As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops

            Currently, women’s median annual earnings are about 20 percent below men’s. What’s the reason for this? New findings suggest that work done by women is not valued as highly. Women are now better educated than men on average, have nearly as much work experience, and are equally likely to pursue many high-paying careers. Yet, the pay gap persists. In one study, it was found that when women enter fields in greater numbers, pay declines—for the very same jobs that more men were doing before.

            The research of Paula England, a sociology professor at New York University, shows that once women start doing a job, “It just doesn’t look like it’s as important to the bottom line or requires as much skill.” This is likely due to gender bias. Evidence of this can be seen in many occupations throughout history. For example, when women became housekeepers, wages fell by 21 percent and when women became biologists, wages fell 18 percentage points. The reverse can also be seen. Computer programming used to be a menial role done by women, but when male programmers began to outnumber female ones, the job began paying more and gained prestige.

            It is true that the pay gap has been closing over time, but it sadly still exists. The gender pay gap has been found to be largest in higher-paying, white-collar jobs. The explanation behind this finding may be that these jobs demand longer and less flexible hours, and research has shown that workers are disproportionately penalized for wanting flexibility. In addition to this, women are indeed sometimes more attracted to lower-paying occupations, but many social scientists say there are other factors that are hard to quantify, like gender bias, and social pressure, that bring down wages for women’s work.

            What can we do to stop this? Certain policies have been found to help close the pay gap, such as raising the minimum wage and providing paid family leave. It is also helpful to give priority to people’s talents and interests when choosing careers even if goes outside gender norms. For example, encouraging girls to be engineers and boys to be teachers. Hopefully, since the problem has been acknowledged, change will begin to take place in order to destroy the pay gap once and for all. 

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over-a-male-dominated-field-the-pay-drops.html?ref=economy&_r=0

Will automation be the response to an increased minimum wage?

Domino’s Pizza has recently introduced a new concept to the fast food world, pizza delivery robots that can navigate neighborhoods to customers. Automation in fast food restaurants has been an increasingly attractive idea within this past year. The CEO of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, Andy Puzder, says that he wants fully automated kitchens in his restaurants, as he has been an opponent to the recent minimum wage pushes. He believes automation will become a common thing such as in airports, grocery stores, essentially any job that requires a low level of skill, if the government implements minimum wage hikes such as from the movement “Fight for $15”.

These robots that Domino’s Pizza has created won’t actually be put into place for a while and will only be able to be initially used in areas with no traffic, however this is showing a movement that could become more popular in the years to come. Many employers who employ primarily minimum wage workers such as fast food restaurants are looking for alternatives to save money in preparation for a dramatic increase in the minimum wage. It will be interesting to see if this type of automation and research into it will become popular within the next few years.

What do you think of this? Do you think that if there is a dramatic rise in the minimum wage that employers will look more into these cost minimizing options?

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2016/0318/Robo-pizza-delivery-Is-automation-putting-low-wage-workers-at-risk

Low-Budget Leicester Nets Fortune for Thai Owner

The story of Leicester City’s improbable rise to the top of global soccer’s wealthiest league starts with a low budget approached towards the transfer of new players. The success has enriched its owners the club is now worth an estimated eight times what Thai duty-free billionaire Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha paid for it six years ago. It has also tormented the big spenders that typically top the standings and challenged the long-held belief that, in the Premier League, the more you pay, the more you win.

To be fair, all Premier League teams receive a share of the league’s generous broadcast deal. By holding on to its spot in England’s top league which the Foxes did by winning a stunning seven of nine games at the end of last season; Leicester continues to enjoy the success of maintaining such a stunning winning percentage. After its 14th-place finish last year, the team generated 104 million pounds in revenue, including about 72 million from the league’s broadcast money, and turned a profit of 26 million, its first in almost a decade.

If the team wins the league this year, it can expect an even larger share. Last year’s winner, Chelsea, got around 99 million pounds. Official numbers won’t be available for a year, but it’s reasonable to assume that Leicester’s overall revenue will rise by 30 percent.

“The Leicester squad has been assembled for about the cost of 22 million pounds,” Matthew Walker, an analyst from Nomura Holdings, said during an earnings call,  “When you head into the transfer window in the summer, can you explain why … the bigger clubs can’t find relatively cheap players like Leicester?”

Even Foxes faithful might profit from the team’s unprecedented run. London-based Ladbrokes PLC gave fans 5,000-to-1 odds on Leicester to win its first ever top division title before the season started. At least one cashed in early, turning his 50-pound bet into a 72,000-pound payout earlier this month. Today, the same bookmaker has Leicester a favorite at 4-5.

link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-18/leicester-city-mounts-english-premier-league-title-charge

Financing Divorce: Til debt us do part

In most developed western countries, it is illegal for divorce attorneys to receive a a share of any settlement. This is due to a fear of an increase in the amount and tenacity of divorces. If an attorney can receive a percentage of the settlement, they will stop at nothing to squeeze out every dollar from their opponent.

However, these rules do not apply to financiers. Several firms are beginning to offer special loans to would-be divorcees that have a high interest rate of around 18% annually. This extra cash allows divorcees to hire a premiere legal team and win a higher settlement. Without the loan, they would likely have to give up and settle for much less. Most applicants can typically expect to win assets worth three times their borrowing.  They then pay off their loan, and both parties walk away a little bit richer.

What if a couple gets back together?

This is the biggest fear of financiers, as the assets would not be sold, and the borrowers would be unable to pay back their loans. To combat this, many firms hand pick cases in which reconciliation is nearly impossible. An example is a couple that have already been battling it out in court for a lengthy amount of time.

Some firms have completely bypassed this risk by using a referral system. These firms will refer clients to lawyers, who then have to guarantee their clients' loans. If borrowers cannot pay the financiers back, the lawyers have to pay the loans themselves.

This entire section of the finance industry is new and interesting, but it is already causing a bit of a controversy. What do you think? Is it right for a firm to finance a divorce?

http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21694473-firms-who-lend-people-seeking-end-marriage-are-attracting-interest-inside

Oil prices in a "skittish" market

This article speaks to the sudden and recent rise of oil prices to 40$ a barrel. This is a two fold problem and solution. What we saw at the beginning of the year was a huge drop in oil prices to a little above 28$ a barrel. This was positive for consumers and was seen as a reprieve from lasting higher prices we had been experience for the last couple of years. However, the reason this price drop occurred does not bode well for oil industry. We saw a swelling of oil  depositories who are reporting almost being overflowed, or to the brim, with oil. This slows U.S. production of oil and caused the supply to obviously severely outreach the demand. That is why this increase in price of oil is positive. Wall street also likes this increase in price because it helped smooth out some of the damage begun by the price drop earlier in the year. This article goes to show that price increase is not inherently bad.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/17/investing/oil-prices-spike-40-dollars/index.html

$81m hack in Bangladesh's central bank - Involves N.Y. Fed

Hackers managed to steal nearly $81 m from Bangladesh's central bank using a U.S. account in a massive cyber crime.

It's bizarre how a cyber theft of such massive scale got pulled off without notice, involving especially New York fed, Philippines and Bangladesh. What's even weirder is that this illegal transaction happened a month ago, but wasn't made public until recently.

Bangladesh government now plans to sue the Fed for failing to prevent the mishap.

Here's more information:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-bangladesh-malware-idUSKCN0WD1EV

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/03/bangladesh-bank-governor-resigns-81m-hack-160315084217775.html

The governor of New York, Governor Cuomo, is urging the New York government to pass $15 minimum wage under their new budget. Cuomo is also rallying support for paid family leave in New York. Non-profit groups and health providers are combatting this minimum wage bump as they would need an increase in state funding to cope with the higher wage requirements. Right wing progressives are pushing back too because they believe this wage hike will hurt businesses, increase costs, and lead to heavy job losses. All parties agree that far more research must be done before a decision is made regarding this issue.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/cuomo-urges-15-per-hour-minimum-wage-budget-article-1.2565550

Silicon Valley Has Not Saved Us From a Productivity Slowdown

This article indicated that middle class wages have not been rising as quickly as they have in the past and a lot of this slow down could be attributed to a slowdown in productivity growth. As we have learned in class in order to continue to increase the standard of living the only sustainable way is through increases in productivity. However, labor productivity has been growing at 1.3% a year compared to 2.8% in the last 10 years resulting in lagging standard of living growth.

On the other hand, people in various tech jobs and circles claim that these outdated measures do not fully capture the benefits of these software products and thus are not calculated in productivity or increasing standard of living. However, results from more extensive research have shown that countries with highly developed tech communities and those with less developed have both felt the slowdown in productivity that has occurred. While the tech community is not the only sector under criticism for the slowdown it does take up 7.7% of the 15% slowdown that has occurred. As the author said, Silicon Valley does not seemed to have saved us just yet.

Do you think that its possible that we are currently hitting a technological plateau? Could these countries be hitting their own steady states due to the lack of breakthroughs in new technological advancements? Do you think there need to be better measures in place for this sector or are the indirect measures good enough?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/upshot/silicon-valley-has-not-saved-us-from-a-productivity-slowdown.html?ref=economy&_r=1

Rich men's paychecks are getting fatter while poor are paid less

This article talks about how the latest statistics show that inequality is getting worse in America. The wages of men in the top 5% of income distribution grew by 15% over the past 8 years, while the wages of men in the bottom 70% did not grow at all during that time according to the Economic Policy Institute. This difference of wage growth was prevalent among women during this 8 year time frame. The study also showed that the wages of whites at the top of the income scale have grown more than the wages of blacks at the top of the income scale. The author of the article noted that the biggest wage difference is between those with a college degree and those without one. 

The author of this article makes a great point of connecting this wage gap problem to the anger of the American people. These large numbers of American citizens who are angry about workers wages are voicing their frustration by supporting the two anti-establishment presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. "It's no surprise that typical workers are frustrated with the economy since wage growth has been slow for so long," said Elise Gould, senior economist at EPI and author of the report.

This study along with this article speaks to why there is such enthusiasm among Sanders and Trump supporters, as both candidates have been speaking to voters who are fed up with the system and are looking for an ‘outsider’ candidate.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/11/news/economy/rich-men-wages-grow/index.html?iid=SF_LN

Chipotle CEOs' insanely high pay was just cut in half

This article mentions how the co-CEOs of Chipotle, Steve Ells and Monty Moran, had their pay checks cut in half compared to their last year pay checks. This was because they are not going to get awarded any money from their stocks. Earlier last year there was a huge outbreak that involved about 14 Chipotle’s restaurants. Chipotle had to close some of their restaurants because they said that these restaurants may have had E. coli. These news really affected their stock market and their shares lost about 30 percent of their value. Therefore, the head executives are not going to get any compensation from their stocks until stocks prices reach above $700. The article also mentioned that these executives were getting an excessive amount of compensation that 10 times more that the median for any other company. I think that it is unfair for the CEOs to get their paychecks cut in half because their stocks prices went down. However, knowing that they have been earning more than the average executives for the past few years makes it more acceptable. 

Link: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chipotle-ceos-insanely-high-pay-133137242.html#