Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Is the meaning of work about to change?

We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. 
~ JP

...the worst fate for our children, yours and mine, is yet to come. Because when the easy pleasures of youth run out and self-affirmation is all students have left, what will remain? Not just bad work and the dreary distractions of the modern entertainment industry—all of which can be tolerated, as bad as they may be—but the absence of something to live for, the highest and most beautiful activity of their intelligence. To cheat them of that is the real crime, and the most profound way in which modern universities have betrayed the trust of an entire generation of young people. Professors you were not normal
~holydays (sik) read

We tend to think of corporate culture as an idea developed by HR and Marketing departments instead of something that forms organically over time. Even if the company manifesto is hanging on the walls or in the lobby, the true spirit of any business is determined by how things have been done before. To quote Gregory Carpenter, Director of the Center for Market Leadership at Kellogg University, “Every organisation develops a culture based on past experiences”.  Culture First


Is the meaning of work about to change?
WEF, 29/2/16.  It’s increasingly clear to me that creating more jobs is not enough, nor is it the real solution. This solution is based on a big misunderstanding. To tackle this crisis cubed, we need to focus on not just jobs but on people earning incomes. This requires us to develop a new model of work

 The riddle of the modern economy is not that overworked professionals are miserable. It's that they are not. When did work become a refuge? Robota 

HMRC 'too busy' to meet £1bn tax evasion target

UK Taxman says 'We're too busy to chase offshore cash': Revenue to miss £1bn evasion target by £780m according to watchdog


I, iPhone case.  Uncertainty about specs


Denmark again takes top spot in UN’s world happiness report Associated Press  

ASX chief Elmer Funke Kupper quits in face of investigation
Paying tax has become optional for 56 of Australia's highest earners. Newly-released tax statistics show each of the 56 paid next to no income tax in 2013–14, not even the Medicare Levy, even though each earned more than $1 million The 56 millionaires who pay no tax
Meet the millionaires who pay no income tax


This factory is replacing robots with human  Mercedes-Benz is firing robots and bringing in humans to do the job instead.  Robots can’t keep up with the changing pace and adaptation required by the luxury car-maker; instead the flexibility and dexterity of human workers is required



The key to success? Just be NICE: The way people treat each other in a team has more of an impact than their experience and skills

Google spent two years interviewing employees to shed light on teamwork. It found there is a secret formula that looks at how people work together. They found that the way people are treated is more important than skills. Teams work best when members feel they can take risks and be supported

 5 Major Hospital Hacks: Horror Stories from the Cybersecurity Frontlines IEEE Spectrum 


Spamming-as-a-service available via the Chinese underground
IDG, 2/3/16. Security firm Trend Micro has just released a research paper which looks at cybercrime and the deep web around the world. This focuses on seven counties: Russia, Japan, China, Germany, US, Canada and Brazil. Each country’s market is as distinct as its culture.
*Paper – Cybercrime and the deep web

Government to end ‘double taxation’ of bitcoin

It is easy to blame the poor for their lot in life, much harder to do anything about the underlying issues. [Lawyers, Guns and Money]

"Exotic dancer given nearly 3 years for tax fraud": This article appeared in The Argus Leader of Sioux Falls, South Dakota in October 2014

Today. a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit issued this decision affirming the judgment of conviction and sentence

Oxfam report: Ending the Era of Tax Havens 

House of Common Briefing Paper: Tax avoidance: a General Anti-Avoidance Rule - background history (1997- 2010)

The Multinational Enterprises (Financial Transparency) Bill   


HSBC has lost its latest bid to keep some portions of a potentially explosive report about its anti-money-laundering efforts from being made public. A Brooklyn federal judge nixed many of the UK bank giant’s requests to black out parts of the 250-page report produced by an outside monitor in the wake of HSBC’s $1.9 billion settlement with the Department of Justice. Judge John Gleeson — who has already rejected requests from the Justice Department and HSBC to keep the January 2015 report sealed — said many of HSBC’s proposed redactions were “over-inclusive.”

Hurdles to Multigenerational Living: Kitchens and Visible Second Entrances Wall Street Journal. More evidence of downward mobility…  




Nina Olson (National Taxpayer Advocate), The Future of Tax Administration, 150 Tax Notes 1315 (Mar. 14, 2016)

Rich countries have a $78 trillion pension problem CNBC
The gangster candidate: Donald Trump and his supporters behave like the mafia, with veiled threats and acting above the law Salon 

& Sons by David Gilbert from that book aka fight club ...He has an expensive taste for flashy metaphors and similes. Some of these are very good, and realign the visual world, asking us, as Nabokov’s best metaphors do, to estrange in order to reconnect. “His shirttail was untucked in a sort of preppy mullet.” Or: “His face seemed a few days fallen from the vine.” As Richard arrives by plane for the Dyer reunion, he anxiously sees Manhattan from above: “rows of razor-sharp buildings, like a shark bursting through water.”


New MRU “Office Hours” video on calculating monopoly profits.  And first ever movie trailer for an economics paper.  My favorite bit is towards the end, when the referee reports are cited.


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