How my mom killed Facebook

6:30 PM Facebook, killed No Comments

| By Josh Herr, The Fiscal Times

More than the fears about future employment, it is the dread of awkward conversations with relatives that keeps us from posting.

Facebook (FB) has always been a cause for handwringing. In its early days, it was seen as a haven of debauchery -- exhibit A in the indictment of misguided youth -- as college students mindlessly posted pictures and comments. As adults, those same users discovered that their campus carousing might now keep them from gainful employment.

Now as the website settles into comfortable middle age, the handwringing comes from those in the biz-tech community who realize that Facebook's days of being a hot young commodity are over.

But how exactly did this happen? And what does Facebook do now?

It is a fairly well established fact that Facebook has a privacy problem. There have been countless stories of employees losing jobs or not being hired due to material posted on Facebook. Or kids suspended from class for posting pictures of their "sick day." There have been the various "slut-shaming" controversies, some of which have resulted in suicides. And earlier this summer, Facebook admitted it had accidentally exposed contact information for as many as 6 million users.

But these are extreme examples. The bigger problem with Facebook can be summed up in one sentence: "My mom is on Facebook."

Once upon a time my Facebook posting was fairly frequent, but it has now slowed to just a couple of times a month. And it's not a lack of desire to post my thoughts that keeps me from doing it, it's the knowledge that there is absolutely nothing that I can post about that could not cause problems.

During the courtship period, most of my status updates centered on politics, women, or alcohol, all of which there are very valid reasons to not talk about on Facebook anymore. But a few weeks ago, I thought I had stumbled on a rant that was still safe for our "everybody's watching me" world: a New Yorker's frustration with tourists.

On a daily basis I arrive at the subway stop at 53rd and 5th, which, for those unfamiliar, has an extremely long escalator ride up from the depths. And frequently there are tourists who don't realize that an escalator is not a ride, but a method to help you walk faster. I thought that an angry public service announcement about this would make a fine Facebook status update.

Unfortunately my mother, like any good Midwestern Irish Mom, has decided Facebook is the appropriate place to remind me that I need to be a nicer person. To do this, she responded to the thread with a story about the first time I was on an escalator. As a 4-year-old.

Like any sensible 4-year-old in the late '70s. I was convinced that the escalator would eat me at the bottom, and threw a royal temper tantrum in the middle of the Florence Mall, refusing to descend to the ground floor. My mother ultimately had to carry me down the stairs over her shoulder, while my father pretended he had no idea who that screaming child was. Needless to say, this image, of me as a hysterical child afraid of an escalator does not particularly jibe with the ice cool Brooklynite vibe I wish that I projected.

Thus I will never post on Facebook again.

Lest you think this is just a complicated revenge scheme against my mom (which, let's be clear, it is), it's this exact phenomenon that keeps driving Facebook's user engagement numbers down.

Far more than the fears about future employment, more than the creepy coworker who "likes" all your bikini pictures, it is the fear of awkward conversations with our relatives that keeps us from posting to Facebook.

This fear is also keeping Facebook from being interesting. We used to view Facebook for the exact same stuff that we are now told never to post; the "I'm so hung over" status messages, the "dancing on top of the bar" videos, and yes, the bikini photos.

By this point in Facebook's existence, everyone is very much aware that you need to be exceptionally careful of what you post on Facebook. The clear-cut solution for Facebook has been to get its privacy settings perfected in such a way that no one is ever hurt by using the website, but this ignores the fundamental question of why we are on Facebook to begin with . . . or at least why we used to be.

Discussions of Facebook's failure to monetize have been numerous. Their advertising models have been either ineffective or disturbingly Orwellian. And their new strategy of sponsored posts have only increased the fundamental problem: Most of us don't want to be there anymore, and no one will say exactly why. Instead, we get occasional stories about a general concept labeled "Facebook fatigue."

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Who killed the American dream?

3:00 PM American, dream, killed No Comments

| By Rex Nutting, MaketWatch

One theory says the 1% a larger and larger share of the cake and the average workers weniger-- earn, because the rich countries are only exceptional. However, the clashes with the reality of who the winners are.

Who killed the American dream?

What is the promise that anyone could build a better life by honest work? That my life would be better than my parents and my children's lives would be better than me?

That America is gone, now seen only in old movies from Frank Capra late into the night.

Today in America, the rich pulls away from the rest of us, leaving almost all profits for themselves, that leave middle-class crawl, only to where they are, and forcing the poor to an increasingly frayed safety net to survive.

Much attention was the question of the expansion of the inequality of opportunities and results, partly because writer George Packer, "The unwinding," narrated terrible lost an eerie new release of New York like the dream.

Recently an academic debate in an upcoming issue of the journal of the economic has again perspective inequality in the headlines, thanks to paper sheet bluntly "Defense of one percent" of Harvard Economist Greg Mankiw argues (and entitled) (who a former adviser to George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney) installed.

In his speech, Mankiw explains why the top 1% do well, while the rest of us desperately to sprint to catch up: the rich are simply better than us. They make more money, as they more contribution than we do for the society. You are intelligent, have the skills that are in high demand, have better entrepreneurial instincts and work harder. Their children inherit these properties genetically what's more.

Not only the rich are better than us, the world is whatever your type of place. Technological changes over the last 30 years have their advantages even more rewarding as before made.

The top 1% really earn their money, and any effort to reduce inequality of us all poorer, says Mankiw. We would have without having to do the innovations made by people like Steve Jobs, j.k. Rowling and Greg Mankiw.

Mankiw takes it as a given that the marginal product allowance is equal to. The rich earn her money, because someone will pay it to you, and that someone is a good reason, so much needs to be paid. The markets decide, numbers, which only Econ 101, and is on this topic.

Many experts have on Mankiw's thesis, but none responded more effectively than Josh Bivens and Larry Mishel of the economic policy Institute, which is also a paper on the special problem of the JEP have contributed.

It turns out, made it not so much what you know as Mankiw argued, but you have what makes, especially the power to extract yields. Bivens and Marie show that the increase in the income of the top more successful profiteering owes 1% over the last 30 years than it does for efficient and competitive markets reward, training and skills.

What do the economists 'rent' mean? Simply put, it is the income, which in addition would require, inducing to those who deliver their work or capital receive is.

For example, say Bevins and Mishel, "it seems likely that many top-level remain essentially the same amount of work to get their sport professional athletes also supply if their salary by a significant portion was reduced, because even the reduced salary would be significantly higher than the next best options."

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Germany killed the eurozone?

10:30 AM Eurozone, Germany, killed No Comments

By Jim Jubak

A new budget makes it clear that only the weaker euro zone economies offer Germany lectures on frugality. This will deadlock.



German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks with President of the European Parliament Martin Schultz at a EU Summit in Brussels on Thursday.

Today, left March 14, Germany the euro zone.

Oh yeah, nothing official. And I hold my breath not wait for confirmation of objective, such as the reintroduction of the German mark. But the new German budget marks the beginning of the effective end of the eurozone and the euro.

What exactly happened is the so important? How can a single national budget will make such a difference?

Because any upturn in Europe on Germany is on the way.

The German budget 2014 announced by the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Wednesday, containing an extra EUR 5 billion (US$ 6.4 billion) in spending cuts eve of a European Summit. Total net new borrowing for 2014 to 6.4 billion euros (U.S.$ 8.3 billion), will be a 40-year low.

And it is balancing the German budget on a path in the year 2015. This is a year ahead of the German Constitution.

If fiscal prudence is your goal, this budget deserves the praise heaped by Ministers for the economy of Philipp Rosler, who said: "with all modesty, this is a result of historic proportions. The lesson from the crisis is that sound finances are essential. Thanks to this approach, Germany is a pioneer in Europe. Our success with a policy of growth-oriented consolidation is the envy of the world."

The problem-apart from the complacency of this Kommentaren--this is fiscal prudence which isn't the most pressing goal in Europe's largest economies.

Jim Jubak

Everyone knows the Greek economy is a city and the home of the latest unemployment figures was pressed. Unemployment hitting 26% in the fourth quarter from 24.8% in the third quarter. Workers between 15 and 24 years old is the unemployment rate at 57.8%. The percentage of the unemployed hit 65.3% searched for more than a year for a job.

But the real problem is not Greece. The real problem is that the rest of Europe-except Germany-, such as Greece, facing rising unemployment with no medium-term relief in sight. Employment in the euro area as a whole decreased by 0.3% in the fourth quarter from the third quarter. Only Germany showed growth in jobs between the zone's major economies. The decline in employment is particularly threatening in the fourth quarter because the Christmas-shopping season generated usually jobs.

And the Outlook for an improvement? Grim. Ernst & young, for example projects that unemployment continue until 2014 will rise this year, and the recovery will be anemic. Until end of 2017 Ernst & young estimates, the unemployment rate in Europe of 11% is stuck.

At the EU Summit now underway to promote the growth of the European economies to propose measures. But it is not clear where growth maybe could come.

Germany's neighbors have with the land, to stimulate its own economy pleaded because additional demand could produce more spending by German consumers for goods from Spain, Italy and France. The new German budget seems to have taken off the table.

The European Central Bank seems also unwilling to intervene. The International Monetary Fund has to stimulate the ECB on growth in Europe, by man named its benchmark interest rate, but the Bank continued to insist insist that combined with austerity budgets of European governments lead the current monetary policy, to a higher growth in the second half of 2013 sufficient will. The Bank is obliged at the moment, waiting for structural economic reforms to work. This growth to take alternative from the table.

Other members of the euro zone, most particularly France, called for easing of euro-zone 3% budget deficit-GDP ratio rules to Governments higher cyclical deficits in difficult economic times, to allow. The French argue clearly in the Eigeninteresse--it looks as if France were a deficit to GDP ratio of 3.7% or more in this year instead of hitting the 3% target is executed. Germany, however, this has also continued to insist that the countries the budget rules-follow and was particularly insistent on the need for the major economies like France, tax examples of smaller euro-zone economies. To remove this last alternative.

And somehow that heads of State and Government, gathered at the Summit to produce a growth plan for the eurozone. The later post instructions for these sessions are always in advance drawn up, changed through discussion. The design for this event, according to the financial times, called "short-term targeted measures to promote growth and employment."

Before the session, this language took fire from Germany, Finland and the Netherlands. The announcement of the German budget 2014--an announcement that a week pressure at the Summit to hold the line on discipline so that the budget ahead of the Summit would released - seems moved. Germany and austerity measures advocates such as European Commission Minister Olli Rehn have heaped scorn on French calls for the relaxation of the budget rules.

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