#as if society would not collapse without retail employees

[julesnichols]

Also I hate how unsustainable customer service/retail work is in this country. If I could I would gladly be a cashier for the rest of my life but like, I also need to be able to afford to live

[weabooweedwitch]

People really don't realize how dehumanizing working in retail is. Our society would literally fucking collapse without employees to manage stores and we're the lowest paid, most disrespected among the workforce besides like garbagemen? I'm either on my feet or ringing for my entire shift, carrying boxes, doing manual labor, helping people get their food, and I get paid only so many dollars above minimum wage. And what's worse is that, comparatively, my job pays a lot more than other retail jobs right now, so I'm "decently paid" but obviously as we all know the average wage in America is criminally low. Like I "make a decent wage" but not enough to afford the cheapest possible rent without a roommate, as is the case in most places in America

I just constantly have to ask myself why bother working at all when the system is set up in such a way where if you don't come from money or have the money to go to college you're just fucked and permanantly segregated to being in poverty forever, and even then, there are hundreds of thousands of people getting college degrees and then finding out their job wants an even MORE in depth degree and even MORE qualifications

Just. God. Is there anything in this country that isn't fundamentally broken

[newstfionline]

Headlines

Boom in camping as Americans escape after months at home (The Guardian) The coronavirus has sparked a surge in RV or motorhome purchasing and rental, and enthusiastic camping and “glamping” bookings as Americans attempt to escape months of quarantine for a summer break while avoiding flights and keeping their distance. The pandemic, which continues to rage across the US, has made many traditional holiday activities either impossible or unappealing, putting millions off flying abroad, going to crowded resort hotels, group holidays or cruises. But experts say the apparent lower risk of transmission in the open is making outdoor holidays in demand—and attracting new fans. Camping and glamping booking services report huge spikes in business, with some 400% busier than the same time last year, following the reopening of states for business. RV companies said business is “booming” in rental and sales. Meanwhile, outdoors retailer REI said it has seen record growth in its camping department in the last six weeks as people rush to buy equipment.

For Oklahoma Tribe, Vindication at Long Last (NYT) The sorrow and death of the Trail of Tears were still fresh when a band of Muscogee (Creek) people gathered by an oak tree in 1836 to deposit the ashes of the ceremonial fires they had carried across America and begin a new home in the West. It was called Tulasi, or “Old Town.” Tulsa. What followed were decades of betrayals, broken treaties and attempts to legislate and assimilate tribes out of existence. Then this week, the Supreme Court confirmed what the Muscogee (Creek) Nation has long asserted: That this land was their land. The court’s 5-to-4 declaration that much of Tulsa and eastern Oklahoma had long been a reservation of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation was seen as a watershed victory for Native Americans’ long campaign to uphold sovereignty, tribal boundaries and treaty obligations. For Muscogee citizens, who make up the country’s fourth-largest Native American tribe, it was also something deeply personal, a thoroughly American moment that rippled across time, connecting ancestors forced to leave their homes in the Southeast with future generations.

As beach towns open, businesses are short foreign workers (AP) At this time of the year, The Friendly Fisherman on Cape Cod is usually bustling with foreign students clearing tables and helping prepare orders of clam strips or fish and chips. But because of a freeze on visas, Janet Demetri won’t be employing the 20 or so workers this summer. So as the crowds rush back, Demetri must work with nine employees for her restaurant and market—forcing her to shutter the business twice a week. The Trump administration announced last month that it was extending a ban on green cards and adding many temporary visas to the freeze, including J-1 cultural exchange visas and H-2B visas. Businesses from forestry to fisheries to hospitality depend on these visas, though there are exceptions for the food processing sector. The move was billed as a chance to free up 525,000 jobs to Americans hard hit by the economic downturn, though the administration provided no evidence to support that. Businesses said they want to hire Americans but are in regions with tiny labor pools that are no match for the millions of tourists visiting each summer. Companies also face the challenge of convincing unemployed workers, many who are still collecting federal benefits, to take a job in the hospitality industry amid a pandemic. Rising housing prices as well as a lack of child care amid the pandemic also pose hurdles.

Panama Hospitals On Verge Of Collapse As Virus Cases Surge (AFP) Hospitals in Panama are on the brink of collapse as coronavirus cases spike in the Central American country worst hit by the pandemic, where doctors are already exhausted. With a population of four million, Panama has gone from 200 cases a day to 1,100 over the last few weeks. The sharp increase has forced authorities to adapt existing hospitals and look for new spaces, like convention centers, to boost a health system with a range of problems including long waiting lists. “The fear of the collapse of the public system in our country is evident if the number of cases remains the same,” Domingo Moreno, coordinator of a coalition of healthcare workers’ unions, told AFP.

UK-China ties freeze with debate over Huawei, Hong Kong (AP) Only five years ago, then-British Prime Minister David Cameron was celebrating a “golden era” in U.K.-China relations, bonding with President Xi Jinping over a pint of beer at the pub and signing off on trade deals worth billions. Those friendly scenes now seem like a distant memory. Hostile rhetoric has ratcheted up in recent days over Beijing’s new national security law for Hong Kong. Britain’s decision to offer refuge to millions in the former colony was met with a stern telling-off by China. And Chinese officials have threatened “consequences” if Britain treats it as a “hostile country” and decides to cut Chinese technology giant Huawei out of its critical telecoms infrastructure amid growing unease over security risks. All that is pointing to a much tougher stance against China, with a growing number in Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party taking a long, hard look at Britain’s Chinese ties.

Hungary imposes border checks, quarantine to prevent spread of virus (Reuters) Hungary has imposed new restrictions on cross-border travel as of next Wednesday in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus after a surge in new cases in several countries, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff said on Sunday. Under the new rules, Hungarian nationals returning from high risk countries listed as “yellow” and “red” will have to go through health checks at the border and will have to go into quarantine. The same applies to foreigners coming from “yellow” countries, but their entry will be banned from “red” countries.

U.S. warns citizens of heightened detention risks in China (Reuters) The U.S. State Department warned American citizens on Saturday to “exercise increased caution” in China due to heightened risk of arbitrary law enforcement including detention and a ban from exiting the country. “U.S. citizens may be detained without access to U.S. consular services or information about their alleged crime,” the State Department said in a security alert issued to its citizens in China, adding that U.S. citizens may face “prolonged interrogations and extended detention” for reasons related to state security. “Security personnel may detain and/or deport U.S. citizens for sending private electronic messages critical of the Chinese government,” it added. The security alert comes as bilateral tensions intensify over issues ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic, trade, the new Hong Kong security law and allegations of human rights violations against Uighurs in the Xinjiang region.

Lockdowns make the heart grow fonder in Japan as online matchmaking surges (Washington Post) Japan’s matchmakers faced a dilemma: how to make those matches during the social distancing of the pandemic? Gone were group gatherings, one of the common icebreakers held by Japan’s popular agencies for people seeking a mate. Also called off were the one-on-one introductions arranged by dozens of Japan’s matchmaking companies, which can charge monthly fees as high as $200 for the many in Japan who don’t want to go solo into the online dating world. So the now-familiar tool of pandemic-era business—the video chat and those little windows—became an unexpected opportunity for Japan’s Cupids for hire. Matchmaking agencies say the video encounters have proved to be a hit, removing the pressures of arranged face-to-face sessions in a society that often discourages being bold and open in first meetings. “Without the online setting, we never would have met,” said Kazunori Nakanishi, a 31-year-old hotel employee from the eastern city of Kumamoto. Matchmakers arranged for him to chat with Ayako, a 43-year-old social worker. She lives in Tokyo, about 550 miles away. Late last month, shortly after restrictions on travel were lifted across Japan, they met in person for the first time. The following day they got married.

Defying U.S., China and Iran Near Trade and Military Partnership (NYT) Iran and China have quietly drafted a sweeping economic and security partnership that would clear the way for billions of dollars of Chinese investments in energy and other sectors, undercutting the Trump administration’s efforts to isolate the Iranian government because of its nuclear and military ambitions. The partnership, detailed in an 18-page proposed agreement obtained by The New York Times, would vastly expand Chinese presence in banking, telecommunications, ports, railways and dozens of other projects. In exchange, China would receive a regular—and, according to an Iranian official and an oil trader, heavily discounted—supply of Iranian oil over the next 25 years. The document also describes deepening military cooperation, potentially giving China a foothold in a region that has been a strategic preoccupation of the United States for decades. It calls for joint training and exercises, joint research and weapons development and intelligence sharing. The partnership—first proposed by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, during a visit to Iran in 2016—was approved by President Hassan Rouhani’s cabinet in June, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said last week.

Lives will be lost as Syria aid access cut, aid agencies warn (Reuters) A U.N. Security Council resolution that leaves only one of two border crossings open for aid deliveries from Turkey into rebel-held northwestern Syria will cost lives and intensify the suffering of 1.3 million people living there, aid agencies said. Western states had pressed for aid access to continue through two crossings at the Turkish border, but Russia, President Bashar al-Assad’s main ally in his war against, and China vetoed a last-ditch effort on Friday to keep both open. “In northwest Syria, where a vital cross-border lifeline has been closed ... it will be harder to reach an estimated 1.3 million people dependent on food and medicine delivered by the U.N. cross-border,” aid agencies operating in Syria said in a joint statement. “Many will now not receive the help they need. Lives will be lost. Suffering will intensify.”

[feelingbluepolitics]

"Nearly 200 chief executives, including the leaders of Apple, Pepsi and Walmart, tried on Monday to redefine the role of business in society — and how companies are perceived by an increasingly skeptical public.

"Breaking with decades of long-held corporate orthodoxy, the Business Roundtable issued a statement on 'the purpose of a corporation,' arguing that companies should no longer advance only the interests of shareholders. Instead, the group said, they must also invest in their employees, protect the environment and deal fairly and ethically with their suppliers.

"'While each of our individual companies serves its own corporate purpose, we share a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders,' the group, a lobbying organization that represents many of America’s largest companies, said in a statement. 'We commit to deliver value to all of them, for the future success of our companies, our communities and our country.'

"The shift comes at a moment of increasing distress in corporate America, as big companies face mounting global discontent over income inequality, harmful products and poor working conditions.

"On the Democratic presidential campaign trail, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have been vocal about the role of big business in perpetuating problems with economic mobility and climate change. Lawmakers are looking into the dominance of technology companies like Amazon and Facebook.

"There was no mention at the Roundtable of curbing executive compensation, a lightning-rod topic when the highest-paid 100 chief executives make 254 times the salary of an employee receiving the median pay at their company. And hardly a week goes by without a major company getting drawn into a contentious political debate. As consumers and employees hold companies to higher ethical standards, big brands increasingly have to defend their positions on worker pay, guns, immigration, [t]rump and more.

..."[T]he Business Roundtable did not provide specifics on how it would carry out its newly stated ideals, offering more of a mission statement than a plan of action. But the companies pledged to compensate employees fairly and provide 'important benefits,' as well as training and education. They also vowed to 'protect the environment by embracing sustainable practices across our businesses' and 'foster diversity and inclusion, dignity and respect.'

"It was an explicit rebuke of the notion that the role of the corporation is to maximize profits at all costs — the philosophy that has held sway on Wall Street and in the boardroom for 50 years.

..."[W]hile the group cast the change in language as an embrace of new corporate ideals, it was also a tacit acknowledgment of the heightened pressures facing companies across the country — including many that signed the document.

"In 2017, after [trump’s...] tepid response to the violent white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Va., the chief executives of several major companies disbanded White House business advisory groups in protest. Walmart, the nation’s largest gun seller, is under pressure after a series of mass shootings, including the recent massacre at its store in El Paso. Amazon, the giant online retailer, is facing scrutiny from lawmakers who say it avoids paying taxes and uses its dominance to hurt competitors.

"And protesters have mobilized across the country to call for a higher minimum wage.

"For companies to truly make good on their lofty promises, they will need Wall Street to embrace their idealism, too. Until investors start measuring companies by their social impact instead of their quarterly returns, systemic change may prove elusive."

No one believes them, of course. But that's just the opening premise for analysis.

Admitting that you have a world-destroying, nation-collapsing, sociopathic problem with evil greed is the first step.

From there, these corporations have a range of options, which all happen to lead to the same place.

Having admitted the destructive impact of their practices, they can try to bask in noble intentions but do nothing more.

Except the same conditions which forced this recognition upon them won't allow inaction.

Right now, the presumption is that they are playing the Facebook game, putting on a concerned and responsive mask over underlying runaway lawlessness, for the purpose of patting away inclinations toward ruthlessly regulating the stuffing out of them.

The drawback of this approach has become obvious. Having acknowledged a burden of responsibility, even when they didn't really mean it, highlights the utter emptiness of their assurances and self-policing actions. "We can, and will, do better" is not an infinitely useful decoy.

So whether this Business Roundtable meant it or not, corporations are now on a path toward change.

With trump, it's a case of being careful with what they wished for, but too late. They got their massive tax windfalls. They got their grossly permissive deregulation. The American auto industry was one of the first to recognize, recently, that trump's willingness to do away with improved mileage goals completely would actually lead to ruin.

In the public's solid assessment, the corporate world is tied closely to trump and Republicons. It is profoundly interesting that the corporate world has discovered that's not a good place to be.

Just look at the fallout generated against SoulCycle and Equinox because their self-proclaimed socially conscious billionaire Stephen Ross hosted a fat fundraiser for trump.

If they continue with trump and Republicons, the country will collapse socially and economically, and the world market will gutter. Furthermore, a fascist government actually is not conducive for autonomous businesses.

If they step back from trump and Republicons, and withhold much of the business contributions to Republicon political donations, Democrats will win. (They will, anyway, in part because of the heightened understanding of the damage Republicons and the business world have done.)

Depending on which Democrat becomes the Party nominee, the corporate world will no longer be left to it's own pretenses toward improving. Biden becomes less likely as he gets hammered more and more for assuring the corporate world that, with him, "nothing will change."

A Biden presidency will set off the same social upheaval as another trump term, just somewhat delayed. Warren's ruthless policy corrections affecting the business world reflect much of what has already been admitted as necessary at this Roundtable.

At this point, if the business world tries to use pretense to stave off real change, real change will be forced. If they try to do a little bit of change but not "too much," real change will be forced.

They know. They are trying to get out in front of it. That's what this Business Roundtable fundamental philosophical change shows: the acknowledgement that real changes are coming. Profit sharing and social and environmental responsibility are better than political, economic, environmental, and social convulsion and chaos.

[coopdigitalnewsletter]

1 Oct 2019: Data is not the new oil. “We track what customers do.” Amazon writes face recognition legislation.

[Last week’s newsletter, which, again, Tumblr didn’t post. Grrr.]

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter - it looks at what's happening in the internet/digital world and how it's relevant to the Co-op, to retail businesses, and most importantly to people, communities and society. Thank you for reading - send ideas and feedback to @rod on Twitter. Please tell a friend about it!

[Image: Littmann/Architectural Digest]

Data is not the new oil

Data is the new oil, says the New York Times. That convenient marketing metaphor probably dates back to Tesco Clubcard creator Clive Humby in 2006, but is it that helpful? Not really, because there are several ways that data is nothing like oil. Oil is a physical resource, data isn’t. Oil is expensive to store and transport, data isn’t. Oil is relatively easy to price. But data isn’t because its value depends on context. Oil is fungible (-ish: don’t worry about the difference between Esso diesel and Shell’s, but don’t put aviation fuel in your Vauxhall Corsa), data isn’t. Oil depletes, runs out, data multiplies in every direction. The products of oil are typically used once. Data is used, remade, reused many times … and so on. 

Are there any ways that data *is* like oil? Data and oil usually need a load of processing before they’re useful. Both data and oil are at risk of a sudden collapse in value: data if it is managed negligently, or lost or stolen; oil assets if (when) the carbon economy collapses thanks to climate change. (Related: if used casually, data is a bit like oil in that its side effects can be unexpected.)

Data is enormously valuable to data factory companies like Google and FB. But for companies that aren't Google, where it was once seen as an asset, now data looks increasingly like a liability, thanks to new regulation like GDPR. (And weirdly it remains fairly valueless to individuals - it's not easy to sell your data and get cash money for it.) 

What does this mean for organisations? Don’t think of data as if it were a scarce physical resource used to refine single-use commodities! Consider whether the data you are collecting is as much a liability as an asset. Can your service run with less data? Should you (responsibly) delete data?

Related: “Data is the New Oil” - a ludicrous proposition.

Mckinsey: “We’re aiming to track what customers do”

Consultancy McKinsey opens a retail store/learning lab In Mall Of America. It’s a 12-month experiment to collect data and understand offline shopper behaviour in 2019.

“Everybody’s seeing the pressure and trying to figure out ‘How do I drive more people into my brick-and-mortar store?’ and ‘How do I make sure when they’re there that I deliver a new customer experience that makes them want to stay there, spend time and engage with the product so that they ultimately buy more?’ The traffic equation and then the in-store experience to get you to buy more stuff is what everyone’s trying to figure out on the revenue side of things. That’s why with these experiences, we’re aiming to track what customers do throughout their journey and which of those things are analytically proven to show that people buy more.”

Amazon health care, and better social care

Amazon has launched a health care service to employees in the Seattle area. It does “urgent care for things like colds and infections, preventative wellness consultations and lab tests, testing for sexually transmitted infections, and answers to general health questions”.

Elsewhere: “Although the care system collects vast amounts of data, current metrics focus on costs and processes and not outcomes for the individual, family or community.” That’s from Doteveryone’s new report on better social care. And their video about the risks and the small daily agonies of automated care tech is great.

Amazon: “here’s your legislation”

What else is Amazon up to? Drafting legislation for face recognition that it hopes lawmakers will take a look at and then go “Well ok, guess we’ll just go with that.” Bezos:

“It’s a perfect example of something that has really positive uses, so you don’t want to put the brakes on it. But, at the same time, there’s also potential for abuses of that kind of technology, so you do want regulations. It’s a classic dual-use kind of technology.”

Related: Facebook is creating its own “supreme court” for content disputes. The tech industry crossing over into law-making, or just borrowing its language is interesting. (Imagine if a House of Commons committee called Amazon in to hear its suggestions about what the Christmas promotion for Prime should be, or the best book to bundle with the next Jack Reacher.)

Uber: “the operating system for your everyday life”

Uber wants to be “the operating system for your everyday life”, which (for now?) means a focus in three areas: card rides, bikes/scooter rides and food delivery. More details about many new services and features it is launching. (If you designed an operating system for your own life, would it centre on travel and meal delivery?)

Other news

On digital crypts and memorials.

Amazon will run 100,000 electric vehicles for deliveries - bold move. 

Boris Johnson’s speech at UN about technology - interestingly freewheeling.

It’s scarily easy to track someone around a city via their Instagram Stories.

More than 50% of Google searches end without a click to other content - study.

Previous newsletters: 

Most opened newsletter in the last month: personal carbon offsetting. Most clicked story: Introducing Co-op groceries on demand.

News 1 year ago: unbundling the high street (ghost restaurants, retail without shopfronts...)

News 2 years ago: all the way to your fridge.

Co-op Digital news and events

Co-op: “We’re the first UK retailer to pledge to meet the United Nations’ climate target by 2050 - but we’ll need political will and real co-operation to get there”.

Public events:

Human Values in Software Production - Tue 5 Nov 6pm at Federation House.

Pods Up North , an event for podcasters - Sat 23 Nov 9am at Federation House.

Mind the Product - MTP Engage - Fri 7 Feb 2020 - you can get early bird tickets now.

Internal events:

What has the web team been up to? - Tue 1 Oct 1.30pm at Fed House 5th floor.

Health show & tell - Tue 1 Oct 2.30pm at Fed House 5th floor.

Targeted marketing (CRM) show & tell - Wed 2 Oct 3pm at Angel Square 13th floor breakout area.

Delivery community of practice - Mon 7 Oct 1.30pm.

Funeralcare show & tell - Tue 8 Oct 1pm at Angel Square 12th floor breakout.

Digital all hands - Wed 9 Oct 1pm at Fed House Defiant.

Co-operate show & tell - Wed 9 Oct 3pm at Fed House 6th floor kitchen.

Data management - Thu 10 Oct 2.30pm at Angel Square 13th floor breakout area.

More events at Federation House - and you can contact the events team at  federation.events@coopdigital.co.uk. And TechNW has a useful calendar of events happening in the North West. 

Thank you for reading

Thank you, beloved readers and contributors. Please continue to send ideas, questions, corrections, improvements, etc to the newsletterbot’s word gardener @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading, please tell a friend!

If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow us @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog. Previous newsletters.

[offthepacific-blog]

Fast Fashion: Fashion's Most Dangerous Trend

What is “fast fashion” and why is it such a big deal?

In the past few decades our attitude towards the clothes we wear has changed in a way that is harming our environment and society. The term “fast fashion” refers to clothing of a lower quality and cost made in factories with poorly regulated conditions and low wages. Fast fashion separates itself from the conventional fashion industry with its 52 annual fashion weeks as opposed to the 4 that normal high fashion brands follow. By releasing new content consistently, brands like Zara and H&M outcompete designer brands with inexpensive renditions of on trend designs. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “15.1 million tons of textile waste was generated in 2013, of which 12.8 million tons were discarded”, as now fashion is seen as a disposable good rather than an investment. Also, the clothing and textile industry is the largest polluter in the world second to the oil industry. This statistic shows that a need for quantity is overriding desires for quality in the current fashion market.

The impact of the fast fashion industry also poses many negative ethical implications. By employing cheap labor in developing nations such as Bangladesh, India, and Taiwan fast fashion brands prioritize profit over promoting a safe working environment as “lower manufacturing and labor costs mean lower costs overall, which result in lower prices, which, in turn, equal higher volume.”. Consumers see cheap, cute clothes, but the reality of the way our clothes are made is hard to look past once brought to our attention. The most deadly garment factory disaster ever occurred less than 10 years ago at Rana Plaza in Bangladesh. Over 1000 employees died as a result of their management ignoring the building’s deteriorating infrastructure which ultimately lead to its collapse. Primark, who employed this factory, took minimal accountability for their negligence. Ignoring problematic companies is being complicit in the chain of abuse towards the employees of factories that produce fast fashion.

As consumers we must be mindful in our purchases, keeping in mind the environmental and ethical impacts of our actions. By being conscientious hopefully we can all work towards making the fashion industry more sustainable without compromising the fun of fashion as an outlet for self expression.

Changing the Mindset of Instant Gratification

One the appeals to fast fashion is the instant gratification it gives consumers. Making shopping for clothes a more mindful event can help individuals better society by reducing their consumption of fast fashion. Thrifting is a foolproof way to buy clothes without adding to the waste of discarded textiles in the environment. In my opinion, it provides even more satisfaction because it allows you to purchase rare and unique pieces. Establishing individuality through style also contributes to the allure of fast fashion, so thrifting is a great alternative to promote self expression while also being sustainable.

Another more conceptual way to reduce your carbon footprint is to simply define your personal style. Knowing your personal style will reduce the likelihood of splurging on trendier pieces that don’t coordinate with items in your current wardrobe that you won’t end up wearing. Also, calculating cost per wear of an item (cost of an item/the amount of times you will wear said item) is helpful in justifying investing in quality pieces rather than buying a lot of low quality pieces. Investing in basics like jeans, jackets, and shoes are good examples of areas of your wardrobe that could benefit from investing in high quality pieces. Trendy, cheap items go out of style quickly or become damaged due to their poor quality, so they are only worth wearing a few times. By using discretion when purchasing clothing, you can reduce your environmental impact by calculating cost per wear of a garment and thinking about how it would match other garments in your wardrobe.

The resources below include transparent shopping brands, additional information about the fast fashion industry, and videos with tips for finding your personal style and how to thrift productively. Being a mindful and informed consumer is key in keeping the fast fashion industry accountable for its destructive impact on society and the environment

Resources

Documentaries:

The True Cost (found on Netflix)

Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things (found on Netflix)

Interviews/TedX Talks:

Stella McCartney   

Fast Fashion’s Effect on People, The Planet, & You Patrick Woodyard TedX Talk

The High Cost of Our Cheap Fashion by Maxine Bédat TedX Talk

YouTube Channels/Series:

Kristen Leo

Grav3yardgirl Haulternative Video

Jenn Im “THRIFTING” Playlist

Estée Lalonde: How to Find Your Personal Style

Sustainable/Ethically Transparent Brands:

Reformation

Stella McCartney

Amour Vert

Veja Sneakers (s0ld at multiple retailers)

Alternative Apparel

Patagonia

Everlane

Re/Done

Alo Yoga

People Tree

Marine Layer

[italicwatches]

I Couldn’t Become a Hero, So I Reluctantly Decided to Get a Job - Episode 07

Okay, I guess I need to work. It’s I Couldn’t Become a Hero, So I Reluctantly Decided to Get a Job, episode 07! Here we GO!

-Lore’s outside the house, and Raul and Fino arrive. And see the Amada truck…And learn that the little old lady’s son went and bought some cheap AC unit from Amada. …Fuck. This just got complicated. The most deadly of all conflicts in the world of appliance retail…The DOUBLE BOOKING!

-Opening!

-Episode 08: The Demon Lord’s Daughter Visits a House.

-So obviously someone needs to give a refund and take the air conditioner back. The question is who’s it going to be, and that’s without even chewing on the complicated social conflicts going on here. Raul’s got to be the one to try and calm everyone down…And the Amada deliveryman just wants to fucking go, so either accept the AC or let him leave.

-And in the end…Raul makes the call. He’ll handle the paperwork so you get a full refund from his store. He’s gonna see that you’re all treated right. And through it all, Fino is pretty frustrated with the old lady’s son…But Raul can see all too well that they’re all facing a lot of stress. Don’t hesitate to come by again if you need anything else, ma’am.

-Back in the car, Fino’s got to learn that sometimes the right thing means eating the loss…And more importantly, it means making sure you’re making life easier for your customers, not harder. So it’s time to g—

-The son comes running out, begging them to stop. What is it this time? …Oh. This house’s mana tank is running suspiciously low, and they don’t have enough capacity to safely run the AC unit. Which leads to going into the house, and Fino’s all giddy because she’s never gotten to be in an actual house instead of just a tiny apartment before! It’s kind of adorable, really.

But a quick look around, the only real drain is the refrigerator…And that’s not drawing enough to bring your capacity down that low. The house’s mana channels are rated for nearly double what the AC should be drawing. Something’s not right here. The Amada guy starts wondering if the wiring’s bad, and that would certainly be a valid explanation…But redoing the wiring would cost a fortune. And he’s still got to charge for the cancellation and the visitation fee…But with whatever’s going on here, there’s nothing they can do…

-And Lore has to admit, even on their end, the materials alone would bring the cost of a rewiring up to about what the Amada guy is charging. Covering labor, it’d probably be even more.

-But this also doesn’t make sense. This house isn’t that old. The people before used a lot more than a fridge and a microwave. …Listen, Amada guy. Go hit up your other appointments and swing back through, alright? Give them some time to figure out what’s going on here. And he’s able to get one, but can only give them around two hours…

-Hard cut to Fino on Raul’s shoulders to check shit out with the lighting in the house. And Lore starts checking some of the other points…There’s no obvious drain on things FINO GET OUT OF THE FRIDGE. They’ll get lunch later. And then the fridge suddenly shuts down?! …The hell? The tank is empty.

-…Another magic eater? So Fino wants to kick a nice burst into the tank…But if she puts her full force in, she’ll blow the whole thing. They need to start slowly. It probably wouldn’t have gotten into the actual tank, it’s probably somewhere along the mana lines…Which means under the house. They get to one of the entry panels, kick on a light, and HOLY FUCK IT’S A SMALL ARMY! How the hell do they deal with an infestation this big?! Slime motels? Holy-water sprayers?

-Too small key. You can’t drive out an infestation this big…You have to draw them in. So soon Lore is setting up long-form magic circuitry. …Push a little in, Fino. A very, very little bit. The chalk lines take in the mana, and the circuits start to glow, as the magic eaters crawl out from under the house, trying to get to the source….Hold, Fino, hold. They’ve got to get every last one…!

-And they start to fuse together, forming into a singular mass…Just a little more, they almost have them all, Fino! They engulf her utterly…Hold the line, Fino! Raul tries to save her and also ends up in the magic eater, but finally, the last one is in! FULL BURST, rookie!

-And when the thick smoke clears…Everyone who isn’t a magic eater is alive. And when it’s done, the Amada guy can come back and install the air conditioner…

-Until the old lady’s son makes the decision. He’ll eat the cancellation fees, after Raul and crew went so above and beyond. That kind of support is worth the extra cost.

-Of course, after that kind of rough day, it’s to the baths…Where Fino is swimming like it’s a pool, and Lore despite acting so above it all, has a cute toy submarine. But when all is done, the whole crew can get some cold drinks and hot food to celebrate a solid victory! The war isn’t over, but if they’re going to hold, it’s by doing right by their customers.

-And that’s when they hear on the radio that Amada just managed to get Sugar Wireless. Shit, they’re just getting bigger and bigger, huh…Fine. They’ll survive. They’ll survive, they’ll endure, and when the smoke clears, they’ll be the ones people want to go to.

-Eventually Raul has to take Fino home. Fino, who has somehow gotten drunk off of nothing but soda and candy. I leave it up to you whether that’s a demon thing or just a childish thing. Also in the brutal heat of summer, Raul really, really wishes he could afford one of those air conditioners…But eventually, as he sleeps, Fino looms over him? Well that’s spooky.

-And in the morning there’s a naked Fino in his bed. Whhhyyyyy is there a naked Fino in his bed?! And she wakes up, freaks out, and why are you in her room?! Wrong way around, why are YOU in HIS room?! Because…Uh…It was so hot, and she was half asleep, and it was cooler over here, and…

-And oh god they’re going to have a baby.

-WAIT WHAT?! Her dad always used to say, if a man and a woman sleep in the same room, a baby appears…No, no, that’s not, there’s more to it than that! Just being in the same room does not make a baby! …And their stomachs both growl, and, okay. Clothes on and breakfast time. Fino’s soon just planted in front of the fan to fight the summer heat, and she’s remarkably enthusiastic about their work. That even this simple, cheap little thing is doing so much to relieve the heat, and they get to do so much to help people with their lives…Selling magic items is pretty cool, huh?

-…Man, when you look at it like that…Also Fino is very glad to get actual food. She was living off of bread crusts from Seara until payday. How did…Why would…Where did all the money go, Fino? Also he’s going to need to talk with Seara about keeping their employees actually alive.

-But by the afternoon, it sucks. Just try to endure until they get to the store, Fino. They’ll have actual AC and it’ll be nice and comfort…able…

-The store is steaming hot and NOVA COLLAPSED ON THE FLOOR?! Nova what happened?!!!

-Credits!

So Amada’s totally pouring slimes out into the city and probably caused the heat wave, too. The real danger in modern society isn’t demon lords or dark gods, but capitalism. Now that’s a lesson worth learning. …Anyways we’ll see how things develop next time, in episode EIGHT of I Couldn’t … Job! Wait for it!

[covid19worldnews]

Another Now by Yanis Varoufakis

When Margaret Thatcher coined “Tina” – her 1980s dictum that “There is no alternative” – I was incensed because, deep down, I felt she had a point: the left had neither a credible nor a desirable alternative to capitalism.

Leftists excel at pinpointing what is wrong with capitalism. We wax lyrical about the possibility of some “other” world in which one contributes according to one’s capacities and obtains according to one’s needs. But, when pushed to describe a fully fledged alternative to contemporary capitalism, for many decades we have oscillated between the ugly (a Soviet-like barracks socialism) and the tired (a social democracy that financialised globalisation has rendered infeasible).

During the 1980s, I participated in many debates in pubs, universities and town halls whose stated purpose was to organise resistance to Thatcherism. I remember my guilty thought every time I heard Maggie speak: “If only we had a leader like her!” I was, of course, under no illusion: Thatcher’s programme was despotic, antisocial and an economic cul-de-sac. But, unlike our side, she understood that we lived in a revolutionary moment. The postwar class war armistice was over. If we wanted to defend the weak, we could not afford to be defensive. We needed to advocate as she did: out with the old system, in with a brand new one. Not Maggie’s dystopian one, but a brand new one nevertheless.

Alas, our lot had no vision of a new system. Instead, we were in the business of bandaging corpses while Thatcher was digging graves to clear the way for her spanking new spiv capitalism. Even when we were putting up a splendid fight in defence of communities that deserved defending, our causes screamed “anachronism” – fighting to preserve dirty coal-fired power stations or the right of male rightwing trade unionists to reach sordid deals behind closed doors with the likes of Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch.

Just as when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, we on the left – social democrats, Keynesians and Marxists alike – had the sense we would live the rest of our days as history’s losers, so in 2008, with Lehman’s collapse, those living the ideology of neoliberalism saw history erupt with similar soul-destroying force. Some years later, surveillance capitalism forced tech-evangelists, who thought they had seen in the internet an irresistible global democratic force, also to shed their illusions.

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, in September 2008. Photograph: Richard Drew/AP

Two years ago I decided we need a blueprint, a sense of how democratic socialism could work today, with our current technologies and despite our human failings. My reluctance to attempt such an undertaking was immense. Two people helped me overcome it. One is Danae Stratou, my partner. From the week we first met, she has been telling me that my critique of capitalism meant nothing unless I could answer her pressing question: “What’s the alternative? And precisely how would things – like money, companies and housing – work?”

The second, and most unlikely, influence was Paschal Donohoe, Ireland’s finance minister and president of the Eurogroup. A political opponent who thought little of me as a finance minister (a mutual assessment), he was kind enough to write a generous review of an earlier book of mine. While Donohoe liked my account of capitalism he thought the book’s ending, in which I tried to sketch some features of a postcapitalist society, was “most disappointing”.

He was right, I thought. So I decided to write Another Now.

In a bid to incorporate into my socialist blueprint different, often clashing, perspectives I decided to conjure up three complex characters whose dialogues would narrate the story – each representing different parts of my thinking: a Marxist-feminist, a libertarian ex-banker and a maverick technologist. Their disagreements regarding “our” capitalism provide the background against which my socialist blueprint is projected – and assessed.

•••

Capitalism took off in earnest when electromagnetism met share markets at the end of the 19th century. Their coupling gave rise to networked megafirms, such as Edison, that produced everything from power stations to lightbulbs. To finance the huge undertaking, and the massive trade in their shares, the need arose for megabanks. By the early 1920s financialised capitalism roared, before the whole juggernaut crashed in 1929.

Our current decade began with another coupling that seems to be propelling history at dizzying velocity: the one between the enormous bubble with which states have been refloating the financial sector since 2008, and Covid-19. Evidence is not hard to spot. On 12 August, the day the news broke that the British economy had suffered its greatest slump ever, the London Stock Exchange jumped by more than 2%. Nothing comparable has ever occurred. Financial capitalism seems finally to have decoupled from the underlying economy.

Another Now begins in the late 1970s, straddles the crises of 2008 and 2020 but also sketches out an imaginary future, and concludes in 2036. There is a moment in the story, on a Sunday evening in November 2025 to be precise, when my characters try to make sense of their circumstances by looking back to the events of 2020. The first thing they note is how drastically the lockdown changed people’s perception of politics.

Before 2020, politics seemed almost like a game, but with Covid came the realisation that governments everywhere possessed immense powers. The virus brought the 24-hour curfew, the closure of pubs, the ban on walking through parks, the suspension of sport, the emptying of theatres, the silencing of music venues. All notions of a minimal state mindful of its limits and eager to cede power to individuals went out of the window.

Many salivated at this show of raw state power. Even free-marketeers, who had spent their lives shouting down any suggestion of even the most modest boost in public spending, demanded the sort of state control of the economy not seen since Leonid Brezhnev was running the Kremlin. Across the world, the state funded private firms’ wage bills, renationalised utilities and took shares in airlines, car makers, even banks. From the first week of lockdown, the pandemic stripped away the veneer of politics to reveal the boorish reality underneath: that some people have the power to tell the rest what to do.

The massive government interventions misled naive leftists into the daydream that revived state power would prove a force for good. They forgot what Lenin had once said: politics is about who does what to whom. They allowed themselves to hope that something good might transpire if the same elites that had hitherto condemned so many to untold indignities were handed immeasurable power.

It was the poorer and the browner people who suffered most from the virus. Why? Their poverty had been caused by their disempowerment. It aged them faster. And it made them more vulnerable to disease. Meanwhile, big business, always reliant on the state to impose and enforce the monopolies on which it thrives, boosted its privileged position.

The Amazons of this world flourished, naturally. The lethal emissions that had temporarily subsided returned to choke the atmosphere. Instead of international cooperation, borders went up and the shutters came down. Nationalist leaders offered demoralised citizens a simple trade: authoritarian powers in return for protection from a lethal virus – and scheming dissidents.

Demonstrators gather outside Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ $80m New York City penthouse, to protest the retailer’s treatment of workers during the pandemic, in August. Photograph: John Marshall Mantel/SIPA/REX/Shutterstock

If cathedrals were the middle ages’ architectural legacy, the 2020s will be remembered for electrified fences and flocks of buzzing drones. Finance and nationalism, already on the rise before 2020, were the clear winners. The great strength of the new fascists was that, unlike their forerunners a century ago, they don’t need to wear brown shirts or even enter government to gain power. The panicking establishment parties – the neoliberals and social democrats – have been falling over themselves to do their job for them through the power of big tech.

To stop new outbreaks governments tracked our every move with fancy apps and fashionable bracelets. Systems designed to monitor coughs now also monitored laughs. They made earlier organisations specialising in surveillance and “behaviour modification”, like the infamous KGB and Cambridge Analytica, seem positively neolithic.

What was the moment when humanity lost the plot? Was it 1991? 2008? Or did we still have a chance in 2020? Like epiphanies, the fork-in-the-road theory of history is a convenient lie. The truth is we face a fork-in-the-road every day of our lives.

•••

Suppose we had seized the 2008 moment to stage a peaceful hi-tech revolution that led to a postcapitalist economic democracy. What would it be like? To be desirable, it would feature markets for goods and services since the alternative – a Soviet-type rationing system that vests arbitrary power in the ugliest of bureaucrats – is too dreary for words. But to be crisis-proof, there is one market that market socialism cannot afford to feature: the labour market. Why? Because, once labour time has a rental price, the market mechanism inexorably pushes it down while commodifying every aspect of work (and, in the age of Facebook, our leisure too).

Can an advanced economy function without labour markets? Of course it can. Consider the principle of one-employee-one-share-one-vote underpinning a system that, in Another Now, I call corpo-syndicalism. Amending corporate law so as to turn every employee into an equal (though not equally remunerated) partner is as unimaginably radical today as universal suffrage was in the 19th century.

In my blueprint, central banks provide every adult with a free bank account into which a fixed stipend (called universal basic dividend) is credited monthly. As everyone uses their central bank account to make domestic payments, most of the money minted by the central bank is transferred within its ledger. Additionally, the central bank grants all newborns a trust fund, to be used when they grow up.

People receive two types of income: the dividends credited into their central bank account and earnings from working in a corpo-syndicalist company. Neither are taxed, as there are no income or sales taxes. Instead, two types of taxes fund the government: a 5% tax on the raw revenues of the corpo-syndicalist firms; and proceeds from leasing land (which belongs in its entirety to the community) for private, time-limited, use.

When it comes to international trade and payments, Another Now features an innovative global financial system that continually transfers wealth to the global south, while also preventing imbalances from causing strife and crises. All trade and all money movements between different monetary jurisdictions (eg the UK and the eurozone or the US) are denominated in a new digital accounting unit, called the Kosmos. If the Kosmos value of a country’s imports exceeds its exports, it is charged a levy in proportion to the trade deficit. But, equally, if a country’s exports exceed its imports, it is also charged the levy. Another levy is charged to a country’s Kosmos account whenever too much money moves too quickly out of, or into, the country – a surge levy of sorts that taxes the speculative money movements that do such damage to developing countries. All these levies end up as direct green investments in the global south.

But it is the granting of a single non-tradeable share to each employee-partner that holds the key to this economy. By granting employee-partners the right to vote in the corporation’s general assemblies, an idea proposed by the early anarcho-syndicalists, the distinction between wages and profits is terminated and democracy, at last, enters the workplace.

From a firm’s senior engineers and key strategic thinkers to its secretaries and janitors, everyone receives a basic wage plus a bonus that is decided collectively. Since the one-employee-one-vote rule favours smaller decision-making units, corpo-syndicalism causes conglomerates voluntarily to break up into smaller companies, thus reviving market competition. Even more strikingly, share markets vanish completely since shares, like IDs and library cards, are now non-tradeable. Once share markets have disappeared, the need for gargantuan debt to fund mergers and acquisitions evaporates – along with commercial finance. And given that the Central Bank provides everyone with a free bank account, private banking shrinks into utter insignificance.

Some of the thornier issues I had to address in writing Another Now, to ensure its consistency with a fully democratised society, included: the fear that powerful people will manipulate elections even under market socialism; the stubborn refusal of patriarchy to die; gender and sexual politics; the funding of the green transition; borders and migration; a bill of digital rights and so on.

Writing this as a manual would have been unbearable. It would have forced me to pretend that I have taken sides in arguments that remain unresolved in my head – often in my heart. I, therefore, owe an immense debt of gratitude to my spirited characters Iris, Eva and Costa. Above all else, they allowed me seriously to ponder the hardest of questions: once we have conceived of a feasible socialism that blasts Thatcher’s Tina out of the water, what must we do, and how far are we willing to go, to bring it about?

• Another Now by Yanis Varoufakis is published by Bodley Head. To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

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https://www.covid19snews.com/2020/11/02/another-now-by-yanis-varoufakis/

[foodramblings]

““The Eastern Cape region of South Africa is currently experiencing higher average temperatures,” noted Africa’s largest food retailer in its 2019 submission to the CDP. “Since Shoprite sources some fresh produce lines from these areas, it had to diversify its supply from this region to mitigate this risk.”Put another way, the farmers of the Eastern Cape, already buckling under the physical pressures of climate collapse, were now up against a cascade of attendant and inevitable commercial pressures. Although Shoprite had deemed food security a “fundamental component” of its mission, which reportedly was the reason it sought “long-term relationships” with suppliers, ultimately it chose to abandon those farmers. And given that it was preparing for “an increased frequency of drought-like conditions,” a near-term scenario that would have a predictable impact on supply lines of milk, sugar and wheat, the customer would not be spared — in this fast-approaching future, Shoprite stated, price increases would be “unavoidable”. Tiger Brands, Pioneer Foods and the Spar Group were all in agreement on the last point, with the latter adding that extreme weather events could result in the company “not having certain products on shelves”. Massmart Holdings, whose food and beverage chains include Makro, Fruitspot and Game, echoed the general sentiment about supply lines and price hikes, observing that ocean acidification would likely deplete fish stocks too. In its 2018 submission (the latest one available), the company stated the following:“Should ocean conditions impact pilchard stock biomass this would significantly reduce an important protein source for a large number of South Africans.”For the Standard Bank Group, the consequences of the above were obvious — a potential “destabilisation” of business, and society. More specifically, the bank registered its concern that its agricultural and home loan book would be exposed to bad debt, leading its own insurance premiums against such loans to “dramatically” increase. Meanwhile, Firstrand Limited was offering a more nuanced take on the intersection between agricultural finance and extreme weather. “[Climate change] could lead to a decrease in lending into specific geographical areas due to an inability of farmers to obtain insurance on their crops,” the bank stated. “Without the insurance cover, the financing might become unavailable.”Implying, of course, that the bank wouldn’t give it to them. But if there was any company in the financial services sector whose submissions to the CDP exposed the vulnerabilities in its business model, it was Liberty Holdings. “Malnutrition and water shortages could increase the spread of vector-borne diseases, the occurrence of malnutrition, cardio-respiratory diseases and diarrhoea,” the group declared. “Liberty’s medical aid customers, including employees, may be affected, causing an increase in payouts related to the overall decline in health.”From there it was onto the mining houses, whose common complaint was water supply. Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), a conglomerate that once achieved second place in the CDP Global 500 rankings, referred to the drought as “both a concern and a challenge” — without water, it stated, the company could not run its mining, processing or refining operations. Aside from the cost associated with investment in “re-use and post-use water treatment technology,” Amplats expressed a particular concern for the communities that lived alongside its operations. “

[hellofastestnewsfan]

Jenna Antico, a 31-year-old childcare operator in Sarasota, Fla., thought 2020 would be a pivotal year for her business. The daycare facility she started building in 2015 was turning a steady profit, so she leased a second building in October 2019, then purchased a third in late February 2020. As it turned out, this year has indeed been pivotal—but not in the way she had hoped.

When COVID-19 hit the United States like a tsunami in March, shuttering schools and businesses, and prompting companies to start working remotely, daycares like Antico’s got caught up in the current. Parents pulled their kids from the centers and local governments began issuing strict guidelines that providers would have to meet before they could welcome children back.

To meet both the Florida state and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations, Antico erected four new walls—at nearly $8,000 a pop—to reduce the number of kids per classroom; purchased 16 portable sinks for $2,800 each; and hired five sanitation workers to deep clean her original center for three and a half hours every night. She is also paying her administrative assistant overtime to keep up with all the new documentation. But despite these investments, enrollment at her facilities, and therefore Antico’s income, hasn’t rebounded in the way she had hoped. At the beginning of 2020, her facility was just shy of its 106-kid capacity; by the end of August, only 49 children were enrolled.

Antico is hurting. She has already blown through the entire $91,000 Paycheck Protection Program loan she received through the CARES Act, accrued an additional $70,000 worth of debt, and both of her new facilities remain vacant. She has no funds left to staff or furnish them. “There’s no more money left for me to take a salary,” says Antico, the mother of three adopted kids and one biological one. She and her husband, a child protective investigator who earns $40,000 a year, have now missed two mortgage payments, pulled their children out of private school, and are considering selling their home to make ends meet. Her childcare business, which she has invested $500,000 into over the past five years, is teetering on the brink of collapse.

Not that it provides her any solace, but Antico is far from alone: 86% of childcare providers are serving fewer children now than they were before the pandemic, while 70% are incurring “substantial” new operating costs, according to a July survey from the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). The costs are relentless: daycare managers must hire more staff to handle smaller class sizes, more legal fees to navigate the onerous process of obtaining government loans and abiding by state regulations, and more cleaning supplies and personnel to prevent outbreaks among toddlers. Across the industry, enrollment has plummeted by two-thirds. Without significant government investment, and soon, 40% of childcare programs surveyed by NAEYC—and half of those that are minority-owned—will shutter. Permanently.

Interviews with more than half a dozen daycare operators from across the country reveal why so many centers may never re-open: Even before the pandemic, they said, overhead costs were immense, whereas profit margins were just enough to get by. In this pandemic era, everything has simply gotten worse. Lauren Brown, the director of World of Wonders Childcare and Learning Center in In Marysville, Ohio, says cleaning costs have skyrocketed 300%, while the center grossed $20,000 less in June and July than it normally would. Annette Gladstone, the co-founder of Segray Eagle Rock daycare in Los Angeles, says she’s struggling to keep up with rent on her daycare building since enrollment is so low. Segray Eagle Rock normally accommodates 177 children; by late August, it had two dozen kids. Despite the blistering Southern California heat, Gladstone has kept the windows open while the air conditioner is running because the CDC indicates the practice can increase ventilation. Meredith Kasten who runs the Early Childhood Center in Greensboro, North Carolina, says the demand for her services all but dried up. “Our waiting list used to be a year long,” she says. “It’s now empty.”

The slow death of childcare centers nationwide may have a domino effect across the economy, experts say. Entrepreneurs like Antico or Gladstone will face financial hardship, but so will the roughly 1.1 million people, 96% of whom are women and 40% of whom are people of color, who tend to make very low wages caring for other people’s kids. Mass closures will also have a ripple effect on communities and parents, who depend on daycare centers to go to work and support their families. Without access to affordable and convenient childcare, many parents—mostly mothers—will find it increasingly untenable, financially and logistically, to work outside the home. It’s an eventuality that could cripple women’s advancement in the workplace, exacerbate inequality, and put a drag on the U.S. economic recovery.

This catch-22 is somewhat unique to the childcare industry. While public school administrators have also had to grapple with new safety protocols and increased expenses as a result of the pandemic, they are government funded. Daycares aren’t. Society decided long ago that children have a right to a grade-school education to which even non-parents are required to contribute, but there is no similar consensus for sharing the cost of caring for smaller kids. Marcy Whitebook, the founding director of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, says there’s no good reason for that societal failure. But the result is clear: “because we’re asking parents to foot the bill and it’s so expensive,” she says, “it means that the only way to really make that happen is to essentially exploit the people who are doing it.”

If there are mass closures across the childcare industry to the extent that experts predict, the failure of the government to act will have broader ramifications. Daycare providers who find themselves unemployed may never return to their profession. Daycare owners may abandon their businesses for more lucrative ones. Families may opt to keep a parent home to watch the kids. “Absent our collective investment in childcare, there really won’t be an effective community recovery,” warns Lynette Fraga, the CEO of ChildcareAware. “If we aren’t supporting childcare providers, there won’t be childcare to go back to.”

Getty ImagesChildren playing on the carpet at daycare while wearing face coverings due to new COVID-19 regulations.

A crucial service for pennies on the dollar

Millions of American parents, who are already struggling to shell out an average of about $10,000 per toddler per year for childcare, may wonder why their daycare center is in such dire financial straits. But the industry as a whole was barely profitable even before the pandemic hit.

Unlike call centers that were able to cut down on building expenses by downsizing or going remote or retail stores that skimped on staffing, daycare facilities went into the pandemic with little fat to trim. State regulations require that they keep high adult-to-child ratios, maintain ample square footage for space to play and learn, and in some places, hire staff that are trained in early childhood development. These measures are important: Research indicates that the early childhood education shapes everything from adult brain volume to reading proficiency. “That has an impact on our future labor force and their economic potential, which ultimately is tied to our country’s economic potential,” explains Katica Roy, a gender economist.

But childcare providers perform this crucial service for pennies on the dollar. The average daycare operator grosses just $48,000 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whereas the standard daycare worker makes just $24,000. Usually these jobs come with little or no paid time off, and no employee-sponsored healthcare. Only 15% of childcare workers receive health insurance sponsored by their employer versus 50% of workers from other occupations, according to a 2015 Economic Policy Institute report. The lack of healthcare benefits is problematic in normal times, as children unwittingly bring their stomach bug or pink eye to their daycares. But during a pandemic, it’s potentially lethal. Daycare providers who make an average of just $11.65 an hour may be unable to risk seeking treatment for any disease, much less COVID-19.

Staffers who need to quarantine or call in sick also pose problems for their bosses. Since most facilities are not currently allowing parents to enter daycare buildings, childcare centers need to have enough staff to bring children inside in the morning and back to their parents outside in the evening. They also need to have enough staff to watch the children throughout the day, but not so many that they can’t keep up with payroll in addition to the added expenses for personal protective equipment, cleaning services and administrative help. Kasten, the childcare director in Greensboro, says 12 out of her 28 staffers were out in one day due to a combination of COVID-related causes and scheduled absences. That creates logistical problems for both Kasten and the working parents who rely on her service. “If I don’t have enough staff to operate safely,” she says, “then I have to close the whole building.”

As COVID-19 restrictions loosen in some states, and parents begin to feel more comfortable sending their children back to daycare, some daycare directors have faced difficulty in hiring back staff that they had to lay off and finding new people to fill vacant roles. Since pay for the average childcare worker is so low, some were making more between their state’s unemployment benefits and the extra $600 per week provided by the CARES Act. In Florida, where Antico operates a center, the most an unemployed worker could have received in July, before expanded unemployment expired, was $875 per week. When unemployed people had to start proving they were looking for work to receive benefits, Antico says she scheduled 17 interviews in one day; only two people showed up.

Not everyone who lost their daycare-based job was getting unemployment insurance, either. Because Kasten’s facility in Greensboro is faith-based, her staff was not required to pay into the state’s unemployment fund, nor were they eligible to receive the state-funded benefits when they were first laid off. She made the tough choice to let her part-time employees go so she could continue paying the full-time ones, even when her center was closed. “If we laid them off in March, I would have hung them out to dry. They wouldn’t have had a job, they wouldn’t have had unemployment, they would have been screwed,” Kasten says. “So we kept them on.”

Whether those daycare jobs will last beyond 2020 is an entirely different issue as centers continue to hemorrhage money. According to data provided to TIME by the Center for American Progress (CAP), the costs of providing center-based childcare have leapt an average of 47% since pre-pandemic times. In California, costs have jumped 54%, and in Georgia, they’ve skyrocketed 115%.

Home-based childcare facilities, which approximately 30% of infants and toddlers attended before the pandemic, are also suffering. Though such facilities usually enroll fewer kids, which some parents may have been seen as a benefit during COVID-19, the sector was has been in decline for years. From 2005 to 2017, the number of licensed, home-based child-care businesses dropped 44% according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Ellen Dressman, the director of Frog Hollow Nursery School, a home-based daycare in Berkeley, California that’s been in business for more than two decades, may soon shut its doors for good. Only two families were interested in returning in recent weeks—not enough to cover operating costs. If Dressman loses the business, which covered her family’s mortgage, they could lose the home that the daycare operated out of, too. “I didn’t realize how much the industry really needs public support until now,” says Dressman, who’s now in her 60s.

“This was an industry that was really struggling before the pandemic,” Simon Workman, CAP’s director of early childhood policy, says of the profession at large. “If you were struggling to get by before, then the chance of you closing now is pretty high.”

“We’re in a fast-moving vehicle towards destruction”

Back in Sarasota, Antico is about two months away from pulling the plug on her daycare business. If enrollment numbers don’t jump, she says, she won’t have much of a choice. “If I get to a place where I don’t think that I can pay the next payroll, I’ll put it up for sale quickly at an attractive price,” she says.

Short of the pandemic ending and enrollment levels surging, there’s a glimmer of hope for childcare-center directors like Antico. On the presidential campaign trail, former Democratic candidates including Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren floated tax breaks and universal child care plans that would have pumped money into daycare centers while also reducing the cost of care for working-class families. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has since called for a combination of tax credits and subsidies that would ensure families earning less than one-and-a-half times the median income in their state aren’t having to spend more than 7% of their incomes on childcare.

There’s also been some movement in Congress. The Democrat-led House recently passed a bill appropriating $50 billion toward the Child Care Stabilization Fund to provide grants to childcare providers, but it’s unlikely to pass the GOP-controlled Senate. And even if it did, it probably wouldn’t be enough to save individual centers that are already underwater. The Center for Law and Social Policy estimates that the industry as a whole will need nearly $10 billion per month to survive the pandemic, according to an April report.

“It is short-term triage, but it may be too late,” Whitebook says of the House bill for emergency childcare funds. “We’re in a fast-moving vehicle towards destruction of a lot of people’s lives, livelihoods, and health. And kids are in that vehicle too.”

from TIME https://ift.tt/3idm5bp

[scienceblogtumbler]

Should government do more for the working poor during pandemic?

Editor’s note: Robert Bruno is a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and the director of the Labor Education Program in Chicago. Bruno, an expert in labor history and politics, spoke with News Bureau business and law editor Phil Ciciora about how the government can help working-class people survive the economic hardship wrought by COVID-19.

Do we need another round of stimulus checks similar to what most taxpayers received last spring?

We definitely need a second round of stimulus checks. When the economy is bad, it needs monetary stimulus, and the only entity that can step in and help is the federal government. There’s real evidence that if not for the first round of stimulus checks in March, the economy would be in measurably worse shape. That $1,200 helped folks maintain their mortgage or rent payments, put food on the table or gas in their car, or buy diapers for their children. For working people, every penny of that check got spent.

You can see the positive impact in food and retail sales that occurred after those checks were sent out. The stimulus amount was small, but there was a level of economic activity that turned those dollars over multiple times. And that meant thousands of other people stayed employed to provide goods and services to those people spending their stimulus dollars.

Along with other financial relief measures, the payments really did prevent us from collapsing into a second Great Depression, and they made a huge difference to millions of workers who desperately needed the additional income. But the government should really think big and play a larger role than it already has been in responding to the economic crisis brought about by COVID-19. Infusions of income should properly function as economic stabilizers. Stimulus checks and increased unemployment benefits should be automatic, so when things start going badly, benefits kick in and don’t go away until the storm has passed and there’s less need for government help.

What happened instead is the benefits mostly went away – but the pandemic didn’t. And now we’re left with political in-fighting over how to reach a compromise on another round of stimulus. So not only should benefits be extended and increased, they should be automatic. They should become the safety valve that protects people during hard times. That kind of government support would make an enormous difference for the working class.

Congress is similarly grappling over whether to extend enhanced federal unemployment benefits. How important is the extra $600 in weekly unemployment benefits for the average laid-off worker?

It’s no exaggeration to say that the extra $600 is vital to the unemployed. In some ways, it’s existential. It’s the difference between having a roof over your head or being homeless; being fed or going hungry. Additionally, it helped small businesses stay open, and since we punitively tie health care benefits to employment, people who remain employed were able to keep their medical coverage.

What’s been lost in this debate is that we let the states set the minimum and maximum weekly unemployment compensation. The average benefits are approximately $330 per week. Having that extra $600 from the federal government will not move anyone into the upper or middle class, but it will help roughly 25 million people regroup until things get better. But without the extra $600, regular state unemployment insurance will be insufficient for working people to pay for basic necessities in any state.

The bigger question is, how did we get here? It’s a consequence of a deeply inequitable and broken economic system. We’ve created millions of jobs over the past 10 years, but the vast majority are relatively low-wage gigs that don’t expand the middle class. They keep people living paycheck to paycheck. And it is true that a fair number of unemployed workers getting the extra $600 in weekly unemployment benefits actually are earning more than they were earning in their jobs. But that’s not their fault. That should be seen as an indictment of the marketplace and what employers are paying people for a day’s work.

All of this just further reveals the structural problems of our economy. We have too few well-paying jobs, and technology continues to eliminate the need for workers.

Hazard pay for essential workers such as grocery store clerks and retail sector employees has all but disappeared, even though their jobs haven’t become any less dangerous. Should that type of pay be reinstated for workers and other essential personnel who can’t work from home?

Some employers have provided bonus pay due to dangerous working conditions, but keep in mind that a bonus is a one-time thing. It doesn’t adjust your base pay, which is often related to other earned benefits such as retirement.

I co-wrote a study about essential workers in Illinois and found that they were paid significantly less than those workers who were able to work remotely. The most important workers in our society, the ones who were actually holding up the entire economy, not only were paid less but also were working under stressful, volatile conditions. And typically, those essential workers were women and people of color, the latter of which were generally at the highest risk of being uninsured and suffering bad outcomes if they were infected by the coronavirus.

For those employees, we need to create a post-pandemic future that protects their rights as workers and rebuilds the middle class. The class disparities could be addressed by a range of policy changes, including a single-payer health care law, paid sick leave, paid family leave, and a stable and secure scheduling law. But perhaps the change with the biggest immediate impact would be fast-tracking a $15-per-hour minimum wage.

source https://scienceblog.com/518145/should-government-do-more-for-the-working-poor-during-pandemic/

[thechasefiles]

The Chase Files Daily Newscap 2/5/2018

Good Morning #realdreamchasers. Here is your newscap for Monday, 5th February 2018. Remember you can read full articles via Barbados Today (BT), or by Daily Nation Newspaper (DN).

GAS PRICES TO DROP, DIESEL INCREASES – Consumers will pay less for gasoline products as of midnight tonight, while the price of diesel, kerosene, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is expected to rise. A statement from the Government Information Service says the retail price of gasoline will fall by six cents from $3.35 per litre to $3.29 per litre. The price of diesel will rise by six cents, from $2.67 to $2.63 per litre. Kerosene will now retail at $1.43 per litre, up from $1.31. Meanwhile, LPG will now cost $173.33 per 100 lb cylinder, up from $170.42 – an increase of $2.91. The price of a 25 lb cylinder will rise by 72 cents to $48.43, while the 22 lb cylinder will cost $42.79, up by 64 cents. The 20 lb cylinder will increase by 59 cents, from $38.31 to $34.90. (BT)

ON THE WARPATH – Trouble appears to be brewing at the Customs Department once again. This time it’s over the interview process for the 100 vacant positions in the department as efforts to transition to the Barbados Revenue Authority (BRA) continue. General secretary of the Unity Workers’ Union (UWU), Caswell Franklyn, is so incensed over the issue that he plans to write Governor General Dame Sandra Mason asking her to investigate the matter. “I am going to write the Governor General to point out that the system is [flawed] and that she needs to investigate. I am writing the Governor General hoping that she would follow the rules and do the right thing,” he told the DAILY NATION yesterday. And if that did not work, Franklyn declared he was willing to “shut the place down”. Franklyn, whose UWU represents 72 of the approximately 200 workers in the department, alleged there was some “handpicking” in the interview process.  (DN)

NUPW WANTS TO SIT WITH BADMC – The National Union of Public Workers (NUPW) appears to be heading on a collision course with the Barbados Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (BADMC) over a number of grievances by its members. On Saturday, a number of aggrieved BADMC staffers met at the union’s Dalkeith, St Michael headquarters to vent on matters such as sick leave, working conditions and the disciplinary protocols of the state-owned corporation.  NUPW assistant general secretary Wayne Walrond charged the BADMC was trying to cut the sick leave days, adding there were to be 14 days a year for temporary workers and 21 for those appointed. “While we acknowledge they are trying to make the corporation efficient and are making some efforts to generate revenue which we commend . . . they want to remove that and give them six sick days a year and that’s not the agreement with this union,” he said. Another issue raised was the reported firing of security assistant Dexter Squires last week. Squires told the DAILY NATION that after close to five years at the BADMC, he was axed unceremoniously. He is now seeking legal counsel. The father of three said he was hastily ushered into a meeting on Tuesday and charged with being absent from duty without approval, failure to perform duties assigned, to observe the corporation’s regulations and the falsification of electronic records, according to the dismissal letter. Squires said he had no prior warnings of the infractions. “In almost five years at the BADMC, each time I leave the compound I would call my supervisor, and if I don’t get my supervisor I call my manager to say ‘I don’t feel well or I have to leave to do something important’,” the upset man said. Walrond said the union would be pursuing an unfair dismissal claim. BADMC chief executive officer Shawn Tudor said yesterday while he was aware of the meeting, he had no comment on the matter. “I don’t have any comment to make on what Mr Walrond said in the newspaper. We run the corporation, that’s what we do. Their business is to do things with newspapers; my business is to manage the corporation in the best interest of all the relevant stakeholders,” he added.  (DN)

NOT ONE THREAD OF BLAME – Decades after the collapse of the Caribbean Sea Island Cotton Company (CARSICOT) in Barbados, Sir Warwick Franlin, the Minister of Agriculture at whom many a finger was pointed in connection with the debacle, has spoken out.   “I am glad to give you the facts,” he said when the DAILY NATION quizzed him on the subject during an interview last week. Branding the allegations as “unfortunate and dishonest”, he declared his innocence of any improper involvement with CARSICOT. “I had absolutely nothing out of it. I have never gotten a penny, a loaf of bread, a sweet drink out of that CARSICOT,” he stated emphatically. The company, formed in 1988 as a joint venture between Canadian investor Nitin Amersey and the Barbados Government, became shrouded in controversy that saw Government opting out of the arrangement and the seizure of company assets. Debate about the then Minister of Agriculture’s role has swirled ever since, and the CARSICOT case continues to be mentioned whenever the issue of political scandals is raised. As he sought to clear the air, Sir Warwick first pointed out: “CARSICOT at that time was a public company with the Government owning 40 per cent . . . so it was not anything that I had oversight of.” Giving a background, he said when the Barbados Labour Party administration “lost the election in 1986”, there had been another minister of agriculture in place and “Barbados’ cotton was being sold to a buyer at US$2.40 per pound or something like that”. That purchaser, Sir Warwick claimed, “wanted to pay less” when the Democratic Labour Party administration took office following its success at the polls in 1986. “I said no, I was not going to sell it for that. So this gentleman Amersey came down and offered to establish this company with the Government.” Sir Warwick said the then permanent secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture “took a lead and became chief executive of CARSICOT . . . so it was a private company”. He added he was out of the island; someone else was acting as minister; and only on his return did he learn of “all the confusion” surrounding a shipment of cotton that arrived on the island and “was discovered not to be sea island cotton, but cotton which came in from Belize and was labelled sea island cotton”. The shipment was impounded. “I said this is a matter for the company that is dealing with it and I enquired about it, to discover that this company had intended and had started to do a lot of cultivation of lands in Barbados for cotton. [They] had indicated that they were growing some of it in Belize. “But we had known that the genuine sea island cotton was only grown in Barbados and I think one or two of the islands. so it was not sea island cotton, and it was impounded.” Sir Warwick charged he was the victim of “unkind” reports by the NATION for which his political opponent at the time was writing a weekly column for the newspaper. A host of a call-in radio programme also focused on CARSICOT “every day” he claimed, projecting it as “the biggest scandal in the world”. But he declared: “I had absolutely nothing to do with it.” (DN)

CRUEL ACTS – Acts of cruelty and abandonment of dogs seem to be on the rise, as one animal activist says it’s time to get harsh penalties on the statute books for animal cruelty. In fact, a member of the local chapter of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) says last month saw almost 15 brutal acts of dumping. One such occurred last week when someone threw a medium to large sized pit bull-mixed dog in the garbage skip at Little Arches Hotel on the South Coast. Luckily, the staff at Café Luna discovered the dog, which has now been called Oscar, when they went to place their garbage in the receptacle. They and a visitor fed and watered the severely emaciated and dehydrated dog until RSPCA Chief Inspector Wayne Norville arrived. That dog, now housed at the RSPCA, is expected to make a full recovery. Nothing was wrong with the two-year-old-dog; it had no injuries or illnesses and RSPCA employee Naresh Belgrave could only surmise it was dumped because the owner could no longer feed it. (BT)

SPEAK UP – The privacy and legal rights of all Barbadians, and working class ones in particular, are under attack, says attorney David Comissiong. And he is calling on all citizens who treasure their rights to speak out against what he termed was the injustice Government was seeking to inflict on them through amendments to the Police Act, now before the Senate for debate. Under the proposed legislation, the police may, with the written approval of the Attorney General, impose a curfew in designated areas, and restrict people to their homes during the curfew hours for up to two days, to promote peace and public safety. The police will also be able to stop and search individuals and vehicles without a warrant, as well as search houses without a warrant if they have reasonable suspicion that any offence, no matter how trivial, has been committed or is about to be committed. Comissiong said if these amendments were enacted, those likely to be targeted were people who lived in working class districts like Deacons Farm and Black Rock in St Michael; Haynesville, St James; The Pine, St Michael; and Silver Hill and Gall Hill in Christ Church.  (DN)

BATTERY THEIF GETS 2 YEARS – “I will appeal!” That was the response of many-time convicted man George St Clair Ricardo Beckles when he was handed his latest sentence by the District “A” Magistrates’ Court last Thursday. The 42-year-old, of 3rd Avenue, Goodland, Black Rock, St Michael, was back in court where he changed his plea and admitted he stole a car battery belonging to Michael Stevenson on December 27. He had initially pleaded not guilty, was remanded, then granted bail and then remanded again when he subsequently appeared on another charge last year. On Thursday, he asked the court to consider that he had been on remand for seven months. “I miss a court date and I get a charge and I get seven months on remand. I’m asking that you take that into consideration,” he said. Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargeant sentenced him to two years in prison for the theft but ordered that the time spent on remand be deducted from the sentence. “I will appeal,” Beckles declared before he was led away. He will return to court on March 1 to answer the 2017 wounding charge. Prosecutor Sergeant Cameron Gibbons said the complainant had parked and secured his vehicle. However, sometime later, he was alerted by a noise outside. When he looked out he saw Beckles, whom he had known for a number of years, leaving with his car battery. Stevenson informed police, who picked up Beckles. The thief confessed to stealing the battery. (DN)

TWO KILLED, DOZENS HURT IN SC TRAIN COLLISION – An Amtrak passenger train collided with a CSX Corp freight train near South Carolina’s state capital on Sunday, killing at least two people on board and injuring at least 70 in the railroad’s third fatal crash in as many months. Amtrak Train 91 was carrying 139 passengers and eight crew members to Miami from New York when it hit the freight train at about 2:35 a.m. local time (0735 GMT) and derailed, injuring at least half its passengers, the railroad said in a statement. “The lead engine was derailed, as well as some passenger cars,” the statement said. The passenger train’s locomotive was lying on its side, and the first car was bent and also derailed, although it remained upright, according to images from the scene in the small city of Cayce, South Carolina. At least four cars of the freight train were crumpled, looking like crushed tin foil, but remained on the tracks. The passenger train was part of Amtrak’ Silver Star Service, and the wreck occurred about 5 miles (8 km) southwest of Columbia, the state capital. Local media said some 5,000 gallons of fuel leaked as a result of the collision, but authorities said it was under control and no threat to public safety. “The injuries range from cuts and bruises to severe broken bones,” said Derrec Becker, public information officer for the South Carolina Emergency Management Division. “All the injured have been transported to local hospitals.” U.S. President Donald Trump was getting regular updates on the crash while at his resort in Palm Beach, Florida. “Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone that has been affected by this incident,” said a White House spokeswoman. (BT)

BODIES PULLED FROM SEA OFF MOROCCO – The bodies of 16 people have been pulled from the sea off the coast of Melilla, a small Spanish territory bordering Morocco. Moroccan rescue services recovered the corpses after the crew of a Spanish ship spotted them in the water. A medical official told AFP news agency all the dead were from sub-Saharan Africa, apart from one Moroccan. It is thought they may have been hoping to reach Europe by sailing from Melilla, despite storm warnings. Melilla, which is just 12 sq km (7 square miles), is a major crossing point for undocumented migrants seeking work or asylum in Europe. It is one of only two EU land borders with Africa – the other being a second Spanish enclave, Ceuta. Spanish newspaper El Pais reported the bodies were found floating on Saturday around 6-8 km from Melilla’s coast. A spokeswoman for Melilla’s authorities said earlier that “about 20” bodies had been retrieved. The exact death toll has not yet been confirmed. Spanish rescue services resumed a search on Sunday morning. (BT)

BARBADOS TO PARTICIPATE IN GRENADA INVITATIONAL – Barbados will again be represented when the 2nd Grenada Invitational Track & Field Meet takes place on April 21 at the Kirani James Athletic Stadium. Six Barbadians competed in the inaugural event last year, with Shane Brathwaite (Men’s 110m Hurdles), Janeil Craig (Men’s Javelin Throw) and Jade Bailey (Women’s 100m B) among the winners. This year, Kierre Beckles (Women’s 100m Hurdles), Sada Williams (Women’s 200/400), Ramon Gittens (Men’s 100m), Anthonio Mascoll (Men’s 800m) and Greggmar Swift (Men’s 110m Hurdles) have already been confirmed for the Meet in St George’s. Barbados will also participate in a Southern Caribbean Invitational Relay that will include schools from Trinidad and Tobago, St Vincent and the Grenadines, St Lucia and Grenada. One Boys school from each of these islands has been invited to compete against the top four schools from Grenada as part of the Grenada Invitational in 2018. Organisers say they have reached out to schools here in Barbados, and Christ Church Foundation, through Seibert Strachan, has accepted the invitation in principle. “We understand that the school will also be attending the Penn Relays, so this event will provide a warm up for the team. “This year we have considered and started with the boys as a trial and we hope to add other elements [to] this initiative in 2019,” Meet organiser Michael Bascombe said in a statement. The Grenada Invitational will also include participants from Cuba, with 15 athletes including their 18-year-old long jumper Maykel Masso. American world 100m champion Justin Gatlin is also confirmed for the Meet. (BT)

RISING STAR MAKES THE MARK – Rowland Kirton-Browne can now book her flight for the CARIFTA Games in Nassau, Bahamas. She threw a magnificent 41.90 metres in the javelin to smash the 37 metres CARIFTA qualifying mark in the Under-17 girls’ division at the Young Olympians Classic at the National Stadium on Saturday. The Rising Stars athlete will be hoping to repeat that performance to possibly bring home a medal in the Easter games set for March 30 to April 2. Though she was unable to meet the requirements in the shot put, which stands at 13 metres, the multi-sport athlete also won that event with an effort of 11.65 metres. Kirton-Browne now joins the list of Under-17 athletes – Shanice Hutson, Dominique Wood, Kyle Gale and Sarah Belle – who have already met the CARIFTA standard. Jaliyah Denny remains among the list of athletes in that age group who have not yet qualified for the upcoming games. Proformers Track Club athlete and three-time fitness champion in the National Sports Council’s Miss Schoolgirl fitness competition, Adeyah Brewster, had enough energy left to beat Denny on the line in the Under-17 Girls’ 100 metres. The Alexandra student clocked 12.75 seconds to finish ahead of Denny’s 12.88 seconds. However, her teammate Anika Blackman defeated her in the Under-17 Girls’ 100 metres hurdles event. Blackman placed second in the 200 metres after she lost that event to Kamile Gaskin-Griffith, also of Proformers, who registered 26.39 seconds. Khalil Roberts of Harrison College ran a slow Under-17 Boys’ 100 metres to win in a time of 12.21 seconds. Pacers Track Club’s Akil Howell will also need to run faster if he wants to meet the 48.90 seconds qualifying time in the 400 metres after crossing the finish line in the boys’ Under-17 event in 51.74 seconds. Howell went on to win the 200 metres in 23.18 seconds. The young, but talented Brieanna Boyce of De Cliff ran away from the pack to win the Under-15 girls’ 400 metres in a time of one minute 2.81 seconds. Boyce, 13, the victrix ludorum at last year’s Barbados Secondary Schools’ Athletics Championships (BSSAC), went on to place third in the 200 metres after Danica Gittens’ win in her heat recorded a faster time of 25.91 seconds. Full Flyt Athletic Club’s Samiya Dell, formerly of Sharon Primary, won the Under-13 girls’ 400 metres in 1:05.52, while Krissaria Ballantyne of BC Trac Club clocked 1:07.08. Dell, who will be competing at BSSAC for the first time since she is now at The St Michael School, also won the shot put in her division when her put measured 7.87 metres. St Giles’ twins Tania and Tia Applewhite took the top two places in the Under-11 Girls’ 60-metre dash in 8.80 and 8.81 seconds respectively. However, Tia clocked 14.06 seconds in the 100 metres to finish ahead of her sister who placed second in 14.15 seconds. Young Ratanang Barker is already making strides to compete in the upcoming National Primary School’s Athletic Championships for St Stephen’s after running an impressive 800 metres in the Under-13 Boys’ Division to record 2:39.62 seconds on the clock.  (DN)

KNIGHT OFF TO SWEDEN FOR SECOND STINT – Caribbean junior table tennis champion Tyrese Knight has been rubbing shoulders with elite players in Halmstad, Sweden. The 18-year-old completed his first stint there last December and will leave the island today for his second attachment. He told NATIONSPORT the training was quite challenging and a lot different from training in Barbados but it was geared toward bringing out the best in the athlete. “The training was a little bit difficult at first but it got better as I got accustomed to it. At home I’m not accustomed to twice a day training,” Knight said. “I train with elite players who are in the top 100. It’s a professional environment. For these players, this is their job so you normally wake up, go to training, get lunch, mingle with the players. You get a chance to rest then go to training again and after that session you go to the gym. “The club also has their own trainer too but we do that like twice a week.” Knight, who won gold in the Under-18 division of the Caribbean Cadet and Junior Table Tennis Championships in Guyana last year, said he would be using this second stint as preparation for the upcoming Commonwealth and Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Games and is also hoping to play in a couple other tournaments while he is away. “I’ll be going back to continue the programme to prepare for the Commonwealth Games and also CAC and also try to go to some other tournaments in Europe and world tour events,” he said. Though he admitted that he did not think he was quite ready for the Commonwealth Games he is still hoping he does well. However, he is planning on focusing on his forearm technique and his mental while there to be able to do well at the CAC Games. “I’m hoping to play the best that I can. I will be focusing on working on my forearm more as well as my mental game,” he said. He added that he was also open to any opportunities that may come his way to play for a club in Sweden. (DN)

BARBADOS FIGHT BUT LOSE TO COLOMBIANS – A courageous second-set performance by Darian King and Haydn Lewis was not enough to prevent Colombia’s world-class doubles players Robert Farah and Juan Sebastian-Cabal from winning 6-2, 7-6 at the National Tennis Center in their Davis Cup Tie. Heading into the match-up, King and veteran Davis Cup doubles partner Lewis were well aware they needed to dig deep in order to get past the class of Farah and Sebastian-Cabal, fresh off the Australia Grand Slam final. But as expected the Colombians won the best of three sets, third game rubber and took a 3-0 lead in the Americas Group l tie. Speaking after the match that lasted a duration of one hour and 35 minutes, King pointed out it was not the opening start he and Lewis were hoping for but they were able to coordinate better in the second set and put pressure on the Colombians. (BT)

NARINE ‘NOT RUSHING BACK’ – West Indies off-spinner Sunil Narine says he is still interested in representing the regional team, but does not feel he is ready for a return to international cricket. In clearing the air on why he declined a spot on the West Indies squad for next month’s ICC World Cup qualifiers in Zimbabwe, the Trinidadian said it was due to a lack of cricket at a higher level, against the background that he did not play any One-Day Internationals last year. Cricket West Indies said last month Narine, along with Kieron Pollard, Dwayne Bravo and Andre Russell, had been invited to join the the squad but had “indicated that they were unavailable to help us qualify as their priority was playing in the Pakistan Super League”. (BT)

FUND ACCESS CELEBRATES 20TH ANNIVERSARY – Minister of Small Business Development, Donville Inniss, has pointed to several markets that are in need of financing, as he hailed the success of the Barbados Agency for Micro Enterprise Development. Addressing the agency’s 20th anniversary church service at the Sanctuary Empowerment Centre this morning, Inniss told the congregation there were several traditional and non-traditional sectors that entrepreneurs need financial assistance. “We have found that there are some niche areas in this economy that we really need to be able to give financial assistance to including the cultural industry, the arts and craft sector, the professionals, the doctors, lawyers these are the kind of niche areas that we are very much focused on,” he stated. The Minister noted that the agency, also known as Fund Access, has provided 2200 jobs, assisted 1800 clients and lent $56 billion dollars over the past two decades, and has also increased its loan limit to $150,000. He assured the public of the organisation’s profitability, saying “I do not believe we will be asking tax payers anytime in the foreseeable future to put up money to be able to help Fund Access stay afloat.” “Recently we were able, in the midst of all the economic challenges of this country, to position Fund Access in its own standalone agency, one that can earn its own way through its lending and the interest earned,” Inniss said.  (BT)

LOTS TO DO AT GIRLFRIENDS – Patrons to this year’s Aloha Girlfriends Expo and Arts Festival were taken on a magical two-day Hawaiian fiesta, as the Concorde Experience in Christ Church was transformed over the weekend. The occasion was an opportunity for new exhibitors to make an impact, and the familiar to cement relationships in fashion and design. There were displays from local designers Lucean Layne of Lucy Lu Creations, Jamar Odwin with his Odboih T-shirt collection, Yaisa Peter’s Browzin collection, Kofi Branch with Legende – which included both beach and casual wear, and guest designer Kiran Knight of Kiran K out of Trinidad and Tobago. Visitors also had an opportunity to be part of a zumba experience by the Zumba Bunnies; karaoke; have manicures and pedicures done, and learn the art of blending and applying make-up. New exhibitor, eight-year-old Paiden Clarke, was a big hit with patrons with slime art. “It’s a stress reliever. It’s made from glue, paint and detergent, and works like a therapeutic ball, but instead you can pull it and stretch it anyway you want,” he explained.  Another first-timer was Aesthetic Dental. Representative Dr Carol Belgrave said while Girlfriends Expo was about the glitz and glamour, she was delighted to be a part of the event to educate people that “the smile is the jewel in the crown”. “I think that dentistry being a part of Girlfriends Expo is such an educational tool. Not only would people be seeing glamour stuff and feminine products but also a smile; what they can do to get an exceptional beautiful smile,” she said. Rhea Alleyne, from the Hangover Express, put icing on the cake for patrons with her alcohol-infused desert treats from drinks to jellos. These included jello shots, sangria, mauby and rum, vodka marshmallows and boozy brownies containingfour different alcohols. Over at Lasage, Glenda King displayed jewellery, called Turn It Around; There’s Nothing New Under the Sun, made from recycled material.  “For this line I used soda cans, paper, magazines, newspaper, T-shirt material and cloth, plastic, PET bottles. The response is good. Barbados is still very far behind in terms of recycling and accepting things made from recyclable material, even though we have them. This particular line doesn’t do bad when I do come out, but I find Barbadians are still a bit more laid back when it comes to recycling,” she said. (DN)

That’s all for today folks there are 329 days left in the year Shalom! #thechasefiles #dailynewscaps Follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram for your daily news. #bajannewscaps #newscapsbystephaniefchase

[investintheself]

INVESTLIKEAGURU #chap7

[Failures, Errors, and Value Traps] Part 1

- there are many ways to lose money in the stock market. Beginning investors lose money on hot stocks and speculation - growth investors expect speculative growth to endure and pay too much for it - value investors are addicted to price bargains and overlook the quality of the underlying business - the stock market is just weird. every time someone sells, someone else buys, and they both think they’re smart The Wrong Companies - you can easily lose a lot of money in the stock market by buying when the market is exciting and optimistic, then selling when it is distressed and in a panic - or by playing with stock options and futures or by buying on margins - if you do, you can lose money with almost any stock - even if you are a long-term investor in a relatively peaceful bull market, you can still lose money by buying the wrong companies - ones that are on their way to failing or that may survive but will never reach a point to justify the price you paid - next, I summarize the signs that may indicate you are buying a wrong company - these warnings signs are different from what I described in the previous chapter - the warnings signs that follow are focused on the business behaviors of the company - if you recognized any of these signs related to the company;s business operation, you may want to avoid buying at any price ____ It has a hot product with a bright future - these are usually young companies in hot industries - their products are typically involved in revolutionary technology that is disruptive and can have enormous impact on society - many ambitious young entrepreneurs start companies within this field because the technology is promising; it changes people’s lives, so investors are excited about its bright prospects and buy into the future of the technology - as the technology matures, it becomes evident that it did change peoples’ lives. but the field is too crowded. few companies will become profitable and survive - those that do create immense wealth for their investors, whereas most investors lose money - beginning and amateur investors can easily get into this situation - this happens once every few years in new fields, and it occurs more frequently now than in the past due to the acceleration of technology and innovations. - in the past century, it was the flight industry, the automobile industry, semiconductors, digital watches, computer hardware, software, the internet, dot-coms, and fiber optics - for this century, it has so far been solar technology, biotech, social media, electric cars, and so on. - new technologies and innovations improve people’s lives, they just don’t make good investments It is as the Peak of the Cycle - the earnings are good and its stock valuation looks low. - but it is actually a cyclical business that is at its peak - cyclicals like automakers, airlines, and durable good producers have good earnings at the peak of the cycle, which makes their P/E low and the stock attractive - P/S and P/B ratios relative to their historical range are better indicators of where they are with valuation - if the company produces commodities like oil, coacl, steel, gold, and so forth, it is necessary to consider where the prices of the commodities are relative to their historical range - when they are at the high end of the historical range, they are likely to go lower - we have heard a lot of turnaround stories with cyclicals, but usually it is not because the management has special skills, but instead simply because their market comes back - if recession hits again, the management will probably discover that ‘we succeeded in turning around the business..just in the wrong direction’ - we want to avoid cyclicals, but if you are determined to buy, the best time is when cyclicals are at the bottom of the cycle, when the news is bad, and they may be losing money - many of them cannot make it through and in turn go bankrupt - buy those with solidest financial strength and that are able to make it through the bad times - also, remember to sell them when things look good and they are again generating profit - unlike the consistently profitable companies, cyclicals will again fall into trouble when the industry gets into a down cycle It is Growing Fast - you want the company to grow, but not too fast - if a company grows too quickly, it may not be able to hire enough qualified employees to maintain quality of products and customer service - furthermore, such companies may need more capital than they can generate to fund the fast growth, causing a cash crunch and forcing them to borrow - if there is any hiccup in the economy or the business itself, they may not be able to service their debt and could face bankruptcy risk - e.g. Tesla - growing too fast is dangerous. when a company is growing fast, watch its cash It is an Aggressive Serial Acquirer - companies also grow through acquisition, which is even more dangerous - driven by ambitious CEOs, many companies grow by acquiring their competitors - they pay a high price for the acquisition and get themselves deep into debt - if a company is too aggressive with acquisition, watch its debt

Its Business is Too Competitive - no business is immune to competition, which is why a business must build an economic moat with high quality, low cost, brand recognition, high switching cost through network effect, and so on. - different businesses complete in different ways and at different scales - a restaurant mainly competes with other restaurants in the same area. a technology company’s competition can come from anywhere on the globe - if a company sells commodity products, it cannot differentiate itself through products. it has to compete via prices. the one with the lowest cost wins. - commodity products include oil, gas, agricultural products, airline tickets, and insurance. - over time, many high-tech products become commodities, too. think TVs and computers. now even smartphones are becoming commodities. - retail is an especially tough business because almost everything a store sells can be found somewhere else. retail stores’ competition used to be local, but now is global and online. those with higher costs cannot survive. - the shift of consumers to online shopping makes the department-store business even worse

It does everything to Gain Market Share - it is not always good for a business to have more customers - a business needs to be selective with customers and price its products at a level that is competitive but profitable - attention should be focused on the customers who are loyal and profitable - trying to gain market share through aggressive pricing puts a business’s survivability in danger - doing everything to gain market share can be fatal to financial institutions like banks and insurance - if a company tries to gain customers without watching its bottom line, stay away

It faces Regulatory Landscape Shifts - for many years, for-profit education was a lucrative business, as it provided career training and college-level education to people who would otherwise not qualify for accredited colleges and universities - revenue and profit were soaring for decades, and for-profit educators’ stocks were among the best performers during the first decade of this century - but suddenly everything came to a stop. their students could not find jobs and were deep in debt with student loans. and with government, having provided billions in financial aid, is on the hook for the loss with student loans - for-profit education companies are under investigation by the government, and new laws were established that would greatly limit their capability in enrolling new students - the industry collapsed and shareholders lost big - be sure to consider the regulatory risk with the companies in which you invest - after the 2008 financial crisis, new laws were enacted to regulate the banking industry - many revenue sources disappeared. Hospitals and healthcare insurers have had to do business differently after Obamacare became law - there are risks involved in investing in regulated industries It becomes Aged - a company being aged doe snot necessarily mean that it is in business for too many years - it means the company cannot adapt to the shift of the industry dynamics; its products have lost their appeal and are replaced by new technologies - e.g newspapers, Blockbuster, Kodak - the problem with these aged companies is that they do own a lot of assets: real estate, patents, brands, business subsidiaries, and so on, and those can look attractive to value investors after the stock has declined by a larger percentage - but often they are value traps, and this is where value investors lose most of their money

_____ - if the warnings signs in the previous chapter are the symptoms of the disease, the behaviors discussed in this section are the internal problems that cause the disease - a company that displays the warning signs of the last chapter is not necessarily sick. You can still buy these companies if you understand the reason behind the signs and take these into consideration for purchase price.  - but if a company is displaying the behavior that I just described, it should be altogether avoided.  - the tricky part is that these companies don’t necessarily fail quickly - these companies can continue to exist for years, especially when the market is booming and funding is easy to find - they can be enticing to those who look for price bargains - ‘just because a company is doing poorly doesn’t mean it can’t do worse’ - Lynch