The pay gap between executives and the average American worker has always been pretty big, and seems to have increased as the world's economy grows. But with the recent recession bringing the most desperate financial conditions the world has seen since the Great Depression, one could be excused for expecting this gap to be reduced.
Why the value of still images is collapsing It’s that old supply-and-demand thing. The supply of digital images is way, way up. At the same time, advertising in magazines and newspapers is sinking. If you want to continue earning a living at something you already do, it’s helpful if your trade is difficult to do and expensive to get started. Photography during the film-era was this way. Every time I pushed the shutter-button a couple of bucks flew out the window. Now the cost of getting into the pro photography game is virtually nothing (aside from the cost of the camera, the computer, the software, the training… still a relatively low investment for what you’re able to accomplish). I’m grateful that HDSLR cinematography is expensive and problematic right now. The Trib Is Dead. Long Live The Trib. For several generations, ads in magazines and newspapers were the leading consumer of commercial stills. Sorry Charlie, those days are gone. Today advertisers are increasingly moving their efforts over to web-based campaigns. It’s not personal. It’s demographics. OK. So that means that it is personal. The web, with it’s ability to provide instantaneous feedback to advertisers enables those spending the ad bucks to target their message exactly where it needs to be within minutes. For an ad placed in the wrong magazine, the response time is measured in weeks or months. Print advertising is plummeting (stats here). It’s not the economy, stupid. It’s the medium. Check out MagazineDeathPool if you’re not already a regular reader. Now is not be the time to launch a career as a magazine shooter.
Waste is part of life. Human and animal bodies produce natural waste, whereas societies produce synthetic waste. While we cannot control the level of natural waste as its production is an organic part of biological survival, we can drastically reduce the production of synthetic waste. Natural and synthetic waste come in two varieties - reusable and nonreusable. The aim of a sustainable waste economy is to reuse as much waste as possible, even to the point of reducing waste surplus to zero.
IP routers -- often called broadband routers or just routers -- direct network traffic to its proper destination, and so help to reduce the load on every system in the network. Once the exclusive domain of IT professionals, a wide variety of small but extremely capable routers are now available for the home & small business markets.
Hyper-localized currencies have been popping ever since the economy went sour--not surprising, since local currencies also gained popularity during the Great Depression.
Project Rwanda is committed to furthering the economic development of Rwanda through initiatives based on the bicycle as a tool and symbol of hope. Our goal is use the bike to help boost the Rwandan economy as well as re-brand Rwanda as a beautiful and safe place to do business and visit freely.
]]>
people rarely held on to money in the form of cash for any length of time, for the most part due to lack of access to banks and/or the high cost of maintaining an account proportionate to their incomes. Cash was rapidly converted to goods based on priorities and these 'goods' acted as insurance (silver), savings (buying building materials on a piecemeal basis as cashflow allowed until the house could be built), a cushion aka insurance (selling a pig for an emergency or eaten for food) and finally investment (milk bearing cow, young piglets to rear to maturity, etc).
With tight wallets and tighter budgets, its not a good feeling to sit at home and bemoan the state of the economy and the job losses. We should rather take up the opportunities offered by the recession before its too late!
Despite the expansion recorded in recent years, the Brazilian economy still presents aspects of underdeveloped countries characteristic. Today, every two Brazilian workers, one is informal, show the research. To raise issues relevant to this phenomenon, this reportage searched for a specific group of informal workers: itinerant traders operating in the metropolitan region mills of Sao Paulo.
With the latest numbers showing Indian car sales falling close to 7 percent in October, the third drop in four months, auto makers are wondering how to attract new buyers. That won't be easy as tight credit, increasingly thrifty consumers and a slowing Indian economy continue to hit demand, forcing some car manufacturers to cut production .
The 5th Montreal Citizen Summit is a social forum open to all and is based on the concept “The City We Want”. This event will take place from June 5-7, 2009 at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and will be an opportunity for citizens and civil society practitioners to strengthen their ties in order to collectively organise social action initiatives. The Summit will also be the opportunity for citizens to learn and exchange on urban issues related to this year's themes: 1) Economy 2) Urban planning 3) Social justice, inclusion and citizenship 4) Environment 5) Democracy 6) Culture.
Modern Japan, the second largest economy in the world, is a land of contradictions. Home to some of the most sophisticated technology and manufacturing, it also has communities whose daily life has changed little in the last 500 years. It is a place of great beauty, both in the landscapes and its celebrations, festivals, and traditional arts. Hiroji Kubota spent four years traveling the length and breadth of his country's many islands, capturing the magnificent diversity of the people and places along the way. From rice paddies to pachinko parlors, ancient temples to the Honda assembly plants, Kubota's lens has captured both the ordinary and the extraordinary of a dually antiquated and modern nation.
The state of our global economy: foreclosures, evictions, bankruptcies, layoffs, abandoned projects, and the people and industries caught in the middle. It can be difficult to capture financial pressures in photographs, but here a few recent glimpses into some of the places and lives affected by what some are calling the "Great Recession". (
]]>
In a battered economy, free goods and services online are more attractive than ever. So how can the suppliers make a business model out of nothing?
I find this extremely fascinating. In a way, the Japanese are looking at these products like pieces of abstract art. On the other hand, if you understand English and especially it’s cultural connotations, there is a good chance that these will look funny to you. In today’s visually over-saturated world, various brands compete in trying to produce striking graphics to influence the consumers. But free trade and competition in today’s global economy has made many of the products essentially the same in content. So in some cases, the only difference with those products is the packaging, or the form.
Sony, the Japanese electronics company, said Thursday that it expected to post a record annual operating loss of nearly $3 billion because of the rapid deterioration of the global economy. It also announced a major restructuring that will include layoffs and factory closings.
]]>
A mysterious blight struck the majority of French grape vines between the late 1850s and the turn of the century, causing enormous damage to the French economy. In the vine districts, wages dropped by half, businesses collapsed, and much of viticulture population emigrated to Algeria and other countries. (1) Vintners used 36,633 tons of sugar to improve the quality and quantity of wine produced in 1888, and imported larger quantities of foreign wines to meet the demand for mixing. The imports were, from Spain, 7,008,000 hectoliters; Italy, 1,082,305 hectoliters; and Algeria, 1,089,000 hectoliters. (2) One hectoliter equals to 100 liters or 26,418 U.S. gallons.
Opsound is a gift economy in action, an experiment in applying the model of free software to music. Musicians and sound artists are invited to add their work to the Opsound pool using a copyleft license developed by Creative Commons. Listeners are invited to download, share, remix, and reimagine.
Obama would be a fool to trust his economy to the discretion of central bankers.