Archive
Reuters blog archive
from The Great Debate:
‘Inclusive Capitalism’: Bridging business-labor divide
Economic policy debates often focus on areas of division and discord. On the minimum wage, you’ll see some businesses fighting labor. On regulation, you have government versus the free market.
There are plenty of areas where American workers and companies agree, however, such as the need for public investments in infrastructure and education.
There is another worker-business alignment, explored in a new Center for American Progress report, that has us — a corporate chief executive and a labor leader — excited about its potential to boost innovation and workers’ wages when we desperately need both.
“Inclusive capitalism” is based on the simple idea that when a company does well, its workers should also do well. Mechanisms to promote inclusive capitalism include everything from broad-based profit-sharing and stock options to worker cooperatives and employee stock ownership plans.
from Expert Zone:
Budget 2013: Need to review tax incentives
(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and not those of Reuters)
It's going to be a tight budget this year and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram will be looking to save every rupee in revenue to reduce the budget deficit, to which he has committed. One option would be to withdraw tax incentives which have outlived their purpose.
The finance ministry is only too aware of revenue lost from tax incentives. In 2011/12, it was a loss of 5.29 trillion rupees. If tax incentives are withdrawn, the 2013/14 budget would be in surplus. Nothing would amuse the finance minister more.
from Global Investing:
Corruption and business potential sometimes go together
By Alice Baghdjian
Uzbekistan, Bangladesh and Vietnam found themselves cheered and chided this week.
The Corruption Perceptions Index, compiled by Berlin-based watchdog Transparency International, measured the perceived levels of public sector corruption in 176 countries and all three found their way into the bottom half of the study.
from Global Investing:
Easy business trend in emerging Europe
Polish central bank governor Marek Belka doesn't apportion a lot of importance to the fact that Poland can boast the second biggest improvement in the latest World Bank's ease of doing business index, after Kosovo.
"This year we have improved, but I don’t care too much about it," Belka said at a meeting in London today.
from Jack and Suzy Welch:
(Business) haters gonna hate – but who gets hurt?
“You didn’t build that.”
“Corporations aren’t people.”
With the first, a revealing gaffe, and the second, a wildly cheered campaign refrain, one party has certainly made it clear how it feels about American business these days.
It ain’t good.
Well, big surprise, we don’t agree. We consider entrepreneurs American heroes and, as we’ve opined recently, we think many corporations brim with humanity. Business can’t operate unfettered, of course, without any form of oversight or control. But our view, essentially, is that business is a source of great good for society, with the power to create hope and opportunity like no other institution going.
from Deepti Govind:
India inflation consistently tough to pin down
High inflation is a drag on economic growth in the world’s second most populous country and matters immensely to over 400 million people, or over a third of India’s total population, who struggle to earn enough to feed their families three meals a day.
The particularly volatile nature of inflation in India has confounded policymakers and small business owners and has left economists, who are often running complex statistical models based on a dearth of reliable data, with a poor forecasting record.
from MacroScope:
Three years after last increase, business group calls for U.S. minimum wage hike
Bucking the usual tune of private sector lobbyists, a group called Business for a Fair Minimum Wage is calling for a hike in the minimum wage, saying it would boost business and the economy.
Business for a Fair Minimum Wage is a project of Business for Shared Prosperity, which describes itself as a national network of "forward thinking" business owners and executives.
from Oddly Enough Blog:
Attention! Everything has been recalled!
Blog Guy, I guess you've been reading about the huge recall of cantaloupes because of that deadly listeria outbreak?
Yes, but recalls in general are coming too fast to count. In the past month, we've had stories about recalls of lettuce, candy, ice cream, pine nuts, brewers yeast tablets, prawns, soy burgers, kale chips, spinach, organic eggs, frozen tuna...
from Jeremy Gaunt:
Splendour in China and other branding
MSCI, the index provider used by leading investors across the world, has decided it needs a name change in Greater China. In a news release this morning the firm (which is no longer owned by Morgan Stanley, the MS in its title) said its Chinese business would henceforth be branded as MSCI 明晟.
When I tweeted this @reutersJeremyG, one wag suggested this meant "MSCI small-ladder-bigger-ladder-books-on-a-picnic-table", which is what it indeed looks like to an untrained eye (like mine). But it is actually Ming Sheng, which apparently is supposed to symbolise "brightness and transparency, prosperity and splendour".
from Entrepreneurial:
Small businesses hiring more online workers
When Casey McConnell started text messaging marketing company Qittle he took the traditional route of hiring onsite employees. But he soon realized it was more advantageous to hire workers online.
“We found it was easy to find these specialists or people that we could hire for a certain amount,” said McConnell, the CEO of Qittle. “We didn’t have the extra overhead and we just got the project done. It’s really easy for us to ramp up our needs or pull back using contractors. If we had an internal staff it’s pretty hard to fluctuate like that.”
