الأربعاء، 7 ديسمبر 2016
الاثنين، 5 سبتمبر 2016
الثلاثاء، 10 مايو 2016
obama is begging for a job !! jobless !!
will propose to employer-sponsored retirement plans could help 30 million American workers have access to retirement savings, the White House said Monday.
Obama's plan consists of of a number of legislative proposals, which he'll outline in the 2017 budget he'll submit to Congress next month. They include:
► Offering tax credits to small businesses that automatically enroll employees in a new 401(k)-style retirement plan — or requiring them to offer payroll deductions to an Individual Retirement Account if they don't offer a company plan.
► Requiring companies with existing plans to offer them to long-term, part-time workers who work 500 hours a year for three years; and
► Making it easier for companies to pool their retirement plans to bring down expenses through multiple employer plans.
The White House previewed the proposals for reporters Monday but did not immediately reveal their budgetary impact. In addition to the newly proposed tax credits for businesses, the changes would give millions of Americans a tax cut by allowing them to defer taxes on their retirement savings.
The retirement proposals are part of an economic security agenda Obama outlined in his State of the Union address this month, which also included a call to expand unemployment benefits. "For Americans short of retirement, basic benefits should be just as mobile as everything else is today," Obama told Congress. "Even if he’s going from job to job, he should still be able to save for retirement and take his savings with him.”
The president will propose an as-yet-undisclosed amount of money to experiment with more portable retirement plans, run by states and non-profits, which would accommodate workers who move from job to job or who have more than one employer at a time.
The National Institute on Retirement Security found last year that the median retirement account balance for all working-age Americans is $2,500 — a number that increases to just $14,500. for those nearing retirement. Many of them just need to get started, said the institute's executive director, Diane Oakley. "What I like about this proposal is it still tries to provide some important incentives for employers to take the next step," she said.
Obama's proposals would require action by a Republican-controlled Congress in an election year session, but Obama has expressed optimism he can still work with Congress on the issue.
In fact, the election could help force Congress to get something done this year. "America's middle class is feeling economically insecure," said Christian Weller, a professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston and author of Retirement on the Rocks. "Economic anxiety is driving a lot of the support for Donald Trump, and also for Bernie Sanders."
Weller said the Obama proposal's "soft mandate" for employers to give employees an IRA option is a significant change to the voluntary, employer-based system of retirement savings. "If you're an employer who's not doing anything, you at least have to maker it easier for an employee to save on their own through a payroll deduction option," he said.
The Republican chairmen of the tax-writing committees of Congress, which have jurisdiction over retirement plans, had no comment on the proposals Tuesday. But they've been working on their own proposals, and the Senate Finance Committee will hold a hearing Thursday on the issue.
"These items shouldn't be particularly controversial," Labor Secretary Tom Perez told reporters Monday. "In fact a lot of these ideas enjoy bipartisan support and have bipartisan roots." Auto-enrolling employees in a retirement plan, for example, has been proposed for years by both the conservative Heritage Foundation and the center-left Brookings Institution.
Perez said many small businesses worry that the administrative and compliance burdens are too costly for them to offer a retirement plan — obstacles that the administration's proposals try to address.
"What we're trying to do is recognize those barriers and address them," he said. "We want to increase access, we want to reduce burdens, but at the same time we want to make sure
there are sufficient consumer protections in place."
it won't be enough. Here's why.
The federal government today launched a program called myRA, a “starter” retirement savings account for people who don’t have access to a 401(k) at work or don’t have enough money to meet the minimum balance requirements on many private-sector IRA accounts.
In his announcement, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew touted it as a cheap, convenient, and risk-free way for people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to sock some money away for their retirements.
Government statistics show that nearly a third of people who aren’t already retired say they don’t have any money set aside through a pension, 401(k) or other retirement account. More than 40% of people who don’t have a 401(k) say it’s because their job doesn’t offer one, and more than 60% of part-time workers don’t have employer-backed retirement accounts.
Here’s what you need to know:
It’s really just a starter account. MyRA isn’t meant to be a stand-alone retirement plan. There’s only one investment option—a Treasury bond that recently earned about 2%. That’s more than a typical savings account, but it’s not the kind of return investment experts say people need to accumulate a good-sized nest egg. The trade-off is that it’s principal-protected (you can’t lose the money you put in) since the money is invested in a government security.
There are no fees, and no minimum balance or contribution requirements, which Treasury officials said are major barriers to people who want to start retirement accounts.
the kingdom of amazing uniforms !
A Sea of Uniformity
Japan must be one of the most uniformed nations in the world. Student uniforms are seen from elementary through high school and sometimes even at colleges. And employee uniforms (mainly for women) are worn at workplaces ranging from tiny firms to giant corporations, from lavish showrooms to little shops selling mobile phones. Where else does the culture of the uniform thrive as it does among the Japanese?
What I think is especially interesting is that we see people voluntarily wearing virtually identical clothes even in some cases where uniforms are not required. A good example is the student job-hunter look: black suits of a standard design that reveal nothing of the wearers’ individuality. For practical purposes these are the same as uniforms. So are the prim suits that mothers buy for themselves and the stereotyped outfits they get for their children as they seek spots for them at private elementary schools. “Pseudo-uniforms,” we might well call this attire.
So Japan’s uniform-wearing culture features two types of uniform: the mandatory regular uniform and the voluntarily worn pseudo-uniform. Let’s look at both.
Advantages of the Mandatory Uniform
Regular uniforms, the mandatory attire for those attending a particular school or working at a particular job, have a number of functions. I think we can sum them up in the following five items.
1. Identification
A uniform identifies the wearer’s status as a member of a student body, a sports team, or the staff at a workplace, making it readily apparent to others what role the person is playing. The uniforms worn by hospital nurses and department store clerks are good examples of this.
2. Pride and Motivation
Wearing a uniform helps motivate people to perform their role at their school or workplace and appeals to their pride. Consider the red jackets worn by the Shinkansen cleaning crews of JR East Tessei. Cleaning is important, but it is not a glamorous job by any means. By outfitting its cleaning team members in bright red jackets, Tessei called attention to them, boosting their pride in their jobs and enhancing their motivation.
A Tessei cleaning crew wait to board a bullet train arriving at Tokyo Station. (Photo courtesy of JR East Tessei)
The special uniforms worn only by those with advanced skills have a similar effect. For example, copilots’ uniforms have three stripes on their sleeves or shoulder epaulets, while pilots have four. This is another way of appealing to pride and building motivation.
3. Safety and Comfort
The uniforms worn by factory workers are an example of regulation wear that enhances safety and comfort. The uniforms are designed to be easy to work in, and they help protect the wearer from harm on the job.
4. Brand Promotion
Uniforms can also promote the brand image of a business. A typical example is the attire of the female flight attendants on Singapore Airlines. Their ethnically inspired uniforms have been unchanged since 1972 and have become a widely recognized trademark for the airline, greatly boosting its brand.
5. Recruiting Power
Many uniforms also enhance the organization’s recruiting power by making people want to work where they are worn. The uniforms of the “cast members” at Disneyland are a good example.
All Nippon Airways flight attendants model the uniforms worn by cabin crews since the airline launched its international service 30 years ago, at an event at Narita Airport, March 3, 2016. (© Jiji)
So uniforms serve various purposes, both for the organizations that adopt them and for those who wear them.
The Fading of the Anti-Uniform Movement
Despite their advantages, uniforms were formerly the target of considerable opposition. Thirty or 40 years ago, the anti-uniform movement was in its heyday, with mandatory student uniforms considered to be symbolic of oppression by schools. But today this movement is in abeyance—if indeed it exists at all. Conversely, many schools have gained more applicants and enhanced their test score rankings after adopting student uniforms that are fashionably designed and reflect young people’s input. These uniforms have helped boost the brand of the schools where they are worn.
The school uniforms of yesteryear were seen as symbols of the establishment, and students generally found them stifling to wear. One reason they are no longer so disliked is that the materials have changed and the designs have become varied. Thanks to improvements in synthetic fibers, today’s uniforms are light, use fabrics that breathe, and do not need to be ironed. On the design front, optional items like vests, sweaters, and blouses give students leeway to introduce variations to their look.
This is certainly quite a transformation from the days when school uniforms were rigidly identical, looked and felt heavy, and were hard to take care of. Uniforms now allow students to enjoy fashionable looks that only they and their contemporaries can sport. Thanks to improvements in design and materials, they have changed from symbols of the establishment to clothing that students themselves want to wear.
Teens sport fashionable designs from Conomi, a retailer whose school uniforms have become popular nationwide. (Courtesy of Conomi)A Selective Revival in Corporate Uniforms
This is not to say that the status of the uniform is unassailable in Japan. For example, many companies stopped having their female office workers wear uniforms after the Equal Employment Opportunity Act came into force in 1986. These uniforms came under attack as symbols of gender discrimination. And eliminating them was also in line with the business world’s drive to cut costs. We cannot expect to see this trend go away.
In addition to paying for office uniforms, employers also need to provide changing spaces. And there is little practical purpose in requiring them to be worn in offices where employees do not have face-to-face contact with customers. Companies have also been cutting costs by eliminating staffed reception desks and the practice of having female employees prepare and pour tea for their colleagues and guests. Doing away with the “OL” (office lady) uniform is in keeping with this streamlining of business practices.
The story is different, though, at workplaces serving customers directly. In 2016, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ for the first time adopted uniforms for all 16,000 of the employees, both male and female, staffing its customer counters. And other institutions, such as Kagawa Bank and Chukyo Bank, have reintroduced uniforms. These moves come from a focus on the advantages of this clothing, as described above. The adoption of uniforms at these banks may also be identified as an element of customer service.
The uniforms adopted by Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ this January are designed to project neatness, reliability, and approachability. (Courtesy of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ)
Other employers may follow suit, so to speak, and decide to reintroduce uniforms for their employees, but if they do, it will be a decision based on a cost-benefit analysis. Companies have become quite cost-conscious, and since uniforms represent an added expense, firms will adopt them only if they determine that the advantages of doing so are sufficient to justify the outlays involved.
The Unthinking Wearers of Pseudo-Uniforms
Next let us consider the “pseudo-uniform.” The reasons Japanese people eagerly buy and wear this sort of standardized attire, even though it is not required, may be summed up as follows.
1. Failure Avoidance
The desire to do whatever one can in advance to prevent failure gives rise to demand for the pseudo-uniforms worn by students during their job hunts and by mothers and children during the competition for spots at private schools. People do not want to leave open the possibility that they will look back and rue what they wore as having caused them not to get their desired job or school seat. So they end up picking the same sort of outfit as everybody else. The pseudo-uniform is a manifestation of the Japanese aversion to failure.
2. Repression of Individuality
Another element is people’s desire to avoid standing out from the crowd. This also powers demand for pseudo-uniforms. And this demand is likely to persist, changing only if and when Japanese society comes to accept diversity and to take the expression of individuality as the norm.
3. Clever Merchandising
Job hunters’ suits have become much more standardized than they used to be. We no longer see any variation in them. This is a result of the profusion of messages purporting to tell students what will cause them to succeed or fail in their hunt for a job, along with the rapid growth in the number of stores that sell suits specifically identified as being for job hunters. Twenty years ago, this flood of information and supply of standardized suits did not exist; students picked their job-hunting wear based on their own ideas and input from their peers. Now they are offered a ready-made option. This is a current that is hard to resist.
Much the same can be said for the elementary school admission-seeking outfits. The selling of these pseudo-uniforms has become a business. Japanese companies are clever at this sort of standardized merchandising. They have created a nationwide marketplace where people can simply buy a product without giving any thought to alternatives.
Supported by the ongoing demand both for regular uniforms and pseudo-uniforms, Japan’s status as one of the world’s most uniformed lands seems secure for the foreseeable future.
الأرسنال يصطاد فى المياه العكرة !
يسعى نادي أرسنال الإنجليزي، للحصول على خدمات الثنائي رياض محرز، ونجولو كانتي لاعبا الفريق الأول لكرة القدم بنادي ليستر سيتي الإنجليزي، خلال فترة الانتقالات الصيفية المقبلة.
وتتسلح إدارة الجانرز بـ60 مليون جنيه إسترليني، لضم الثنائي بداية من الصيف المقبل، وفقًا لما ورد عن مجلة "فرانس فوتبول" الفرنسية.
وترغب العديد من الأندية في ضم اللاعب بداية من الصيف المقبل، أبرزها باريس سان جيرمان الفرنسي، وريـال مدريد الإسباني.
دخل نادي آرسنال في مفاوضات مع ليستر سيتي من أجل التعاقد مع الجزائري رياض محرز، والفرنسي نجولو كانتي.
وأشارت صحيفة "فرانس فوتبول" إلى أن النادي اللندني وضع 40 مليون جنيه أسترليني لضم محرز، و20 من أجل زميله لاعب الوسط.
ويمتلك كل من اللاعبان 25 عاما، وتسعى العديد من الأندية للتعاقد معهما بعدما قادا ليستر سيتي للتتويج بالبريميرليج للمرة الأولى في تاريخه.
وتتسلح إدارة الجانرز بـ60 مليون جنيه إسترليني، لضم الثنائي بداية من الصيف المقبل، وفقًا لما ورد عن مجلة "فرانس فوتبول" الفرنسية.
وترغب العديد من الأندية في ضم اللاعب بداية من الصيف المقبل، أبرزها باريس سان جيرمان الفرنسي، وريـال مدريد الإسباني.
دخل نادي آرسنال في مفاوضات مع ليستر سيتي من أجل التعاقد مع الجزائري رياض محرز، والفرنسي نجولو كانتي.
وأشارت صحيفة "فرانس فوتبول" إلى أن النادي اللندني وضع 40 مليون جنيه أسترليني لضم محرز، و20 من أجل زميله لاعب الوسط.
ويمتلك كل من اللاعبان 25 عاما، وتسعى العديد من الأندية للتعاقد معهما بعدما قادا ليستر سيتي للتتويج بالبريميرليج للمرة الأولى في تاريخه.
New Logos Selected for 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics !
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