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Earlier this summer, New Mexico suffered through record-breaking forest fires that consumed over 170,000 acres. It marked the second consecutive year of record-breaking fires. As a new report released by Demos today shows, increased forest fire risk and intensity is just one of the many impacts that New Mexico will face from climate change.
Here are the things that are standing in the way of small businesses hiring more employees in order of priority: economic uncertainty, uncertainty over what Washington is going to do next, lack of sales, requirements of the healthcare bill, too much regulation. In fact, 29 percent of small business owners listed economic uncertainty as the number one obstacle to more hiring, 22 percent listed lack of sales, and just 8 percent said it was too much regulation.
People who think about breaking the law often engage in a risk-benefit analysis, looking at how big the gain is from cheating against the possible downsides of getting caught.
Too often, on Wall Street, that calculus has favored cheating: The rewards can be astronomical and the penalties can be relatively minor. Witness how many key figures in the subprime mortgage disaster -- in which investors were routinely misled about the health of such securities -- walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation and have faced no criminal charges.
As early as today, the Republican leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives will be bringing H.R. 4078, the so-called “Red Tape Reduction and Small Business Job Creation Act” up for a vote. Like so much of what passes for legislation in Congress these days, this legislation is more a statement of philosophy than a thought out piece of policy.
As we pointed out a few weeks ago, man-made climate change will make extreme weather events much more likely going forward and we are facing a pretty serious one now. More than half of the continental U.S.
In case you haven't been paying attention, a concerted effort has been underway for more than a year to depict low-income workers as tax freeloaders. Most taxes are paid by the rich, the argument goes -- the "job creators" -- while workers at the bottom are paying less and less.
As part of a commitment to measure well-being and happiness alongside GDP, Britain’s Office of National Statistic conducted a wellbeing population survey that compared happiness and anxiety levels by several demographic factors, including sex, age, and ethnicity. The study included four subjective well-being questions:
Work as a hotel housekeeper isn’t an easy job under any circumstances. For more than 400,000 predominantly female and immigrant workers, the work means lifting heavy mattresses, stretching to clean high surfaces, and often scrubbing bathroom floors on hands and knees. Full-time workers earn just $21,000 a year, on average.
The days between the Fourth of July and Bastille Day on the 14th are known for fireworks on both sides of the Atlantic. This year, more rockets and firecrackers than usual were going off, but they were inside hearing rooms in the British Parliament and the U.S. Congress. Barclays bank announced that it had been fined more than $450 million by regulators from both countries, and its CEO, Robert E. Diamond Jr., and COO, Jerry del Missier, both resigned. The fines were part of a settlement that granted Barclays immunity from potentially worse punishment for its manipulation of interest rates.