Today’s Solutions: November 23, 2024

Worklife

Learn about how you can achieve a better work-life balance, and check out the latest news about the world of work, including advancements on ideas like the four-day work week and universal basic income.

One of the biggest criticisms

One of the biggest criticisms of Universal Basic Income has been proven wrong

Existing welfare programs are a tangled mess. If welfare recipients start making too much money, they lose food stamps, medical care, and housing vouchers—essentially trapping recipients in poverty. One way around this problem is universal basic income (UBI), which guarantees every citizen a Read More...

New credit card allows immigra

New credit card allows immigrants without a credit score to easily build one

For immigrants who lack a credit history in the US, it can be difficult to do things such as buy a home or get a credit card. Petal, a new online company, solves this issue by connecting people with little to no credit history with a line of credit of up to $10,000. Instead of relying on the narrow Read More...

Contactless payments are comin

Contactless payments are coming to the U.S., another threat to the use of cash

Contactless payments are set to finally become widespread in the US, posing a renewed challenge to the use of Read More...

Foreign aid campaigns have lon

Foreign aid campaigns have long been flawed—these groups are changing this

The problem with foreign-aid donations is that they often fail to create the positive impact that donors had hoped for. Specifically, while large-scale efforts often improved infrastructure, they typically fell short on a key dimension: bring greater democracy and inclusiveness to decision-making Read More...

At this new online banking pla

At this new online banking platform, customers are the owners

In a given year, the biggest banks in the U.S.–Wells Fargo, Citi, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase–rake in billions of dollars in fees that their customers pay to the bank they are with, and money they have to turn over if they overdraw from one of their accounts. Often, the banks then Read More...

Blockchain could prevent chari

Blockchain could prevent charity money from going into the wrong pockets

There is a large number of corruption cases involving charitable organizations with some of the money never making it to those in need. Blockchain technology can come to the rescue here as it allows most processes to become radically transparent: from spending and money transfers to supply chains Read More...

‘The Big Issue’ launches b

‘The Big Issue’ launches blockchain platform to promote impact investing

The Big Issue, a street newspaper sold by the homeless in the U.K. and other countries, is launching a blockchain-driven platform to promote impact investing. Three investment companies — UK Standard Life Aberdeen, U.S. Columbia Threadneedle, and AllianceBernstein — will join The Big Read More...

Crowdfunding is opening up Bri

Crowdfunding is opening up Britain’s justice system

Chris Day’s first Twitter post was fairly standard. “It feels good to tweet,” he wrote. He got two likes. A week later he posted a second time, about a legal challenge to protect junior doctors’ whistleblowing rights. Hundreds of people retweeted it. Soon, he marshaled an “army” of Read More...

Signs that institutional inves

Signs that institutional investors are reorienting towards sustainable investing

Could sustainable investing be at a tipping point? For a long time entrepreneurs, investors and advocates of sustainable investing have spoken longingly about the $2 trillion of institutional investor dollars that have been reputed to be sitting skeptically on the sidelines, teasing everyone with Read More...

This startup is making investi

This startup is making investing in clean energy projects easier than ever

A new crowdsourcing platform makes it possible to direct even the smallest investments towards clean energy projects. At the Jumpstart platform, people can put just a few bucks into the projects of their choice in the form of a loan. Once the project is successfully functioning, investors are paid Read More...