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Photo of the Day: Big Brother is watching you in the Plaza de George Orwell, Barcelona (Via)
The original 1811 Commissioner’s Plan for Manhattan’s famous street grid and the fascinating story of how it came to be.
The chart from 2009 Congressional testimony by Gary Burtless below compares the maximum duration of unemployment insurance benefits in 21 nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, as of 2005, measured in months. The United States had the shortest duration of the 21 countries, six months. By 2009, when Mr. Burtless testified, the United States had increased its benefit period and would increase it still after that; he did not have 2009 data on the other countries.
Even in 2005, before the world financial crisis, many countries had unemployment benefits that lasted 18 months or more. Three countries offered benefits indefinitely, in some situations. By European standards, our 99 weeks appears too short.
Part of the reason that countries can disagree so much on the benefit period is that long periods have both costs and benefits. A longer benefit period makes it more difficult to get people back to work, because they are getting paid for not working. But for the relatively small fraction of people who cannot find a job even after looking for several years, the government benefits help cushion lives that can be very difficult.
Moreover, the aggregate consequences of a long benefit period may not be all that large, because a only small fraction of people are unemployed long enough for it to matter whether the benefit period is 99 weeks or 199 weeks. At the end of 2010, for example, when unemployment in the United States was quite high, only about 2 percent of the unemployed had been unemployed more than 25 months, let alone 50 months.
For the same reason, it makes a lot bigger difference if benefits last 12 months rather than six, because about half of the unemployed have been unemployed more than six months.
We know that long-lasting unemployment benefits have the cost of less employment and the benefit of more safety. But we still don’t know the optimal mix of the two. (NYTimes.com)
Oligopoly & Oligopsony
Oligopoly
An oligopoly is a market form in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of sellers (oligopolists). The word is derived, by analogy with “monopoly”, from the Greek ὀλίγοι (oligoi) “few” + πόλειν (pólein) “to sell”. Because there are few sellers, each oligopolist is likely to be aware of the actions of the others. The decisions of one firm influence, and are influenced by, the decisions of other firms. Strategic planning by oligopolists needs to take into account the likely responses of the other market participants.
Oligopoly is a common market form. As a quantitative description of oligopoly, the four-firm concentration ratio is often utilized. This measure expresses the market share of the four largest firms in an industry as a percentage. For example, as of fourth quarter 2008, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, Nextel, and T-Mobile together control 89% of the US cellular phone market.
Oligopolistic competition can give rise to a wide range of different outcomes. In some situations, the firms may employ restrictive trade practices (collusion, market sharing etc.) to raise prices and restrict production in much the same way as a monopoly. Where there is a formal agreement for such collusion, this is known as a cartel. A primary example of such a cartel is OPEC which has a profound influence on the international price of oil.
Oligopsony
An oligopsony (from Ancient Greek ὀλίγοι (oligoi) “few” + ὀψωνία (opsōnia) “purchase”) is a market form in which the number of buyers is small while the number of sellers in theory could be large. This typically happens in a market for inputs where numerous suppliers are competing to sell their product to a small number of (often large and powerful) buyers. It contrasts with an oligopoly, where there are many buyers but few sellers. An oligopsony is a form of imperfect competition.
The terms monopoly (one seller), monopsony (one buyer), and bilateral monopoly have a similar relationship.
One example of an oligopsony in the world economy is cocoa, where three firms (Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, and Callebaut) buy the vast majority of world cocoa bean production, mostly from small farmers in third-world countries. Likewise, American tobacco growers face an oligopsony of cigarette makers, where three companies (Altria, Brown & Williamson, and Lorillard Tobacco Company) buy almost 90% of all tobacco grown in the US.[citation needed]
In each of these cases, the buyers have a major advantage over the sellers. They can play off one supplier against another, thus lowering their costs. They can also dictate exact specifications to suppliers, for delivery schedules, quality, and (in the case of agricultural products) crop varieties. They also pass off much of the risks of overproduction, natural losses, and variations in cyclical demand to the suppliers.
“A mere handful of seafloor mud may contain as many species as are found in a square meter of tropical rainforest.” Reminiscent of the One Cubic Foot project.
Plenty More Fish In The Sea? | Information is Beautiful
A visualization of the state of Atlantic fish stocks.
Commissioned by The Pew Charitable Trusts as part of European Fish Week
Popularly eaten fish include: bluefin tuna, brill, cod, haddock, hake, halibut, herring, mackerel, pollock, salmon, sea trout, striped bass, sturgeon, turbot, whiting.
A followup on The last post about Movement
(Source: curiositycounts)
Neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert on how the brain evolved not to think and feel but to control movement, and on the psychology of tit-for-tat. Wolpert is the co-author of The Neuroscience of Social Interaction: Decoding, Imitating, and Influencing the Actions of Others. (via)
The East River Ferry - 30 minutes from Wall St to 34th St
Though Others Failed, New East River Ferries Are a Hit - The New York Times.
After several failed attempts at encouraging the use of boats to commute across the East River, city officials have an unforeseen problem: too many ferry riders.
The ferry service that the city started in June has attracted twice as many riders as its planners had expected. On sunny weekends, it has been so popular with tourists and wandering residents that some boats have been too full to take on everybody waiting on the piers in Brooklyn.
Now, with service scheduled to be reduced for the winter on Nov. 1, the operator of the ferries, BillyBey Ferry Company, is worried about having to turn away more customers. But city officials do not want to pay the operator more than the $3.1 million annual subsidy called for in a three-year contract signed this year.
“The only major complaint I’ve heard is that people want more of it,” said Seth W. Pinsky, the president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, which oversees the service.
Mr. Pinsky said that the city was considering ways to add capacity but that, “in an era of limited resources,” it would be difficult to find more public money for the service.
The East River service is an experiment to spur development in revitalized sections of the industrial riverfront in Queens and Brooklyn. The boats connect Midtown and the financial district near Wall Street with, for the fall and winter, five spots on the east side of the river.
The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, a nonpartisan polling source and a reporter’s default source on almost everything, released a report last week on how Americans feel about various political labels. The most liked term: “progressive,” which 67 percent react positively to, while only 22 percent have a negative response. But don’t get too happy: “Conservative” is a close second, with 62 percent of Americans reacting favorably and 30 percent disliking it. Since these are highly contradictory results, we’re obviously talking about feelings, not thoughts. (via TAPPED)
(Source: culturetrash)
Who said time is linear?
(Source: alittledelusion)
