Asking for a Raise? Avoid Round Numbers

Asking for a Raise? Avoid Round Numbers
by Lauren Weber
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324310104578511583633691660.html

Who Says New York is Not Affordable?

That may not be surprising, but once you account for these different preferences, it turns out that living in New York is actually a relative bargain for the wealthy.

While compiling her research, Handbury looked at Nielsen shopping data for 40,000 American households, across more than 500 food categories, with details on everything from organic labeling to salt content. Remarkably, she found that for households earning above $100,000, grocery costs are 20 percent lower in cities with a high per-capita income (like New York) than in cities with a low per-capita income (like New Orleans). There’s evidence that the same forces hold true for other products that cater to upper-income people, from high-end retail to beauty services. The average manicure, for example, is about $3 cheaper in New York City than in each of the rest of the top 10 biggest cities in the United States, according to Centzy, a company that collects data on the prices of services.

Part of the reason high-income residents get good deals, Handbury explains, results from a particular economic system. Highly educated, high-income New Yorkers are surrounded by equally well-educated and well-paid people with similar tastes. More vendors compete for their business, which effectively lowers prices and provides variety. There’s also a high fixed cost to distributing a niche product to an area; if there’s more demand for that product, then the fixed cost can be spread across more customers, which will justify bringing the product to the market in the first place. That’s why companies go through the expensive hassle of distributing, say, St. Dalfour French fruit spreads in rich cities but not in poor ones and why New York can support institutions like the Metropolitan Opera.

Who Says New York is Not Affordable?
by Catherine Rampell
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/who-says-new-york-is-not-affordable.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Isn't Extinction Part of Evolution?

From a WSJ opinion piece:

Does it ever occur to folks like William Brown that extinction is one of the natural outcomes of Darwinian evolution as it goes through the process of selecting the strongest species for survival (“Wanted: A Noah’s Ark for Species’ DNA,” op-ed, April 23)? Does it ever occur to them that maybe extinction is nature’s method of improving the viability of the biosphere as a whole? Does it ever occur to them that mankind’s activities that result in species extinction are in fact simply part of the process of Darwinian selection? Does it ever occur to them that mankind’s attempts to prevent extinction possibly, just possibly, might in fact be an unnatural act that ultimately harms the health of the biosphere?

http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-222677/