last year, when Phoenix did not rank among the lowest areas. A dozen insurers are offering silver plans. “Phoenix, during the boom, attracted a lot of providers so it’s a very robust, competitive market,” said Allen Gjersvig, an executive at the Arizona Alliance for Community Health Centers, which is helping people enroll in the marketplaces.
The cheapest silver plan in Phoenix comes from Meritus, a nonprofit insurance cooperative. The plan is an HMO that provides care through Maricopa Integrated Health System, a safety net system that is experienced in managing care for Medicaid patients. Meritus’ chief executive, Tom Zumtobel, said they brought that plan’s premium down from 2014. The insurer and the health system meet regularly to figure out how to treat complicated cases in the most efficient manner. “We’re working together to get the best outcome,” Zumtobel said.
Katherine Hempstead, who oversees the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s research on health insurance prices, found no significant differences in the designs of the plans that would explain their premiums. “In most of the plans – cheap or expensive – there seemed to be a high deductible and fairly similar cost-sharing,” she said.
Book that European vacation now, America: It hasn't been this cheap in 11 years.
The euro was in a crashy mood on Friday, briefly falling to its lowest level against the U.S. dollar since November 2003, according to Bloomberg. One euro is now about $1.15, down from about $1.40 less than a year ago.
Here is a chart, courtesy of FXStreet.com, singing the sad song of the euro today. It measures the number of dollars a euro will buy. The lower the line, the weaker the euro:
As you can see, Europe's common currency has battled back a bit, but it's still in a deep pit. Here's a longer-term chart, courtesy of Bloomberg.com, for perspective:
What ails the euro? At least three things:
Thing One: Europe's economy is in a depression, basically, that is going on its eighth year.
Thing Two: The European Central Bank is getting ready to buy a bunch of bonds to help the economy. This is basically "quantitative easing," the same thing the Federal Reserve did in the U.S., only about seven years too late. The ECB's bond-buying will flood the market with euros, which will make them cheaper.
Third Thing: The Swiss National Bank on Thursday threw a boulder to the drowning euro by giving up on trying to keep its own currency, the franc, artificially cheap by buying euros. Investors have been buying francs and dumping euros because Switzerland is a safer economy, basically. The Swiss hate that because it makes Swiss vacations even more expensive than they already were. But the SNB finally just said, "Eh, whatevs," and let its currency soar, crushing the euro.
Oh, well, who needs Alps when you can see Paris/Berlin/Venice/Barcelona on the cheap this summer? Assuming, that is, that Europe's problems don't spread overseas and cost us all our jobs.
Good news, consumers: Everything's on sale! The bad news: Low, low prices aren't always such a great thing.
The U.S. consumer price index tumbled 0.4 percent in December from the month before, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday, led by a 9.4-percent crash in the cost of gasoline. It was the biggest one-month drop for consumer prices since December 2008, when the world was still gripped by the financial crisis.
Please note the context there: Sometimes prices fall not because of angel kisses and unicorn dreams, but because everything is going to hell.
Is everything going to hell right now? Maybe not. Probably not? But some scary things are happening. The price of crude oil has been cut in half in a matter of months. The Swiss National Bank on Thursday gave up trying to keep panicky investors from buying the safe-haven Swiss franc, causing turmoil and bloodshed in currency markets. Interest rates around the world keep plunging to record lows, in a year everybody expects interest rates to rise because of booming economic growth and demand for loans.
Meanwhile, U.S. consumer prices are up just 0.8 percent in the past year, the weakest 12-month stretch since 2009. The euro zone is in outright "deflation," which is the opposite of inflation -- prices fall instead of rise. Japan, the World Deflation Champion for two decades, is tottering on the edge of it again.
Everybody loves falling prices, but sometimes we love them too much. If prices fall and fall and keep falling, then we'll put off buying stuff because we expect that stuff to be cheaper tomorrow and even cheaper the day after that. When everybody's sitting around not buying stuff, you can have what is known as a depression. Depressions are not good.
To fight off the risk of a depression, central banks around the world have cut interest rates to zero and, in some cases, less than zero, to try to get people to pull money out of banks and spend it on clothes or Google Glass or meth or something, anything.
It's working OK for the U.S., at least. The Federal Reserve got out in front of the deflation thing early and has managed to keep the U.S. economy humping along. Job growth is steady and improving, and wages might some day start rising, which could encourage people to spend more. The Fed expects this recent bout of falling prices to be temporary.
The Fed is so darn confident that all of this stuff will pass, in fact, that it's planning to start raising interest rates, pulling support away from the U.S. economy, just at the moment the rest of the world is having a bit of a moment. Should be interesting.
It's a great time to own an NBA team. And an even better time to sell one: A bad team losing money in a big city is ten times more valuable than it was just five years ago.
Take Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov: He wants to sell the Brooklyn Nets, Bloomberg reported this week. The Brooklyn Nets are not good (they're 16-23). They lost $144 million last year, too.
Yet the Nets are also worth somewhere between $1.3 and $2.7 billion, according to various estimates.
How can such an bad, money-losing team be worth so much money? Television.
The Nets, like all teams in the NBA, get money from the league's revenue-sharing agreement, which parcels out the proceeds of national TV rights, taking money from rich teams and giving it to poorer ones. As part of that deal, every team gets an equal share of the TV money. That share was about $30 million this year. It will be more than twice that amount once a new nine-year, $24 billion deal takes effect in 2016.
And that’s just national media money. The Nets have their own local TV rights deal in the New York City area. It expires next year and is worth $20 million a year. Which is actually not all that much money -- it’s not unrealistic to think the Nets could get ten times more from a renegotiated deal. After all, the Los Angeles Clippers, who play in the country's second-largest media market, are expected to get $200 million a year when their current $20 million-a-year deal expires in 2016.
The Nets are losing money right now because they’re loaded up with silly expensive contracts for aging, poorly performing players that put them way over the league's salary cap. For breaking that cap, the team had to pay a league-record $90 million in luxury taxes for the 2013-2014 season.
Those player contracts are bad, financially and on the court, but they’re far shorter than media rights deals. Phase them out, sign a new, much-improved local TV deal, add in the soon-to-double league TV checks, and the Nets start looking like a pretty decent business: almost fixed revenue, slashed costs, and no real competition.
It’s actually more than a decent business model, it’s a great one -- unless you’re a basketball fan. Jay Z, former part-owner of the Nets, wasn’t just bragging when he said, “the Nets could go 0-for-82 and I look at you like this shit gravy.”
He was right. That’s just how the economics of owning an NBA team work: The costs of putting a team on the court are variable and under your control, while revenue is set in stone. The best way to make the most money is to spend as little money on players as possible in as big a media market as possible. Owners in such a market have an incentive to put a minimally viable product on the court: just good enough not to be a complete joke, but not much more. And even if you are spectacularly bad for a few seasons, high draft picks help you out.
Once the new owner sunsets the most expensive players, the Nets will be what they always should have been: a great business, regardless of how bad a team they are.
