Roger Pasquier hunts for coins on NYC sidewalks and keeps track of how much he finds. He discovered an odd consequence of everyone having a smartphone: people don’t pick up change on the sidewalk anymore. From 1987 to 2006, he averaged about fifty-eight dollars a year. Then Apple introduced the iPhone, and millions of potential competitors started to stare at […]
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In just one year, 28,745 Americans injure themselves with paper money and coins.
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“Economic growth may one day turn out to be a curse rather than a good, and under no conditions can it either lead into freedom or constitute a proof for its existence.” – Hannah Arendt
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For many Americans, collecting disability has become a career, said Michael Barone. Over the past 50 years, the number of people receiving benefits from the Social Security disability program created to help Americans who are too sick to work—has rocketed from 455,000 to 8.6 million. An incredible 5.6 percent of adults are now getting disability checks, with a cost to […]
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■ Brazilian taxi driver Adilson Luiz da Cruz often finds lost phones and forgotten umbrellas in his cab, but last week he hit the jackpot: 40 tickets to the World Cup. Despite his lifelong dream of going to the tournament, plus the thousands of dollars he could have earned by scalping the tickets, the cabbie didn’t hesitate to do the […]
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Russian orphanages are a scandal, said Jennifer Rankin. State institutions house nearly 400,000 children, a population larger than many cities. But less than one third of these children are actually orphans. Many “fall into the system when their parents, often fighting a losing battle with alcohol or drugs,” lose their parental rights. Even more of them—nearly half the total—have disabilities, […]
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A notice appeared in the paper recently with the names and faces of eight men who have a combined wealth of $426 billion. According to Oxfam International, in 2015 this would have equaled the amount of wealth held by half the world’s population, the poorest half. Oxfam International is a confederation of charitable organizations in 90 countries seeking to stop the injustices that […]
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“If you worship money, you will always feel poor.” – Tom Sachs
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