I was driving listening to well known, well liked, remarkably able Larry Mantle on KPCC doing a segment on suicide where people called in and some professionals spoke. One of the professionals from Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, a respected center, kept using the word dark when speaking about the place most people with suicidal ideation find themselves in. Then Larry Mantle in summarizing what she Continue reading “Using The Word Dark and Racism”
Category: Better Relations
Eyeglasses For The World’s Poor
The headline in a NYT story was arresting, “A Simple way to Improve a Billion Lives: Eyeglasses. Poor eyesight is not the kind of problem that usually makes headlines and yet according to the WHO it costs $200 billion a year in productivity. Poor eyesight means that truck drivers in Nigeria and drivers in India drive without seeing what they need to see and end up causing more accidents, many involving fatalities. It means that school children who can’t see to do their school work properly are Continue reading “Eyeglasses For The World’s Poor”
Merger, Less Jobs and Smaller Paychecks
We’re so used to hearing about mergers, we don’t give them sufficient attention. Some are well known names, Amazon bought Whole Foods, Cigna bought Express Scripts, and some are names we may not often hear such as Marathon Petroleum buying rival Endeavor. There are also those which are proposed, AT&T merger with Time Warner or T Mobile with Sprint, for example. The number of mergers keeps growing; so far in 2018 $1. 7 trillion worth of deals have occurred and more are expected. We Continue reading “Merger, Less Jobs and Smaller Paychecks”
Private Equities and Toys ‘R’ Us
How do popular stores like Toys ‘R’ Us end up filing for bankruptcy? The behind the scene story opens a window on the role of private equity funds in our society. “Thirty-three percent of retail job losses from 2016 through 2017 resulted from private-equity backed store closures…,” according to a report by Inflection Capital Management, an equity fund consulting firm. Due to competition from e-commerce Continue reading “Private Equities and Toys ‘R’ Us”