When President Trump promised last fall that under a Trump administration America would “would win so much you’ll get tired of winning,” we suspect this is not what he had in mind. According to the latest international obesity study from the Organization For Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), America is by far the fattest nation in the world with just over 38% of the adult population considered ‘obese.’
Here are some stats from the OECD’s latest study courtesy of the Washington Examiner:
– In 2015, an estimated 603.7 million adults and 107.7 million children worldwide were obese. That represents about 12 percent of all adults and 5 percent of all children.
– The prevalence of obesity doubled in 73 countries between 1980 and 2015 and continuously increased in most of the other countries.
– China and India had the highest number of obese children. China and the U.S. had the highest number of obese adults.
– Excess body weight accounted for about 4 million deaths — or 7.1 percent of all deaths — in 2015.
– Almost 70 percent of deaths related to a high BMI were due to cardiovascular disease.
– The study finds evidence that having a high BMI causes leukemia and several types of cancer, including cancers of the esophagus, liver, breast, uterus, ovary, kidney and thyroid.
– In rich and poor countries, obesity rates increased, indicating “the problem is not simply a function of income or wealth. Changes in the food environment and food systems are probably major drivers. Increased availability, accessibility, and affordability of energy-dense foods, along with intense marketing of such foods, could explain excess energy intake and weight gain among different populations. The reduced opportunities for physical activity that have followed urbanization and other changes in the built environment have also been considered as potential drivers; however, these changes generally preceded the global increase in obesity and are less likely to be major contributors.”
Of course, obesity in the “fast food nation” is hardly a new epidemic though the rate of change is fairly staggering.
Meanwhile, Michelle Obama’s crusade against childhood obesity didn’t seem to work all that well…
But that “Turn-ip for what?” video was so clever…shocking it was ineffective.
Finally, for all of you who will undoubtedly sign up for a brand new gym membership as part of your New Years resolution to shed the extra pounds in 2018…you might as well just give up now because the OECD predicts we’re all just going to get much fatter over the next 15 years.
OECD projections show a steady increase in obesity rates until at least 2030 (Figure 5). Obesity levels are expected to be particularly high in the United States, Mexico and England, where 47%, 39% and 35% of the population respectively are projected to be obese in 2030. On the contrary, the increase is expected to be weaker in Italy and Korea, with obesity rates projected to be 13% and 9% in 2030, respectively. The level of obesity in France is projected to nearly match that of Spain, at 21% in 2030. Obesity rates are projected to increase at a faster pace in Korea and Switzerland where rates have been historically low.
InternationalMan's Nick Giamburno is a strong advocate of international diversification – such as holding multiple passports and offshore assets. It frees you from absolute dependence on any one country. In short, international diversification minimizes the State’s power to coerce you. Bitcoin is an important part of this strategy. It’s an inherently international asset.
Bitcoin has incredible value as an international transfer mechanism. You can take any amount in and out of any country. You don’t need permission from any government.
You can send it across any border—or any number of borders—as often as you want. And there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
I’ve seen this firsthand in Latin America, where bitcoin helps people get around capital controls. (Governments use capital controls to trap money within their borders so they have more to steal.)
Bitcoin helps people bypass these restrictions. That’s because governments can’t freeze, seize, or block the transactions.
This is why bitcoin is such a disruptive and exciting technology, and why bitcoin should be a critical tool in your international diversification toolkit.
Bitcoin’s use is set to explode… and it could make you a fortune.
All the details are below in this must-read article from my friend and colleague Greg Wilson. I think you’ll enjoy it.
Greg is a true expert on all things bitcoin. He stays on top of all the breaking bitcoin news more than anyone else that I know of.
This Event Could Be Bitcoin’s “Mainstream Moment”
On August 9, 1995, the internet had its “mainstream” moment.
That’s when Netscape held its initial public offering (IPO) and released its web browser, Netscape Navigator, to the world.
At that point, the internet had already been around for 15 years.
Yet despite being one of the greatest inventions in history, the world was slow to adopt. In 1995, only 0.3% of the world’s population used the internet.
The internet needed a catalyst. And looking back, it was Netscape.
The numbers back it up.
In 1995, there were 16 million internet users. Then Netscape Navigator came along. By the end of 1996, the number of internet users had more than doubled to 36 million.
And five years later, we reached over a half-billion users. That’s growth of over 100% annually.
The success of the IPO inspired the term “Netscape moment.” Today, we use the term to describe an event that signals the dawn of a new industry.
I believe we’ve already had our Netscape moment for another technology: bitcoin.
Now, it’s incredibly difficult to make predictions, especially without the benefit of hindsight. And I might be wrong.
Nevertheless, today I’ll tell you which key event over the past two years was bitcoin’s Netscape moment.
Bitcoin Is Like the Internet in 1995
Today, there’s an estimated 15 million–35 million bitcoin users. We’ll split it in the middle and call it 25 million.
That’s 0.3% of the population… similar to the number of internet users before its Netscape moment.
Like the internet in 1995, bitcoin continues to gain popularity.
The chart below highlights the key events of the last two years.
To me, one event stands out as bitcoin’s Netscape moment. That’s when Japan legalized bitcoin.
Bitcoin’s Moment
Since bitcoin was legalized, here’s what has happened in Japan…
More than 260,000 stores in Japan are rolling out bitcoin as a payment method.
Stores at famed electronics marketplace Akihabara have started accepting bitcoin.
Japan is setting up a bitcoin “testing hub” for fintech companies.
Leading Japanese bitcoin exchanges have unveiled plans to accelerate adoption.
It’s all leading to increased usage of bitcoin in Japan.
Volume on LocalBitcoins has accelerated since the law went into effect. And it had its highest volume week of the year the last week of June, topping 4.7 million yen (about $42,000).
Tokyo’s Sushi-Bar Numazuko Ginza 1st is an example of the growing popularity of bitcoin in Japan. The restaurant was one of the first to accept bitcoin payments.
The restaurant’s manager said there were only a few bitcoin payments per month two years ago. By March 2017, that number increased to about 70.
This quote from the restaurant manager sums it up best: “Japanese customers are using bitcoin more than we expected.”
How to Profit From the “Bitcoin Moment”
I think we’ll look back at Japan’s legalization of bitcoin as its Netscape moment.
Every day, millions of people are working on bitcoin to make it better. And its acceptance will only rise from here.
And just recently, South Korea announced it will regulate and legalize bitcoin. The trend that started in Japan continues unabated.
The best way to profit from this trend is simply to buy bitcoin.
President Donald Trump might’ve been on to something when he accused the Washington Post of being a “lobbyist weapon For Amazon.”
In a rambling five-page email published by WaPo, the CEO of Birkenstock USA threatened to cut off authorized retailers who sell even a “single pair” of its shoes to Amazon.com Inc., a continuation of his crusade against the online retailer, which began about a year ago when he demanded that the e-commerce powerhouse do more to ferret out fakes being sold on its platform. In the missive, CEO David Kahan blasted Amazon for soliciting Birkenstock retailers, offering to buy the company’s shoes from them for full price. Birkenstock stopped selling its shoes on Amazon earlier this year, citing a rise in counterfeit products and unauthorized sellers.
Though the paper disclosed its conflict of interest, the story was obviously intended to embarrass a business rival of WaPo owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, despite the paper’s smoothly neutral tone.
“In the email, Kahan called the entreaty a “desperate act” and a “PERSONAL AFFRONT.”
“Birkenstock does NOT sell [to] Amazon,” he wrote in the email to retail partners. “And it is clear that they are seeking back-channel means by which to obtain our brand.”
He emphasized that the German shoemaker prohibits shop owners from selling, distributing or shipping its products to resellers.
“I will state clearly, any authorized retailer who may do this for even a single pair will be closed FOREVER,” Kahan wrote. “I repeat, FOREVER.”
Kahan added that he is considering legal action against Amazon.com for ‘knowingly encouraging a breach of our policy.’”
Birkenstock doesn’t allow unauthorized resellers like Amazon to sell its classic cork-and-leather sandals, believing that losing control of it products risks tarnishing its brand and reputation. Kahan also noted that, by cooperating with Amazon, the company risks losing control of how and where its products are sold.
Later in the lengthy missive, Kahan claimed that Amazon’s inability to weed out fakes is tantamount to encouraging piracy.
“'This is modern-day piracy on the high seas,” Kahan said in an interview. “This is a middle finger to all brands, not just Birkenstock.”
At least one Birkenstock retailer interviewed by WaPo said he supports Kahan’s decision to cut off Amazon, saying sales of the company’s shoes have risen about 20% over the past year.
“At Martin’s Family Shoes in Gettysburg, Pa., owner John Fidler says sales of Birkenstocks are up about 20 percent this year, which he attributes at least partly to the company’s split with Amazon. He was encouraged, he said, to receive Kahan’s “ticked off” email last week.
‘It was great that somebody finally put Amazon in its place,” he said. “I don’t see any reason to sell there.’”
Even though Amazon declined to comment about Kahan’s email specifically, it’s clear why the firm might consider his anti-counterfeit campaign a threat to its ambitions to keep expanding. As WaPo noted, Kahan’s decision to stop cooperating with Amazon could inspire other retailers to withhold their product from the platform, as brick-and-mortar retailers struggle to survive as consumers increasingly prefer to shop online.
Amazon is fighting battles on multiple fronts as it struggles to expand: Wal-Mart recently warned trucking firms that it would drop its business if it found out they were also moving goods for Amazon. Meanwhile, its deal to purchase Whole Foods Market is in danger of being scuttled by Congressional Democrats, who are falling for the FTC to investigate the company for possible antitrust violations.
Regime change advocates are in continued meltdown mode.
Last week's announcement of Trump's shutting down the CIA's covert weapons and aid program to anti-government insurgents in Syria – a move now widely interpreted as marking the end of the years long US push for overthrowing Assad – has deep state hawks and their media allies throwing repeat public fits and tantrums inalltheusual op-ed pages and cable news panels (though it appears the Pentagon is still ramping up its presence in Syria, ostensibly to fight ISIS). Even John McCain found time, a day after announcing his diagnosis with brain cancer, to compose a statement which said: “If these reports are true, the administration is playing right into the hands of Vladimir Putin.”
On Monday night Trump gave confirmation of the closure of the program while taking issue with The Washington Post's reporting:
The Amazon Washington Post fabricated the facts on my ending massive, dangerous, and wasteful payments to Syrian rebels fighting Assad…..
Utilizing zero evidence, the Post described the president's decision as "a move sought by Moscow" in yet another cheap attempt at playing the Russia card. Appeasement of Moscow in Syria is now a central talking point of the pro regime change enthusiasts now attacking Trump. But in the midst of such unsightly neocon weeping, wailing gnashing of teeth (actually a welcome spectacle) we can glean more information of things only previously discussed in the classified halls of Langley or the Pentagon.
For example, David Ignatius penned an unhinged column immediately after the news broke last week (he laments the US didn't give jihadist "rebels" anti-aircraft missiles!) which reveals new information based on a quote from a defense official with knowledge of the CIA program:
Run from secret operations centers in Turkey and Jordan, the program pumped many hundreds of millions of dollars to many dozens of militia groups. One knowledgeable official estimates that the CIA-backed fighters may have killed or wounded 100,000 Syrian soldiers and their allies over the past four years.
"Massive, dangerous, and wasteful"
Whether this estimate of Syrian troop death toll is low or high, it offers a rare confirmation that the CIA program was theprime driving force which fueled and escalated the war and its massive bloodshed since nearly the beginning. It is important to remember that the prevailing wisdom coming out of the DC echo chamber had perpetually cast the US as "on the sidelines" of a fundamentally internal Syrian drama. Though Obama ordered the covert program which "killed or wounded 100,000 Syrian soldiers" (and who knows how many civilians?) his legacy has been continually framed as the reluctant humanitarian warrior who didn't do enough.
The New York Times, among many others, constantly promoted the lie that the CIA program was minuscule and inconsequential, and near daily reporting on Syria over the past years conveniently glossed over the massively budgeted program altogether. ButTrump's tweet further provides rare highest level confirmation that the program was "massive" (according to Snowden documents given to the Washington Post, “one the agency’s largest covert operations, with a budget approaching $1 billion a year”).
Importantly, Trump's tweet also called it "wasteful". As a recent report in the Financial Times reminds us, the CIA not only ran a US weapons pipeline into Syria, but actually payed salaries of "rebel commanders" and others. That's right… your tax dollars at work funding jihad in Syria!:
One rebel commander who asked not to be named said US support had been waning for months but noted that the rebels had been given their salaries as normal last month. Still, he believed the decision was final. “The CIA’s role is done,” the rebel commander said.
As for Trump calling the program "dangerous", this is probably the most immediately self-evident part of his description. He had campaigned on the promise to disentangle the US from Syria on the basic common sense idea that getting in bed with Syria's so-called "moderate rebels" was tantamount to supporting al-Qaeda. In June 2016 he controversially tweeted the following:
An: Media fell all over themselves criticizing what DonaldTrump "may have insinuated about @POTUS." But he's right: https://t.co/bIIdYtvZYw
The story, from the conservative Breitbart website, says the State Department received a memo from an intelligence agent who claimed al Qaeda in Iraq, a group that splintered off to form ISIS, was one of the "major forces driving the insurgency in Syria."
Based on the memo, the article claims that the Obama administration backed ISIS by setting up a program to train Syrian rebels fighting against President Bashar Assad.
That ISIS was fueled and strengthened through the US, Saudis, Turks and allies flooding the Syrian battlefield and its jihadists with cash and weaponry is now beyond dispute, confirmed by many of the very people with direct knowledge of the program: from the US ambassador to Syria to former DIA chief Michael Flynn to then Vice President Biden to General Martin Dempsey to members of Congress and many others. Here is Gen. Michael Flynn, long before he had any association with the Trump campaign, speaking to Al Jazeera about the 2012 Pentagon secret memo Trump tweeted about:
Confront the Russians! CIA's Afghan Jihad 2.0
Meanwhile, we've recently pointed to the obvious comparison (and have been doing so for years) between the CIA's Syria operation, called Timber Sycamore, and 'Operation Cyclone' – the 1980's CIA program to arm Afghan and Arab mujahideen fighters against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Whereas recent covert action in Syria fueled the rise of ISIS, covert action of the 1980's produced the original Frankenstein of global jihad, including al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and spawned an entire generation of veteran terrorists. And now we can behold the spectacle of angry national security state insiders rant about the end of their beloved Syrian jihad, which like the 1980's, had Russia as a prime target.
Who can forget the chilling words of former deputy and acting director the CIA, Michael Morell, issued in a Charlie Rose interview nearly a year ago?:
Morell: We need to make the Iranians pay the price in Syria; we need to make the Russians pay the price.
Rose: We make them pay the price by killing Russians and killing Iranians?
Morell: Yes. Covertly. You don't tell the world about it. You don't stand at the Pentagon and say we did this. But you make sure they know it in Moscow and Tehran. I want to go after those things that Assad sees as his personal power base. I want to scare Assad. I want to go after his presidential car. I want to bomb his offices in the middle of the night. I want to destroy his presidential aircraft. I want to destroy his presidential helicopters. I want to make him think we are coming after him.
Ironically, Michael Morell joined the CIA in 1980, just as Operation Cyclone was getting started in central Asia – and even after personally witnessing the progression of how the US backed Afghan jihad became an international terror scourge by the 90's and early 2000's, Morell remains an apologist for arming mujahideen, but this time in Syria. As Tucker Carlson recently commented while citing Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, "people would rather provide support to Al Qaeda than give up their idea of regime change in Syria."
Concerning the original Afghan jihad, it's a little known fact that CIA support for the mujahideen did not completely dry up until well into the 1990's. According a report in The Guardian from the end of that decade:
American officials estimate that, from 1985 to 1992, 12,500 foreigners were trained in bomb-making, sabotage and urban guerrilla warfare in Afghan camps the CIA helped to set up.
Since the fall of the Soviet puppet government in 1992, another 2,500 are believed to have passed through the camps. They are now run by an assortment of Islamic extremists, including Osama bin Laden, the world's most wanted terrorist.
The US government understood in real time that it had set up camps for training terrorists. In what was probably the first ever US government classified report to identify Osama Bin Laden as a terrorist threat, a 1993 paper (now declassified) called “The Wandering Mujahidin: Armed and Dangerous,” admitted the increasingly global "jihadist movement" was spawned from "US support of the mujahidin." The report produced by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research noted that the “support network that funneled money, supplies, and manpower to supplement the Afghan mujahidin” in the war against the Soviets, “is now contributing experienced fighters to militant Islamic groups worldwide,” and concluded the following:
The alleged involvement of veterans of the Afghan war in the World Trade Center bombing [February 1993] and the plots against New York targets are a bold example of what tactics some former mujahidin are willing to use in their ongoing jihad. US support of the mujahidin during the Afghan war will not necessarily protect US interests from attack.
The late Congressman Charlie Wilson with CIA-supported Jalaluddin Haqani. After 9/11 Haqani was sought by the US military as a close associate of Osama Bin Laden and terror network leader. Image: Charliewilsonswar.com
The intelligence officials who run such programs (far away from scrutiny of the public) understand quite well the consequences their actions will produce, yet they willingly proceed anyway. Morell, who has lately been a constant critic of Trump's refusal to go to war with Russia inside Syria, is a prime example of such arrogance and is representative of the deep state's long running war against Trump. But another Michael (and close confidant of Morell's), who has a deeper connection to the CIA's original Afghan jihad, has this week stepped out of the shadows to confront Trump over pulling the plug in Syria.
Who is Michael G. Vickers?
Mike Vickers recently added his voice to the chorus of frustrated pundits raging against Trump's closure of the CIA's Syria program. He wrote this week in the Washington Post:
Abandoning the goal of removing Assad from power will place the United States on the side of not only the barbaric Syrian regime, which has American blood on its hands dating to the early 1980s, but also Iran, Hezbollah and Russia. This is strategic folly.
Even with his impressive sounding bio as former assistant secretary of defense for special operations, low-intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities and undersecretary of defense for intelligence during the Bush and Obama administrations, Vickers will not be recognizable to most. He is the quintessential man behind the scenes – hugely influential and powerful in the national security bureaucracy and shaping military action abroad over the past four decades, yet largely out of the public eye.
Michael G. Vickers is a key US strategist who funded Afghan jihadists in the 1980's and jihadists in Syria after 2011.
But he might be more recognizable as portrayed in the 2007 movie, Charlie Wilson's War, (based on George Crile's 2003 investigative book by the same name) which depicts Congressmen Charlie Wilson's role in organizing US support for the Afghan jihad:
CIA's Afghan Jihad Mastermind
Vickers was considered the CIA's top strategic mastermind tasked with choosing weapons systems and implementing guerrilla warfare strategies for the various mujahideen groups fighting the Soviets in the 1980's war. This of course included supplying mass quantities of Raytheon's Stinger heat-seeking anti aircraft missiles to Afghan commanders like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and others now considered notorious terrorists by the West. Hekmatyar was a close ally of Bin Laden and had a reputation of throwing acid in women's faces should they be caught participating in public life. After 9/11 Charlie Wilson admitted that he "lived in terror" that one of the hundreds of Stinger missiles which were never recovered (and whereabouts still unknown) would be used to take down a civilian airliner.
According to Crile's exhaustively researched book, Vickers was the CIA's chief strategist that made it all happen, even expanding the weapons program beyond all historical precedent in the mid-80's:
He [Vickers] was confident that the Stinger would add a lethal new dimension to the anti-aircraft mix that was already beginning to pay off. He had gone to great lengths to make sure the Afghans would be properly trained. In the past, U.S. trainers had taught the Pakistanis how to use the new weapons, and the Pakistanis had then instructed the mujahideen. This time Vickers proposed that the American specialists go into the camps dressed like mujahideen to personally supervise the training.
…Now that the anti-aircraft strategy was in place, Vickers insisted that his master plan, spelling out precise how the CIA should support the Afghans for the next three years was complete.
And like with the more recent Syria covert program, the massive Afghan jihad program had to be carefully shielded from public view:
And so all of Vickers's calculations had to take into account maneuvers with Swiss bank accounts, shadowy purchasing agents, safe houses, phony corporations, contracts, lawyers, disguised boats, fleets of trucks, trains, camels, donkeys, mules, warehouses, disguised satellite-targeting studies, and secret payments to the families of the fighters.
…By the beginning of 1986 Vickers realized he was calling the shots on 57 percent of the Directorate of Operations' total budget. He had by then grown accustomed to running the biggest CIA paramilitary campaign in history.
We all know how this ended up: an unprecedented rise in international Islamic terrorism as a permanent fixture on the world stage, horrific mass casualties of civilians in sophisticated terror bombings, the installation of the radical Taliban government in Afghanistan, the rise of al-Qaeda, and the 9/11 attacks. According to Crile the CIA was well aware of the nasty jihadist nature of the Afghan rebels it was dealing with at the time, and like with Syria of more recent years, it was warned of what would come and proceeded anyway.
Vickers: From Afghan to Syrian Jihad
With not a hint of shame, bashfulness, or recognition of the twisted irony of it all, Vickers actually invoked his prior experience overseeing the Afghan jihad in his recent Washington Post op-ed:
President Ronald Reagan understood the potential of covert proxy wars to alter global power balances. Through stepped-up support for the Afghan mujahideen and other anti-Communist movements, and other, complementary strategic policies, he won the Cold War. It took the Carter and Reagan administrations more than five years to come up with a war-winning strategy (work that I helped to lead as a CIA officer) against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The same could be done in Syria today.
At the very least, this might serve to educate the public of how the intelligence and national security deep state works: these guys never go away, criminality is rewarded (Vickers was literally praised as thinking "like a gangster" for his ability to implement nasty guerrilla tactics on shifting battlefield environments in a 2007 Washington Post profile), and it's often the same guys running the show behind the scenes of ugly covert interventions which only serve to make the world less safe for Americans.
Vickers himself, as Defense Under Secretary for Intelligence until 2015, oversaw aspects of US covert action in Syria. The man has literally gone from overseeing the CIA's covert support of Afghan mujahideen to overseeing US support for jihadists in Syria to now declaring war on Trump. The deep state has gone full circle here. But it's our sincere hope that America finally defeats all the jihadists and their enablers both at home and abroad.
Last summer we declared that “China’s favorite offshore money laundering hub is officially no longer accepting its money” after the city of Vancouver slapped a 15% tax on foreign real estate buyers. The tax was intended to curb a massive real estate bubble which had resulted from an influx of Chinese money over the preceding years. The move seemingly worked as it resulted in a staggering and immediate 96% drop in foreign buyers (see: Foreign Buying Plummets In Vancouver: Sales To Foreigners Crash 96%).
According to data released by British Columbia’s Ministry of Finance on Thursday, foreign investors officially disappeared from Vancouver’s property market last month after the local government imposed a 15% surcharge to curb a record-shattering surge in home prices. Overseas buyers accounted for a paltry 0.7% of the C$6.5 billion of residential real estate purchases in August in Metro Vancouver; this represents a 96% plunge from the seven weeks prior, when foreigners were responsible for 16.5% of transactions by value.
According to the latest data overseas buyers snapped up C$2.3 billion of homes in the seven weeks before the tax was imposed, and less than C$50 million in the next four weeks. The government began collecting data on citizenship in home purchases on June 10. The ministry said auditors are checking citizenship or permanent residency declarations made by buyers and also reviewing transactions to determine if any were structured to avoid tax (spoiler alert: most of them were).
So, take a look at the chart below and see if you can figure out where all those Chinese buyers may have gone…
As The Seattle Times points out today, Seattle’s sudden surge in home prices is the market’s most rapid ascent since just before the housing bubble collapsed a decade ago.
It marks the most rapid housing-price increase here since 2006, when home values were rising at an unsustainably brisk pace — up to nearly 19 percent growth — before dropping during the recession. The previous high-water mark in the current boom came in fall 2013, when home values soared 13.2 percent.
The price hikes also surpass anything Seattle saw during the 1990s or early 2000s (Case-Shiller’s data began in 1990).
The market isn’t just hot by Seattle standards: No region in the country has had prices soar this fast in the past three years. The last metro area to get this heated was San Francisco, where home costs soared more than 20 percent in 2013 and 2014.
Meanwhile, to our complete ‘shock’, the Times goes on to point out that the Seattle market has seen a lot of interest from Chinese buyers of late who like to pay cash (also shocking) for luxury homes that they don’t even bother to visit before buying and rarely ever actually occupy.
For the past few years, a small but growing portion of homebuyers had been coming from overseas, especially from China — targeting mostly upscale homes, and often paying cash, sometimes sight unseen.
Interest soared last year, after British Columbia enacted a tax on foreign buyers in the Vancouver area. At one point after that tax took effect, Seattle was the No. 1 American city for inquiries from Chinese homebuyers, according to Juwai.com, which helps people in China buy homes abroad.
Foreign homebuyers have themselves contributed to rising prices in some ZIP codes here: Real-estate agents say foreign buyers are more likely to pay cash and bid up homes than other buyers. They also tend to eye luxury homes. In some parts of West Bellevue and along the Lake Washington waterfront, Realtors have reported that half or more of their business now comes from foreign homebuyers.
Juwai’s data show 38 percent of Seattle buyers from China purchase the home primarily as an investment. Some of those buyers might also live in their new home or allow family members to live there, but in other cases, they sit empty.
But it’s probably nothing…maybe Americans are just suddenly attracted to Seattle’s thoroughly depressing climate where residents can go months and months without ever actually seeing the sun.
Illinois is broke and continues to flirt with junk bond status. But the state’s financial woes aren’t stopping 63,000 government employees from bringing home six-figure salaries and higher.
Whenever we open the books, Illinois is consistently one of the worst offenders. Recently, we found auto pound supervisors in Chicago making $144,453; nurses at state corrections earning up to $254,781; junior college presidents making $465,420; university doctors earning $1.6 million; and 84 small-town “managers” out-earning every U.S. governor.
Using our interactive mapping tool, quickly review (by ZIP code) the 63,000 Illinois public employees who earn more than $100,000 and cost taxpayers $10 billion. Just click a pin and scroll down to see the results rendered in the chart beneath the map.
20,295 teachers and school administrators – including superintendents Joyce Carmine ($398,229) at Park Forest School District 63, Troy Paraday ($384,138) at Calumet City School District 155, and Jon Nebor ($377,409) at Indian Springs School District 109. Four of the top five salaries are in the south suburbs – not the affluent north shore.
10,676 rank-and-file workers and managers in Chicago – including $216,200 for embattled Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) and $400,000 for Ginger Evans, Commissioner of Aviation – including a $100,000 bonus. Timothy Walter, a deputy police chief, made $240,917 – that’s $146,860 in overtime on top of his $94,056 base salary. Ramona Perkins, a police communications operator, pulled down $121,318 in overtime while making $196,726!
9,567 college and university employees – including the southern Illinois junior college power couple Dale Chapman ($465,420) and Linda Terrill Chapman ($217,290). The pair combined for a $682,000 income at Lewis and Clark Community College. Fady Toufic Charbel ($1.58 million) and Konstantin Slavin ($1.04 million) are million-dollar doctors at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
8,640 State of Illinois employees – including $258,070 for Marian Frances Cook, a “contractual worker” at the newly created Dept. of Innovation and Technology. Further, there are the “barber” and “teacher of barbering” positions in the state prisons making $100,000+. Loreatha Coleman made $254,781 as a nurse at the Dept. of Corrections.
8,817 small town city and village employees – including 84 municipal managers out-earning every U.S. governor at $180,000. These managers include Lawrence Hileman (Glenview – $297,988); Michael Ellis (Grayslake – $264,486); Robert Kiely (Lake Forest – $255,247); Kevin Bowens (Libertyville – $254,428); and Richard Nahrstadt (Northbrook – $250,248).
In total, there is roughly $12 billion in cash compensation flowing to six-figure government workers when counting the 9,031 federal employees based in Illinois.
So, who are the biggest culprits in conferring six-figure salaries? We ranked the top 15 largest public pay and pension systems in Illinois:
Illinois’ largest pay and pension systems conferring $100,000+ cash compensation
Corruption in Chicago
Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago now pays out more six-figure incomes than the state government. We found city truck drivers, tree trimmers, and street light repair workers earned six-figures. But, really, the problem is the overtime. Last year, the city paid out $283 million in overtime to 1,000 employees who pocketed more than $40,000 apiece.
Chicago paid out $283 million in overtime (2016) – here are the top 10 city departments.
Taxpayer-Expensive Educators
Some of Illinois’ K-12 schools are spiking salaries and padding pensions. Data reveals nearly 30,000 teachers and administrators earned $100,000+ incomes. However, just 20,295 of those educators are currently employed; the other 9,305 are retired, resting on six-figure pensions.
Here’s how it breaks down in two of 900 school districts. Just 1,236 of the 2,147 educators with $100,000+ incomes are currently working.
In Township High School District 214, there were 500 retirees receiving six-figure annual pensions in addition to 640 working educators.
In Palatine Township High School 211, while 596 educators earned a six-figure salary, 491 retirees received six-figure lifetime pensions.
Private associations, nonprofits, and retired lawmakers
All kinds of entities are jumping on the gravy train. Private associations, nonprofit organizations and former lawmakers have gamed the system for personal gain. All of this is legal, although it shouldn’t be:
Former state representative Roger Eddy (R) currently makes $334,433 – that’s $303,953 as Executive Director of Illinois Association of School Boards (IASB) and $30,500 from his lawmaker’s pension. Eddy is double dipping for a second government pension, and his employer (IASB) – a private nonprofit – is further burdening an underfunded Teacher’s Retirement System.
Two of the highest earners within the municipal pension system work for private associations – not government. Brett Davis, Executive Director of Park District Risk Management Agency, makes $319,404, while Peter Murphy, Executive Director of Illinois Park District Association, brings in $309,972. These private nonprofits muscled their way into the government system and their huge salaries will mean lavish taxpayer-guaranteed pensions.
Former Gov. Jim Edgar (R) took $2.38 million in compensation from the University of Illinois (2000-2013) and has received at least $2 million in pension payments earned from his 20-year career as legislator, secretary of state and governor. Today, Edgar receives $241,272 ($20,106 per month) per year from two pension systems: the General Assembly Retirement System ($161,016) and the State University Retirement System ($80,256).
Highly Compensated Locals
County bosses are getting in on the action. In three of the 102 counties – DuPage (201), Lake (237) and Will (190) – 628 employees earned $100,000+. Lake won top honors with 237 six-figure employees. In DuPage, Tom Cuculich, the “Chief of Staff” to DuPage Board Chair Dan Cronin (R), made $201,750.
Even “water district” employees are tapping into the taxpayer largess with 1,432 employees making $100,000+. Across Illinois, 348 highly compensated “park district” employees make over $100,000.
Illinois, like many states, is in serious trouble. Policymakers are exploring desperate measures. Two weeks ago, ten Republicans voted with Democrats to override Governor Bruce Rauner’s veto of a permanent 32-percent income tax hike. Without reforms the tax hike will only feed a culture of waste and abuse.
Rauner was right to veto the income tax hike but he hasn’t shown serious resolve to curtail spending. In fact, he created a personal assistant position for his wife – who has no official state duties – for $100,000 a year at taxpayer expense.
To much fanfare, President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced that Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn, best known for making the iPhone, will build a new plant producing LCD panels in Wisconsin that will bring thousands of jobs to the state. On the surface it’s a great deal: in what’s being called the largest economic development project in state history, Foxconn plans to build a $10 billion plant that will eventually employ as many as 13,000 people, according to the White House and Gov. Scott Walker.
“It starts today with this investment in Wisconsin,” Foxconn chairman Terry Gou said at announcement in Washington D.C. on Wednesday.
The plant is expected to open in 2020 and be on a 20 million square-foot campus on at least 1,000 acres, a campus Walker’s office has dubbed “Wisconn Valley” according to the Wisconsin State Journal. The plant could be the first of several facilities the company intends to build in the United States and will start with 3,000 employees, a staff that could eventually grow by 10,000.
Furthermore, Walker’s office projected the project would create at least 22,000 “indirect and induced jobs” throughout Wisconsin and will generate an estimated $181 million in state and local tax revenues annually, including $60 million in local property taxes.
In making the announcement, Trump was near-euphoric: “This is a great day for American workers and manufacturers and for everybody who believes in the concept and the label ’Made in the USA,” the president said. “The construction of this facility represents the return of LCD electronics and electronic manufacturing to the United States, the country that we love, that’s where we want our jobs,” he continued.
Trump gave himself credit for the deal: “To make such an incredible investment, [Foxconn Chairman Terry] Gou put his faith and confidence in the future of the American economy,” the president said. “In other words, If I didn’t get elected, he definitely would not be spending $10 billion.”
The Foxconn chairman validated Trump’s boast, crediting the president with spurring the investment: “I met you three times. Each time you emphasized the importance of manufacturing in America and providing high-skilled jobs for American workers,” Gou said about Trump. He also explained why here, and why now: “Why do it here? TV was invented in America, yet America does not have a single LCD factory. We are going to change that. And it starts today with this investment in Wisconsin. This is a win-win-win strategy,” Gou said, adding he is “committed to great, great jobs for American people.”
According to the State Journal, the deal with Foxconn was “a culmination of many months of discussion” between a team of Republicans from the White House, Wisconsin and Foxconn officials, a White House official said. The negotiations included Trump, his senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, chief-of-staff Reince Priebus, Ryan and Walker.
* * *
And while superficially the agreement is a slam dunk for both Wisconsin, and US workers – especially in a high-tech sector that has over the years shifted to China – reading between the lines of the deal makes one wonder who is getting the best deal.
While a White House official said there will be no new federal programs to provide new incentives for Foxconn to build in Wisconsin, he added that the company could be eligible for existing incentives offered by the federal government.
What subsidies? The “incentive package” contemplated as part of the Foxconn deal will total $3 billion over 15 years, including $1.5 billion in state income tax credits for job creation; up to $1.35 billion in state income tax credits for capital investment and up to $150 million for the sales and use tax exemption. In other words, just over $230,000 for each new job that Foxconn may (or may not) create.
To some this is a problem: “The bottom line is this company has a concerning track record of big announcements with little follow through. Given the lack of details, I’m skeptical about this announcement and we will have to see if there is a legislative appetite for a $1 to $3 billion corporate welfare package,” Sen. Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, said, referring to the company’s 2013 announced plans to build in Pennsylvania that never materialized. Fitchburg Democratic Rep. Jimmy Anderson blasted the deal as a multibillion-dollar handout” and said “taxpayers should not be subsidizing private corporations at the expense of our children, school and roads.”
Yet not all Democrats blasted the deal: lawmakers from the region where Foxconn is expected to locate were more receptive to the news. Sen. Robert Wirch, D-Pleasant Prairie, called the news “a great thing for southeastern Wisconsin;” Barca hailed it as “an exciting opportunity.” Barca, D-Kenosha, said he met with Foxconn officials earlier this month and has been in touch with the Walker administration about its discussions with the company. “I’ve heard that they are family-supporting jobs and that the wages, on average, are actually more on the high end of the spectrum,” Barca said.
However, besides one’s view on incentives – which ultimately have to be funded somehow by taxpayers – there is another potential problem: this is not the first time Foxconn has come out with bombastic promises to create US jobs, only to quietly reneg on its pledge.
In 2013, Foxconn said it would spend $30 million to build a plant in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Then-Gov. Tom Corbett (R) personally helped craft the deal and hailed the plan in a statement, saying “Pennsylvania is once again leading the way through integrating technology into manufacturing.” The plant didn’t get built. The next year, Foxconn announced a $1 billion investment in Indonesia. The year after that, $5 billion in India. Though the announcements caused many excited headlines, the ambitious plans never came to fruition, according to an investigation published in March.
Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a group that advocates for favorable manufacturing trade policies, applauded the Trump administration for trying to bring consumer electronics manufacturing to the U.S., but said he’s skeptical of Wednesday’s news. “I’ll be excited about this Foxconn announcement when I see actual paychecks going to workers in Wisconsin,” Paul said.
Furthermore, Gou has regularly made noise about bringing a Foxconn factory to the United States. Earlier this year, the company said it was considering several states for a new plant that would make digital display panels. An administration official said the deal had been in the works for months, with talks being led by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. At a speech in Wisconsin in June, Trump hinted an announcement could be on the horizon. “Just backstage, we were negotiating with a major, major, incredible manufacturer of phones and computers and televisions, and I think they’re going to give the governor a very happy surprise very soon,” Trump said.
Whether or not the deal is real or just another mirage, remains to be seen, but another question involves relative wages: it is clear that Foxconn would not pursue US expansion if the economics were not right. Surely the generous incentives were a key part of the calculus, but from a bigger picture perspective, one wonders if – in at least one industry – the US has not reached wage parity with China.
As Forbes recently reported, “average wages in China’s manufacturing sector have soared above those in countries such as Brazil and Mexico and are fast catching up with Greece and Portugal after a decade of breakneck growth that has seen Chinese pay packets treble.” That’s average: wages for highly skilled sectors such as LCD production are far greater; in fact, it is distinctly possible that they are now higher in China than equivalent all-in comp (with incentives) in the US, especially for a company like Foxconn.
Foxconn factory
Recall that this is the same Foxconn that not so long ago Foxconn replaced 60,000 factory workers with robots due to rising labor costs.
In a statement to the BBC, Foxconn Technology Group confirmed that it was automating “many of the manufacturing tasks associated with our operations” but denied that it meant long-term job losses.
“We are applying robotics engineering and other innovative manufacturing technologies to replace repetitive tasks previously done by employees, and through training, also enable our employees to focus on higher value-added elements in the manufacturing process, such as research and development, process control and quality control.
“We will continue to harness automation and manpower in our manufacturing operations, and we expect to maintain our significant workforce in China.”
… and perhaps add to it in the US, with the proper amount of sweeteners of course. Because if the wage equivalency tipping point between high-tech jobs in China and the US has indeed been reached (or is close to it) the consequences for both the Chinese and US economy would be dramatic. If that is the case, Foxconn’s first foray into the US may be just the beginning.
Sweden’s government is being quietly rocked by a major scandal. So far the market has paid it little regard, but, as Citi warns, it may soon escalate…
Sweden appears to have accidentally leaked the details of almost all of its citizens. And now it's getting worse as the leak happened in 2015, but only emerged last week. As The Indepedent reports,
The leak allowed unvetted IT workers in other countries to see the details of people registered in Swedish government and police databases.
It happened after the government looked to outsource data held by the Transport Agency, but did so in a way that allowed that information to be available to almost anyone, critics have claimed.
The opposition is seeking to boot out the ministers of infrastructure, defence and the interior – Anna Johansson, Peter Hultqvist and Anders Ygeman, respectively – for their role in outsourcing IT-services for the Swedish Transport Agency in 2015.
Prime Minister Stefan Lofven admitted Monday his country and its citizens were exposed to risks by potential leaks as a result of the contract.
"This is a disaster," Swedish PM Lofven said. "This has exposed Sweden and Swedish citizens to risks."
The minority government has said that contract process – won by IBM Sweden – was speeded up, bypassing some laws and internal procedures in a manner that may have led to people abroad, handling servers with sensitive materials.
As Reuters reports, the scandal has raised questions about the way it has been handled within the government. The security police informed the Justice Ministry in late 2015 but Lofven said he only found out about it early this year.
Lofven said Anna Johansson, minister of infrastructure and responsible for the Transport Agency, had not passed information on to him.
Johansson on Sunday in turn blamed one of her former state secretaries for not informing her about the scandal.
"I wish I had been informed earlier," Lofven said while adding he had no plans to fire any ministers. "I have full confidence in them (ministers) until I say otherwise."
However, as The Independent notes, the centre right opposition Alliance, comprising the Moderate, Centre, Liberal and Christian Democrat parties, has taken aim at Lofven's cabinet…
"It is obvious (they) have neglected their responsibility. They have not taken action to protect Sweden's safety", Centre party leader Annie Loof told a news conference.
Parliament is in recess but the opposition parties will submit a request to the speaker to summon legislators for a vote within 10 days.
If the opposition gets a majority the ministers will have to resign, a likely outcome as the nationalist Sweden Democrats have said they will support a vote of no-confidence.
"There are only two alternatives, either a new election or he himself (Lofven) resigns," Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Akesson said.
"It feels like it's possible, yes," Anna Kinberg Batra, leader of the Moderates said.
As Citi notes, SEK has strengthened so far this week and no dramatic headlines seem to be impacting the currency yet, but some political noise may be on the way.
IBM Sweden says it never comments on relations with clients. The government said it had no comment pending a later statement, which Swedish Prime Minister Lofven just announced that he will hold a press conference on July 27th at 10am CET.
Finally we wonder how long before Sweden blames Russia for leaking this 2-year-old secret.
When I was studying in the UK in early 90s, I was often asked about cows, elephants and snake-charmers on the roads in India. A shift in public perception – not in the associated reality – was however starting to happen. India would soon become known for its vibrant IT industry.
Friends and family are helping students taking university exams with cheating. 2.5 million candidates, many of them with PhDs or post-graduates, recently applied for 6,000 of the lowest level job positions (“grade D”) available in West Bengal, which require no more than an early-stage school education. While India produces the largest number of PhDs, engineers, etc. in the world, the educational system is in reality in a shambles and a complete joke. Most of these people are in fact unemployable. [The incredible scene above took place in Bihar and is explained in greater detail here. Relatives of students are scaling the walls of the examination center to pass on cheat sheets to their offspring. Policemen who were supposed to guard examination buildings were often bribed to look the other way. A total of 6 to 7 million people across India were estimated to provide cheating assistance. [PT]]
A similar scene at another examination center in Bihar. In several locations parents and relatives even clashed with police who tried to keep them from scaling the walls (which is actually quite risky). Here is a You-tube video showing a TV report on the “massive family affair” the exam turned into, which is in parts quite funny. You will inter alia notice that students who get caught cheating by their teachers sometimes have to expect the kind of traditional instant punishment that would be frowned upon in politically correct Western societies, but which probably has the advantage of being memorable (here is another video of the collective cheating effort; and here is Mr. Bean taking an exam). [PT]
As more IT graduates from India moved to the US to work, they lobbied to change how India was viewed, not because India had actually changed or because they cared for India, but because from their tribal perspective, this reflected well on them. This process went hand in hand with the emerging trend toward political correctness in the West – people in the West became keen to exaggerate the successes of India and other “emerging markets” to prove their non-racist orientation.
Today, Silicon Valley has quite a visible Indian population and many of its members are very talented and in top positions. This helped change the perception of India. There are a total of one million Indian engineers and scientists in the US. To put this number into perspective, the population of India increases by more than a million souls every month.
These were the best and the brightest of India, and while their number is not even noise in the grand scheme of things, the exception to the rule began to be seen as the rule. A completely faulty assumption was taking root, namely that India is a land of high-tech people. Neither Indians nor politically correct Westerners challenged this notion.
Indians were hired by Americans based on meritocratic principles, but as more Indians rose to the top, they tended to hire based on tribal affiliations. Again, this tribalism has nothing to do with trying to help their brethren. Mostly it is about the comfort tribal people feel working with their own kind, despite harboring concomitant feelings of disdain. An Indian boss finds it easier to get away with abusing his Indian staff.
Apart from visible high-caliber Indians in the IT industry in the US, most of these employees are actually C-level, sweatshop labor, who work for a lot less than what Americans would be prepared to accept. Many of those who did not learn programming in the US are known for writing error-prone code that cannot be maintained. Moreover, they have developed a reputation for being pompous. Americans find it difficult to complain, as they don’t want to risk looking racist.
An outsized number of Indians in the position of recruiters tend to favor Indians, once again not for reasons of empathy, but merely for the comfort they feel in managing expectations. The lottery system associated with H1B visa is riddled with manipulated multiple filings and fake resumes – stories about this abound.
The IT Industry in India
Even within India, the IT industry is not what many people believe it to be. The IT sector accounts for 9.3% of the country’s GDP, or about $150 billion. While the Indian IT industry looks big from an Indian perspective, it is miniscule even in comparison with China, let alone the US.
In total, a mere 3.7 million out of India’s population of 1,350 million people are employed in the IT industry. Again, most of them are working as better-paid sweat-labor, forever ready to jump to a slightly better job offer. Creative, innovative work is almost never sent to India.
As time has passed it has become increasingly difficult for political correctness to suppress the fact that much of the code written by Indian IT programmers is of inferior quality. Indian IT firms are losing business and sadly the one industry that led most of India’s growth over the last three decades is rapidly shedding employees.
An Indian friend who has worked for many years in the IT industry, in and outside of India told me:
“The Indian IT sector, excluding the work that gets done at Microsoft, Google, Intel and few research-based companies, is the biggest joke of the millennium. Service-based companies within India, including well-known Indian names, try to skim clients big-time and operate with meager productivity. It really doesn’t make surprise me when many Indians in IT are losing their jobs because of their irresponsibility and indecent behavior. They treat their offices as their own private place to hang around, chit-chatting with colleagues, talking about their private lives publicly. Managers, mostly incompetent at work have zero-tolerance towards their subordinates, are sexist, and lure their female subordinates.”
Will Indians one day sit back and reflect that their lack of reason, their tribalism and superstitions are the reason for the utter backwardness and wretchedness, which is letting the one small advantage Indians had slip by?
The flaws of Indian coders have made headlines before. The article from which the above exhortation was taken appeared in 2015 after “Snapdeal cheerfully declared that ‘right programmers are rare in India’” and inter alia notes that “India’s education system has failed its citizens”. The problems with many Indian coders are deemed to consist of “rote-learning, lack of research and Gestalt skills and an inability to be innovative even while they possess the talent”. Two years earlier, the Atlantic had already published a “behind the scenes” article on the topic as well, which also blames the Indian education system for the situation and includes a forecast that the amount of coding work outsourced to India is likely to drop – to the chagrin of many newly-minted, but apparently poorly trained Indian programmers. [PT]
Here is a comment by Vidyanshu Pandey, who in the past worked as a coder, in delivery management, as a software architect, and is currently in IT sales and management consulting:
“ The combination of all these factors creates IT services that are cheap, but unsustainable. Wage hikes and inflation will make Indian IT services non-competitive. Moreover, the Chinese have rapidly become quite good in English and programming. The quality of their work is high, they have excellent skills in cyber-security, data-science and AI, and they constantly win the International Programming Olympics, a recognition that has mostly eluded Indians. Chinese coders are also happy to put in long hours, without complaining. Also, I find Filipinos to be very good, as well as the Vietnamese. I see a decline coming in India’s IT industry soon. The easy money of the past several years has encouraged materialism, hedonism and decadence. As IT has spearheaded growth of the middle class, its coming downturn may well herald its decline.”
Quiet Changes
Inside the country, Indians have increased their gold hoarding. There is no way to know how much they are really buying, as a lot of gold comes into the country through smuggling. Those who can are moving their gold and wealth abroad. They are increasing their purchases of properties outside the country, in the process contributing to property price increases in the US, in London, Thailand, and so forth.
A very large number of Directors of publicly-listed Indian companies are officially residents of Singapore, Hong Kong or Dubai. 30% of the people living in the UAE are from India. Of course, not much of this shows up in statistics.
Every Indian I know would emigrate today if he could. Most want to live under institutions created by Europeans. Hypocritically, those who cannot emigrate, and particularly those who do manage to do so, vociferously claim that European colonization of the third world was somehow an unmitigated calamity. It wasn’t. Without the British running India, India is rapidly on its way to utter chaos, disintegration and what will likely end up becoming a major humanitarian crisis.
Amazon wiped out billions of dollars worth of grocery store market cap last month when they announced plans to purchase Whole Foods. The announcement sent shares of Kroger, Wal-Mart, Sprouts, and Target, among others, plunging… (WMT -4%, TGT -5.5%, SFM -7.6%, KR -12%).
But, as we pointed out back in May, well before Amazon’s decision to buy Whole Foods, Amazon’s success in penetrating the traditional grocery market was always a matter of when, not if. Concept stores, like Amazon Go, already exist that virtually eliminate the need for dozens of in-store employees which will allow them to generate higher returns at lower price points than traditional grocers. And, with grocery margins averaging around 1-2% at best, if Amazon, or anyone for that matter, can truly create smart stores with no check outs and cut employees in half they can effectively destroy the traditional supermarket business model.
And while the demise of the traditional grocery store will undoubtedly take time (recall that people were calling for the demise of Blockbuster for nearly a decade before it finally happened), make no mistake that the retail grocery market 10-15 years from now will not look anything like the stores you visit today.
So, grocers have a choice: (i) adapt to the technological revolution that is about to transform their industry or (ii) face the same slow death that ultimately claimed the life of Blockbuster.
As such, as the the St. Louis Post-Dispatch points out today, the relatively small Midwest grocery store chain of Schnucks has decided to roll out the first of what could eventually be a large fleet of grocery stocking robots.
A slender robot named Tally soon will be roaming the aisles at select Schnucks groceries, on the lookout for out-of-stock items and verifying prices.
Maryland Heights-based Schnuck Markets, which operates 100 stores in five states, on Monday will begin testing its first Tally at its store at 6600 Clayton Road in Richmond Heights. The pilot test is expected to last six weeks. A second Tally will appear in coming weeks at Schnucks stores at 1060 Woods Mill Road in Town and Country and at 10233 Manchester Road in Kirkwood.
The robots are the first test of the technology in Missouri and could ultimately be expanded to more Schnucks stores.
Each 30-pound robot is equipped with sensors to help it navigate the store’s layout and avoid bumping into customers’ carts. When it detects product areas that aren’t fully stocked, the data is shared with store management staff so the retailer can make changes, said Dave Steck, Schnuck Markets’ vice president of IT and infrastructure.
Tally, created by a San Francisco-based company named Simbe, is also being tested at other mass merchants and dollar stores all across the country.
Founded in 2014, Simbe has placed Tally robots in mass merchants, dollar stores and groceries across the country, including some Target stores in San Francisco last year.
“The goal of Tally is to create more of a feedback mechanism,” Bogolea said. “Although most retailers have good supply chain intelligence, and point-of-sale data on what they’ve sold, what’s challenging for retailers is understanding the true state of merchandise on shelves. Everyone sees value in higher quality, more frequent information across the entire value chain.”
The robot does take breaks. When Tally senses it’s low on power, it finds its way to a charging dock. And, the robot is designed to stay out of the way of customers. If it detects a congested area, it’ll return to the aisle when it’s less busy. If a shopper approaches the robot, it’s programmed to stop moving.
Meanwhile, with nearly 40,000 grocery stores in the U.S. employing roughly 3.5mm people, most of whom work at or near minimum wage, Bernie’s “Fight for $15” agitators may want to take note of this development.
