economy

This interesting article on deskmag discusses the German government’s plan to force freelancers to pay a compulsory retirement ‘contribution’. Will it kill off entrepreneurship and destroy millions of independent careers? At least that’s the opinion of Tim Wessels, an IT specialist from Hamburg who has launched a petition against the so-called “Rewarding Life’s Work” law. With this law, provided it is passed, Freelancers will be forced to pay €350+ a month to support the broken pension system, on top of the €300-€600 they must already pay for health insurance (plus other taxes). Demanding that entrepreneurs fork out at least €650 a month in contributions before they earn a single cent will end innovation in Germany…

In 2010, women became the majority of the U.S. workforce for the first time in the country’s history. Also, 57% of college students are now women. While men continue to dominate the executive ranks and corporate board rooms, women now hold a number of lucrative careers: they make up 54% of accountants, 45% of law associates and approximately 50% of all banking and insurance jobs. These statistics, which appeared in Hanna Rosin’s Atlantic article “The End of Men,” have prompted considerable attention and debate…

If it comes to workspace, work time, global markets or salary, the job-world is changing rapidly, especially in the developed countries of the world. For example there are some people who are not having a real traditional job anymore. People are doing freelancing or are part of the so called “gig economy”. In the past you would have gotten a simple answer about the question what they are working:

“I work in manufacturing” or “I’m a teacher” etc. But nowadays you will find a lot more complex and undefined answers, they can’t label their “jobs” properly. They will give you loads of projects or things they are or are not working on right now. Exactly this progress is raising the question of Mathew Ingram: “Are defined hours of work an anachronism that’s holding us back? Or is it freedom to work whenever we want and/or is it a trap that causes us to work more, rather than less?”

“berlin, july 14 (reuters) – germany is unlikely to see sizeable economic growth in the rest of 2009, though a recovery could begin in 2010, according to wolfgang franz, president of the zew economic research institute. ‘what we’re likely to see in the next few months is a kind of undulating economy with gross domestic product growth of round about nil – at times slightly above, at times slightly below,’ franz told germany’s ard television on tuesday…’.”

read full article @

“in a good economy, americans start hundreds of thousands of new businesses every year. and in a bad economy, like today’s? they do pretty much the same thing…”