GEORGE TOWN: The scarcity of land on Penang island and its lure as a
tourist destination and a second home for foreign retirees have caused
residential property prices to soar by more than 25% over the past five
years.
According to real estate valuers, the prices are among the
highest in Malaysia, which is why the Consumers Association of Penang
claimed that only the rich could live on the island a world heritage
city.
A survey by The Star revealed that condominium units
in Batu Ferringhi, Tanjung Bungah and Gurney Drive which front the sea
are being sold at astronomical prices, in some cases beginning with
RM2mil for a 1,000 sq ft unit.
Crowded
skyline: High-rise buildings dot Gurney Drive, which was once a sedate,
low-density area where locals came to relax. — K.T. GOH / The Star
Even
pre-war houses in the inner city for example, in Campbell Street have
been snapped up mostly by non-Penangites, who have turned them into
boutique hotels or simply kept them because of their architectural
beauty.
The prices of the houses have rocketed from about RM500,000 in 2007 to approximately RM800,000 today an increase of about 30%.
Raine & Horne Malaysia director Michael Geh
said the increase was among the steepest in the Pulau Tikus, Gurney
Drive, Tanjung Tokong, and Tanjung Bungah residential neighbourhoods,
which experienced a rise of over 25% in prices of condominium units.
Other
areas where prices of condominium units and terrace and semi-detached
houses have shot up by at least 25% are Bayan Baru, Sungai Ara, Minden
Heights and Batu Maung.
The
medium-range housing schemes in George Town neighbourhoods of Perak
Road, MacCallum Street, Burmah Road, Jelutong Road and Sungai Pinang
have not been spared.
“These have seen over a 25% increase in prices over the past five years,” Geh said.
An apartment located in such a neighbourhood cost RM180,000 in 2007 but is now RM250,000,
Geh
said the rise in property prices had driven many people to buy homes in
Seberang Prai, where property prices are a third of those on the
island.
“But we are seeing property prices on the mainland rising as well,” he added.
An
apartment in Butterworth town is now selling for RM250,000, compared to
RM180,000 five years ago, while a terrace house now costs RM500,000,
compared to RM300,000 in 2007.
Mushroo
ming buildings : A file picture showing Penang’s Gurney Drive in 2008.
Many high-rise projects have sprouted there since.
Given
the rise of raw materials prices and the scarcity of land, property
prices in Penang were expected to continue rising, Geh added.
Meanwhile, Penang Barisan Nasional chairman Teng Chang Yeow
said there were only one or two major hillslope projects during the
previous administration. Now, there were hillslope projects all over the
island.
He said the present guidelines on hillslope development
were adequate, but the state government should be more stringent in
enforcing them.- The Star/Asia News Network
Don't blush, but chances are the magazines you read are getting sexier.
Sexy advertisements are up in magazines from Playboy to Time and
Newsweek to Esquire, according to new research from the University of
Georgia. Since 1983, the percent of ads using sex to sell products rose
from 15 percent to 27 percent by 2003.
Though sexual imagery is used to sell almost everything, even banking
services, the bulk of the increase has come in ads for impulse buys:
alcohol, entertainment, beauty supplies. These products have long clung
to the "sex sells" maxim, said study researcher Tom Reichert, a professor of advertising and public relations at the University of Georgia.
"Advertisers use sex because it can be very effective," Reichert said in a statement. (Past research has suggested, however, that sex doesn't sell to female readers, with sensual advertising images leaving women bored and uninterested.)
Sex sells
Reichert and his colleagues analyzed 3,232 ads published between 1983
and 2003 in six magazines: Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Esquire, Playboy,
Newsweek and Time. These magazines were chosen because they have large
circulations, include titles that appeal to both men and women, and
because they have been included in past studies, allowing for easy
comparison across time.
About half of the advertisements included models. Researchers analyzed
these ads based on how sexily the models were dressed and whether they
were engaging in physical contact, such as kissing or simulated sex,
with another model. [Sex Quix: Myths, Taboos & Bizarre Facts]
The ads for health and hygiene products were the sexiest of all ads,
with 38 percent containing sexual imagery across the three-decade study
period. Beauty came in second, at 36 percent. Drugs and medications,
which include weight-loss supplements, came in third with 29 percent of
ads containing sexy models.
Just more than a quarter, or 27 percent, of clothing ads showed sex
appeal during the study period, compared with 23 percent of travel ads
and 21 percent of entertainment ads.
The overall uptick in sexiness was driven by increasingly sex-obsessed
ads for alcohol, entertainment and beauty products. In 1983, only 9
percent of alcohol ads
used sex to sell booze. Today, that number stands at 37 percent.
Sexually arousing entertainment ads increased from 10 percent in 1983 to
33 percent today, and 51 percent of beauty ads now include sexiness,
compared with 23 percent in 1983.
Modeling sexuality
Women are overwhelmingly the vehicles by which advertisers portray
sexuality, the researchers found. That trend has held for three decades.
In 1983, 11 percent of all advertisements contained sexy women,
and only 3 percent contained sexy men. As of 2003, 22 percent of ads
included sexy ladies, while only 6 percent featured smoldering hunks.
Sexy images popped up in odd places, including in 5 percent of
advertisements for financial products in 2003. But for the most part,
advertisers use sex to sell products that people might buy on a whim,
such as a new flavor of vodka or a papaya-scented lotion. Only two
categories — charities and computer companies — never used sex in their
ads in this sample.
"Sex is not as effective when selling high-risk, informational products
such as banking services, appliances and utility trucks," Reichert
said.
The researchers reported their results online in May in the Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising
Self-styled porn star Luka Rocco Magnotta has been arrested in a Berlin internet café,
where he was identified while watching pornography and reading news
stories about the global effort to track him down. His capture came as a
relief to Montreal’s Chinese community, following the identification
late last week of Wuhan-born student Lin Jun, whom Magnotta allegedly murdered, dismembered and mailed parts of to political parties.
The
murder of Mr. Lin has provoked widespread shock and anger in China,
where many believe the crime was racially motivated. The Chinese embassy
in Ottawa has warned citizens living or travelling in Canada to
“strengthen their personal security” in the wake of the deadly attack.
Mr.
Lin’s death is the second killing of a Chinese student in Canada in
just over a year, following last April’s murder of York University
studentLiu Qian, part of which was watched on Skype by her boyfriend
back in China.
[…] A makeshift memorial to Mr. Lin sprang up in
downtown Montreal in front of the statue of Norman Bethune, the Canadian
surgeon regarded as a hero in China. The foot of the statue was covered
with bouquets along with a note in English, French and Chinese that
summed up the sense of relief over Mr. Magnotta’s arrest: “We got that
beast.”
“The
Chinese Embassy in Canada reminds Chinese citizens traveling in Canada,
as well as students and the staff of Chinese organizations in Canada,
to improve their self-protection [and] awareness, and to strengthen
their personal security,” reads the final paragraph of the Embassy’s
Chinese-language statement on Mr. Lin’s murder, which called condemned
the “heinous criminal act.” A similar warning was posted on the webpage
of the Chinese consulate in Montreal.
[…] “The impact of the case
will be very bad on Canada,” Meng Xiaochao, the boyfriend who witnessed
the attack on Ms. Liu, said in an interview. “Last year when Liu Qian’s
case happened, many parents said they were no longer willing to send
their children to Canada. Now here comes this other case.”
More
than 50,000 Chinese students currently live and study in Canada. Like
all foreign students, they pay higher tuition than their Canadian-born
classmates, making them highly sought-after by cash-strapped
universities. Another 242,000 Chinese came to Canada as tourists last
year, a number the travel industry had been hoping would increase by as
much as one-fifth this year.
Porn star accused of killing gay ex-lover ate victim's body parts, claim police
Video footage of the suspected Montreal murderer Luka Rocco Magnotta
show him eating the body parts of his alleged victim, police said
yesterday.
Montreal Police Commander Ian Lafrenière said that while it
could not be confirmed, his officers suspected Magnotta of eating
parts of the lover he is accused of killing and dismembering.
German prosecutors further revealed yesterday that they intended
to extradite Magnotta to Canada following his surprise arrest in
Berlin on Monday.
The pornographic-film actor and model, 29, is wanted on
suspicion of murdering and dismembering his male Chinese student
lover and sending his victim's body parts to political parties in
one of Canada's most gruesome killings.
Magnotta fled from Montreal to Berlin via Paris. He was arrested
in an internet café in the German capital on Monday morning.
Yesterday he appeared before a judge and was remanded in custody
until further notice.
Prosecutors said they were awaiting a request from Montreal
Police for his extradition. A spokesman said the process could take
"several days".
Canadian police have confiscated a film of a man killing his
victim with an ice pick. The video is thought to show Magnotta
murdering his 33-year-old lover, Jun Lin. His motive is said to
have been jealousy.
The killer is suspected of dismembering his victim's body and
posting parts of the corpse to Canada's Conservative and Liberal
parties.
Magnotta is nicknamed "psycho killer" because the soundtrack to
the video allegedly showing the murder carried excerpts from the
film American Psycho.
Canadian porn actor who killed man and mailed body parts arrested
Berlin: A Canadian porn actor suspected of murdering and dismembering
a Chinese student and mailing his body parts to Canada's top political
parties was reading about himself on the internet when he was arrested
on Monday at a cafe in Berlin.
Canadian investigators say 29-year-old Luka Magnotta's obsessions
led him to post internet videos of his killing kittens, then a man, and
finally to his arrest at the cafe where he had spent two hours reading
media coverage of himself.
An international manhunt set off by a case of internet
gruesomeness that captured global attention ended quietly in the
working-class Neukoelln district of the German capital when a cafe
employee recognised Magnotta from a newspaper photo and flagged down a
police car.
Confronted by seven officers, "He tried at first giving fake
names but in the end he just said: 'You got me’," said police spokesman
Guido Busch. "He didn't resist."
Magnotta is wanted by Canadian authorities on suspicion of killing
Jun Lin, a 33-year-old man he dated, in Canada, and mailing his body
parts to two of Canada's top political parties before fleeing to Europe.
They say Magnotta filmed the murder of the Chinese student in his
Montreal studio apartment and posted it online. The video shows a man
with an ice pick stabbing another naked, bound male. He also dismembers
the corpse and performs sexual acts with it in what police called a
horrifying video.
The warning signs apparently were already there. For nearly two years
animal activists had been looking for a man who tortured and killed cats
and posted videos of his cruelty online. Since Lin's murder, Montreal police have released a photo from the video which they say is of Magnotta.
In 2005, Magnotta was accused of sexually assaulting a woman, but the
charges were dropped, the lawyer who represented him at the time said.
Magnotta is believed to have fled to France on May 26, based on
evidence police found at his apartment and a blog he once posted about
disappearing.
In Germany, surveillance camera footage of the internet cafe,
obtained by the Associated Press, showed Magnotta casually walking in to
the shop at noon local time, wearing jeans, a green hoodie sweater and
sunglasses.
He briefly spoke to the internet cafe's desk person, then walked
off to his assigned computer with the number 25 where he would later be
spotted reading the news about his case.
About two hours later, seven German police officers are seen walking into the shop, without any haste or arms.
On the camera footage, three police officers are seen
accompanying the handcuffed Magnotta a couple of minutes after they
first entered the cafe. Magnotta calmly walks alongside them, again
wearing sunglasses.
In Germany, police spokeswoman Kerstin Ziesmer said Magnotta is
being questioned, and will be brought before a judge behind closed
doors.
"He says he is the wanted person," she added, while cautioning
that his identity must still be independently confirmed by German
authorities.
Canada, like Europe, has no death penalty, making extradition
more likely. Quebec bureau of prosecutions spokesman Rene Verret said it
could still take a long time to get him back to Canada, but he said if
Magnotta doesn't contest the order he could be returned within a couple
of weeks.
The case's full horror emerged when a package containing a
severed foot was opened at the ruling Conservative Party headquarters on
May 29. That same day a hand was discovered at a postal facility,
addressed to the Liberal Party of Canada. And a torso was found in a
suitcase on a garbage dump in Montreal, outside Magnotta's apartment
building. Police in masks combed through the blood-soaked Montreal
studio apartment last Wednesday.
As they unraveled his background, police discovered that Luka
Magnotta changed his name from Eric Clinton Newman in 2006 and that he
was born in Scarborough, Ontario. He is also known as Vladimir Romanov.
His mother, Anna Yourkin in Peterbourgh, Ontario, said she had no comment, apologised and hung up the phone.
Toronto lawyer Peter Scully said he represented Magnotta in a fraud case in 2004 and a sexual assault case in 2005.
He said Magnotta was charged with a dozen counts of fraud and
impersonation for using a woman's credit card to buy about $17,000 worth
of goods, including a television, DVD player and several cellphones. He
said he pleaded guilty to four fraud-related charges after serving 16
days in pre-trial custody. He received a nine-month conditional sentence
and a year of probation.
Scully said Magnotta was charged with sexually assaulting a woman
in 2005, but the prosecution decided to withdraw the charges. The
woman's father became so irate and threatening that Scully said he wrote
a letter to police and the prosecutor, telling them about it.
Scully remembered Magnotta as soft spoken and polite.
"I've had lots of creepy characters and Eric did not stand out as
one of them," he said. Scully refers to his client by his previous
name, Eric Newman.
But Nina Arsenault, a Toronto transsexual who said she had a
relationship with Magnotta over a decade ago, described him as a drug
user with a temper, who sometimes turned his anger on himself, hitting
himself on the head, and other parts of his body.
While Magnotta described himself in an online video interview
with a site called "Naked News" as a stripper and male escort, Lin, who
was from Wuhan, China, was registered as an undergraduate in the
engineering department and computer science at Concordia University in
Montreal. Police have confirmed Magnotta is a porn actor and that he and
Jun had a relationship.
Zoya De Frias Lakhany, 21, a fellow Concordia student in some of
Lin's classes, said he was an excellent student who was shy and humble.
She said she cried all weekend.
"He was happy here, he would take pictures of the snow and post
them," she recalled. "He was sweet, never complained and smiled all the
time."
Montreal Police Cmdr Ian Lafreniere said investigators are extremely relieved and pleased about the arrest.
"We said from the beginning that the web has been used to glorify
himself and we believe the web brought him down," said Lafreniere. "He
was recognised because his photo was everywhere."
Costs billions ... the DDG-1000, the US Navy's next-generation destroyer. Photo: AP
A super-stealthy warship that could underpin the US
Navy's China strategy will be able to sneak up on coastlines virtually
undetected and pound targets with electromagnetic "railguns" right out
of a sci-fi movie.
But at more than $US3 billion a pop, critics say the new
DDG-1000 destroyer sucks away funds that could be better used to bolster
a thinly stretched conventional fleet. One outspoken admiral in China
has scoffed that all it would take to sink the high-tech American ship
is an armada of explosive-laden fishing boats.
With the first of the new ships set to be delivered in
2014, the stealth destroyer is being heavily promoted by the Pentagon as
the most advanced destroyer in history - a silver bullet of stealth. It
has been called a perfect fit for what Washington now considers the
most strategically important region in the world - Asia and the Pacific.
Though it could come in handy elsewhere, like in the Gulf
region, its ability to carry out missions both on the high seas and in
shallows closer to shore is especially important in Asia because of the
region's many island nations and China's long Pacific coast.
"With its stealth, incredibly capable sonar system,
strike capability and lower manning requirements - this is our future,"
Admiral Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations, said in April
after visiting the shipyard in Maine where they are being built.
On a visit to a major regional security conference in
Singapore that ended on Sunday, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said
the Navy will be deploying 60 per cent of its fleet worldwide to the
Pacific by 2020, and though he didn't cite the stealth destroyers he
said new high-tech ships will be a big part of its shift.
The DDG-1000 and other stealth destroyers of the Zumwalt
class feature a wave-piercing hull that leaves almost no wake, electric
drive propulsion and advanced sonar and missiles. They are longer and
heavier than existing destroyers - but will have half the crew because
of automated systems and appear to be little more than a small fishing
boat on enemy radar.
Down the road, the ship is to be equipped with an
electromagnetic railgun, which uses a magnetic field and electric
current to fire a projectile at several times the speed of sound.
But cost overruns and technical delays have left many
defence experts wondering if the whole endeavour was too focused on
futuristic technologies for its own good.
They point to the problem-ridden F-22 stealth jet
fighter, which was hailed as the most advanced fighter ever built but
was cut short because of prohibitive costs. Its successor, the F-35
Joint Strike Fighter, has swelled up into the most expensive procurement
program in US Defence Department history.
"Whether the Navy can afford to buy many DDG-1000s must
be balanced against the need for over 300 surface ships to fulfill the
various missions that confront it," said Dean Cheng, a China expert with
the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research institute in
Washington. "Buying hyperexpensive ships hurts that ability, but buying
ships that can't do the job, or worse can't survive in the face of the
enemy, is even more irresponsible."
The Navy says it's money well spent. The rise of China
has been cited as the best reason for keeping the revolutionary ship
afloat, although the specifics of where it will be deployed have yet to
be announced. Navy officials also say the technologies developed for the
ship will inevitably be used in other vessels in the decades ahead.
But the destroyers' $US3.1 billion price tag, which is
about twice the cost of the current destroyers and balloons to $US7
billion each when research and development is added in, nearly sank it
in Congress.
Though the Navy originally wanted 32 of them, that was cut
to 24, then seven.
Now, just three are in the works.
"Costs spiraled - surprise, surprise - and the program
basically fell in on itself," said Richard Bitzinger, a security expert
at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. "The DDG-1000 was a
nice idea for a new modernistic surface combatant, but it contained too
many unproven, disruptive technologies."
The US Defence Department is concerned that China is
modernising its navy with a near-term goal of stopping or delaying US
intervention in conflicts over disputed territory in the South China Sea
or involving Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province.
China is now working on building up a credible aircraft
carrier capability and developing missiles and submarines that could
deny American ships access to crucial sea lanes.
The US has a big advantage on the high seas, but
improvements in China's navy could make it harder for US ships to fight
in shallower waters, called littorals. The stealth destroyers are
designed to do both. In the meantime, the Navy will begin deploying
smaller Littoral Combat Ships to Singapore later this year.
Officially, China has been quiet on the possible addition of the destroyers to Asian waters.
But Rear Admiral Zhang Zhaozhong, an outspoken
commentator affiliated with China's National Defence University, scoffed
at the hype surrounding the ship, saying that despite its high-tech
design it could be overwhelmed by a swarm of fishing boats laden with
explosives. If enough boats were mobilised some could get through to
blow a hole in its hull, he said.
AP
China laughs at Planned American Stealth destroyer "It really sucks"
The US Navy is readying a $7 billion boat that can launch attacks faster
than the speed of sound and is practically invisible to detection. Even
with that hefty cost, however, China says it will only take a few
fishing boats to blow up the DDG-1000.
The chief of US naval operations says that the DDG-1000 super-stealth
destroyer warship is the “future” of America’s on-the-water weaponry,
and at that price tag it better be. Right now the ship is costing
taxpayers around $3.1 billion but the price of research and development
is likely to bring the tally to more than double. The ship is several
years in the making and the first of its kind is expected to be ready by
2014, but critics in China — the very place Uncle Sam plans to send his
up and coming fleet — are laughing at America’s latest endeavor.
"It would be a goner," Rear Adm. Zhang Zhaozhong of China's National
Defense University tells the nation’s CCTV military channel.
The US intends on sending its newest ship towards China’s Pacific Coast
where it will be able to monitor activity in the budding region without
being easily detected. The boat’s wave-piercing hull will leave almost
no wake in the water, reports the Associated Press, and upgrades to the
ship will eventually equip it with electromagnetic railguns that can
shoot projectiles by using an electric current and magnetic field to
fire at enemy targets. Zhaozhong warns, however, that where the US
invests in unnecessary weaponry and sleek, stealth technology, it fails
to properly outfit the ship with the material to keep it from going
kerplunk.
According to the AP, Zhaozhong claims that the DDG-1000’s impressive
design could be easily overwhelmed by a mere fleet of fishing boats that
are laden with explosives. If enough of those boats could be mobilized
around the stealth ship, says Zhaozhong, its high-tech hull could be
blown apart sending the boat straight to the bottom of the sea.
That, of course, is not how the Pentagon wants to spend a few billion
dollars. "Whether the Navy can afford to buy many DDG-1000s must be
balanced against the need for over 300 surface ships to fulfill the
various missions that confront it," Dean Cheng, a China expert with the
Heritage Foundation, adds to the AP. "Buying hyper-expensive ships hurts
that ability, but buying ships that can't do the job, or worse can't
survive in the face of the enemy, is even more irresponsible."
A 2008 report on the ship from US Navy Vice Admiral Barry McCullough
revealed that “the DDG-1000 cannot perform area air defense” and that
the ship essentially lacked any ability to fire at enemies located
above, making it a sitting duck for air attacks. At the time, a naval
source with Defense News said that the ship "could carry and launch
standard missiles, but the DDG 1000 combat system cant guide those
missiles onward to a target."
Off the sea and in the air, the Pentagon is having other problems with
costly crafts that aren’t operating up to snuff. After a serviceman was
killed on board an F-22 Raptor stealth jet in 2010, the Air Force has
repeatedly grounded the fleet over security concerns. Recently, several
pilots announced that they would refuse to board the craft until all of
its kinks were worked out. The Air Force has spent around $77.4 billion
on its F-22 fleet so far — the cost of building and maintaining around
11 of the DDG-1000s — but has been forced to ground them time and time
again. Around $400billion worth of high-tech F-35 fighter jets have been
grounded no fewer than three times as well.
Although the Navy first ordered 32 of the DDG-1000s, they have slashed
that figure three times; once the first boat is finished, only two more
are currently slated to join it.
The political power of the working class has diminished in recent
decades, and that helps to explain why US politicians have not paid enough
attention to the unemployment problem.
The high unemployment rate ought to be a national emergency. There are millions of people
in need of jobs. The lost income as a result of the recession totals
hundreds of billions of dollars annually, and the longer the problem
persists, the more permanent the damage becomes.
Why doesn’t the unemployment problem get more attention? Why have other
worries such as inflation and debt reduction dominated the conversation
instead? As I noted at the end of my last column, the increased concentration of political power at the top of the income distribution provides much of the explanation.
Consider the Federal Reserve. Again and again we hear Federal Reserve officials say that an outbreak of inflation
could undermine the Fed’s hard-earned credibility and threaten its
independence from Congress. But why is the Fed only worried about
inflation? Why aren’t officials at the Fed just as worried about
Congress reducing the Fed’s independence because of high and persistent
unemployment?
Similar questions can be asked about fiscal policy. Why is most of
the discussion in Congress focused on the national debt rather than the
unemployed? Is it because the wealthy fear that they will be the ones
asked to pay for monetary and fiscal policies that mostly benefit
others, and since they have the most political power their interests –
keeping inflation low, cutting spending, and lowering tax burdens –
dominate policy discussions?
There was, of course, a stimulus program
at the beginning of Obama’s presidency, but it was much too small and
relied far more on tax cuts than most people realize. The need to shape
the package in a way that satisfied the politically powerful, especially
the interests that have captured the Republican Party, made it far less
effective than it might have been. In the end, it had no chance of
fully meeting the challenge posed by such a severe recession, and when
it became clear that additional help was needed, those same interests
stood in the way of doing more.
Republican policymakers give us all sorts of excuses for blocking
further action to help the unemployed. We are told the problem is
structural – there is a geographical or talent mismatch between labor
availability and labor needs – and nothing can be done to help. But
something can be done. We can help workers move to where the jobs are,
encourage firms to locate in areas where
workers are readily available, and help with job retraining. If
mismatches are really the problem, why aren’t Republicans leading the
charge on these policies? If they care about the unemployed rather than
the tax burden of the wealthy, then why are they allowing community colleges – one of the best ways we have of providing job training for new and displaced workers – to be gutted with budget cuts?
We
are also told that the deficit is too large already, but there’s still
plenty of room to do more for the unemployed, as long as we have a plan
to address the long-run debt problem. But even if the deficit is a
problem, why won’t Republicans support one of the many balanced budget
approaches to stimulating the economy? Could it be that these policies
invariably require higher income households to give something up so that
we can help the less fortunate? Tax cuts for the wealthy are
always welcome among Republicans no matter how it impacts the debt, but
creating job opportunities through, say, investing in infrastructure?
Forget
it. Even though the costs of many highly beneficial infrastructure
projects are as low as they get, and even though investing in
infrastructure now would save us from much larger costs down the road –
it’s a budget saver, not a budget buster – Republicans leaders in the
House are balking at even modest attempts to provide needed job opportunities for the unemployed.
The
imbalance in political power, obstructionism from Republicans designed
to improve their election chances, and attempts by Republicans to
implement a small government ideology are a large part of the
explanation for why the unemployed aren’t getting the help they deserve.
But Democrats aren’t completely off the hook either. Centrist Democrats beholden to big money interests are
definitely a problem, and Democrats in general have utterly failed to
bring enough attention to the unemployment problem. Would these things
happen if workers had more political power?
When we talk about
leveling the playing field, it is generally in terms of economic
opportunity. However, leveling the political playing field is just as
important, and in the past unions provided workers with a powerful voice
in the political arena. But unions have largely faded from the scene,
leaving workers with very little organized power. Correcting the
political imbalance this has created through the renewed political
empowerment of the working class must be part of any attempt to improve
our response to serious recessions.
It also suggests a solution — renewed political empowerment of the working class — but that’s easier said than done.
(Reuters) - Four
out of five Facebook Inc users have never bought a product or service as
a result of advertising or comments on the social network site, a
Reuters/Ipsos poll shows, in the latest sign that much more needs to be
done to turn its 900 million customer base into advertising dollars.
The online poll also found that
34 percent of Facebook users surveyed were spending less time on the
website than six months ago, whereas only 20 percent were spending more.
The
findings underscore investors' worries about Facebook's money-making
abilities that have pushed the stock down 29 percent since its initial
public offering last month, reducing its market value by $30 billion to
roughly $74 billion.
About 44
percent of respondents said the botched market debut has made them less
favorable toward Facebook, according to the survey conducted from May 31
to June 4. The poll included 1,032 Americans, 21 percent of whom had no
Facebook account.
Facebook's 900
million users make it among the most popular online destinations,
challenging entrenched Internet players such as Google Inc and Yahoo
Inc. But not everyone is convinced that the company has figured out how
to translate that popularity into a business that can justify its lofty
valuation.
Shares of Facebook
closed Monday's regular trading session down 3 percent at $26.90.
Facebook did not have an immediate comment on the survey.
While
the survey did not ask how other forms of advertising affected
purchasing behavior, a February study by research firm eMarketer
suggests that Facebook fared worse than email or direct-mail marketing
in terms of influencing consumers' purchasing decisions.
"It
shows that Facebook has work to do in terms of making its advertising
more effective and more relevant to people," eMarketer analyst Debra
Williamson said.
Those concerns
were exacerbated last month when General Motors Co, the third largest
advertiser in the United States, said it would stop paid-advertising on
Facebook.
Measuring the
effectiveness of advertising can be tricky, particularly for brand
marketing in which the goal is to influence future purchases rather than
generate immediate sales.
And the
success of an ad campaign must be considered in relation to the
product, said Steve Hasker, president of Global Media Products and
Advertiser Solutions at Nielsen.
"If
you are advertising Porsche motor cars and you can get 20 percent of
people to make a purchase that's an astonishingly high conversion rate,"
said Hasker.
"If you are selling instant noodles, maybe it's not," he
WANING ENGAGEMENT
About
two out of five people polled by Reuters and Ipsos Public Affairs said
they used Facebook every day. Nearly half of the Facebook users polled
spent about the same amount of time on the social network as six months
ago.
The survey provides a look at
the trends considered vital to Facebook's future at a time when the
company has faced a harsh reception on Wall Street.
Facebook's
$16 billion IPO, one the world's largest, made the U.S. company founded
by Mark Zuckerberg the first to debut on markets with a capitalization
of more than $100 billion.
It's
coming out-party, which culminated years of breakneck growth for the
social and business phenomenon, was marred by trading glitches on the Nasdaq
exchange. A decision to call certain financial analysts ahead of the
IPO and caution them about weakness in its business during the second
quarter has triggered several lawsuits against Facebook and its
underwriters.
Forty-six percent of
survey respondents said the Facebook IPO had made them less favorable
towards investing in the stock market in general.
While Facebook generated $3.7 billion in revenue last year, mostly from ads on its website, sales growth is slowing.
Consumers'
increasing use of smartphones to access Facebook has been a drag on the
company's revenue. It offers only limited advertising on the mobile
version of its site, and analysts say the company has yet to figure out
the ideal way to make money from mobile users.
Facebook
competes for online ads with Google, the world's No. 1 Web search
engine, which generated roughly $38 billion in revenue last year.
Google's search ads, which appear alongside the company's search
results, are considered among the most effective means of marketing.
The
most frequent Facebook users are aged 18 to 34, according to the
Reuters/Ipsos survey, with 60 percent of that group being daily users.
Among people aged 55 years and above, 29 percent said they were daily
users.
Of the 34 percent spending
less time on the social network, their chief reason was that the site
was "boring," "not relevant" or "not useful," while privacy concerns
ranked third.
The survey has a "credibility interval" of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Much is being done to make sure M'sia can compete with the best on the world
BY now, most people would have heard of the term middle-income trap.
This
describes a situation where a nation makes rapid progress in terms of
economic growth and in increasing incomes from a low base, but is unable
to make that final leap to becoming a high-income nation.
Why
this happens is often not clear but economists theorise that once the
economic factors of production such as land, labour and capital have
been sufficiently harnessed, it needs real gains in productivity to
further increase income.
Put in another way, there is only so
much land, labour and capital. Once you have made optimum use of these,
the next stage is simply to ensure that you use these much more
efficiently, and that there is a further increase in productivity.
Are we stuck in a middle-income trap?
It’s too early to answer the question. If we don’t reach high-income status by our target date of 2020, then perhaps we are.
But let me tell you we are doing everything possible to get to high income.
In a nutshell, competitiveness is crucial for high income. We simply must do things better than before and more efficiently.
High income goal: ‘In a nutshell, competitiveness is crucial for high income. We simply must do things better than before and more efficiently.’
We need a technological and knowledge leap, and to foster an environment which breeds and encourages competitiveness.
To
become a high-income country, we have to be globally competitive, and
focus on areas where we can bring our competitiveness to bear with the
highest impact in terms of economic contributions and earnings.
Often,
we hear the New Economic Model or NEM which is aimed at moving us into a
high income country, is dead and is replaced by the Government and
Economic Transformation Programmes. Nothing can be further from the
truth and I am keen to dispel this transformation blues.
The moves we are taking to transform arise from the NEM - we are NOT replacing it.
We are implementing the NEM as best as we can through measures aimed at making major changes to our operating environment.
The Strategic Reform Initiatives have been put in place as an enabling process.
The
National Economic Advisory Council (NEAC) recommended in the NEM, 51
broad and cross cutting policy measures to enable us to realise our goal
of transforming our nation into a high income, sustainable and
inclusive economy. We are implementing, albeit at different stages, all
the 51 strategic reform initiatives.
There are six areas in which we are making major changes:
·Competition, standards and liberalisation
·Improving public finance
·Better public service delivery
·Defining and reducing the Government’s role in business
·Human capital development
· Narrowing disparities
Like charity, competition begins at home.
We
introduced the Competition Act, which is being enforced this year so
that all anti-competitive behaviour among Malaysian industries can be
removed and there will be free and fair competition.
This is a
major milestone and our adoption of this, despite powerful vested
interests, demonstrates our commitment towards a competitive economy.
We have made amendments to the Standards of Malaysia Act 1996, approved in Dec 2011, to accelerate the development of standards.
This includes reducing the period of adoption of international standards from a year previously to nine months.
These are key requirements for an industry to be internationally competitive.
In the last Budget, 17 sub-sectors were announced for liberalisation, with up to 100% foreign equity participation.
Nine sectors have been fully liberalised while the remaining will be liberalised in stages by end-2012.
For changes to take place we need a healthy fiscal position.
We have made progressive improvements in tax collection, and collected additional RM25bil through improved efficiencies in 2011.
We have other measures in the pipeline to be disclosed in due course.
In
terms of public service delivery we are re-engineering business
processes. 395 licences will be eliminated by year end, which is
estimated to reduce RM729mil in business licence compliance costs.
We
are exploring open recruitment between the private sector and the civil
service, and introducing real time performance monitoring.
We
have introduced a minimum wage to force industry to become more
competitive and various other initiatives to improve skills and upgrade
the workforce.
Concurrently, we are modernising labour laws,
providing a labour safety net, recognising talented women, strengthening
human resource management and providing labour market analysis.
In
making Malaysians more employable in the ICT industry and addressing
the industry’s talent supply issue, the MyProCert programme does its
part in upskilling Malaysians with international certification standards
on programmes such as iOS Mobile Development and Oracle Certified
Professional Programmes.
We are limiting the Government’s role in
business to four areas – national infrastructure such as public
transport; businesses that need to be owned locally such as defence;
specialised industries which require large growth, catalytic or new
technology; and situations where the private sector needs co-investors.
There is a programme to pare down Government investments.
Last
year, 80 companies participated in TERAS – a programme that aims to
develop high performing bumiputra SMEs by enabling them to scale up and
accelerate their growth, thus making them more competitive in the open
market.
In line with the NEM, we are using the principles of
being market friendly, merit-based, need-based and transparent in
implementing these measures.
So far 50 more companies have qualified under this programme this year.
We are committed to encouraging competition and entrepreneurship.
The
Government’s role is to set the conditions for competitiveness,
enabling the private sector to take the lead and rise to the challenge.
We know if we don’t successfully transform here, we will lose the battle
to become a high-income nation.
But we are already taking the
measures by putting in place enablers to make the economy more
competitive and taking specific measures in a cross-section of areas to
achieve the income we need to make us a developed country.
We will get there.
Datuk
Seri Idris Jala is CEO of the Performance Management and Delivery Unit
and Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department. Fair and reasonable
comments are most welcome at idrisjala@pemandu.gov.my
Lure of Penang sees spike in property prices
Crowded
skyline: High-rise buildings dot Gurney Drive, which was once a sedate,
low-density area where locals came to relax. — K.T. GOH / The Star
Mushroo
ming buildings : A file picture showing Penang’s Gurney Drive in 2008.
Many high-rise projects have sprouted there since.
