Posts tagged business
Germany has the economic strengths America once boasted: Germany with its manufacturing base and export prowess is the U.S. of yesteryear, an economic power unlike any of its European neighbors. It has thrived on principles America seems to have lost.
The couple, in their early 50s, aren’t retired or well off. They live in a small Tudor-style house in this middle-class town about 30 miles northwest of Frankfurt. He’s a foreman at a glass factory; she works part time for a company that tracks inventories for retailers. Their combined income is a modest $40,000.
Yet the Krugers have a higher standard of living than many Americans who have twice that income.
Their secret: little debt, frugal habits and a government that is intensely focused on high production, low inflation and extensive social services.
That has given them job security and good medical care as well as well-maintained roads, trains and bike paths. Both of their adult children are out on their own, thanks in part to Germany’s job-training system and heavy subsidies for university education.
For instance, Volkmar’s out-of-pocket costs for stomach surgery and 10 days in a hospital totaled just $13 a day. College tuition for their son runs about $260 a semester.
Photo: Vera and Volkmar Kruger, seen here in the town of Limburg, Germany, not far from their home in Elz, earn about $40,000 a year but live as well as an American couple making twice as much. Credit: Don Lee / Los Angeles Times
This is one of those few times when I think about moving back…
We try to encourage people to drive carefully and safely and then the police will not stop them. But a lot of people have lost confidence and they’d rather just leave.
Latino exodus hurts South Carolina economy. My video from Greenville, SC will air Jan 25, 2012 on http://bbc.com/news
Guillermina owns fours stores in Greenville, SC, but the economy and a tough new immigration law have made things difficult for her and many Latinos in South Carolina. #bbcmagazine #bbcalteredstates (Taken with instagram)
What We Know About the Business of Digital Journalism
Columbia Journalism School releases report about digital media business
The report argues that news organizations must do more to embrace the unique attributes of the Internet rather than trying to adapt Web offerings to legacy business models. The authors suggest that news organizations and their audiences “regard digital platforms as being in a constant state of transformation, one that demands a faster and more consistent pace of innovation and investment.”
Among their recommendations:
- Digital platforms should not simply repurpose existing news content. They should feature unique, high-value content designed specifically for digital media.
- Media companies should redefine the relationship between audience and advertising. Journalists must better understand their existing and potential audiences, and strive to ensure deeper loyalties.
- Media companies ought to rethink their relationships with advertisers and gain a fuller appreciation for how advertisers now reach their customers via social media, new-media ads and search engine optimization.
- News and marketing companies should move beyond the impression-based pricing systems that dominate online advertising, and forge new models that integrate digital ads and social-media outreach.
- Media companies must restore content value to digital advertising and move beyond the decades-old relics that convey little information or appeal to consumers.
- News organizations must balance vigilance about content theft with the realization that most aggregators operate within the bounds of copyright law. They should accept the fact that this generates value for readers, and develop thoughtful approaches to understanding what topics best lend themselves to aggregation.
- Integration of a legacy division—news content or ad sales—with new media is not for everyone. Larger enterprises should consider creating separate digital staffs, particularly on the business side.
- Any news site that adopts a pay scheme now should have very limited expectations for its success—at least on the Web. Requiring digital readers to pay may help to slow circulation losses, but that is hardly a long-term solution. A pay plan merged with an ambitious strategy to improve users’ experience on mobile platforms has a much better chance to succeed.
This recovery is spread widely because every German town seems to have its periphery populated by the famed “mittelstand” of small and not-so-small companies, exporting countless unglamorous but profitable products. These companies are often family-owned and founded on values of quality and investment, combined with a shrewd search for markets.
BBC News - What is the secret to Germany’s economic success?
Making things that other people want to buy.
With 33% unemployment, we need to get the much-needed jobs first and talk about wages later.
Lillian Hoffman and her husband opened a cafe in Killdeer, North Dakota, five years ago. She tells the BBC how the recent oil boom has affected her business and what locals think about the changing town.
The National Enquirer is getting killed not by a waning appetite for gossip but by a waxing sophistication in satisfying it.
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