Economy
Discover facts about economy. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Economy
Women entering the workforce doubled global labor supply
As more women joined the workforce, employers had a larger pool of people to hire from. Compared with a smaller, male-dominated workforce, that added supply…
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Use-it-or-lose-it water rules can discourage conservation
Under some prior-appropriation systems, prolonged failure to put water to beneficial use can threaten a right to it. That creates anxiety about saving water…
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Florida pays trained hunters to remove invasive pythons
The South Florida Water Management District runs a removal program with paid agents on designated lands. The work targets a predator that consumes native…
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Arterial embalming uses the circulation system as a delivery route
Preservative solution is introduced through arteries while blood is drained through a vein. The vascular network helps distribute chemicals through tissues,…
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Bail recovery turns a missed court date into someone's financial risk
Where commercial bail and recovery agents are permitted, a surety can face losing money if a defendant fails to appear. Returning the person can reduce that…
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You can pay someone to stand in line for you
If waiting would cost you an hour of work, you can hire someone to spend that hour in the queue instead. The stand-in holds your place, then steps aside when…
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When Zimbabweans washed dollar bills
Fresh U.S. bills were hard to come by, so people tried to keep their worn one-dollar notes usable. Some ran them through washing machines with soap, then hung…
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How strangers choose the same meeting place
With no messages to compare, each person may pick the landmark that seems most obvious to everyone else: the city’s largest clock tower. They can arrive…
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America's student debt reaches into the trillions
Education loans accumulate across millions of borrowers into a trillion-dollar national balance. That total is money still owed, not what students borrow in a…
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Slot machines remove the pauses a table game gives you
A player can start another spin without waiting for a dealer to shuffle or other players to decide. Sounds, lights, and quick results keep the next action…
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Hasbro sold textile scraps before it sold toys
The Hassenfeld brothers began with fabric remnants in 1923, then moved into pencil boxes and school supplies. Doctor and nurse play kits followed in the…
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Saddam Hussein's fake $100 bills were easy to spot
Cheap paper, missing watermarks, and blurry portraits made Saddam Hussein’s counterfeit $100 bills easy to spot. The fakes often gave themselves away before…
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A Japanese one-yen coin can float on water
The coin weighs just one gram, and its flat aluminum surface can be held up by surface tension on perfectly still water. A tiny ripple is enough to spoil the…
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Plutus was the ancient Greek god of endless wealth
The Greeks pictured Plutus blind so he couldn’t direct wealth toward the deserving or the undeserving. His blindness made riches look like a random…
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Carbon taxes penalize heavy polluter entities
Without a fee, a polluter can release greenhouse gases without paying directly for the damage they cause. A carbon tax attaches a price to those emissions.
Discover moreTaylor Swift re-recorded albums to own her masters
The new recordings gave fans another version to stream or buy. That let Swift control those recordings and keep control of the revenue they generated.
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Greece's debt shrank on paper through a currency swap
Goldman Sachs described transactions that converted foreign-currency debt using historical exchange rates, reducing the reported euro amount by about €2.4…
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Pets.com's mascot outlasted the business it advertised
The sock puppet became a memorable face of the dot-com boom, but fame didn't make selling and shipping pet supplies profitable. Pets.com began winding down in…
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Why empty containers pile up at busy ports
Ships bring containers full of imports into countries that buy far more than they sell abroad. With fewer exports to load for the return trip, empty…
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The hidden meaning behind the euro symbol
Look closely and the € is doing two jobs: its epsilon shape nods to Europe’s Greek roots, while the pair of horizontal lines stands for stability.
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Banksy shredded his painting—and made it worth more
The auction had already ended when an alarm set off a shredder hidden in the frame, slicing the canvas partway. The damaged work later sold for $25.4 million,…
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Why furniture instructions feel impossible
Furniture instructions can make a simple purchase come with an unpaid second job. After hours of confusing diagrams, some people decide it is worth paying…
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A crypto exchange’s missing keys concealed a much bigger problem
After QuadrigaCX founder Gerald Cotten died, inaccessible wallets became the headline explanation for missing customer funds. Ontario securities investigators…
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Why the same software costs more for bigger companies
One dashboard, two price tags: a startup might pay $50 while a huge company is quoted $50,000. Some software sellers price the buyer, not just the product.
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