A dare to dream together, megadonors, megathreats, countries with highest wealth, hiring disparity, housing, mpox, going to the dogs
September 3, 2024 - The Nett Report
Every other week, the award-winning Nett Report provides readers with thoughtful perspectives helpful to navigating life in a changing world. Past issues.
“Perhaps the American dream is no dream at all, but instead a dare to dream together.” - Poet Amanda Gorman at the 2024 Democratic National Convention
Future of Work / The Economy
“If we want companies to do more than maximize profits for investors, we need to give them that mandate.” - Margot Brandenburg, senior program officer, Ford Foundation
Countries with the highest wealth per person
The Visual Capitalist on August 27, 2024, provided the data and visualization about which countries have the highest wealth per person. The story looked at both average wealth and median wealth. The top three in average wealth: Switzerland ($709.6k), Luxembourg ($607.5k), and Hong Kong ($582.0k). The U.S. was fourth at $564.9k. Median wealth told a different story. Top three: Luxembourg ($372.3), Australia ($261.8k), and Belgium ($256.2k). The U.S. wasn’t in the top ten for median wealth.
Workplace disparity between men and women continues in feedback from bosses
An August 8, 2024, story in Fortune reported that “76% of high-performing women receive negative feedback compared to 2% of high-achieving men.” The report by Textio “analyzed performance reviews for more than 23,000 workers across 250 organizations … About 88% of these outstanding women workers receive feedback on their personalities, while the same is true for only 12% of their male counterparts.”
L’Oréal heiress loses wealthiest woman title to Walmat heiress
Women might still not get a fair shake at work, but a privileged few are doing quite well thank you. L’Oréal heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers late last year became the first woman to amass a fortune of $100 billion and the title of richest woman in the world. “She held the title of richest woman for a few months, even though her fortune has tumbled to $89.9 billion since the start of 2024,” according to an August 29, 2024, story in Fortune. Walmart heiress Alice Walton, the daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, recently took over the title of richest woman as 2024 “saw her wealth leap to $95.7 billion.”
Too few houses drive the housing crunch
Lack of housing has been a continuing topic of conversation in terms of both homelessness and lack of affordability for middle-class Americans. According to an August 22, 2024, article in The New York Times, “In the three years leading up to the Great Recession, homebuilders started about two million homes a year. That number plunged during the crisis and never fully rebounded. Since 2010, builders have started about 1.1 million new homes a year on average — far below the 1.6 million needed to keep up with population growth. America is millions of homes behind, and it gets worse each year. Two issues are key drivers to the shortage of homes according to The Times:
Developers everywhere find it harder to raise money, and homeowners find it harder to get loans. That’s because banks and the government, in a quest to prevent another housing bubble, have raised lending standards and made mortgages harder to get.
Builders simply aren’t putting up subdivisions at the rate they once did. They’re cautious about overbuilding after the losses they incurred in the 2008 crisis, and they’ve become reluctant to invest and expand before they know they have a winning hand.
Climate Change
Inflation Reduction Act perspective
"I can see, feel, and taste that a clean energy future is not only possible – it’s underway thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act. In two years, we’ve created more than 330,000 jobs - all while helping hard-working families breathe cleaner air and save money on their energy bills. Just imagine what we can do in ten years of this law.” - Gina McCarthy, former White House national climate advisor
Rules reducing sulfur dioxide in shipping fuel contributed to warming
Complex problems like climate change sometimes create solutions with unintended consequences. According to a June 9, 2024, article in the Los Angeles Times, a 2020 rule by the International Maritime Organization “substantially reduced the amount of harmful sulfur dioxide content allowed in shipping fuel. The move was part of a broad strategy to improve public health.” There was an unintended consequence, “dirtier ship emissions contributed to the creation of bright clouds over the ocean. These bright clouds helped to reflect some of the sun's light and energy back into space. When sulfur dioxides were reduced, however, it resulted in fewer bright clouds, so more of the sun's heat and energy were able to reach Earth's surface, contributing to global warming.”
Trends in automobile purchases
I know we have been fixated on where the auto industry is going in recent issues, particularly as it relates to carbon-cutting EVs and hybrids. However, this is a dynamic and important market and new information continues to emerge. Here are some headlines from recent stories.
NIO is opening 100 Onvo stores next week to sell its new $30K Tesla Model Y challenger, elektrek, August 27, 2024
Plug-in hybrid car starts to win over buyers, Wall Street Journal, August 25, 2024
The hardest sell in American car culture, The Atlantic, August 22, 2024
Car experts make surprising discovery after examining high-mileage Tesla taxi: 'Degradation isn't an issue,' The Cool Down, August 22, 2024
Ford scraps all-electric SUV plan, saying drivers want hybrids, NPR, August 21, 2024
Here’s the summary as we see it. Drivers arebeginning to favor plug-in hybrid cars. Toyota has been leading that trend. Now, Ford is getting onboard. But hybrid cars are really SUV’s, because Americans aren’t buying sedans anymore, and here comes China with a market-busting all-electric SUV. Oh yeah, and all that concern about electric vehicle car batteries degrading might not be a problem after all. Stay tuned for more news from this dynamic market.
Political Divide
“if you're lost in the woods, start talking loudly about politics. Someone will come to argue with you.” – author unknown
Whose big money is driving the 2024 election?
When it comes to elections, it’s all about money. From using donation data as a proxy for polls to the need for funds to drive social and traditional media, money is the election lubricant. “The 50 biggest donors this cycle have collectively pumped $1.5 billion into political committees and other groups competing in the election,” according to an August 26, 2024, story in The Washington Post. The story lists the top individual donors, top 10 organizational donors, and top 50 overall.
Five global megathreats that could shape our future
An August 13, 2024, article in Forbes summarizes five potential megathreats that could shape our future. All are controversial in some way and fit into the category of political divide.
Power Struggles: The New Cold War. The United States, China, and Russia are locked in a complex dance of diplomacy, economic maneuvering, and occasional saber-rattling. It is a multifaceted contest across economic, technological, and ideological battlefields.
AI And Tech Advances: A Double-Edged Sword. The rapid march of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies promises to revolutionize every aspect of our lives. The potential benefits are mind-boggling. These technologies also pose challenges, like AI-powered hacking tools making even sophisticated systems vulnerable.
Climate Change: The Existential Threat. The World Bank estimates that climate change could force more than 140 million people to migrate within their countries by 2050. The increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, changing weather patterns, and more frequent droughts could lead to significant disruptions in global food supply chains.
The Debt Crisis: Living On Borrowed Time. Global debt hit a record $307 trillion in 2022, more than three times the size of the global economy. The COVID-19 pandemic forced governments worldwide to take on massive amounts of debt to support their economies. While this was necessary to prevent economic collapse, the World Bank has warned of a looming debt crisis in low-income countries. A wave of defaults could trigger a global financial crisis.
Stagflation: The Economic Bogeyman Returns. We last saw stagflation, a toxic mix of high inflation, slow economic growth, and high unemployment, in the 1970s, but some economists fear it could make a comeback. Raising interest rates to combat inflation could further slow economic growth. However, keeping rates low to stimulate growth could allow inflation to spiral out of control. One wrong move and the economy is on the rocks.
Forbes says “Addressing these challenges will require unprecedented global cooperation, innovative thinking, and a willingness to make tough choices. It will demand leadership from governments, businesses, and civil society. But most importantly, it will require each of us to play our part.”
Health
Kid creates soap that could prevent skin cancer
How could it be more logical? To prevent skin cancer, use soap as a delivery mechanism for drugs to fight and prevent skin cancer. That’s what Heman Bekele, Time’s “Kid of the Year,” did. According to an August 15, 2024, story in Time, the Ethiopian-born 15-year-old invented a soap that could one day treat and even prevent multiple forms of skin cancer. “It may take years before such a product comes to market, but this summer Heman is already spending part of every weekday working in a lab at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, hoping to bring his dream to fruition.”
Mpox health emergency, what’s spreading, where, and why
The World Health Organization recently declared mpox a public health emergency. According to an August 24, 2024, story in Science, there are actually three epidemics, each with their own variant in different locations and populations.
The first is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Where the clade I strain has spread from animals, likely small rodents, to people, “sometimes followed by limited spread from human to human.” These cases are mostly affecting children in the west and center of the country.
In 2023, a second mpox variant, clade 1b, began spreading in the eastern DRC. “Most of these cases are in adolescents and adults, and transmission is primarily through sexual contact.” This variant has spread to Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and Burundi, and travelers from Africa have carried the virus to Sweden and Thailand.
A third variant, clade II, has emerged in Nigeria. That country and others in West Africa have seen an occasional spillover of a virus termed clade II from animal reservoirs to humans. Variant clade IIb, is still circulating in Nigeria and “affects primarily gay men and their sexual networks. So far, about 100,000 people in more than 100 countries have been sickened.”
The Nett Light-Side
“I’m part of the team that’s going to put a man on the moon.” – the response from a worker sweeping the floor at NASA’s Cape Canaveral when President Kennedy asked him what he was doing.
The rest of this issue is going to the dogs!
Starting with Snoopy, this section is going to the dogs. First, in San Diego, dogs are practicing for a surfing competition that raises money for the Helen Woodward Animal Center, according to an August 26, 2024, story in Reuters. But that’s not all. Netflix is releasing a new documentary, Inside the Mind of a Dog. You can see the trailer here. Finally, rabies is not exclusive to dogs, but according to an August 15, 2024 story by Deep Sea Reporter, now it has jumped the divide between water and land, as fur seals in South Africa have contracted rabies. “This is the first time rabies has been detected in marine mammals.”
Space beer might taste better than Earth beer
Finally, to wash down all that doggy news, in the future you might want to drink space beer. An August 16, 2024, story in Popular Science reports on work being done by the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences indicating that brewing beer in microgravity conditions “may not only speed up the fermentation process – it may also produce higher quality products.” Microgravity is a condition where there is very little gravity, as in space.
Carl Nettleton is an award-winning writer, speaker, thought partner, facilitator, and subject-matter expert regarding water, climate, sustainability, the ocean, and binational U.S.-Mexico border affairs. Nettleton Strategies, the consultancy he founded in 2007, is a trusted source of analysis and advice on issues at the forefront of public policy, business, and the environment. He helps people and organizations to think strategically about their options for change. He is also the founder of OpenOceans Global, a nonprofit addressing ocean plastic in a new way.