1 China is richer but more unequal (Jonathan Kaiman
in The Guardian) China is becoming more unequal as it gets richer, with about a
third of the country's wealth now concentrated in the hands of 1% of its
citizens, according to new research. A report by the Peking University
Institute of Social Science Survey also found that the poorest quarter of
Chinese citizens owned only 1% of the country's wealth.
The report concludes that while the country is
getting richer as a whole – the average net worth of a Chinese household rose
17% between 2010 and 2012 to $71,000 – inequality is a serious and growing
problem. It says the country's Gini coefficient, a widely used indicator of
economic inequality, has grown sharply over the past two decades.
A Gini coefficient of zero represents absolute
equality, while one represents absolute inequality. About 20 years ago, China's
Gini coefficient for family net wealth was 0.45, according to the People's
Daily website, a Communist party mouthpiece, but by 2012 it had risen to 0.73.
Data from the OECD gives the US the highest Gini
coefficient in the G7, after taxes and transfers, at 0.39, followed by the UK
at 0.34 and Italy at 0.32. In the US, the richest 1% of the population controls
about 40% of the country's wealth. According to a Credit Suisse's 2013 global wealth
report, about 1% of the world's population holds 46% of its total assets. The
richest 10% of earners own 86% of all wealth, and the bottom half owns less
than 1%.
2 How to job search using social media (Belo
Cipriani in San Francisco Chronicle) Not every employment opportunity is posted
on traditional job boards, leaving staffing professionals to develop other
creative ways to find candidates. Many recruiters are relying on social media.
Here are six ways social media can help you land your next job.
Before using social media to job search, make sure
that your profiles are updated and look professional. Use the same cover photo
in all of them and ensure you are using an image employers would not frown
upon. Check the privacy settings and see how your profile is displayed to
others.
Social media accounts give companies a better idea
of who you are than a resume or cover letter. So, make sure you are branding
yourself correctly by having a few friends glance over your social media
accounts. You don’t have to use all of your social media profiles to hunt for a
job. Make sure the ones you do use are polished.
3 Being anxious is being human (Chong Siow Ann in
Straits Times) Various explanations have been advanced for this inexplicable
and spectacular failure of a football powerhouse like Brazil. Much had been
said about the excessively high expectations placed on a team whose nerves were
stretched as they inched closer to that coveted trophy. On that day and on that
pitch, the Brazilian team could not show grace under pressure. Instead, they
buckled and crumpled under the German onslaught.
Collectively, they seemed to have
"choked". "Choking" is the sports colloquialism for that
stress reaction that happens under high-pressure situations and where athletes
become self-conscious, over-think their actions, and end up not being able to
perform.
It is a classic illustration of the Yerkes-Dobson
law. Robert M. Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson were two Harvard psychologists
who, a century ago, demonstrated that moderate levels of anxiety improve
performance by focusing the mind and readying the body for action, but only up
to a point. The level of performance increases with anxiety until it reaches a
peak. Thereafter, it barrels downhill as the anxiety continues to ratchet up.
Social commenters like to describe our present time
as the age of anxiety to refer to that abstract collective sense of uneasiness
in the face of the constant threats of religious fundamentalism, terrorism,
economic crisis, unemployment, devastating viral pandemic, et cetera. As a
group, they are the most common type of mental illness.
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