Making simple changes to your spending can be an easy way to help you start saving. Learn how to save money on everyday expenses like groceries, transportation and entertainment.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1. What can you do not to buy on impulse at the supermarket?
2. Why may sales or discounts not be advisable?
3. 'It is advisable to save on the things that are important to us.' True or false?
4. How can you prevent throwing away spoiled groceries?
5. What time of the day is electricity cheaper?
6. How can you find out what petrol stations offer the cheapest fuel?
7. What is ‘a spontaneous meal out’ an example of?
You probably already know some of the basics, like how making your own coffee or bringing your lunch to work can help you save hundreds of dollars a year. If you're doing that, definitely keep it up. But let's look at a few other ways you can save on everyday expenses and how some simple decisions that you make every day can help you save money.
The supermarket is a great place to start because there are a lot of easy ways to cut down on your shopping bill. You may already be doing things like making a list to cut back on impulse buying, clipping coupons, or using apps to find deals, and even looking at the price per unit to help you get the most for your money.
But there are even more ways you can save. For example, when you see a sale or discount, be strategic. Sales and discounts can be great opportunities to save on things you need, but stores often offer incentives for items that a lot of people wouldn't normally get. So it can pay to be selective when considering any discounts you might be offered.
And while you're considering priorities, spend on what's important, save on what's not. For example, for some people, things like organic food or your favourite brands might be important to you; for others, what's important may be different. The point is that it might be worthwhile to spend a bit more on the items you care about but look for ways to save on the things that are less important to you to keep you on budget. Making simple trade-offs like these can help you save money without giving up what's important.
Finally, before you even make a shopping list, consider your actual eating and cooking habits. A good idea is to plan your meals ahead of time or challenge yourself to eat at least one more meal at home each week. This may help prevent you from tossing out spoiled groceries that you didn't eat or ordering takeout because you didn't buy enough food for the week. This can save you hundreds of dollars each year.
Keeping with household expenses and bills, you probably already turn off the lights when you leave a room and unplug gadgets when you aren't using them, right? But there are some other small changes you can make that can help you save even more around the house. For example, did you know that most utility companies charge more for electricity during different parts of the day? Peak hours, like the middle of the day, when more people are using electricity, often have substantially higher rates compared to early mornings or late at night. Doing your laundry or running your dishwasher off peak can likely help you save on your utility bill. You can check out your utility company's website to see if they list their peak hours or contact them directly.
Let's move on to transportation. Gas prices can be unpredictable, but technology could be a way to help you save. There are plenty of websites and apps that can help you locate which gas station in your area might be offering the cheapest prices. And depending on how often you drive and where you live, you may consider ditching your car altogether. Public transportation might be one option, and there are a number of car-sharing programs that allow you to affordably rent vehicles short term. And for the truly dedicated, how about biking? It's certainly a cost-effective and healthy alternative to both driving and public transportation.
It can be easy to follow others into overspending, but try getting creative and occasionally plan activities with your friends and family ahead of time that can help you avoid temptations, like a spontaneous meal out.
Saving money doesn't have to mean sacrificing fun! It pays to take some time to figure out where you're spending and what you're willing to cut back on. You don't necessarily have to do the math on every single decision you make, but being mindful of where your money is going and how simple trade-offs here or there can add up over the long run can help you get creative and find your own ways to trim costs every day.
KEY:
1 make a list, clip coupons, use apps to find deals, look at the price per unit
2 because many people don’t need those products
3 false
4 by having one more meal at home each week
5 in the early morning or late at night
6 through websites and apps
7 temptations that lead to overspending
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta Economy. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta Economy. Mostrar todas las entradas
viernes, 9 de junio de 2017
miércoles, 15 de marzo de 2017
Talking point: Money
This week's talking point is money. Before getting together with the members of your conversation group, go over the questions below so that ideas come to mind more easily the day you get together with your friends and you can work out vocabulary problems beforehand.
Look at the statements 1-8. Do you agree, partly agree or disagree? Give examples to support your opinions.
1 Money is for spending today. Who know what will happen tomorrow?
2 It’s important to save at least 10% of your salary each week.
3 If I can’t afford to buy something, I’m happy to borrow the money.
4 I’m always looking for new ways to make money.
5 I like to shop around for the best price before I buy something.
6 I only like buying things that are a good investment for the future.
7 Spending large amounts of money makes me feel nervous.
8 Having a regular income is better than having a lot of money one day and a little the next.
How are your attitudes different to your parents’ attitudes to money?
Teaching financial literacy
1 What does it mean to be good with money?
A saving money for the future
B not spending much money
C making your money grow
D spending money wisely
E getting the most for your money
F being rich
2 Are you good or bad with money? In what way?
3 Did your parents teach you lessons about money?
4 Did you learn any financial skills at school?
5 Is it important for schools to teach financial skills to children? Why? At what age?
Look at the statements 1-8. Do you agree, partly agree or disagree? Give examples to support your opinions.
1 Money is for spending today. Who know what will happen tomorrow?
2 It’s important to save at least 10% of your salary each week.
3 If I can’t afford to buy something, I’m happy to borrow the money.
4 I’m always looking for new ways to make money.
5 I like to shop around for the best price before I buy something.
6 I only like buying things that are a good investment for the future.
7 Spending large amounts of money makes me feel nervous.
8 Having a regular income is better than having a lot of money one day and a little the next.
How are your attitudes different to your parents’ attitudes to money?
Teaching financial literacy
1 What does it mean to be good with money?
A saving money for the future
B not spending much money
C making your money grow
D spending money wisely
E getting the most for your money
F being rich
2 Are you good or bad with money? In what way?
3 Did your parents teach you lessons about money?
4 Did you learn any financial skills at school?
5 Is it important for schools to teach financial skills to children? Why? At what age?
sábado, 17 de diciembre de 2016
Reading test: The death of saving
For this week's reading test we are going to practice the multiple choice task. Read The Daily Mail article The death of saving: With pitiful interest rates, a third of us are not longer putting a penny aside and choose the option A, B or C which best completes each sentence. 0 is an example.
Britain is no longer a nation of savers – with a third us not putting aside a single penny at the end of each month. A report into social mobility in the UK warns that families can no longer afford to put money aside for a rainy day or to save for a holiday or home. Some 31 per cent have nothing left to put in the bank when the month is over, while 4 per cent save less than £10. Overall, half of the population save £100 or less. Only 23 per cent save £200 or more.
The Social Mobility Commission, which will today launch its annual State of the Nation report, said Britain was now a country of ‘haves and have nots’. People have also been given less incentive to save by rock bottom interest rates in recent years.
In addition, banks and building societies have been accused of exploiting savers by slashing hundreds of savings rates since the Bank of England cut the official interest rate in August from 0.5 per cent to 0.25 per cent. Some accounts have been chopped to zero, or to 0.01 per cent. Britons are currently saving only 5.1 per cent of their disposable income. This compares to 7.4 per cent only two years ago, according to official figures.
The Social Mobility Commission findings are also a damning criticism of successive governments – led by the Tony Blair regime – which have failed to improve social mobility. In 2004, the then Labour prime minister promised to make the spread of greater social mobility the cornerstone of his third term. Gordon Brown and David Cameron also promised to do more to improve the life chances of the less well-off. Yet, the public remains deeply pessimistic, despite hundreds of millions of pounds being spent and a number of high-profile initiatives being launched.
Nearly half of people – 45 per cent – believe that, in Britain today, where you end up in society is mainly determined by your background and who your parents were, according to a YouGov poll of 1,655 adults carried out for the commission. In contrast, only 29 per cent feel that Britain is a country where everyone has a fair chance to go as far as their talent and their hard work will take them. A majority of adults – 55 per cent – believe that children from privileged backgrounds are more likely to secure a place at university than those from less well-off backgrounds. Exactly half say they are also given more opportunities to get a foot in the workplace by securing work experience or unpaid internships.
Social mobility tsar Alan Milburn, a former Labour Cabinet minister, said: ‘Britain has a deep social mobility problem and the growing sense that we have become an “us and them” society – where a few unfairly have power and wealth – is deeply corrosive of our cohesion as a nation. ‘It is no surprise that populism of Right and of Left is on the march when a growing number of people feel like they are losing out unfairly.’
The study found the most sought-after professions have become even less representative than the most selective universities. Only 4 per cent of doctors, 6 per cent of barristers and 12 per cent of solicitors have working-class origins.
In July, Mrs May pledged in Downing Street: ‘If you’re from an ordinary working class family, life is much harder than many people in Westminster realise… The government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours.’
0 Example:
According to a report into social mobility
A. around 25% of the population can save at least £200.
B. families can’t go on holiday any more.
C. families spend all their money before the end of the month.
1 The Social Mobility Commission has said
A. the country is divided between those with economic means and those without.
B. people are being encouraged to save.
C. interest rates are getting higher.
2 Britons
A. are not saving at all.
B. are saving well over 5% of their income.
C. sometimes get no interest on their accounts.
3 The Social Mobility Commission has also concluded
A. people not having so much money improved their standard of living with David Cameron.
B. popular campaigns to improve the living conditions have failed.
C. Tony Blair’s governments fulfilled his promises.
4 In today’s Britain
A. half of the population believes talent is a key factor for a person’s future.
B. hard work has no use to improve in life.
C. the social position determines a person’s future.
5 The YouGov poll also found
A. only the rich manage to secure a place at university.
B. people from privileged backgrounds find work easily.
C. work experience will get you a better chance of getting a job.
6 In Alan Milburn’s opinion
A. British society is getting more and more extremist.
B. populist political parties are taking control.
C. power and wealth corrupt people.
7 The study also found
A. British universities are more democratic than it was thought.
B. selective universities are offering less popular degrees.
C. the social class divide is obvious in some professions.
KEY:
1A 2C 3B 4C 5C 6A 7C
Britain is no longer a nation of savers – with a third us not putting aside a single penny at the end of each month. A report into social mobility in the UK warns that families can no longer afford to put money aside for a rainy day or to save for a holiday or home. Some 31 per cent have nothing left to put in the bank when the month is over, while 4 per cent save less than £10. Overall, half of the population save £100 or less. Only 23 per cent save £200 or more.
The Social Mobility Commission, which will today launch its annual State of the Nation report, said Britain was now a country of ‘haves and have nots’. People have also been given less incentive to save by rock bottom interest rates in recent years.
In addition, banks and building societies have been accused of exploiting savers by slashing hundreds of savings rates since the Bank of England cut the official interest rate in August from 0.5 per cent to 0.25 per cent. Some accounts have been chopped to zero, or to 0.01 per cent. Britons are currently saving only 5.1 per cent of their disposable income. This compares to 7.4 per cent only two years ago, according to official figures.
The Social Mobility Commission findings are also a damning criticism of successive governments – led by the Tony Blair regime – which have failed to improve social mobility. In 2004, the then Labour prime minister promised to make the spread of greater social mobility the cornerstone of his third term. Gordon Brown and David Cameron also promised to do more to improve the life chances of the less well-off. Yet, the public remains deeply pessimistic, despite hundreds of millions of pounds being spent and a number of high-profile initiatives being launched.
Nearly half of people – 45 per cent – believe that, in Britain today, where you end up in society is mainly determined by your background and who your parents were, according to a YouGov poll of 1,655 adults carried out for the commission. In contrast, only 29 per cent feel that Britain is a country where everyone has a fair chance to go as far as their talent and their hard work will take them. A majority of adults – 55 per cent – believe that children from privileged backgrounds are more likely to secure a place at university than those from less well-off backgrounds. Exactly half say they are also given more opportunities to get a foot in the workplace by securing work experience or unpaid internships.
Social mobility tsar Alan Milburn, a former Labour Cabinet minister, said: ‘Britain has a deep social mobility problem and the growing sense that we have become an “us and them” society – where a few unfairly have power and wealth – is deeply corrosive of our cohesion as a nation. ‘It is no surprise that populism of Right and of Left is on the march when a growing number of people feel like they are losing out unfairly.’
The study found the most sought-after professions have become even less representative than the most selective universities. Only 4 per cent of doctors, 6 per cent of barristers and 12 per cent of solicitors have working-class origins.
In July, Mrs May pledged in Downing Street: ‘If you’re from an ordinary working class family, life is much harder than many people in Westminster realise… The government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours.’
0 Example:
According to a report into social mobility
A. around 25% of the population can save at least £200.
B. families can’t go on holiday any more.
C. families spend all their money before the end of the month.
1 The Social Mobility Commission has said
A. the country is divided between those with economic means and those without.
B. people are being encouraged to save.
C. interest rates are getting higher.
2 Britons
A. are not saving at all.
B. are saving well over 5% of their income.
C. sometimes get no interest on their accounts.
3 The Social Mobility Commission has also concluded
A. people not having so much money improved their standard of living with David Cameron.
B. popular campaigns to improve the living conditions have failed.
C. Tony Blair’s governments fulfilled his promises.
4 In today’s Britain
A. half of the population believes talent is a key factor for a person’s future.
B. hard work has no use to improve in life.
C. the social position determines a person’s future.
5 The YouGov poll also found
A. only the rich manage to secure a place at university.
B. people from privileged backgrounds find work easily.
C. work experience will get you a better chance of getting a job.
6 In Alan Milburn’s opinion
A. British society is getting more and more extremist.
B. populist political parties are taking control.
C. power and wealth corrupt people.
7 The study also found
A. British universities are more democratic than it was thought.
B. selective universities are offering less popular degrees.
C. the social class divide is obvious in some professions.
KEY:
1A 2C 3B 4C 5C 6A 7C
viernes, 16 de diciembre de 2016
Kenya's mobile controlled greenhouses
In Africa, despite many slogans and proverbs making references to farming, young people are increasingly attracted to big city living, leading to a wave of urbanisation on the continent.
However, in Kenya, there is a band of young entrepreneurs who believe that when agriculture is paired with high-tech solutions on mobile phones, young people are seeing the benefits of staying in the villages to farm.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and anwswer the questions below.
1. What is the Silicon Savannah?
2. Who is Illuminum Greenhouses trying to help?
3. How do farmers farmers connect to their greenhouse, monitor the temperature and programme the sprinkler system?
4. When did Millicent Rutere start farming?
5. Who worked the land in Millicen's family? Who got the money?
6. What is the percentage of Kenyan population that still live in rural areas?
Skyscrapers, traffic jams and throngs of people. Kenya's capital is a typical African city except that here mobile phones and digital systems are taking over. Nairobi is known as the Silicon Savannah. People often think that the Silicon Savannah is an area in Africa. In fact, it’s a building, this very building, where take-on entrepreneurs take advantage of the cheap rents and the free software that allows them to focus on the various functions and applications that they’re building. And it's something that Illuminum Greenhouses has taken advantage of as they develop the hardware that will help Kenya's smallholder farmers.
It's also from here that Taita Ngetich and his team design green houses that have inbuilt sensors controlled via mobile phone. The technology has taken off, but not without difficulties.
We're building hardware and it’s not called hard for anything and I think it's really hard, and it's very difficult to develop that in Kenya because we have a very small pool of skilled developers to work with and secondly to get anyone nice today is costly, therefore the problem of access to capital exists.
This effusion of talents here as developers, agricultural experts and investors from America partner to create this product. Through a simple text message, farmers connect to their greenhouse, monitor the temperature and programme the sprinkler system. Remotely, the water is pumped onto the crops at this farm, 20 kilometers away. The co-owner is Millicent Rutere, who has 13 green houses on her plot. She grows herbs such as basil and chives. She began farming as a child and feels strongly about the plight of women who are the majority of Kenya’s smallholders.
I grew up in the village and when I was eight years old I started seeing the challenges that my mother faced when she was raising us up because there's no other source of income apart from farming. When my mother tried to work in the field, my father would take all the money and misused the money, and I could not see the sense of women working in the field and men taking the yields in selling.
It's for this reason that Millicent farms cash crops destined for Europe and Dubai. Even though Kenya is moving towards a modern economy, more than seventy percent of the population still live in rural areas. The younger generation, who are exposed to different opportunities, have found a way to match the old Kenya with the new.
Key:
1 a building in Nairobi
2 Kenya's farmers
3 through a text message
4 as a child
5 her mom; her dad
6 over 70%
However, in Kenya, there is a band of young entrepreneurs who believe that when agriculture is paired with high-tech solutions on mobile phones, young people are seeing the benefits of staying in the villages to farm.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and anwswer the questions below.
1. What is the Silicon Savannah?
2. Who is Illuminum Greenhouses trying to help?
3. How do farmers farmers connect to their greenhouse, monitor the temperature and programme the sprinkler system?
4. When did Millicent Rutere start farming?
5. Who worked the land in Millicen's family? Who got the money?
6. What is the percentage of Kenyan population that still live in rural areas?
Skyscrapers, traffic jams and throngs of people. Kenya's capital is a typical African city except that here mobile phones and digital systems are taking over. Nairobi is known as the Silicon Savannah. People often think that the Silicon Savannah is an area in Africa. In fact, it’s a building, this very building, where take-on entrepreneurs take advantage of the cheap rents and the free software that allows them to focus on the various functions and applications that they’re building. And it's something that Illuminum Greenhouses has taken advantage of as they develop the hardware that will help Kenya's smallholder farmers.
It's also from here that Taita Ngetich and his team design green houses that have inbuilt sensors controlled via mobile phone. The technology has taken off, but not without difficulties.
We're building hardware and it’s not called hard for anything and I think it's really hard, and it's very difficult to develop that in Kenya because we have a very small pool of skilled developers to work with and secondly to get anyone nice today is costly, therefore the problem of access to capital exists.
This effusion of talents here as developers, agricultural experts and investors from America partner to create this product. Through a simple text message, farmers connect to their greenhouse, monitor the temperature and programme the sprinkler system. Remotely, the water is pumped onto the crops at this farm, 20 kilometers away. The co-owner is Millicent Rutere, who has 13 green houses on her plot. She grows herbs such as basil and chives. She began farming as a child and feels strongly about the plight of women who are the majority of Kenya’s smallholders.
I grew up in the village and when I was eight years old I started seeing the challenges that my mother faced when she was raising us up because there's no other source of income apart from farming. When my mother tried to work in the field, my father would take all the money and misused the money, and I could not see the sense of women working in the field and men taking the yields in selling.
It's for this reason that Millicent farms cash crops destined for Europe and Dubai. Even though Kenya is moving towards a modern economy, more than seventy percent of the population still live in rural areas. The younger generation, who are exposed to different opportunities, have found a way to match the old Kenya with the new.
Key:
1 a building in Nairobi
2 Kenya's farmers
3 through a text message
4 as a child
5 her mom; her dad
6 over 70%
martes, 13 de diciembre de 2016
Living paycheck to paycheck
The Vories family lives on a volatile income — not knowing how much each paycheck will contain month-to-month.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say whether the statements below are true or false.
1. The Vories have to pay the electricty bill on the 8th of each month.
2. The Vories have been unemployed for a long time.
3. The Vories don't own a car.
4. The Brighton Center is a charity.
5. The Vories have ups and downs in their day-to-day.
6. The Vories spend around five hundred dollars a month in medications.
7. They didn't buy their son basketball shoes because they had no money.
I just look at what’s the day that it is due, what’s the mercy day, what’s the actual day that I have to pay this bill by. I don’t even look at it month to month. The electric bill is due like the 8th but I can pay it on the 25th, you know when we’re paying bills this Monday, and that’s one of the bills I’m gonna be paying.
The Vories family is one many in America that lives on a valid all income. Like thousands who rely on seasonal or contract work, money comes in each week but it’s rarely the same amount. Financial planning becomes about the near future, about paying the bills when, not if the paychecks stop. Erica works full time at the IRS as the family’s primary source of income. Her husband Alex was laid off last year from Fidelity Call Center and can only find seasonal work. His last contract ended right before Thanksgiving, so Alex returns to an employer he’d had in high school, The Rosa’s Pizza.
Hopefully the Rosa’s is enough to keep us going. An accident and a breakdown left the family carless, so Alex borrows his father’s car to deliver pizzas at night. Every week is a delicate balancing act of time, money and resources.
We don’t have a savings account or anything like that. And we have one, but there’s no money in there.
And we have like 401k’s at our work where we can put it. I have never been able to put in because…
I had to cash mine out from Fidelity to pay bills.
Hey, Josh, I brought food to eat? Are you hungry?
A little bit of income, some odd jobs, help from parents, the Vories are hardly the only family in this position. A local non-profit, the Brighton Center, provided emergency help to the Vories and over 6800 households last year. Nearly 71% of those families had income.
I started praying and asking the Lord, Lord, you know, will you give me an idea to write a play? It’s a way to tell people what I’ve been through without having the opportunity to tell somebody one on one.
And when the housing bubble came down it just crashed everything I had. I lost my job, my house.
Before that bad stuff happened to you, why would you believe all the Jesus stuff?
We will have one good, two weeks and we’ll be like okay we know these two weeks it’s going to be great but we won’t even know in advance we’ll be okay. But next two weeks, nothing.
I don’t have nothing right here, right now.
It will be hard to go to the grocery store and say, okay I only have, you know, 20 to 30 dollars to spend and I have to make it so that four of us can eat.
No, no ice-cream.
Yes! Ice-cream! I don’t want anything else.
They’ll ask for stuff all the time. ‘Can we go get an ice-cream’, and we have to be… the parents let’s say, guys you don’t understand, we just don’t have money.
Family health issues further complicate things. Alex has diabetes, Erika fibromyalgia, their oldest kid has severe ADHD and their youngest, Josh, has mild autism. It costs the family a couple hundred dollars monthly in medications alone. At time the Vories borrow ahead of their next pay cheque at a steep interest rate just to make minimum payments.
You see how things are going up and it’s like how am I gonna be able to give them a meal that is going to nurture them because, you know, cereal is not going to cut it.
I’m tired too, pal.
I was gonna pay some bills today and our son needed some basketball shoes and grandma gave us some money to buy some, but we didn’t have the chance to cash the cheque, so we took it out of the account and then we’re not going to put the money until tomorrow, and tomorrow is like the last day to pay the electric bill, so, oh thank God it ain’t raining, that’s what stinks about one car, if it’s pouring rain we are going to get soaked.
I have this tendency to say to her ‘I think we are almost there, I think we are almost there’ and then we just don’t get there.
Key:
1F 2F 3T 4T 5T 6F 7F
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say whether the statements below are true or false.
1. The Vories have to pay the electricty bill on the 8th of each month.
2. The Vories have been unemployed for a long time.
3. The Vories don't own a car.
4. The Brighton Center is a charity.
5. The Vories have ups and downs in their day-to-day.
6. The Vories spend around five hundred dollars a month in medications.
7. They didn't buy their son basketball shoes because they had no money.
I just look at what’s the day that it is due, what’s the mercy day, what’s the actual day that I have to pay this bill by. I don’t even look at it month to month. The electric bill is due like the 8th but I can pay it on the 25th, you know when we’re paying bills this Monday, and that’s one of the bills I’m gonna be paying.
The Vories family is one many in America that lives on a valid all income. Like thousands who rely on seasonal or contract work, money comes in each week but it’s rarely the same amount. Financial planning becomes about the near future, about paying the bills when, not if the paychecks stop. Erica works full time at the IRS as the family’s primary source of income. Her husband Alex was laid off last year from Fidelity Call Center and can only find seasonal work. His last contract ended right before Thanksgiving, so Alex returns to an employer he’d had in high school, The Rosa’s Pizza.
Hopefully the Rosa’s is enough to keep us going. An accident and a breakdown left the family carless, so Alex borrows his father’s car to deliver pizzas at night. Every week is a delicate balancing act of time, money and resources.
We don’t have a savings account or anything like that. And we have one, but there’s no money in there.
And we have like 401k’s at our work where we can put it. I have never been able to put in because…
I had to cash mine out from Fidelity to pay bills.
Hey, Josh, I brought food to eat? Are you hungry?
A little bit of income, some odd jobs, help from parents, the Vories are hardly the only family in this position. A local non-profit, the Brighton Center, provided emergency help to the Vories and over 6800 households last year. Nearly 71% of those families had income.
I started praying and asking the Lord, Lord, you know, will you give me an idea to write a play? It’s a way to tell people what I’ve been through without having the opportunity to tell somebody one on one.
And when the housing bubble came down it just crashed everything I had. I lost my job, my house.
Before that bad stuff happened to you, why would you believe all the Jesus stuff?
We will have one good, two weeks and we’ll be like okay we know these two weeks it’s going to be great but we won’t even know in advance we’ll be okay. But next two weeks, nothing.
I don’t have nothing right here, right now.
It will be hard to go to the grocery store and say, okay I only have, you know, 20 to 30 dollars to spend and I have to make it so that four of us can eat.
No, no ice-cream.
Yes! Ice-cream! I don’t want anything else.
They’ll ask for stuff all the time. ‘Can we go get an ice-cream’, and we have to be… the parents let’s say, guys you don’t understand, we just don’t have money.
Family health issues further complicate things. Alex has diabetes, Erika fibromyalgia, their oldest kid has severe ADHD and their youngest, Josh, has mild autism. It costs the family a couple hundred dollars monthly in medications alone. At time the Vories borrow ahead of their next pay cheque at a steep interest rate just to make minimum payments.
You see how things are going up and it’s like how am I gonna be able to give them a meal that is going to nurture them because, you know, cereal is not going to cut it.
I’m tired too, pal.
I was gonna pay some bills today and our son needed some basketball shoes and grandma gave us some money to buy some, but we didn’t have the chance to cash the cheque, so we took it out of the account and then we’re not going to put the money until tomorrow, and tomorrow is like the last day to pay the electric bill, so, oh thank God it ain’t raining, that’s what stinks about one car, if it’s pouring rain we are going to get soaked.
I have this tendency to say to her ‘I think we are almost there, I think we are almost there’ and then we just don’t get there.
Key:
1F 2F 3T 4T 5T 6F 7F
lunes, 31 de octubre de 2016
Listening test: Passport for sale
Listen to a short report on the famous St. Kitts and Nevis passport and complete the gaps in the sentences below with UP TO THREE words. 0 is an example.
0 Example:
According to the United Nations, there are 19.5 million refugees around the world.
1 In the US foreigners can get a permanent visa by investing $_________________ in a US business.
2 In the late 90’s, the economy of St. Kitts and Nevis was _________________.
3 Apart from the collapse of the sugar industry, _________________ hit the islands in 1998 and 1999.
4 Lawrence’s plan meant foreign companies giving donations or investing a lot of money in _____________ .
5 Lawrence calmed down the citizens of St. Kitts and Nevis by saying that the new citizens would not be given the _________________.
6 Citizens of St. Kitts and Nevis can travel to over 100 countries ________________.
7 The problem with St. Kitts and Nevis passports started when ________________ started using them.
8 Lawrence has ________________ about his plan because it brought a lot of money to St. Kitts and Nevis.
According to the United Nations, there are 19.5 million refugees around the world. Most of them are poor and in need of support. What most people don’t hear about are the ultra-rich who can easily buy their way into a new life abroad. In the US, for example, foreigners who invest $500,000 in a US business can get a permanent residency visa.
The country of St. Kitts and Nevis has taken it one step further. This island country has beautiful oceans, jungles, and mountains, but it doesn’t have much else. In the late 90’s, the economy of St. Kitts and Nevis was in trouble. Wendell Lawrence found a solution.
Lawrence worked for the finance ministry at a time when the government was in massive debt. The sugar industry, which employed a quarter of the country’s citizens, had collapsed. To make matters worse, a massive hurricane hit the islands in 1998, and in 1999 two more hit. Major rebuilding was necessary, but they had no money.
Lawrence found a foreign company that wanted to partner with St. Kitts and Nevis to sell passports. The plan was simple. For a $250,000 donation or a $400,000 investment in real estate, anyone could get a passport and citizenship.
Not everyone was on board. For many people citizenship is sacred. Some people said that foreigners might take over the country. Lawrence told them not to worry. They would be citizens, but they wouldn’t have the right to vote.
The plan was given the green light. While some customers were looking for a place to hide their money from their home countries, others were looking for the visa-free travel that a St. Kitts and Nevis passport would give. Being a member of the British Commonwealth, citizens of St. Kitts and Nevis have access to over 100 countries without a visa.
The product was a big hit. At its height, they were selling 2,000 passports a year. The plan eventually came to a head when international criminals started using St. Kitts and Nevis passports. Suddenly, countries started to scrutinize this once respected passport. Canada even said that non-native St Kitts and Nevis passport holders would not be allowed in without a visa. The market for these passports like the previous market for sugar collapsed.
Lawrence says he has no regrets. The plan raised a lot of money and improved the economy of the country. Other people disagree. One local woman said, “It’s wrong. There are ways to get money. Do it some other way. Don’t sell us out.”
St. Kitts and Nevis may have been one of the first, but they are not the last. Malta now sells citizenship, but EU passports don’t come cheap. The current price is 1.5 million Euros.
Key:
1 500,000
2 in trouble
3 (some/three massive) hurricanes
4 real estate
5 right to vote
6 without a visa
7 international criminals
8 no regrets
source: Deep English
According to the United Nations, there are 19.5 million refugees around the world.
1 In the US foreigners can get a permanent visa by investing $_________________ in a US business.
2 In the late 90’s, the economy of St. Kitts and Nevis was _________________.
3 Apart from the collapse of the sugar industry, _________________ hit the islands in 1998 and 1999.
4 Lawrence’s plan meant foreign companies giving donations or investing a lot of money in _____________ .
5 Lawrence calmed down the citizens of St. Kitts and Nevis by saying that the new citizens would not be given the _________________.
6 Citizens of St. Kitts and Nevis can travel to over 100 countries ________________.
7 The problem with St. Kitts and Nevis passports started when ________________ started using them.
8 Lawrence has ________________ about his plan because it brought a lot of money to St. Kitts and Nevis.
According to the United Nations, there are 19.5 million refugees around the world. Most of them are poor and in need of support. What most people don’t hear about are the ultra-rich who can easily buy their way into a new life abroad. In the US, for example, foreigners who invest $500,000 in a US business can get a permanent residency visa.
The country of St. Kitts and Nevis has taken it one step further. This island country has beautiful oceans, jungles, and mountains, but it doesn’t have much else. In the late 90’s, the economy of St. Kitts and Nevis was in trouble. Wendell Lawrence found a solution.
Lawrence worked for the finance ministry at a time when the government was in massive debt. The sugar industry, which employed a quarter of the country’s citizens, had collapsed. To make matters worse, a massive hurricane hit the islands in 1998, and in 1999 two more hit. Major rebuilding was necessary, but they had no money.
Lawrence found a foreign company that wanted to partner with St. Kitts and Nevis to sell passports. The plan was simple. For a $250,000 donation or a $400,000 investment in real estate, anyone could get a passport and citizenship.
Not everyone was on board. For many people citizenship is sacred. Some people said that foreigners might take over the country. Lawrence told them not to worry. They would be citizens, but they wouldn’t have the right to vote.
The plan was given the green light. While some customers were looking for a place to hide their money from their home countries, others were looking for the visa-free travel that a St. Kitts and Nevis passport would give. Being a member of the British Commonwealth, citizens of St. Kitts and Nevis have access to over 100 countries without a visa.
The product was a big hit. At its height, they were selling 2,000 passports a year. The plan eventually came to a head when international criminals started using St. Kitts and Nevis passports. Suddenly, countries started to scrutinize this once respected passport. Canada even said that non-native St Kitts and Nevis passport holders would not be allowed in without a visa. The market for these passports like the previous market for sugar collapsed.
Lawrence says he has no regrets. The plan raised a lot of money and improved the economy of the country. Other people disagree. One local woman said, “It’s wrong. There are ways to get money. Do it some other way. Don’t sell us out.”
St. Kitts and Nevis may have been one of the first, but they are not the last. Malta now sells citizenship, but EU passports don’t come cheap. The current price is 1.5 million Euros.
Key:
1 500,000
2 in trouble
3 (some/three massive) hurricanes
4 real estate
5 right to vote
6 without a visa
7 international criminals
8 no regrets
martes, 25 de octubre de 2016
Why is New York City cracking down on Airbnb?
Airbnb, the short-term housing rental industry giant, now lists more than 1 million rooms available in 192 countries. The platform's largest market is in New York City, with more than 25,000 listings per night, but it's also where the debate over how to regulate short-term rentals is the most contentious.
In light of a new report by the NY Attorney General that says nearly three-quarters of Airbnb's listings in the city are technically illegal, the city is cracking down.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and asnwer the questions below.
1. Why does Jennifer rent her place?
2. How does this scheme benefit the community and the visitors?
3. What does '25,000' refer to?
4. Why might Jennifer be acting illegally?
5. Why have hotel rates gone down in New York?
6. How much tax does Airbnb pay in New York?
7. Why do residents also complain about Airbnb?
8. What additional problem is mentioned by Senator Liz Krueger and the reporter?
9. Why does Airbnb make the housing situation harder in New York?
10. How does the rental system help the residents who decide to rent out their apartment?
11. How is this issue dealt with in Santa Monica?
HARI SREENIVASAN: So it’s a two bedroom?
JENNIFER: Yeah, two bedrooms.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Three years ago, Jennifer and her husband began listing their two bedroom apartment on what was then an up-and-coming website Airbnb.
JENNIFER: My husband travels a lot for work. We also have family all over the country. And so when we knew we were going away, I would just make the apartment available. We have a space that sleeps six. So people almost always rented it. It just kept going well and we kept having all these good experiences
HARI SREENIVASAN: Airbnb connects hosts who want to share their homes with guests who are looking for a place to stay – short term, typically for a weekend or a vacation. Airbnb lists the property, connects the two parties, and collects a booking fee.
Jennifer – she did not want us to use her last name – charges up to $200 a night to rent her place when she and her family goes away, up to a week every month.
JENNIFER: I think it’s great for the local communities, I can kind of, direct people to my favorite restaurants in the neighborhood. I’m able to help people come in here and really experience what the city has to offer, you know.
HARI SREENIVASAN: What sounds like a win-win situation for Jennifer and her guests is not so simple. What Jennifer is doing may be illegal in New York City, where city and state laws restrict short-term rentals.
The short-term home rental industry is booming. Platforms like Homeaway, Flipkey, VRBO are popular. And Airbnb has emerged as the giant in this space, especially in cities. Airbnb now lists over one million rooms available in 192 countries. And New York City, with more than 25,000 listings a night, is the platform’s largest U.S. market.
New York is also where the debate over how to regulate short term home rentals like Airbnb is perhaps most contentious.
According to a report by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman last year, nearly three-quarters of Airbnb’s listings between 2010 and 2014 were essentially ‘illegal hotels’– short term rentals that violate state and city laws against renting out an apartment for less than 30 days unless the occupants are also present.
Schneiderman found 94 percent of Airbnb hosts are like Jennifer and her husband. They have only one or possibly two listings.
VIJAY DANDAPANI: Those are rooms that would have gone to the hotel industry and should have gone to the hotel industry given what we’ve invested in the city and our buildings.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Vijay Dandapani chairs the New York City Hotel Association and is President of Apple Core Hotels, which owns five in Midtown Manhattan, including this ‘La Quinta’. He says competition from Airbnb has driven down his hotels’ room rates.
VIJAY DANDAPANI: Rates have not gone back up to pre-financial crisis despite the fact that tourism has gone up. That’s because, let’s say you had 100 rooms, now you’ve suddenly got 140 rooms, 40 of those rooms being not hotels.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Dandapani complains Airbnb and its hosts not only steal business, they also do not follow the same rules and regulations as hotels.
VIJAY DANDAPANI: We have a fire command system, security systems that give you protections from intruders, and so on. The moment you get into converting your house into a hotel, which is de facto what is being done nowadays, none of those protections are there.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Then, there’s the issue of taxes. Airbnb collects a hotel occupancy tax on behalf of hosts in many cities but not New York.
Chip Conley, Airbnb’s Head of Global Hospitality, says the company is looking at how to do that.
CHIP CONLEY: The annual taxes that we would be paying would be 65 million dollars if the state and city of NY would allow us to be a collector of taxes and a remitter of taxes. Currently they are not allowing us to do that.
HARI SREENIVASAN: City officials counter that allowing collection of taxes legitimizes activity that is largely unlawful.
CHIP CONLEY: So what’s odd to us is that actually New York is actually sort of a laggard here relative to so many other communities across the US who have said, let’s create sensible legislation and let’s make sure we’re actually collecting taxes as well.
HARI SREENIVASAN: New York Airbnb hosts Jordan and Joshua — who also prefer us not to use their last names — say they’d be willing to pay a hotel tax for renting out their two bedroom apartment. They already declare the income: about a $180 a night.
JORDAN: If Airbnb collected the tax right when it was booked; then we wouldn’t have to worry about it.
HARI SREENIVASAN: The hotel industry is not the only group fighting Airbnb. So are residents of apartment buildings where neighbors’ apartments are rented out to total strangers. New York State Senator Liz Krueger represents the east side of Manhattan.
SEN. LIZ KRUEGER: Constituents started coming to me and saying, “There’s something strange going on in my building. The apartments seem to be being rented out on a nightly basis. There are groups of tourists wandering in and out with luggage, with keys to the buildings."
HARI SREENIVASAN: Krueger, who has often been dubbed Airbnb’s Doubter-in-Chief, was the primary sponsor of the 2010 state law that effectively banned short-term apartment rentals in New York City.
SEN. LIZ KRUEGER: They encourage illegal activity. They don’t have to, but they choose to do so as a business model.
HARI SREENIVASAN: And the short-term rental activity that troubles officials like Krueger and Attorney General Schneiderman most is what they call ‘commercial users’ of Airbnb and similar websites.
SEN. LIZ KRUEGER: People becoming entrepreneurs and renting one to 100 apartments, claiming that they’re their own homes, and turning them into ongoing illegal hotel arrangements.
HARI SREENIVASAN: In fact, the Attorney General’s report found that while only 6 percent of Airbnb hosts advertise three or more listings, they account for more than a third of Airbnb’s business in New York.
The report also found thousands of Airbnb listings were rented for three months or more of the year.
We found that New York Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal went on what she terms an undercover sting operation this spring to find these commercial users.
ROSENTHAL: Do you live here? You don’t live here, oh ok.
In one of the videos that she released to the press, Rosenthal is seen visiting a host who, she says, was renting seven apartments in a building, none of which he lived in.
HOST: “But in case anybody asks something, you don’t know what’s Airbnb is."
ROSENTHAL: “Oh, OK."
HOST: “That’s why Airbnb always calls you guests.”
HARI SREENIVASAN: Airbnb has taken steps to remove users who have a large number of listings.
CHIP CONLEY: We, like the Attorney General, support the idea of cracking down on illegal hotels and unscrupulous landlords. In spring we took down 2,000 listings, what we were calling bad actors who we just felt shouldn’t be using the site
HARI SREENIVASAN: But State Senator Krueger argues Airbnb is enticing landlords like the one in the undercover video, to convert apartments into short-term rentals, which can be more profitable than renting them to long-term residents. And that, Krueger says, makes it harder for New Yorkers to find affordable housing in a city where the housing market is already tight.
SEN. LIZ KRUEGER: Airbnb has told me, “If you could just do one or two, it would be okay,” and the answer is no, because if 10,000 people decide to rent out two apartments fulltime, that’s 20,000 units off the market.
HARI SREENIVASAN: So we’re sitting in an illegal hotel room, according to the State Senator.
JENNIFER: Yes, I have a difference of opinion with her, for sure. It’s really hard for me to feel like my home is a hotel. I feel like someone who is welcoming a lot of people who become friends. I think the key is just making sure that it’s people are, it’s something that people are doing with their primary home. Financially, it really helps my family. Rents here have skyrocketed in the 10 years that we’ve been here.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Airbnb argues it helps residents stay in their homes by allowing them to earn supplemental income to pay their rent or mortgage.
JOSHUA: It affords me as an artist to be an artist. I use part of this income to survive on.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Joshua also says that the Airbnb system allows them to be very choosy about who they let stay in their home and when.
JOSHUA: It’s up to us as hosts what we want to do. I say we deny 8 out of 10 people that ask us to stay here. And we get a lot of requests, a lot. So that’s how I regulate it. The question that people ask is do we feel safe having people we don’t know in our home and the answer is yes.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Arun Sundararajan is a business professor at New York University. He says cities like New York should partner with companies like Airbnb and residents to forge new ways of regulating the activity on those platforms.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Why is the AirBNB model so different than the model for lodging that we’ve had all the rules and regulations around so far?
ARUN SUNDARAJAN: The fundamental innovation is in tapping into underutilized capacity: repurposing what used to be residential real estate and sort of converting it into a new form of mixed-use real estate where for some of the time it is short-term accommodation, and for the rest of the time it’s residential.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Cities across the country are grappling with these questions.
Like New York, Santa Monica banned short-term rental of entire homes when the host is not present and additionally imposes a 14-percent tax when a host rents out a room in his house.
Other cities have recently forged a middle ground.
San Francisco residents are permitted to rent out homes a maximum of 90 days a year.
In Philadelphia, the maximum is 180 days and hosts must pay an eight-and-a-half percent hotel tax to the city.
ARUN SUNDARARAJAN: I think that there’s a growing recognition among cities that this kind of sharing economy activity can be good for a city.
HARI SREENIVASAN: But for now, New York City is cracking down. It has expanded the office tasked with investigating complaints of illegal hotels and is proposing higher fines for violators.
Key:
1. her husband travels a lot for work and they have family all over the country
2. Jennifer directs visitors to specific places (restaurants) in the neighbourhood; visitors are advised on interesting places to drop by
3. the number of Airbnb houses available in New York
4. Jennifer and her family rent their apartment when they are away
5. there are many more rooms available thanks to platforms like Airbnb
6. none
7. total strangers keep coming up to the buildings
8. a small percetage of individuals are renting out hundreds of apartments, which means 1) it is not possible they live in those apartments they rent and 2) they have created an illegal business
9. empty apartments are rented short-term because it is more profitable and so New York residents who would be willing to rent the apartmemts long-term do not have the option to do so
10. they get extra cash that help them pay very high rents
11. Santa Monica banned short-term rental of entire homes when the host is not present and additionally imposes a 14-percent tax when a host rents out a room in his house
In light of a new report by the NY Attorney General that says nearly three-quarters of Airbnb's listings in the city are technically illegal, the city is cracking down.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and asnwer the questions below.
1. Why does Jennifer rent her place?
2. How does this scheme benefit the community and the visitors?
3. What does '25,000' refer to?
4. Why might Jennifer be acting illegally?
5. Why have hotel rates gone down in New York?
6. How much tax does Airbnb pay in New York?
7. Why do residents also complain about Airbnb?
8. What additional problem is mentioned by Senator Liz Krueger and the reporter?
9. Why does Airbnb make the housing situation harder in New York?
10. How does the rental system help the residents who decide to rent out their apartment?
11. How is this issue dealt with in Santa Monica?
HARI SREENIVASAN: So it’s a two bedroom?
JENNIFER: Yeah, two bedrooms.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Three years ago, Jennifer and her husband began listing their two bedroom apartment on what was then an up-and-coming website Airbnb.
JENNIFER: My husband travels a lot for work. We also have family all over the country. And so when we knew we were going away, I would just make the apartment available. We have a space that sleeps six. So people almost always rented it. It just kept going well and we kept having all these good experiences
HARI SREENIVASAN: Airbnb connects hosts who want to share their homes with guests who are looking for a place to stay – short term, typically for a weekend or a vacation. Airbnb lists the property, connects the two parties, and collects a booking fee.
Jennifer – she did not want us to use her last name – charges up to $200 a night to rent her place when she and her family goes away, up to a week every month.
JENNIFER: I think it’s great for the local communities, I can kind of, direct people to my favorite restaurants in the neighborhood. I’m able to help people come in here and really experience what the city has to offer, you know.
HARI SREENIVASAN: What sounds like a win-win situation for Jennifer and her guests is not so simple. What Jennifer is doing may be illegal in New York City, where city and state laws restrict short-term rentals.
The short-term home rental industry is booming. Platforms like Homeaway, Flipkey, VRBO are popular. And Airbnb has emerged as the giant in this space, especially in cities. Airbnb now lists over one million rooms available in 192 countries. And New York City, with more than 25,000 listings a night, is the platform’s largest U.S. market.
New York is also where the debate over how to regulate short term home rentals like Airbnb is perhaps most contentious.
According to a report by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman last year, nearly three-quarters of Airbnb’s listings between 2010 and 2014 were essentially ‘illegal hotels’– short term rentals that violate state and city laws against renting out an apartment for less than 30 days unless the occupants are also present.
Schneiderman found 94 percent of Airbnb hosts are like Jennifer and her husband. They have only one or possibly two listings.
VIJAY DANDAPANI: Those are rooms that would have gone to the hotel industry and should have gone to the hotel industry given what we’ve invested in the city and our buildings.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Vijay Dandapani chairs the New York City Hotel Association and is President of Apple Core Hotels, which owns five in Midtown Manhattan, including this ‘La Quinta’. He says competition from Airbnb has driven down his hotels’ room rates.
VIJAY DANDAPANI: Rates have not gone back up to pre-financial crisis despite the fact that tourism has gone up. That’s because, let’s say you had 100 rooms, now you’ve suddenly got 140 rooms, 40 of those rooms being not hotels.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Dandapani complains Airbnb and its hosts not only steal business, they also do not follow the same rules and regulations as hotels.
VIJAY DANDAPANI: We have a fire command system, security systems that give you protections from intruders, and so on. The moment you get into converting your house into a hotel, which is de facto what is being done nowadays, none of those protections are there.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Then, there’s the issue of taxes. Airbnb collects a hotel occupancy tax on behalf of hosts in many cities but not New York.
Chip Conley, Airbnb’s Head of Global Hospitality, says the company is looking at how to do that.
CHIP CONLEY: The annual taxes that we would be paying would be 65 million dollars if the state and city of NY would allow us to be a collector of taxes and a remitter of taxes. Currently they are not allowing us to do that.
HARI SREENIVASAN: City officials counter that allowing collection of taxes legitimizes activity that is largely unlawful.
CHIP CONLEY: So what’s odd to us is that actually New York is actually sort of a laggard here relative to so many other communities across the US who have said, let’s create sensible legislation and let’s make sure we’re actually collecting taxes as well.
HARI SREENIVASAN: New York Airbnb hosts Jordan and Joshua — who also prefer us not to use their last names — say they’d be willing to pay a hotel tax for renting out their two bedroom apartment. They already declare the income: about a $180 a night.
JORDAN: If Airbnb collected the tax right when it was booked; then we wouldn’t have to worry about it.
HARI SREENIVASAN: The hotel industry is not the only group fighting Airbnb. So are residents of apartment buildings where neighbors’ apartments are rented out to total strangers. New York State Senator Liz Krueger represents the east side of Manhattan.
SEN. LIZ KRUEGER: Constituents started coming to me and saying, “There’s something strange going on in my building. The apartments seem to be being rented out on a nightly basis. There are groups of tourists wandering in and out with luggage, with keys to the buildings."
HARI SREENIVASAN: Krueger, who has often been dubbed Airbnb’s Doubter-in-Chief, was the primary sponsor of the 2010 state law that effectively banned short-term apartment rentals in New York City.
SEN. LIZ KRUEGER: They encourage illegal activity. They don’t have to, but they choose to do so as a business model.
HARI SREENIVASAN: And the short-term rental activity that troubles officials like Krueger and Attorney General Schneiderman most is what they call ‘commercial users’ of Airbnb and similar websites.
SEN. LIZ KRUEGER: People becoming entrepreneurs and renting one to 100 apartments, claiming that they’re their own homes, and turning them into ongoing illegal hotel arrangements.
HARI SREENIVASAN: In fact, the Attorney General’s report found that while only 6 percent of Airbnb hosts advertise three or more listings, they account for more than a third of Airbnb’s business in New York.
The report also found thousands of Airbnb listings were rented for three months or more of the year.
We found that New York Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal went on what she terms an undercover sting operation this spring to find these commercial users.
ROSENTHAL: Do you live here? You don’t live here, oh ok.
In one of the videos that she released to the press, Rosenthal is seen visiting a host who, she says, was renting seven apartments in a building, none of which he lived in.
HOST: “But in case anybody asks something, you don’t know what’s Airbnb is."
ROSENTHAL: “Oh, OK."
HOST: “That’s why Airbnb always calls you guests.”
HARI SREENIVASAN: Airbnb has taken steps to remove users who have a large number of listings.
CHIP CONLEY: We, like the Attorney General, support the idea of cracking down on illegal hotels and unscrupulous landlords. In spring we took down 2,000 listings, what we were calling bad actors who we just felt shouldn’t be using the site
HARI SREENIVASAN: But State Senator Krueger argues Airbnb is enticing landlords like the one in the undercover video, to convert apartments into short-term rentals, which can be more profitable than renting them to long-term residents. And that, Krueger says, makes it harder for New Yorkers to find affordable housing in a city where the housing market is already tight.
SEN. LIZ KRUEGER: Airbnb has told me, “If you could just do one or two, it would be okay,” and the answer is no, because if 10,000 people decide to rent out two apartments fulltime, that’s 20,000 units off the market.
HARI SREENIVASAN: So we’re sitting in an illegal hotel room, according to the State Senator.
JENNIFER: Yes, I have a difference of opinion with her, for sure. It’s really hard for me to feel like my home is a hotel. I feel like someone who is welcoming a lot of people who become friends. I think the key is just making sure that it’s people are, it’s something that people are doing with their primary home. Financially, it really helps my family. Rents here have skyrocketed in the 10 years that we’ve been here.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Airbnb argues it helps residents stay in their homes by allowing them to earn supplemental income to pay their rent or mortgage.
JOSHUA: It affords me as an artist to be an artist. I use part of this income to survive on.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Joshua also says that the Airbnb system allows them to be very choosy about who they let stay in their home and when.
JOSHUA: It’s up to us as hosts what we want to do. I say we deny 8 out of 10 people that ask us to stay here. And we get a lot of requests, a lot. So that’s how I regulate it. The question that people ask is do we feel safe having people we don’t know in our home and the answer is yes.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Arun Sundararajan is a business professor at New York University. He says cities like New York should partner with companies like Airbnb and residents to forge new ways of regulating the activity on those platforms.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Why is the AirBNB model so different than the model for lodging that we’ve had all the rules and regulations around so far?
ARUN SUNDARAJAN: The fundamental innovation is in tapping into underutilized capacity: repurposing what used to be residential real estate and sort of converting it into a new form of mixed-use real estate where for some of the time it is short-term accommodation, and for the rest of the time it’s residential.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Cities across the country are grappling with these questions.
Like New York, Santa Monica banned short-term rental of entire homes when the host is not present and additionally imposes a 14-percent tax when a host rents out a room in his house.
Other cities have recently forged a middle ground.
San Francisco residents are permitted to rent out homes a maximum of 90 days a year.
In Philadelphia, the maximum is 180 days and hosts must pay an eight-and-a-half percent hotel tax to the city.
ARUN SUNDARARAJAN: I think that there’s a growing recognition among cities that this kind of sharing economy activity can be good for a city.
HARI SREENIVASAN: But for now, New York City is cracking down. It has expanded the office tasked with investigating complaints of illegal hotels and is proposing higher fines for violators.
Key:
1. her husband travels a lot for work and they have family all over the country
2. Jennifer directs visitors to specific places (restaurants) in the neighbourhood; visitors are advised on interesting places to drop by
3. the number of Airbnb houses available in New York
4. Jennifer and her family rent their apartment when they are away
5. there are many more rooms available thanks to platforms like Airbnb
6. none
7. total strangers keep coming up to the buildings
8. a small percetage of individuals are renting out hundreds of apartments, which means 1) it is not possible they live in those apartments they rent and 2) they have created an illegal business
9. empty apartments are rented short-term because it is more profitable and so New York residents who would be willing to rent the apartmemts long-term do not have the option to do so
10. they get extra cash that help them pay very high rents
11. Santa Monica banned short-term rental of entire homes when the host is not present and additionally imposes a 14-percent tax when a host rents out a room in his house
domingo, 12 de junio de 2016
Extensive listening: Britain and Europe For Richer or Poorer
Ahead of the EU referendum, Laura Kuenssberg examines the economic costs and benefits of EU membership in this BBC documentary.
She talks to politicians and business leaders on both sides of the debate in an attempt to find out what leaving could mean for trade and jobs, for red tape and people's livelihoods.
Kuenssberg also looks at what the UK brings to the EU, and what it gets back, before hearing the views of the public on whether Britain is better off in or out.
She talks to politicians and business leaders on both sides of the debate in an attempt to find out what leaving could mean for trade and jobs, for red tape and people's livelihoods.
Kuenssberg also looks at what the UK brings to the EU, and what it gets back, before hearing the views of the public on whether Britain is better off in or out.
domingo, 3 de abril de 2016
Extensive listening: How Aribnb designs for trust
In his TED Talk How Aribnb designs for trust, Joe Gebbia, the co-founder of the company, talks about how he built Airbnb on the belief that people can trust each other enough to stay in one another's homes. How did he overcome the stranger-danger bias? Through good design.
Now, 123 million hosted nights later, Gebbia sets out his dream for a culture of sharing in which design helps foster community and connection instead of isolation and separation.
You can read the transcript for his talk here.
Now, 123 million hosted nights later, Gebbia sets out his dream for a culture of sharing in which design helps foster community and connection instead of isolation and separation.
You can read the transcript for his talk here.
domingo, 6 de marzo de 2016
Extensive listening: Economic Growth Has Stalled, Let's Fix It
Economic growth is the defining challenge of our time; without it, political and social instability rises, human progress stagnates and societies grow dimmer.
In this TED talk delivered in Geneva in December 2015, economist Dambisa Moyo says dogmatic capitalism isn't creating the growth we need. As she shows, in both state-sponsored and market-driven models, capitalism is failing to solve social ills, fostering corruption and creating income inequality.
Moyo surveys the current economic landscape and suggests that we have to start thinking about capitalism as a spectrum so we can blend the best of different models together to foster growth.
You can read the transcript here.
In this TED talk delivered in Geneva in December 2015, economist Dambisa Moyo says dogmatic capitalism isn't creating the growth we need. As she shows, in both state-sponsored and market-driven models, capitalism is failing to solve social ills, fostering corruption and creating income inequality.
Moyo surveys the current economic landscape and suggests that we have to start thinking about capitalism as a spectrum so we can blend the best of different models together to foster growth.
You can read the transcript here.
sábado, 13 de febrero de 2016
Reading test: Oxfam says wealth of richest 1% equal to other 99%
In this week's reading test we are going to practise the insert-a-sentence type of task. Read the BBC article Oxfam says wealth of richest 1% equal to other 99% below and choose the sentences and phrases A-K that best complete the gaps. There are two sentences you do not need to use. 0 is an example.
Oxfam says wealth of richest 1% equal to other 99%
The richest 1% now has as much wealth (0) as the rest of the world combined, according to Oxfam. It uses data from Credit Suisse from October for the report, which urges leaders meeting in Davos this week to take action on inequality. Oxfam also calculated that the richest 62 people in the world had as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population. It criticised the work of lobbyists and (1) … .
Oxfam predicted that the 1% would overtake the rest of the world this time last year. It takes cash and assets worth $68,800 (£48,300) to get into the top 10%, and $760,000 (£533,000) to be in the 1%. That means that if you own an average house in London (2) … , you are probably in the 1%.
The figures carry various caveats, for example, information about the wealth of the super-rich is hard to come by, which Credit Suisse says means its estimates of the proportion of wealth held by the 10% and the 1% is "likely to err on the low side". As a global report, the figures also necessarily include some estimates of levels of wealth in countries from which accurate (3) … .
Some free market think tanks questioned the credibility of the figures. The Institute of Economic Affairs' director general Mark Littlewood said the statistics were "bogus". "The methodology of adding up assets (4) … and then making a global 'net wealth' distribution implies that many of the poorest in the world are those in advanced countries with high debts. Whilst we might have sympathy for the Harvard law graduate's plight, it is unclear that worrying about her should be the focus of a development organisation," he said.
The Adam Smith Institute's head of research Ben Southwood also said the data was "misleading". "More meaningful measures show greater equality. Those in the middle and bottom of the world income distribution have all got pay rises of around 40% between 1988-2008. Global inequality of (5) … are narrowing too—showing better nutrition and better healthcare where it matters most. "What we should care about is the welfare of the poor, not the wealth of the rich," he added.
Oxfam said that the 62 richest people having as much wealth as the poorest 50% of the population is a remarkable concentration of wealth, given that it would have taken 388 individuals to have the same wealth as the bottom 50% in 2010. "Instead of an economy that works for the prosperity of all, for future generations, and for the planet, (6) … one for the 1%," Oxfam's report says.
The trend over the period that Credit Suisse has been carrying out this research has been that the proportion of wealth held by the top 1% fell gradually from 2000 to 2009 and(7) … . In fact, it is only in the 2015 figures that the proportion held by the top 1% overtakes the share taken by them in the first report in 2000.
Oxfam calls on governments to take action to reverse this trend. It wants workers paid a living wage and the gap with executive rewards to be narrowed. It calls for an end to the gender pay gap, compensation for unpaid care and the promotion of equal land and inheritance rights for women. And it wants governments to take action on lobbying, reducing the price of medicines, (8) … rather than consumption and using progressive public spending to tackle inequality.
A - and subtracting debts
B -as the rest of the world combined 0 Example
C - has risen every year since then
D - it is hard to be believed
E - life expectancy and height
F - statistics are not available
G - taxing wealth
H - the amount of money kept in tax havens
I - to make matters worse
J - we have instead created
K - without a mortgage
KEY:
1H 2K 3F 4A 5E 6J 7C 8G
Oxfam says wealth of richest 1% equal to other 99%
The richest 1% now has as much wealth (0) as the rest of the world combined, according to Oxfam. It uses data from Credit Suisse from October for the report, which urges leaders meeting in Davos this week to take action on inequality. Oxfam also calculated that the richest 62 people in the world had as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population. It criticised the work of lobbyists and (1) … .
Oxfam predicted that the 1% would overtake the rest of the world this time last year. It takes cash and assets worth $68,800 (£48,300) to get into the top 10%, and $760,000 (£533,000) to be in the 1%. That means that if you own an average house in London (2) … , you are probably in the 1%.
The figures carry various caveats, for example, information about the wealth of the super-rich is hard to come by, which Credit Suisse says means its estimates of the proportion of wealth held by the 10% and the 1% is "likely to err on the low side". As a global report, the figures also necessarily include some estimates of levels of wealth in countries from which accurate (3) … .
Some free market think tanks questioned the credibility of the figures. The Institute of Economic Affairs' director general Mark Littlewood said the statistics were "bogus". "The methodology of adding up assets (4) … and then making a global 'net wealth' distribution implies that many of the poorest in the world are those in advanced countries with high debts. Whilst we might have sympathy for the Harvard law graduate's plight, it is unclear that worrying about her should be the focus of a development organisation," he said.
The Adam Smith Institute's head of research Ben Southwood also said the data was "misleading". "More meaningful measures show greater equality. Those in the middle and bottom of the world income distribution have all got pay rises of around 40% between 1988-2008. Global inequality of (5) … are narrowing too—showing better nutrition and better healthcare where it matters most. "What we should care about is the welfare of the poor, not the wealth of the rich," he added.
Oxfam said that the 62 richest people having as much wealth as the poorest 50% of the population is a remarkable concentration of wealth, given that it would have taken 388 individuals to have the same wealth as the bottom 50% in 2010. "Instead of an economy that works for the prosperity of all, for future generations, and for the planet, (6) … one for the 1%," Oxfam's report says.
The trend over the period that Credit Suisse has been carrying out this research has been that the proportion of wealth held by the top 1% fell gradually from 2000 to 2009 and(7) … . In fact, it is only in the 2015 figures that the proportion held by the top 1% overtakes the share taken by them in the first report in 2000.
Oxfam calls on governments to take action to reverse this trend. It wants workers paid a living wage and the gap with executive rewards to be narrowed. It calls for an end to the gender pay gap, compensation for unpaid care and the promotion of equal land and inheritance rights for women. And it wants governments to take action on lobbying, reducing the price of medicines, (8) … rather than consumption and using progressive public spending to tackle inequality.
A - and subtracting debts
B -
C - has risen every year since then
D - it is hard to be believed
E - life expectancy and height
F - statistics are not available
G - taxing wealth
H - the amount of money kept in tax havens
I - to make matters worse
J - we have instead created
K - without a mortgage
Photo: BBC and Getty
KEY:
1H 2K 3F 4A 5E 6J 7C 8G
martes, 2 de febrero de 2016
10 questions for Daniel Yergin
Energy expert Daniel Yergin speaks on peak oil, fracking and how to power the U.S. Economy in this Time Magazine interview.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say whether the statements below are true or false.
1 Yergin doesn't think the world is running out of oil.
2 Yergin doesn't think we should be careful with energy resources.
3 The Japanese are planning to turn towards nuclear energy again.
4 As people live longer and longer, that means that oil consumption is going to increase in US.
5 The Chinese buy more cars than the Americans.
6 Yergin is in favour of the shale gas industry.
7 The US very much depends on coal.
8 Yergin seems optimistic about a growing awareness towards energy consumption and preservation.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say whether the statements below are true or false.
1 Yergin doesn't think the world is running out of oil.
2 Yergin doesn't think we should be careful with energy resources.
3 The Japanese are planning to turn towards nuclear energy again.
4 As people live longer and longer, that means that oil consumption is going to increase in US.
5 The Chinese buy more cars than the Americans.
6 Yergin is in favour of the shale gas industry.
7 The US very much depends on coal.
8 Yergin seems optimistic about a growing awareness towards energy consumption and preservation.
Daniel Yergin is an energy expert and economic expert, an international relations expert, a Pulitzer prize winner, the author of many books and today’s subject of our Ten Questions. Welcome, Mr Yergin.
Thank you.
In your new book, The Quest, you don’t seem that worried about the world running out of oil. Can you explain why?
Because I don’t think the world is running out of oil. It turns out that when you apply technology the resources that were not accessible or were not economic, as times goes on people crack the code and, and add to the supplies. With that said it’s not we’re saying the resources there, there’s still a lot of things to worry about above ground.
How are you feeling about the story around nuclear energy?
I think Fukushina has definitely changed the nuclear story. Prior to that, people were talking about a nuclear renaissance, the Japanese themselves were talking about going to 50% of their electricity from nuclear, they’re now saying we’re going to have a different kind of mix, going to look for more renewable, other alternatives. We’ll use more gas to generate electricity.
What do you see for our cause down the future?
Well, people talk about peak oil, that we’re gonna run out of oil. But actually I think that in the United States we’ve run into what we might call peak demand. We’ve had the high point of oil consumption, and our oil consumption’s gonna go down. It’s gonna go down because we drive more efficient cars, people are not gonna continue to drive more and more miles. It’s gonna go down because of demographics, because the population is ageing and they drive less. And also we had a big surge in the United States of driving as women entered the labour force, not they’re at the same level as men, so…
A little higher in some cases.
Yeah.
Yeah. But, on the other hand, as you point out in your book all those Indians and Chinese are gonna start driving.
China now consumes more energy than the United States, and it’s really astonishing to see what’s happened in automobiles. In 2000, there were 17m cars sold in the United States and just about 2m in China. Last year, there were 17m cars sold in China and 11m in the United States.
The government gave a $500-m loan guarantee to the company that makes solar panels that went out of business very shortly afterwards. Can we have a manufacturing industry within the United States that can make these things economically compared to, say how cheaply they can make them in China?
For the solar panel manufacturers, they’re competing with Chinese manufacturers who are very driven to drive costs down. The leading solar company a few years ago was in Germany. It really has just been knocked on its back now by the Chinese who are big beneficiaries of German renewable energy legislation. So… but this is a part of a larger picture of how we compete and on what basis we compete.
There’s a lot of promise and controversy around shale gas. What do you think needs to be done so that we can extract the gas in shale and protect the border?
Well, it’s gone from being virtually nothing a decade ago to being 30% of our natural gas production in this country. It’s a major part of our energy mix. It’s developed rapidly, brings us a lot of energy security, and were we not doing shale gas, we would be we would be spending tens and tens of billions of dollars to import liquefied natural gas. And by the way, this also has creates several hundred thousand jobs at a time when jobs is the number one economic issue in the country. But, with that said, you know, it has to be done in an environmentally sound way, and the public has to be convinced of that.
Could there be a lot of green jobs, or is that a…?
The thing is we have a really big complex energy system that sits underneath our -$14 trillion economy. It doesn’t change overnight, so there are green jobs and people have them but I don’t think they’ve been as plentiful as had been expected and it really depends upon the pace at which renewables themselves grow.
I come from a country that loves its coal, loves it coal and has built a super duper cappuccino fueled economy totally pretty much on coal. Is there a danger with building an economy totally on a sort of a fuel sort.
Yes, we, your… Australia is also, of course, now that they’ve built it internally, but Australia’s economic growth and the strength of the Australian currency is related to the exports of coal and these other raw materials…
Uranium.
I mean, so much of what’s happening in the world economy now is really being set by what’s happening in China. 20m people a year are moving into cities, and these cities are coming from nowhere, and they’re the biggest cities in the world. When you see what’s happened with the price of oil, often now it will move in terms of what’s the latest manufacturing data from China.
Do you get really annoyed when you see people doing really energy wasteful things?
People say, well we waste energy and obviously we can look around and find it. But what strikes me when you look in the last 30 years what’s happened is we’ve become twice as energy efficient as we were in the 1970’s. If you go in the campus in Massachusetts Institute of Technology five or six years ago, there was not an Energy Club. Now there’s an Energy Club and it has several thousand students in it so, kind of this…
I bet that’s the party scene. The Energy Club, MIT.
They go…
Pushing the ladies away.
They go way past nine o’clock at night, I bet. It’s that wild.
Ok. Great. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Key:
1T 2F 3F 4F 5T 6T 7F 8T
Key:
1T 2F 3F 4F 5T 6T 7F 8T
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