Economy
Discover facts about economy. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Economy
“Freelance” once meant a fighter available for hire
Walter Scott used “free lances” in Ivanhoe for mercenaries not tied to one lord. The expression later moved from hired weapons to independent professional…
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The corporate move that changes a company’s home on paper
A company can buy a smaller foreign business, then claim that its official home has changed to lower its tax bill. The paperwork moves abroad even while the…
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Why bureaucracies may preserve the problems they fight
An agency's success can threaten its own funding: solve the problem, and the budget and jobs tied to it may disappear. That can give it an incentive to…
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Some cities tax you for owning a dog
Some municipalities make dog ownership come with yearly paperwork and a fee. The city registers the dog, and the owner pays again the next year.
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Salaried corporate workers are legally exempt from overtime
Long weeks don’t automatically mean overtime pay for every salaried worker—but salary alone doesn’t settle it either. The employee’s job and pay must meet the…
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A brick tax led to oversized bricks
The tax charged per brick, so builders had a reason to make each brick larger: fewer bricks meant a smaller tax bill for the same stretch of wall. The…
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The eight-hour workday was once radical
Eight hours for work, eight for rest, and eight for personal life was once treated as a danger to industrial society. The radical part was giving workers a…
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Leonardo da Vinci wrote an early résumé
Leonardo wanted work from the Duke of Milan, so he wrote a pitch emphasizing mechanical skills and downplaying his painting. In the late fifteenth century,…
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There is absolutely no fixed finite amount of work available
When newcomers spend money on goods and services, businesses can get enough new demand to hire more workers. Jobs are not slices of a fixed pie that newcomers…
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Renaissance merchants invented double entry bookkeeping
Merchants wrote each transaction in two places so they could compare the entries and catch mistakes. A discrepancy had somewhere to show up before it vanished…
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Why smart employees sometimes act incompetent
When a top performer gets extra duties instead of extra pay, doing great work can mean earning an even bigger workload. Some employees respond by hiding how…
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OnlyFans paid hundreds of millions in UK corporate tax
Its parent company brings in enormous revenue, leaving it with UK corporate tax bills in the hundreds of millions. A platform best known for creator…
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Britain’s tax laws still leave room for paying with cows
An old British law is sometimes said to let people settle debts to the Crown with livestock, but the claim is theoretical—not a practical way to pay HMRC with…
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The fake Apple stores where employees thought they worked for Apple
The stores copied Apple’s winding staircases, minimalist wooden tables and blue employee lanyards so convincingly that staff reportedly thought Apple had…
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Companies insure themselves against kidnapping ransoms
If an employee is kidnapped, a company may need specialists to negotiate for their release. Kidnap-and-ransom insurance can cover those crisis negotiators,…
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Canada's official reserves reached zero gold in 2016
The country's reserve reports listed foreign-currency securities, deposits, IMF-related assets—and zero gold. A national financial reserve did not have to be…
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The tax England paid to make Vikings leave
English rulers raised the Danegeld to pay Viking raiders to leave. The country taxed its own people to buy relief from the people raiding it.
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In the UK, the TV license follows live viewing onto a laptop
The requirement covers watching or recording live television on any service, not just using a television set. BBC iPlayer is also covered, including its…
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Some Finnish speeding fines rise with the driver's income
For offenses handled through day fines, the number of units reflects the offense and the value of a unit depends on income. Minor traffic violations can…
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Farmers can be paid to turn cropland into habitat
The US Conservation Reserve Program pays participating landowners to remove environmentally sensitive acreage from agricultural production and establish…
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Ending America's peanut quotas came with a buyout
The old system limited access to the more valuable domestic peanut market through production quotas. When the 2002 farm law ended the quota program, holders…
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A toy company's tax fight asked whether the X-Men were human
Under the tariff categories involved, dolls representing humans faced a different rate from other toys. Toy Biz argued that figures with mutant or superhuman…
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When Britain tried to tax gin out of existence
Parliament wanted gin drinkers to pay more, so it piled on duties. The legal price pushed distillers underground instead, and the black-market trade grew…
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Why dead people sometimes receive government checks
Relatives have even tried to cash those checks. During large relief efforts, outdated tax records can send government payments to people who have died.
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