Weekend Digest: The Meeting A Millionaire Edition

For our weekend business and political readers:

IN WHAT CITIES COULD YOU MOST LIKELY MEET A MILLIONAIRE?

Interesting question posed by Forbes. If you think it’s in the U.S., think again.

If you want to meet millionaires, go to Europe. According to a study conducted by Spears magazine and wealth consultancy company WealthInsight, you’re most likely to cross paths with a millionaire in the tiny city-state of Monaco. Well known throughout the world as a playground for the rich and famous, nearly a third of the principality’s 37,000 population are millionaires.

European cities totally dominate the top five, with only American entry. Can you guess which city it is? For the full chart listing, click on this link.

ARE YOUR WORK HOURS UNPREDICTABLE?

If they are, chances are good it is stressing you out. Harvard Business Review has taken an in-depth look at control, or lack of control, over your time.

In the modern workforce, control over your time is a valuable form of currency: for many, it’s an equal aspiration to getting rich (if it’s any proof,“control your time” has almost 200,000,000 more mentions on Google than “make more money”). And yet as jobs become ever more dependent on online connectivity and technology, more of us are losing control over our time.

What is the key reason for this and whatever happened to workplace flexibility?

In the end, it’s control over your day that empowers people and gives satisfaction at work. We all must have control over our time in order to function and create solid families and normal lives.

Not happening for you or your colleagues?  Find out more what could be behind it all, at this link.

PERFORMANCE REVIEW

Fast Company says, “There’s one adjective that’s never used to criticize men, yet it shows up at an alarming rate in women’s performance reviews.”

This was reported after a linguist researcher found there were repetitive review statements about women, but not men. One review in particular became the catalyst for her study.

These statements, uttered by an engineering manager who was preparing performance reviews, were the catalyst for linguist Kieran Snyder to see if she could quantify the double standards in the way male and female employees are evaluated.

Her results? Click on this link to find out.

WHERE’S THE CASH GOING?

So, as Marketplace reports, “If millennials aren’t using cash, who is?

“When you buy your morning latte, do you pay cash or charge it? A recent survey by credit card.com found that if you’re a millennial, the chances are about 50-50. Moreover, mobile payment options are tilting those odds in credit’s favor.”

And is there a county/city divide between using plastic or cash? Follow this link to “cash-in” on the full story.

REAR VIEW MIRROR BIGGER THAN WINDSHIELD

In other words, “Why do political campaigns tell us what their candidates have done, instead of what they are going to do?” asks The Washington Post.

And case-in-point is Arkansas Democratic Senator Mark Pryor’s recent campaign ad.

The Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) campaign shook up their race against US. Rep. Tom Cotton by releasing an ad last week that focused on Pryor’s vote in favor of Obamacare. 

Commentators from across the political spectrum have examined the Pryor ad for what it says about the shifting and more favorable political situation of Obamacare in 2014.

The embrace of a provision of Obamacare by an embattled Democratic incumbent running in a red state is certainly new and noteworthy. But the rhetorical strategy of the ad is tried and true.

The Post writer says Pryor focuses exclusively on what he has done in the past and, “In the ad, Pryor never discusses what he plans to do in the Senate in the next six years.”

For more on this story, follow this link.

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN AMERICA’S COAL HEARTLAND?

“It’s not just the typical bust,” reports The Washington Post. It’s called the new Central Appalachian economic experience. “A job-hunt in a region whose sustaining industry is in an unprecedented freefall,” says The Post.

More than 10,000 miners have lost jobs over the past two-and-a-half years in southern West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, and their plight illustrates how, even amid an economic recovery, certain segments of the workforce are being shut out.

Even though the economy is growing in northern parts of West Virginia, driven by a natural gas boom, those in the geographically isolated southern parts have shown a tendency to stay put, even if it means sliding toward poverty.

“This is where you grew up; you can fish, you can hunt. Land is cheap. Chances are your grandfather owned that property,” said Ted Boettner, executive director of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. “So leaving that to go somewhere else where you’ll be stuck in Toledo doesn’t sound very attractive.”

So what are the possible options? Are any of these former coal workers willing to adapt and move on. Go inside The Post story for a moving and gritty piece that explores this dilemma in depth at this link.

ROMNEY 2.0?

POLITICO reports, that the day after Mitt Romney opened the door to another possible presidential run, a new poll shows he has a huge lead among likely 2016 Iowa Republican caucus voters.

The survey comes as rumors have begun to swirl about a potential Romney bid for president in 2016. After months of insisting that he will not run again, the former Massachusetts governor on Tuesday acknowledged that “circumstances can change.”

For complete survey results and analysis, click on this link.

STRETCH TIME FOR MITCH McCONNELL

Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell is the Senate minority leader. He hopes to become the Senate majority leader. If just a few key state like Arkansas, turn-out Democratic Senators he will obtain his goal. That is, if he wins his own re-election race.

“There’s only one thing Barack Obama needs to keep his grip on power,” Mitch McConnell said, his voice cracking amid the applause. “He needs the U.S. Senate!”

That’s classic McConnell on the stump at a campaign rally in the Commonwealth. McConnell uses his power to throttle the president almost more than his Democratic opponent. But wisely, he combines his rhetoric to entwine and bash them both.

“By any standard, Barack Obama has been a disaster for our country,” he declared. “Now, if you think about it, that’s what you get for electing someone with no experience. He was only two years into his first job when he started campaigning for the next one. Sound familiar?”

McConnell was referring to his opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes, who stood a few feet away on the faux redbrick porch in a stylish navy dress and tan heels. Two years ago, Grimes, 35, was sworn in as Kentucky’s secretary of state; a year later, as McConnell prepared to run for his sixth term in the Senate, she emerged as the Democrats’ best hope to depose him.

“Polling had put McConnell and Grimes nearly dead even since May,” reports The New York Times. How has Grimes managed to keep this race so close and what part does the Tea Party play in all this?

For a great read on one of the nation’s most intriguing political races as it reaches its stretch-run, go to this link.

LANDLINES A THING OF THE PAST FOR HARVARDX

Landlines have been steadily declining in homes across America, but not so much in the business setting. HarvardX is taking it to the next level.

So when the team at HarvardX, the university’s online learning initiative, began setting up its new offices in Cambridge, down came the walls and the cubicles, in came the long tables and shared work spaces. And out went the landlines.

Instead of traditional desk phones, employees at HarvardX use their own cell phones and collect $50 per month from the university to help cover the bills.

So how’s it working out? “Dial-up” this link from Marketplace to find out.

ROBIN WILLIAMS’ FINAL DAYS CHRONICLED IN ROLLING STONE

Just out, the newest issue of Rolling Stone “…is devoted to the triumphant life and painful final days of a comedic genius: Robin Williams, who died after hanging himself in his California home on August 11th at the age of 63.”

Contributing editor David Browne traces Williams’ comedic roots to his childhood, when he’d try to attract the attention of his mother, Laurie (“The first laugh is always the one that gets you hooked,” Williams once said) and spent hours alone with a massive collection of toy soldiers, making up voices for many of them.

For more on this touching and sad story, click on this link.