The Difference Between the Rich and The Rest

“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy.” – Ibid.

Modern Day Citizenship, Give Me Your Rich & Famous: Citizenship-by-investment programs, or CIPs, are schemes by which a country can offer wealthy people nationality for a price. In at least 24 countries, including several in the EU, well-heeled folk can obtain a new home in exchange for their investment in a business, property, government bonds, even just a cash donation. A mere $100,000 to $2.5 million can buy citizenship and a passport somewhere. Countries may offer “golden visas”, which reward investors with residence permits that can eventually, usually after five years, turn into citizenship. Companies such as Henley and Partners, CS Global and Apex specialize in CIPs, advertising their services online and in airline in-flight magazines. And business is booming.

The idea first launched in 1984 with the young, cash-strapped Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis. It ramped up in 2009 when the country began offering passport holders visa-free travel to the 26-nation Schengen zone (which includes most of the EU). The practice has grown exponentially ever since, driven by super-rich private investors from emerging market economies like China, Russia, India, Vietnam, Mexico, Brazil, even the Middle East. Most recently, Turkey saw a 12 percent decline in its millionaire population. Wealthy Turks were moving large sums of money out of the country, apparently fleeing both deteriorating financial conditions marked by very high inflation, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdown on his critics, including business owners. The United States offers the EB-5 visa that provides a way for immigrant investors to invest 1 million dollars and become a lawful permanent resident.

– US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will unveil a plan in Brussels Thursday aimed at getting NATO to prepare more battalions, ships, and planes for combat in the event of a threat from Russia. The initiative fits with the Pentagon’s 2018 National Defense Strategy, which accuses Russia of wanting to destroy the alliance. The Kremlin has said NATO is the real security risk in Eastern Europe, and Russia’s envoy said Mattis’s idea would only increase tensions in an increasingly sensitive part of Europe.

– The US certainly isn’t backing away from sensitive, potentially tense situations. Officials are considering sending a warship through the Taiwan Strait at a time when China-US ties are under pressure from trade disputes and the North Korean nuclear crisis. President Trump has already angered Beijing by approving a $1.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan and signing legislation encouraging visits by senior US officials to Taiwan. (Reuters)

– Despite Beijing’s “official enforcement” of international sanctions against North Korea, imposed to curtail the country’s nuclear weapons program, some trade has continued between China and the North along their 900-mile border. Excitement is growing, because if President Trump makes a deal with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un at the June 12 nuclear summit, and sanctions are loosened, China stands to reap big benefit$ from what could become a group of avid new consumers. (NYT)

– June 5 was World Environment Day, with the theme “Beat Plastic Pollution.” The amount of plastic pollution is astronomical. It’s the equivalent of a garbage truck full of plastic being dumped into the oceans every minute of every day. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke on the increasing damage plastics are doing globally, to the oceans, marine life, the country’s beaches. He called on the world to do more to tackle the plastic problem and other environmental harms. The Indian state of Tamil Nadu announced it would ban the use of plastic items, including non-biodegradable plastic bags, beginning in January. (CNN)

Chinese Techopolies Wage Digital War: When you think of ginormous companies duking it out for global market domination, you could think of Google or Facebook, Apple or Amazon. Actually, in Technology World, the most bruising battle of behemoths is happening in China. Tencent and Alibaba are in a no-holds-barred contest to dominate the ways 770 million internet users communicate, shop, get around, entertain themselves and even invest their savings and visit the doctor. Both companies have competed in messaging, microblogging, video streaming, cloud computing, even takeout delivery. Currently, their fiercest fight is over digital money kept on smartphones. Mobile payments have transformed the Chinese economy, and a company that can lock people into its payment system can branch out into even more kinds of commerce, financial and health services, literally anything that is an opportunity for people to use their digital wallets.

More Tech to Fix More Tech Addiction: Google and Facebook claim more users, but Chinese companies offer more product and services to theirs. But perhaps techopolies in China and the United States are in cahoots with each other as “Facebook Gave Data Access to Chinese Firm Flagged by U.S. Intelligence.”

What doesn’t seem to be on the radar in China are the downsides of “phone addiction.” American tech companies recognize the time users spend staring at their screens is actually making them miserable. But their plan to fix the problem is literally more tech (perhaps an apt metaphor here is the winners of a cake eating contest receiving more cake). At Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), taking place in San Jose this week, execs demonstrated their new “digital health” tools; the wellness tools will be found inside the settings app and are designed to get a user to spend less time on their iPhone. Google announced a similar set of tools last month. Third party apps already exist, with the promise they can make a user use apps less.

President Trump is supporting a prison reform bill called the First Step Act that improves some conditions for inmates and provides incentives to get involved in programs that reduce the risk of recidivism after release. The bill has appealed to both conservative groups like the Charles Koch Institute and the Faith and Freedom Coalition, and some progressive reformers, including DNC co-chair Keith Ellison. And Tuesday it was announced that, due to ill health, billionaire Republican megadonor David Koch is retiring from his roles at Koch Industries, the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, and other organizations. (The Guardian and CNN)

– Investing- one of the only fields dictated not by any amount of information or experience, but rather behavior with money. Behaviors with money can make the richest man poor, and the poorest man rich in the blink of an eye, and you need look no further than the stories of Grace Groner and Richard Fuscone. One invested their life savings into stable stocks and died wealthy beyond belief, while the other retired early, lived the dream life, and went bankrupt. The key is not how much money one has, but how they use it. (Collaborative Fund)

– Punching and jabbing his way to the top of the Forbes Top 100 earning athletes is none other than the Pretty Boy himself, Floyd Mayweather. With a perfect match history, Mayweather has earned over 285 million dollars throughout his boxing career. (BBC)

– I could lose a few pounds. Probably 10-15 to be exact. But in terms of weight, “human beings are insignificant.” Here is “All life on Earth, in one staggering chart: Scientists estimated the mass of all life. It’s mind-boggling.” (Vox)

– As we know from behavioral economists, default settings are incredibly powerful. And that is why habits are so powerful: we execute without thinking. But it’s important to use our prefrontal cortex and our system 1 thinking and reflect on our default modes. Especially if the default modes are ones we didn’t decide on: “Hands off my data! 15 default privacy settings you should change right now: Say no to defaults. A clickable guide to fixing the complicated privacy settings from Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple.” (WaPo)

LAST MORSELS

“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

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