Money for Nothing

Money for Nothing

Fair Shot Chris Hughes is a very wealthy man. But the cofounder of Facebook didn’t start out that way. His parents are first generation college graduates from small-town North Carolina, one generation removed from the hardscrabble working class of the Great Depression. As he tells it in his new memoir-cum-manifesto, Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn , Hughes studied hard and won a scholarship to Phillips Academy Andover, a prestigious New England boarding school, followed by admittance to Harvard. There, he met Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz; the three started a little online college experiment that later […]

New Envestnet Insurance Exchange Integrates Insurance Solutions into Wealth Management Practice

Envestnet Advisor Summit , which is currently underway at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.

The Envestnet Insurance Exchange will seamlessly connect select insurance carriers and established account processing vendors with Envestnet enterprise clients, allowing advisors to deliver cohesive and consistent holistic advice by incorporating insurance solutions into the wealth management process. The exchange will service large financial institutions including bank wealth management, independent advisors, broker-dealers and Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs), among others. It will offer fixed, fixed-indexed, variable, contingent-deferred, and private placement annuities with leading insurance carriers.

"We’re launching the Envestnet Insurance Exchange in response to the […]

Guaranteed income is a no-brainer—just don’t call it an annuity

Guaranteed income is a no-brainer—just don’t call it an annuity

Those near or in retirement really like the idea of receiving a Guaranteed Lifetime Income (GLI). But tell them this is the same as an old-fashioned life annuity and suddenly many lose interest.

That’s a pity because, as this column has long argued, there is a growing need for a Guaranteed Lifetime Income, particularly as employer-sponsored defined benefit pensions fall by the wayside.

The prevailing bias against annuities is confirmed with the results of a new 2018 Canadian Guaranteed Lifetime Income Study, conducted by Greenwald & Associates and CANNEX for two Canadian insurance companies.In the study, almost half of the subjects […]

It’s Time for America to Embrace Guaranteed Income

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/20/america-guaranteed-income-chris-hughes

Record low unemployment and record highs for the stock market don’t tell the full story of what is really happening in today’s economy. For many, a job used to mean stability: 40 hours a week, benefits, vacation days, sick leave and retirement savings plans. But according to a 2016 study by Princeton economists, nearly all of the jobs created in the preceding decade were part-time, contract or temporary. Today a job is more often than not just an unreliable gig.This didn’t happen spontaneously. Our political leaders over the past 40 years lowered taxes on corporations and the […]

Stockton, CA Gets Ready To Experiment With Universal Basic Income

Stockton, CA Gets Ready To Experiment With Universal Basic Income

With alleged record low unemployment throughout the nation, the reality in Stockton is radically different. The Technocrat idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI) is being explored as the only solution: simply giving money to citizens. ⁃ TN Editor

Wage stagnation. Rising housing prices. Loss of middle-class jobs. The looming threat of automation. These are some of the problems facing Stockton and its residents, but the city’s mayor, Michael Tubbs, says his city is far from unique.

“I think Stockton is absolutely ground zero for a lot of the issues we are facing as a nation,” Tubbs said.Stockton is one of many […]

Math doesn’t add up for Social Security

Math doesn’t add up for Social Security

(Photo: TRN file photo) The “guaranteed income” the vast majority of Americans will (and do) depend on for the vast majority of their income is Social Security. You’d think that Social Security would be the ideal income stream. After all, it will keep up with inflation and it’s got the best guarantee there is. There are some problems with this.

First, Social Security may not keep up with inflation. January 2009 saw the largest cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) to Social Security retirement benefits since the hyper-inflation period of the early ‘80s. And while seniors, according to The Senior Citizens League, welcomed […]

Fighting against poverty and precarity in Europe: What is the proposal of European basic income advocates ?

Fighting against poverty and precarity in Europe: What is the proposal of European basic income advocates ?

How can the EU provide an answer to the upheavals of the labour market? While 40% of employers have difficulty finding candidates with the appropriate skills, precarious employment continues to rise. The next European elections are in May, 2019. It’s time to put basic income on the agenda. How to prepare for the debate with candidates?

Aurélie Hampel, a member of Unconditional Basic Income Europe ( UBIE ), gives us some hints. She is coordinating a delegation of 20 young Europeans for the major European Youth Event in Strasbourg which will take place in the European Parliament in […]

Pension boost rings bell for Esquimalt firefighters

Pension boost rings bell for Esquimalt firefighters

Federal minister Jean-Yves Duclos is spreading the word that the government will rollout its enhanced Canada Pension Plan. He paid a visit to Esquimalt Fire Hall on Friday. The firefighters in their early 30s and 40s were seen as some of the beneficiaries of the enhancement. Federal minister Jean-Yves Duclos pointed to firefighters in their early 30s and 40s at the Esquimalt Fire Hall on Friday as a generation benefiting from the government’s bolstering of the Canada Pension Plan.

On the heels of a $30-million funding announcement for Greater Victoria housing on Thursday, Duclos appeared at the fire hall to […]

The Long, Tortured History of the Job Guarantee

The Long, Tortured History of the Job Guarantee

It took a half-century of growing inequality, a massive recession, a spoiler primary campaign by a self-proclaimed socialist, and the election of a quasi-fascist, but big ideas are here again for Democrats. Medicare for All, paid family leave, tuition-free college—not since the late 1960s and ‘70s has the Democratic Party had such a bold, liberal agenda. Now, likely presidential candidates are even talking about job guarantees and universal basic income. The future seems left indeed.

But before assuming that anything is possible, it is worth considering just how bad things had to get for these goals, many of which were […]

A Universal Basic Income: the Next Big Thing in policy

A Universal Basic Income: the Next Big Thing in policy

Too bad Finland is phasing out its experiment with a guaranteed income, because we don’t really understand anything about it. Germany should conduct its own trial, says our editor-in-chief. Let’s try to answer that. Source: DPA Policy boffins all over the world are feeling a bit let down by Finland. It has been doing an experiment with a prototype of a so-called Universal Basic Income (UBI), but is now phasing out this trial ahead of schedule.

The UBI is an old idea gaining new currency amid fears about the job-destroying potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI). That anxiety is overblown. Yes, […]