Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• The War on Poverty Is Over. Rich People Won. The sociologist Matthew Desmond believes that being poor is different in the U.S. than in other rich countries. How is poverty different in America than in its peer countries? Matthew Desmond: We have more of it. We have double the child-poverty rate of Germany and South Korea. We have a lot less to go around with, in terms of fighting poverty. We collect a much smaller share of our GDP in taxes every year. (The Atlantic)
• Young Americans Are Dying at Alarming Rates, Reversing Years of Progress: Car accidents, homicides, suicides and drug overdoses have pushed up death rates for children and teens in the U.S. (Wall Street Journal) see also Students are increasingly refusing to go to school. It’s becoming a mental health crisis. Since the pandemic, more students are school-avoidant, leaving parents feeling hopeless and schools unequipped to find a solution. (USA Today)
• Drug Shortages Near an All-Time High, Leading to Rationing: A worrisome scarcity of cancer drugs has heightened concerns about the troubled generic drug industry. Congress and the White House are seeking ways to address widespread supply problems. (New York Times)
• The Ugly Truth Behind “We Buy Ugly Houses” HomeVestors of America, the self-proclaimed “largest homebuyer in the U.S.,” trains its nearly 1,150 franchisees to zero in on homeowners’ desperation. dementia now carved into her short-term memory: A recent neurological assessment had found the 82-year-old was unable to say what year it was or name the city she was in. She routinely mistook her adult son for his uncle. (ProPublica)
• 1 in 5 Young Chinese Is Jobless, and Millions More Are About to Graduate: The youth unemployment rate, which spiked during the pandemic, reached a record high this week, showing the perils of China’s uneven economic recovery. (New York Times)
• Elon Musk Didn’t Just Do Turkey’s Bidding. Censoring for Strongmen Is Now a Pattern. Free speech—unless a country doesn’t really do free speech. (Slate)
• Conservative pundits are increasingly open about who they think should be killed: Right-wing media cheer DeSantis’ expansion of the death penalty and try to justify the extrajudicial homicide of Jordan Neely. (Media Matters)
• Envision Healthcare files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Envision suffered from declining profits amid hurdles from the COVID-19 pandemic and prolonged legal battles with health insurer UnitedHealthcare. “The bankruptcy wipes out private equity firm KKR’s investment in Envision. In 2018, the PE firm shelled out over $5 billion in 2018 to take Envision private, in a deal valued at $9.9 billion including debt. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that an Envision bankruptcy filing would be one of the steepest losses in KKR’s history.” (Healthcare Dive) see also Health Insurance Claim Denied? See What Insurers Said Behind the Scenes: Learn how to request your health insurance claim file, which can include details about what your insurer is saying about you and your case. (ProPublica)
• How to Raise $89 Million in Small Donations, and Make It Disappear: A group of conservative operatives using sophisticated robocalls raised millions of dollars from donors using pro-police and pro-veteran messages. But instead of using the money to promote issues and candidates, an analysis by The New York Times shows, nearly all the money went to pay the firms making the calls and the operatives themselves, highlighting a flaw in the regulation of political nonprofits. (New York Times)
• Justice Thomas Ethics Review Questioned by US Court Leader in 2012: Thomas faced complaints in 2011 over reporting wife’s income Judiciary leadership member objected to lack of information. (Bloomberg)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Robyn Grew, Incoming CEO of Man Group, (and current President). Man Group is the largest publicly traded hedge fund in the world, whose history dates back 230 years to 1783. Previously, she held senior positions at Barclays Capital, Lehman Brothers, and LIFFE.
World may breach climate target soon
Source: Semafor
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