Tag Archives: Perverse Incentives

France’s Financial Transaction Tax Experiment Is Turning Into The Worst Kind Of Failure

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“Investors who own French shares are selling them and taking positions on them through derivatives instruments such as contracts for difference, structured products and ETFs, according to a Paris-based lawyer. ‘Most structured transactions remain outside the tax,’ he says. ‘It is due only if you have actually purchased the shares.’  In other words, instead of curbing excessive speculation, the tax is simply forcing those speculative activities into darker, less-regulated corners of the market.”

http://www.businessinsider.com/france-transaction-tax-and-derivatives-2013-1#ixzz2GzRC7C9m

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Health care law may mean less hiring in 2013

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“Many businesses plan to bring on more part-time workers next year, trim the hours of full-time employees or curtail hiring because of the new health care law, human resource firms say.  The so-called employer mandate to offer health coverage doesn’t take effect until Jan. 1, 2014. But to determine whether employees work enough hours on average to receive benefits, employers must track their schedules for three to 12 months prior to 2014 — meaning many are restructuring payrolls now or will do so early next year.  About a quarter of businesses surveyed by consulting firm Mercer don’t offer health coverage to employees who work at least 30 hours a week.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2012/12/30/health-care-law-jobs/1785641/

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Meet the Weeds That Monsanto Can’t Beat

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“When Monsanto revolutionized agriculture with a line of genetically engineered seeds, the promise was that the technology would lower herbicide use—because farmers would have to spray less. In fact, just the opposite happened.  Sixteen years on, Roundup (Monsanto’s tradename for its glyphosate herbicide) has certainly killed lots of weeds. But the ones it has left standing are about as resistant to herbicide as the company’s Roundup Ready crops, which are designed to survive repeated applications of the agribusiness giant’s own Roundup herbicide.”

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/12/gm-crops-roundup-italian-ryegrass

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Why You Might Only Be Able to Get Part-Time Work in 2013

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“Here is what I am doing for the rest of the year — working with every manager in my company so that as of January 1, 2013, none of our employees are working more than 28 hours a week.   We have got to get our company under 50 full time employees or else I am facing a bill from Obamacare in 2014 that will be several times larger than my annual profit.  I love my workers.  They make me a success.  But most of my competitors are small businesses that are exempt from the Obamacare hammer.  To compete, I must make sure my company is exempt as well.  This means that our 400+ full time employees will have to be less than 50 in 2013.”

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2012/12/why-you-might-only-be-able-to-get-part.html

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Useless U.S.-Canada train roundtrips exploit U.S. energy program

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“A train carrying biodiesel crisscrossed the Canada-US border repeatedly without unloading its cargo, exploiting a loophole in a US green energy program.  The EPA mandates that oil companies must bring a certain amount of renewable fuel to the US market. Verdeo retired an equivalent number of credits generated from ethanol production that were worth pennies compared to biodiesel credits that traded as high as one US dollar apiece when it turned the train around.  A dozen back-and-forth railway trips across the border reportedly cost Can $2.6 million but would have generated biodiesel credits worth US $12 million.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/12/19/canada-probes-scheme-to-exploit-u-s-energy-program/

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India suspends doctors over banned fetal ‘sex tests’

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“A study published last year in The Lancet said sex selection of fetuses in India led to 7.1 million fewer girls than boys up to age six, a gender gap that had grown by more than a million in a decade.  The 1996 law designed to prevent the use of ultrasound for prenatal sex tests is widely flouted in India.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/18/india-suspends-doctors-over-banned-fetal-sex-tests/

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Russians discover four vats of embryos during stroll in the woods

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“The 50-litre (13-gallon) containers of formaldehyde in the woods of the industrial Ural Mountains region contained 248 embryos in all, the police said. The four strollers noticed the contents because some of the lids to the vats had popped open when they were dropped and some of the embryos had spilled to the ground. The embryos appeared to have been illegally dropped off by a local hospital that treated biological waste for four nearby medical facilities.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/24/russians-discover-four-vats-of-embryos-during-stroll-in-the-woods/

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Human Corpses Are Prize In Global Drive For Profits

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“A single, disease-free body can spin off cash flows of $80,000 to $200,000 for the various non-profit and for-profit players involved in recovering tissues and using them to manufacture medical and dental products, according to documents and experts in the field.  Ground-level body wranglers in the U.S. can get as much as $10,000 for each corpse they secure through their contacts at hospitals, mortuaries and morgues. Funeral homes can act as middlemen to identify potential donors. Public hospitals can get paid for the use of tissue-recovery rooms.   And medical products multinationals like RTI?  Last year RTI earned $11.6 million in pretax profits on revenues of $169 million.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/icij/human-corpses-profits_b_1679094.html

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