The richest people in the world share three things in common

The three personality traits of the world’s most famous billionaires revealed 
The richest people in the world share three things in common, according to research published by UBS and PwC.

Sex, lies and debt potentially exposed by US data hack CNBC

Incentives of Ireland and Luxemkbourg

Gawker’s Idealism Is Exactly What the Labor Movement Needs New Republic

Twilight of the Professors CounterPunch

Now, workers have fewer rights than they did a century ago. Trade unions are hobbled by what Tony Blair described as “the most restrictive union laws in the western world”. With the rise of zero-hours contracts and bogus self-employment, workers can be treated as commodities to be hired and fired. With housing treated as an asset, not a right, tenants are often at the mercy of their unregulated landlords. Basic needs such as water and heating are run by profiteering corporations. Universal access to justice is curtailed by legal aid cuts.

Owen Jones on Magna Carta: a striking example of useful myths New Statesman 

'Poor thing, when he sings, it shows that he is not remembering, and that comforts me; but when he is still, I am afraid he is thinking, and I cannot bear it. He will never see his mother again; if he can sing, I must not hinder it, but be thankful for it. If you were older, you would understand me; then that friendless child's noise would make you glad.'
 #7 — Mark Twain’s wise mother: Slavery incident 

Richard Branson launches great paid leave policy for .2 per cent of Virgin workers Sydney Morning Herald

American Express pays no tax on multibillion-dollar Australian operation for seven years Sydney Morning Herald (EM)

The ratio of incomes gives a sense of the relative differences in productivity between the cities and countryside. For China, this ratio is 3.2 – the highest in world. On average, urban workers are more than three times as productive as rural workers and are being compensated accordingly. No wonder some 270m migrant workers have flocked to the cities to secure better paying industrial jobs. For India, the same measure gives a ratio of 1.6, one of the lowest for emerging market economies, indicating that urban productivity is only moderately higher than in rural areas, and cities do not offer such a magnet of higher earnings.
The other key indicator is the relative difference in property prices in China versus India. China’s mega-cities have seen a five-fold increase in property prices in renminbi terms, or nearly seven-fold in US dollars over the past decade. No wonder concerns about a possible property bubble in China dominate global financial news. Yet despite these astounding increases, property prices in Beijing and Shanghai are still only half those of their Indian counterparts of New Delhi and Mumbai.
…India’s excessively high property prices reflect a combination of two archaic practices. One is the legacy of its colonial past in reserving large parcels of valuable urban land for government use, including sprawling and wasteful estates for civil servants and military cantonments. The other comes from outdated and overly rigid building codes that discourage concentrated development of commercial activity and housing in the core of its major cities. This pushes development to the outer suburbs, making it difficult to realise the agglomeration benefits that drive productivity gains.