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UK PM Burnham promises business help within 'difficult' financial outlook
Britain's government will do what it can to help lower costs for business but against the backdrop of a "difficult financial outlook", Prime Minister Andy Burnham said in an interview on Wednesday.
Willits business owner to host Thursday event highlighting no-cost advising • The Mendocino Voice
Small businesses can get advising at no-cost from state program which also helps secure capital.
New Insta360 X6 leaks confirm pricing with specs before global launch
New Insta360 X6 leaks have revealed pricing information and official specifications. Shared by a major retailer, the leaks confirm that the Insta360 X6 will cost significantly more than the Insta360 X5 in North America. Insta360 hopes to offset this $150 increase with major upgrades, though.
Cheese industry struggling under weight of tariffs, inflation and war
Rising costs of milk and shipping are impacting makers
AI Could Help Researchers Get Funding—But at What Cost?
Scientists who use AI to draft research proposals are earning more money, but their ideas may be less likely to move the field forward.
FDA approves Samsung's Hearing Aid feature on Galaxy Buds
The Galaxy Buds3 Pro and Buds4 Pro just became cost-effective and easy-to-use hearing aid devices. Samsung has been improving its health-tracking features...
AHA resource: Economic Impact of Disparities in Health Outcomes
The AHA Aug. 11 released a new resource guide designed to address a critical gap by helping leaders understand and quantify the economic burden of disparities of health outcomes. The guide provides practical methods to identify and assess the financial impact of health disparities, along with data-driven approaches to implement interventions that both improve outcomes and reduce costs. READ MORE
Proven behavioral health navigation at scale: Inside Tufts Medicine’s playbook
Behavioral health conditions affect roughly 30% of patients, and these patients remain among the costliest and most challenging to guide to appropriate
News | Why Nicole Mihalka sees LA's entertainment industry overcoming challenges
The CBRE executive has spent decades navigating Hollywood
GTA 6 might not cost $100, but most of the people pre-ordering it are buying it at that price, Take-Two reveals
Rockstar put a lot of effort into enticing people into pre-ordering the more expensive Ultimate edition.
The U.S. Healthcare System is Already Mostly Socialized
Now that Abdul El-Sayed is the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s open Senate seat, the outcome of this crucial race will depend mainly on two things: Whether Republicans succeed in demonizing El-Sayed because he’s brown and a Muslim, and whether they succeed in demonizing him as a left-wing radical. I will defer for the now the question of whether bigotry will be effective this year, although I will address it another day. What I want to address instead is El-Sayed’s signature issue — healthcare. Yes, El-Sayed advocates Medicare for All, a position the usual suspects denounce as “socialism.” I will get to the politics of his stance soon. Today, however, I want to talk about the substance. We should be clear that El-Sayed doesn’t even call himself a socialist. On the contrary, he explicitly disavows the label, saying “I’m a capitalist who just knows about capitalism”. In fact, as I explained in a previous post, the policies that El-Sayed advocates qualify him as a social democrat, not a socialist. Still, El-Sayed advocates a system under which the government would pay almost all medical expenses. Isn’t that socialism? Well, if that is the criterion then much of U.S. healthcare is already socialist. In fact, the government’s role is so large that U.S. healthcare is better described as partially privatized socialism than as anything resembling a free market. Let’s start with the raw numbers on health insurance, which pays the bulk of Americans’ medical expenses. Americans receive health insurance either from private companies or from public programs, overwhelmingly Medicare and Medicaid. Here’s what the breakdown of coverage and spending between private and public looked like in 2024: While a majority of Americans with health insurance get it from private companies, well over 100 million of us are covered by government programs instead. And these government programs pay more total dollars for medical bills than the private insurers do. Why do government programs that cover a minority of the population account for a majority of health insurers’ outlays? Mainly because Medicare covers seniors, and we’re expensive. Also, while Medicaid covers many younger Americans, disabled and elderly beneficiaries account for most of its spending. Even by the raw numbers, then, U.S. health insurance looks as much public as private. But that understates the government’s role: Private health insurance in the U.S. is both highly regulated and heavily subsidized. This is obviously true for the insurance coverage purchased by tens of millions of Americans through the exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act. But employment-based health insurance, which covers 161 million Americans, is far more of a government creation than most people realize. For employment-based insurance exists largely because of huge implicit government subsidies that come with major strings attached. Here’s how that works. If your employer pays you $10,000, that’s taxable income. But if your employer pays $10,000 toward a company health insurance plan that meets certain criteria, it isn’t taxable. That’s a huge effective subsidy, running at more than $300 billion a year. Take that subsidy into account, along with the more than $100 billion per year spent subsidizing policies purchased under the ACA, as well as the outlays on Medicare and Medicaid, and net effect is that the government pays for more than two-thirds of Americans’ health insurance. Granted, there are strings attached. Roughly speaking, employment-based health plans can’t discriminate based on medical history — that is, they can’t deny coverage to employees with pre-existing conditions — and they also can’t offer the plans only to highly compensated employees — a health plan that is only for the C-suite is considered taxable income. So given the restrictions of the federal tax code, employer-based health insurance is a lot like Obamacare, which also prohibits discrimination based on medical history and provides subsidies to make insurance affordable to lower-paid workers. The fact is that virtually all of private healthcare insurance is already well under some form of government control through regulation and tax subsidies. How should we think about this system? First of all, is Medicare socialist? Don’t tell anyone, but the way Medicare operates — it covers every senior’s medical expenses, whatever they turn out to be, while being funded by taxes that depend on one’s income — could be summarized by the old Marxist slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” And back in 1961, when Ronald Reagan was the face of a last-ditch effort by the American Medical Association to block the creation of Medicare, he denounced Medicare as “socialized medicine” and warned that it would destroy our freedom. In reality, American freedom survived until Jan. 20, 2025, while Medicare is immensely popular, with an 82 percent favorable rating in the most recent KFF survey. Medicaid, government health insurance for lower-income Americans, comes in at 73 percent. This is in sharp contrast to public views about private insurers, who are widely disliked if not hated and accused of denying essential care. Furthermore, if Medicare is socialism, then the whole U.S. health insurance system, with the government paying most of the bills and placing conditions on private insurers, is almost equally socialist. If you insist on calling any program the government pays for and regulates socialist, then U.S. healthcare would best be described as a partially privatized form of socialism. And one must ask, what is the point of the part that is privatized? Do private insurers add anything positive? Or are they simply parasites, skimming off money that could have been paying for care? The case for viewing insurers as parasites is strong. Many Medicare benefits are now delivered via Medicare Advantage, that is, plans paid for by the government but run through insurance companies. MedPAC, an independent advisory commission, estimates that last year Medicare Advantage plans were overpaid by $84 billion, thanks to practices such as “upcoding,” in which patients’ health problems are overstated to get larger sums from Medicare. Assessing the waste from employer-based insurance is harder, but most evidence suggests that private insurers have substantially higher administrative costs than Medicare does. Furthermore, the complexity of private insurance, with multiple payers all trying to deny care when they can, is a huge burden both on providers — doctors, nurses, and hospitals — and on patients. What do private insurers offer to compensate for these costs? One must go through intellectual contortions to avoid the conclusion that they are, in fact, parasites. Which brings me back to El-Sayed. In supporting Medicare for All, he’s basically calling for an end to the partial, parasitic privatization of a healthcare system that is already hugely dependent on public funding. When one looks at it that way, it’s not at all a radical proposal. Admittedly, the political lift requires overcoming the opposition to higher taxes to pay for Medicare for All. Political realism rather than economics was the reason I and many other progressives supported Obamacare, with all its complexities, rather than demanding an immediate move to Medicare for All. But the political calculus may very well have shifted since the 2000s, as Americans are fed up with a system of unaffordable premiums, rampant claim denials, and byzantine claim administration. Moreover, funding healthcare insurance through taxation would allow for a much more progressive distribution of the cost. That is, compared to the present system, middle-income households would pay less as high-income households would pay more. And the U.S. would stop wasting large sums on pointless administrative costs. So let’s be clear: El-Sayed’s healthcare platform is perfectly reasonable on the merits of cost, fairness and health efficacy. And with private insurers never more hated, while millions of Americans are losing their health insurance, 2026 may be its time. MUSICAL CODA
Steve Hilton talks cutting costs, achieving balance in California politics
Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton joined KTVU to talk about his proposals for cutting costs in the state and achieving balance in California politics.
iPhone 18 Pro BOM cost estimated to be up by 40%
Apple is reportedly paying three times more for RAM and storage than it did with the iPhone 17 Pro. We’ve already seen rumors that iPhone 18 Pro...
Experts warn Oklahomans should expect health insurance costs to spike
As Oklahoma’s state employees face potential double-digit hikes in health insurance premiums, experts are warning that all Oklahomans should brace for a similar shock this year.
Amazon asking town of Niagara for more in sales tax exemptions
Amazon is basing their request off the rising construction costs.
Amid RAM price hikes, Microsoft reportedly raises Windows license cost, forcing OEMs to hike prices even further on hardware
A new report claims Microsoft has raised the cost of the Windows license by up to 10% for certain OEMs, which is much higher than usual.
Someone Made a Terrific Deal in the Peacock/YouTube Premium Partnership…But Who?
(Welcome to the “Most Important Story of the Week”, my bi-weekly strategy column analyzing the most important (but often not buzziest) news story of the last two weeks. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. Please subscribe.) I hope everyone around the world suffering from record heat waves is doing okay. The temperature is already up in Southern California, but obviously not nearly as bad as parts of Europe. With a super El Nińo coming this year, I worry it will get even worse. Yes, we know what’s causing this heat—it’s the carbon, duh—but we really aren’t making enough progress. I’m not “environmental strategy guy”, but if I were, I’d have some ideas of what I’d try. Honestly, for years I’ve been intrigued by the work of the folks at MEER—whose plan, super simply, is to put up mirrors to reflect heat (while continuing the important work of decarbonization)—but I’m frustrated this idea hasn’t made more progress. (Other geo-engineering groups seem to get better press.) With heat like this—cancelling events, hurting economies and, most importantly, killing people—it seems like the time to push solutions! The “mirrors on the ground” solution has barely been tried.1 While entertainment companies may not “feel the heat”, lots of outdoors/experiential industries—concerts, theme parks and so on—will. Even movie theaters could benefit, since mirrors could help lower AC costs, which I imagine is not an insignificant expense, especially in the hotter areas of the country. So I do think the entertainment industry should prioritize this issue. Anyways, let’s get back into the entertainment strategy. I was about to write, “Hey, this week we don’t have any mergers and entertainment news to dive into,” but that’s not really true, since we had more updates on Paramount-Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. But the big story of the week involves a streamer and a Big Tech platform bundling their respective streamers. So I’ll write about the updates on Paramount buying Warner Bros., Versant making some moves, and a whole lot more. But we start with a surprising deal: Peacock licensing their content to YouTube Premium. Let’s dive in! Subscribe Most Important Story of the Week - Peacock’s Pricey Premium Partnership The story of the week is Comcast’s2 NBC-Universal’s Peacock making a deal with Google’s YouTube’s YouTube Premium subscription product to embed their content. And I’ll say this up front: Someone made a terrific deal. The question is who. And I’ll be honest: I don’t know. Let me explain why, including why this deal exists, the pros and cons for each side, the biggest unknown, and what that says about the streaming wars. Customers Love Bundles (But YouTube Has Its Own Issues) We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… Why customers love bundles… But why I’m worried about YouTube’s integration... How Peacock is trading scale for control… And the reason they likely made this deal... The odd budget math for this deal... Whether or not I think the Paramount-Skydance/WBD deal is more likely after the latest settlement... Versant making moves and why that’s good for Hollywood… Another distributor going out of business… ...and a whole lot more! ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support.
Trump signs order overriding CDC vaccine schedule and breaking up measles, mumps and rubella shots
Order also recommends all shots be given at separate medical visits though cost of doing them together is lower
Oregon lawmakers condemn reported attack against Sen. Janeen Sollman
Sen. Janeen Sollman was reportedly verbally and physically accosted by a man on Aug. 8, prompting bipartisan condemnation of political violence.
‘Family Affair’ actress Kathy Garver reflects on child costar Anissa Jones’ death at 18
‘Family Affair’ actress Kathy Garver reflects on child costar Anissa Jones’ tragic death at 18 and reveals a haunting plea the star’s mother made to her shortly before her daughter died.
Cook County moves to end decades-old tax buying practice
After Evanston homeowner Goyce Rates fell behind on her property taxes, two tax buyers in 2019 purchased liens on the home’s two parcels for a total of $9,025. By 2023, she was unable to redeem her property for the cost of back taxes and interest, enabling the buyers to win deeds for the property and evict her family in November that year.
As Sky-High Health Care Costs Top Voter Concerns, Families USA’s Stop the Bleed: Cut Costs, Not Care Campaign Gains Nationwide Momentum
SEIU, MomsRising, Community Change, Popular Democracy, Main Street Alliance, Small Business Majority, and Others Join Effort to Rein in High Health Care Costs WASHINGTON, D.C. — Families USA announced today that its Stop the Bleed: Cut Costs, Not Care campaign is now officially active in all 50 states. Launched in January, Stop the Bleed is […]
Big Gold Miners Agree On IPO. One Pops, One Sinks.
Barrick earnings fell short as oil prices pushed up costs.
Trump admits 'contractor error' on Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool
For the first time, Trump admitted there was a construction error on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which is seeing another round of costly renovations.
India’s Zee Entertainment quarterly profit falls on weak advertising, higher costs
Aug 10 (Reuters) - India's Zee Entertainment Enterprises reported a 46.9% fall in first-quarter profit on Monday, hurt by weak advertising revenue and higher costs related to its return to sports broadcasting. The company posted a consolidate...
India's Zee Entertainment posts quarterly profit drop on weak ad sales, rising costs
India's Zee Entertainment Enterprises reported a 46.9% fall in quarterly profit on Monday, hurt by weak advertising revenue and higher costs related to its return to sports broadcasting.
iPhone 18 Pro Costing Apple 38% More to Make, TrendForce Estimates
Apple's iPhone 18 Pro will cost nearly 40 percent more to build than its predecessor because of soaring memory prices, according to new data analyzed TrendForce. The research firm's latest smartphone analysis puts the bill of materials for the 256GB iPhone 18 Pro roughly 38 percent above the equivalent iPhone 17 Pro, and says higher retail prices will be unavoidable as a result.
450,000 NYers just lost their health insurance: How one Syracuse caregiver is coping
Tyler Lyons' no-cost health insurance was a casualty of cuts to the Affordable Care Act.
Same Knee Surgery, Twice the Price: Hospital Monopolies Push Up Healthcare Costs
A federal disclosure rule is offering new insight on the effect of healthcare monopolies on pricing, following a wave of U.S. mergers.
Ball wants improvement as Torquay start with draw
Torquay United manager Jimmy Ball says his side's second-half performance cost them as they drew 1-1 with Horsham in their National League South opener.
Matt Maglodi Racing Announces New Small Business Motorsports Sponsorship Program Combining Grassroots Racing With Digital Marketing
Matt Maglodi Racing today announced plans to launch a new grassroots motorsports sponsorship program designed to provide small businesses with affordable digital marketing and promotional exposure while helping amateur and hobbyist racers offset the costs of competition.
KFF HEALTH NEWS: Medicaid Work Rule Leaves Homeless People in the Cold
By Katheryn Houghton KFF Health News August 6, 2026 MISSOULA, Mont. — Tywon Pugh has seizures that make it hard to find and keep a job. “They called me a ‘liability to the job site,’” Pugh said, recalling the words of his manager when a seizure cost him his last job at a fast-food restaurant
Aubrey Plaza welcomes first child with Christopher Abbott
The couple, who met as costars on the 2020 psychological drama “Black Bear,” have remained largely silent about their relationship.
L.A. Jazz Festival Featuring John Legend Canceled Due to Unexpected Costs
Commenters online are now comparing it to the infamous Fyre Festival.
Japan's executives call for FX stability as weak yen intensify import-cost pressure
Japanese executives are increasingly warning that currency swings and a persistently weak yen pose risks to the economy, highlighting concerns that triggered last week's joint Japan-U.S. intervention to support the currency.
Cost of Living Worries Give Democrats Lead Over GOP on Economy
Persistent cost-of-living worries are eroding a crucial GOP asset, giving Democrats an edge ahead of the midterms.
How hospital monopolies are driving up the cost of your health care
More than a million times a year, a U.S. surgeon slices open a knee, strips out worn cartilage, caps the leg bones with metal and drops in a plastic spacer to allow the new joint to glide. But while these knee-replacement procedures have become standard, the prices charged have not.Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. At Catawba Valley Medical Center in Hickory, North Carolina, for example, the cost of the procedure under
The Watch: Microplastics Linked To Fatty Liver Disease
Plastic used in food packaging is most common type found in liver…workers exposed to pesticides at higher risk for Lou Gehrig’s disease…last year’s measles outbreak cost $5.4 million to contain…and more
AMD FSR 4.1 costs RX 7800 XT up to 10% performance versus FSR 3.1
ComputerBase tested FSR 4.1 against FSR 3.1 on the RX 7800 XT and RX 7600. Performance drops by around 7-10%, depending on resolution.
Politics trumps science
Trump administration rules on federal science funding could make American research slower, costlier and harder to share.
Politics trumps science
Trump administration rules on federal science funding could make American research slower, costlier and harder to share.
How hospital monopolies are driving up the cost of your health care
A federal disclosure rule is offering new insight on the effect of health care monopolies on pricing, following a wave of U.S. mergers.
Nissan's in-factory AI cameras track employees to help worker safety
Nissan is using AI cameras to track how factory workers move. They say it reduces injuries and cut health and safety costs.
Small school districts in Florida band together to lower health costs for employees
By combining forces, smaller school districts have found a way to bargain for better health insurance policies for their teachers by turning to a self-insured plan.
Moderate Democrat in Hawaii Defeats Progressive House Challenger
Representative Ed Case beat Jarrett Keohokalole, a younger progressive, in a race that centered on questions of generational change and the state’s skyrocketing cost of living.
Seaport Entertainment Gr Q2 Earnings Call Highlights
Seaport Entertainment Gr (NYSE:SEG) reported its first quarter of positive operating EBITDA and positive non-GAAP adjusted net income in the second quarter of 2026, as the company benefited from improved operations, lower corporate costs, the closure of the Tin Building and payments associated with
The Rear-Seat Entertainment On A Jeep Grand Wagoneer Costs More Than iPads For The Whole Family
Jeep feels justified in charging extra for re-seat entertainment on its costly Grand Wagoneer. Families may have a better opportunity to consider.
Blake Lively shares rare look at family life with Ryan Reynolds
Blake Lively has shared another glimpse of a recent family outing with her husband, Ryan Reynolds, following her tumultuous legal battle with her "It Ends With Us" costar Justin Baldoni.
iPhone 17 Pro vs iPhone 18 Pro: Buy now or wait?
Rumors say the iPhone 18 Pro could cost $200–$300 more. Here's why buying the iPhone 17 Pro now makes more sense than waiting for September.
How AI-Powered Business Email Compromise Scams Are Stealing Billions
Business Email Compromise scams cost companies billions. Criminals are use AI, deepfakes and voice cloning to commit fraud. Learn how businesses can protect themselves.
American Airlines ends free business upgrades on select Hawaii routes
American Airlines is ending free economy-to-business-class upgrades for its most loyal customers on select long-haul domestic routes where the carrier offers three classes of service.
5 Streaming Devices Cheaper Than The Roku Ultra (After The Price Hike)
Streaming devices that serve as worthwhile alternatives to the Roku Ultra but don't cost as much include TiVo Stream 4K Onn 4K Plus, and Roku Stream Stick 4K.
Social prescribing boosts health checks without raising costs
Patients referred to social prescribing are more likely to seek health care in the short term but could end up needing their primary care physician less often within a year, according to a new study by ...
As regulations fade, electric truck adoption will hinge on business cases
Rather than plan around a national transition to zero-emission trucks, fleets are weighing total cost of ownership, operational feasibility and customer expectations.
Workers are creating 'burnout funds' to afford career breaks
Workers are building burnout funds to prepare for career breaks as workplace pressure, job insecurity, and living costs increase.
Late call costs Orioles in 2-1 loss to Rangers
Replay review failed to overturn a play at the plate, and the Orioles wasted a complete game from Shane Baz.
Teachers and other state employees brace for possible health insurance increase
In what was a historic year for education funding in Oklahoma, lawmakers didn’t seem to prepare for a major insurance cost increase set to hit next year.
I compared Google's pricier Pixel 11 series to Samsung's Galaxy lineup - here's the better value now
The Pixel 11 may cost more, but Google's software advantage may make it worth it for you.
Microsoft’s Efforts In Making Windows 11 More Efficient Isn’t Just Due To The DRAM Shortage; Analyst Believes MacBook Neo Played A Pivotal Role In This Decision
Microsoft’s RAM optimization push for Windows 11 isn't just about DRAM costs as analyst points to Apple’s budget MacBook Neo as a major catalyst
Minecraft Switch 2 Edition Coming This Autumn, Featuring Vibrant Visuals
But how much will it cost for owners of the original Switch edition?
Burger chain bucks California trend, doubles down on Golden State despite rising costs
Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers CEO says California gets a "bad rap" as competitors close doors, planning 60 new locations nationwide this year with a Northern California focus.
PENN Entertainment Q2 Earnings Call Highlights
PENN Entertainment (NASDAQ:PENN) reported record second-quarter retail revenue and raised its full-year outlook for the segment, while management said its interactive business continued to narrow losses through lower marketing spending, cost efficiencies and growth in online casino operations. Chie
Here's what tariffs have cost our small business
If we are uncertain whether tariffs will rise again, we become even more cautious.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Release Date, T-Mobile Free Phone Deals, Price
Fresh off its silver screen debut and record-breaking pre-order numbers, the buzzy new device is coming to T-Mobile customers at no cost. Here's how to claim the carrier's best phone deal to date.
Entertainment Network (India) Ltd (BOM:532700) (Q1 2027) Earnings Call Highlights: Digital ...
Despite a 1.9% dip in domestic revenue, the company's strategic shift toward digital and aggressive cost optimization fueled a significant profitability boost.
Oregon universal health care board punts single-payer report over funding uncertainty
A state board in charge of developing a universal health plan for all Oregonians will delay the release of its final report to lawmakers, citing uncertainty over how to pay for it. The Universal Health Plan Governance Board voted unanimously Thursday morning to extend its deadline to Dec. 1 for its report that will describe […]
Hello Local Business, Your AI Ads Are Costing You Customers
'Even if this was a genre popularised by human artists, it would still look like shit'
iPhone 18 Pro price: Here's how much more it could cost
The iPhone 18 Pro will cost more than the iPhone 17 Pro, with estimates ranging from $100 to $300. Here's what to expect.
Did saving the pharmacy help Costco’s business center plan? What KC leaders say
The City Council made a final decision on Costco’s zoning request for its plans to convert the midtown store into a business center.
Kit Connor eyed for Cyclops role in 'X-Men' movie, joins 'Heartstopper' costar in the MCU
KCMO City Council passes ordinance assisting Midtown Costco in business center conversion
The Kansas City, Missouri, City Council passed legislation Thursday that will assist Costco with its plans to convert the Midtown store into a business center.
OpenAI’s New Device Will Be Hockey Puck-Sized and Cost Over $300
A highly anticipated new device from OpenAI will have a unique look, complete with moving parts that help give it personality, and likely cost more than $300, according to people familiar with the matter.
Enterprises embrace AI-native shift with HPE solutions
HPE drives virtualization modernization, enabling enterprises to unify cloud control and improve agility amidst rising costs and AI demands.
Costa Welcomes House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar to Central Valley Health Care Roundtable
FRESNO, Calif. - This week, during Affordable Healthcare for Every American Week of Action, Congressman Jim Costa (CA-21) welcomed Congressman Pete Aguilar (CA-33), Chair of the House Democratic Caucus, to the Central Valley for a roundtable hosted by Community Health System to hear directly from local hospitals and health care leaders focused on the federal funding reductions under H.R.1, including changes to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, as well as the Administration's decision to withhold approximately $867.5 million in federal Medicaid funding from Califor
Pinellas schools, teachers union reach health insurance agreement
The deal sees increases in cost for workers covering employees and spouses.
How Much and Why Premiums Are Going Up for Small Businesses in 2027
Small businesses that offer health insurance to their employees could see health costs rise in 2027, according to an analysis of preliminary rate filings from all 50 states and DC. Nearly 300 insurers offering small group coverage reported a median proposed premium increase of 14% for next year.
Governor Moore Announces Kevin Sexton as Nominee for Chair of the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission
Governor Moore Announces Kevin Sexton as Nominee for Chair of the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission
Bose Has Refreshed Its QuietComfort Headphones With Two-Way USB-C Audio And Better Noise Cancellation
Bose's updated QuietComfort headphones cost $359.
States with the worst and best healthcare in the US, ranked
Each state's healthcare was ranked based on three factors: cost, access, and outcomes.
States with the worst and best healthcare in the US, ranked
Each state's healthcare was ranked based on three factors: cost, access, and outcomes.
Costs keep rising, business owners tell Davids, pointing to ‘reckless’ US tariff policies, Iran war
“When tariffs hit local favorites like toy stores and craft shops, it’s Kansas families who end up paying the price at the register,” Sharice Davids said after meeting with small business owners in Prairie Village. “Some of what we’ve been working on in my office is trying to address the reckless tariff policies.”
Rep. Ryan holds roundtable on youth sports affordability
Ryan blames private equity for the costs of youth sports continuously increasing.
Advocates celebrate as California's first cardiac ablation is performed in ASC
Medicare is looking to reduce healthcare costs, and EPs believe outpatient procedures are more convenient for patients.
Sony quietly prepares to bring ads to PlayStation ecosystem as game costs rise
It looks like Sony is planning to add an advertising environment on PlayStation to tackle the rising game development costs and increase revenue
New Mexico Health Care Authority releases $50M to rural health care providers
New Mexico Health Care Authority announced $50 million in state funds to 41 rural healthcare providers. (Getty Images)
Miliband says reopening Strait of Hormuz 'essential' as he meets Rubio
The move is required "to ease cost-of-living pressures", Miliband says, as he meets his US counterpart in Washington.
Why Don't We Put More Turbines Underwater? The Pros And Cons Of Tidal Energy
Underwater turbines would be great for zero-carbon and high power output, but it has some drawbacks, including high upfront costs and some inconsistency.
COOL: Bad math makes for bad business
While some claim the cost of the program is “just pennies per pound,” those pennies add up – to an estimated nearly $30/head.
Huawei confirms MateBook Pro pricing, Kirin X90 Plus and Harmony OS laptop starts at $1,480
Huawei’s 970-gram MateBook Pro returns with the Kirin X90 Plus and higher prices. The base model costs around $1,480, while the top option exceeds $2,000.
From Westwood to the Valley: How ‘The Shards’ recreates 1981 L.A.
Ryan Murphy's FX adaptation of 'The Shards' brings Bret Easton Ellis' coming-of-age thriller to life with meticulous production design, costumes and iconic L.A. locations.
Chartbook 464 The"China squeeze" - the politics of development counterfactuals.
There are three types of China shock discourse. Each has a distinct temporal register. China shock 1.0 was a phrase coined by US academics in the 2010s to retrospectively summarize the impact on particular US labour markets, which they identified through painstaking empirical investigation. China shock 2.0 on everyone’s lips in Europe in the mid 2020s is an alarm raised by trans-Atlantic policy thinkers warning of a coming disaster which they project onto Europe’s ailing car industry. The third type of China shock discourse - commonly known as the “China squeeze” launched most recently by Indian economists Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian in the pages of Foreign Affairs - mobilizes a different, more speculative temporal register: the counterfactual realm of alternate history. The China squeeze argument asks not what has happened, or what is going to happen, but what might have been. Specifically, what options for economic development might have been open to Global South economies like India or the economies of sub-Saharan Africa, had it not been for China’s spectacular industrialization since the late 1990s and the persistent competitiveness of China’s manufacture in low-skilled segments. Chatterjee and Subramanian’s argument is that whilst China has built a powerful position in electrical machinery and other high-skill manufacturing, which is now delivering China Shock 2.0, it also continues to run a trade surplus in low-skill, labour-intensive manufacturing. This surplus is large and has remained largely unchanged in fifteen years. Indeed, in the 2010s, in trade with low-income countries, China’s surplus rapidly increased. On their reading, this squeezes low-income producers in low-skill sectors in which they “should” be able to compete. Source: “China’s Mercantilist Squeeze on Developing Countries” Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian. Peterson Institute for International Economics 26-7 May 2026 Chatterjee and Subramanian’s wording is telling: (emphasis mine) The canonical trajectory of economic development in the post-World War II period is for countries to transition from agriculture to manufacturing, first in low-skilled manufacturing and then later on to high-skill manufacturing (Herrendorf, Rogerson, and Valentinyi 2013). At the global level, this implies that high-income countries (HICs) that once specialized in low-skilled activities cede manufacturing export space to poorer countries that come along to occupy that space. In 1965, advanced economies accounted for about 60 percent of global value-added exports in four key low-skilled manufacturing sectors, i.e., apparel, leather, textiles, and footwear. Over time this share declined and began to be occupied first by the East Asian tigers and, beginning in the late 1990s, by China. Today China accounts for about 50 percent of the global market. The question is whether China, with its rising prosperity, is continuing to behave like its richer counterparts and ceding export space to poorer followers or to behave unlike them and continuing to occupy space. In terms of the conceptual maneuvers it performs, of the three China shock discourses, the “China squeeze” argument is by far the most ambitious. After all, it bases its critique of China on a counterfactual imagining of the world. Like any counterfactual argument, to construct this alternative reality it must rely on a heuristic model. To make their argument Chatterjee and Subramanian mobilize two key claims. The first reference point is the actual history of rich-country industrialization, what they refer to as the “canonical path”. The idea is that countries transition from agriculture to light industry and low-skilled manufacturing and from there up the value chain. To make this useful as a standard of comparison and a means to construct a normative standard, they adjust sectoral export shares for two factors: 1. the underlying level of economic development of the exporting country, as measured by national income and 2. the degree to which the sector in question is internationalized. The idea being that for a high income country to have a high export share in low-skill sectors is anomalous and even more so if that particular product is highly internationalized and thus suitable for being “conceded” to lower-income competitors. Where should this process end? Here Chatterjee and Subramanian introduce their second benchmark. Their normative idea of a global development path is one in which, in due course, low-skill manufacturing exports are distributed in proportion to a country’s share in the global labour force. They imagine, in other words, a world of proportional, polycentric global development without much national specialization in low-skill manufacturing. A useful benchmark is that, in labor-intensive manufacturing sectors, a country’s share of world exports should be broadly commensurate with its share of the world’s low-skilled labor endowment. … In the Heckscher-Ohlin model, this would be true if value added per worker and export propensities, i.e., fraction of output that is exported, are the same across countries. It is this pleasant liberal vista of orderly global development, progressing towards a general distribution of low-skilled manufacturing against which they judge reality and conclude that the low-income countries are suffering a “China squeeze”. China is not exiting low-skill sectors fast enough Allowing for its gdp level and the degree of globalization, China’s share of low-skill manufacturing exports is far higher than it “should” be. Relative to population, its low-skill share of exports is far too high. That in turn yields the conclusion that huge numbers of jobs - the authors suggest tens of millions - are being hoarded by China. For the four sectors captured in figure 4, this excess in value-added exports is $110 billion in 2022. For all low-skilled sectors overall captured in appendix figure D.1, excess value-added exports amount to $365 billion. The crowding out of LMIC exports by China is therefore substantial. Both these claims have in common that they are strong structuralisms. The first is that development paths ought to resemble each other. The second is that broadly speaking as far as low-skilled manufacturing is concerned, all countries are alike. If the world currently diverges from the distribution of trade implied by these assumptions, if China is not following the advanced economy path and has huge exports, this must be the result of “policy”, which the authors then put in question as illegitimate or unfair. Thus the naturalistic construction of a canonical path leading to a “level” distribution of low-skilled manufacturing reveals itself to be a polemical tool. From the point of view of China shock polemics, this discourse is no doubt welcome. But as an account of economic history, it must surely be regarded as nothing short of bamboozling. Development paths do not follow a regular, natural sequence. As David Fishman put it aptly, “development is not a queue”. They are always and everywhere, through and through political. Development is not so much a process, as a project. Each such project is more or less well adjusted to its context. As Gerschenkron taught uneven and combined development implies differentiation rather than simple imitation on a single parth. It may be true that Europe and the US exited relatively early from low-skill work. But clearly technology has changed. As C&S themselves point out, China no longer enjoys a low wage environment. Do they really believe that such huge differences can be accounted for either by industrial policy, which as they admit does not operate powerfully in low-skill sectors, or by exchange rate manipulation? What is overwhelmingly dominant in explaining the persistence of “low-skill” manufacturing in China are surely the network effects of complex supply chains. Indeed the label of “low-skill” may miss the point. The degree of globalization which Chatterjee and Subramanian decide to conjure away in their model of the development path - to allow for the fact that Europe and American textiles exporters did not enjoy just-in-time logistics in the 1950s - obscures the point that the networks through which Chinese factories supply the world are themselves key parts of the low-skill industrialization project. China isn’t knocking out 1970s style “cheap”. It has redefined the entire product cycle. C&S’s casual reference to “T-shirts” is telling. In today’s “fast fashion”, there is weight on both terms. Fashion and fast. China’s success in delivering on both at unprecedentedly high speed and at unprecedentedly low cost, isn’t a low-skill operation at all. If we see development trajectories not as the serial repetition of the same, but as distinctive, crafted projects that cumulate in complex agglomerations of skill, technology and labor, then this explains why the assumption that low-skilled manufacturing should follow the distribution of population flies in the face of all experience. As countless cases attest, low-wage, low-income developed economies are not by themselves the makings of a competitive production base. As Leon Liao puts it quite fairly: “International trade has never been allocated according to population. A country’s population gives it no natural claim to an equivalent share of global exports." And the remarkable fact is that Subramanian alone and with co-authors has long been making this point, not to pillory China, as is the case of the tendentious _Foreign Affair_s and Peterson pieces, but to highlight the great counterpart to China’s industrial success, namely India’s relative failure. The much-quoted Foreign Affairs piece showed low-skill export shares only for China, not for India. If you put both countries in the picture as Chaterjee and Subramanian have done on other occasions, the picture looks like this. China is far above the line, but India, almost as large in terms of population, is no less anomalous, just in the opposite direction. As far as global populations are concerned, and the imagining of tens of millions of “squeezed” jobs, it is this Sino-Indian pair that account for a huge share of the action. What this graph reveals is not China’s cheating, but India’s “greatest development failure”, at least this is the argument made Arvind Subramanian, this time in co-authorship with Devesh Kapur, in their major book, A Sixth of Humanity. Independent India’s Development Odyssey which appeared with Oxford University Press earlier this year. In this highly critical work on India’s development, China is repeatedly evoked, not to criticize but as a benchmark against which to illuminate what India’s political economy has not delivered i.e. large-scale formal employment for hundreds of millions of citizens. Kapur and Subramanian leave no doubt, if you want to understand why China, not India was the main driver of manufacturing globalization from the 1980s, don’t look to slots opening up in the division of labour thanks to the liberal mindedness of advanced economies, look to the contrasting political economy of the Maoist PRC and India’s post-independence political economy. As Kapur and Subramian note: The great divergence between China and India did not begin in 1978 with the Deng reforms—it was well underway by then. In one of the great ironies of modern history, the conditions created by Maoism turned out to be a great launching pad for industrial globalization. As the comparison of India and China in 1980 makes clear, to imagine manufacturing would be equally distributed when populations are so differently endowed in terms of educational and nutritional is fanciful. Here is the data from Kapur and Subramanian, data which I explored back at the very beginning of Chartbook. As Kapur and Subramanian insist, the striking fact is that even as India’s growth accelerated from the 1980s, structural change has not. Formal employment in India lags woefully behind. Why? As Kapur and Subramanian note, the path-dependent impact of India’s poor early start was devastating. The list of factors they mention is long and weighty: We argue for a new five-fold explanation applicable at different stages of Indian history: in the initial stages, the legacy of two key pre-1980s policies, the neglect of agriculture and the strangling of the domestic private sector, were critical. The failure of broad-based agricultural growth militated against rural industrialization, which would have been devoted to satisfying local needs that would have necessarily been labour intensive. Then, when the boom came after 1980, the thicket of regulation and broader labour protections that were legislated prematurely in a nascent democracy, underpinned by a deep ideological aversion to private capital in general and big capital specifically, became a barrier to attaining the size that would be necessary to compete globally. Similarly, the reforms after 1991, while wide-ranging, did not quite encompass non-tradeable inputs critical to manufacturing, namely, land, logistics infrastructure and power. A combination of low investment (logistics infrastructure), regulation (land) and the continued monopoly supply by state governments (power), combined with residual socialism, kept costs at 75–100 per cent above efficient supply. These factors were compounded on the supply side by the government, which dominated the formal labour market and established exorbitantly high wages at the lower end of the skill spectrum. This made their employment in the labour-intensive sector by the private sector less attractive. Finally, when the services sector and its exports boomed, wages soared even further via a Dutch Disease effect: one successful tradeable sector killed and cannibalized another less-skilled tradable sector, namely, manufacturing. Thus, scarcity-inducing policies of the planning era, precocious democracy and a Gandhian aversion to size; inefficient, monopolistic supply of critical non-tradable inputs; the behemoth of government; and super-successful skill-intensive services successively undermined India’s unskilled labour employment opportunities. The employment failure seems to have been over-determined. … Less quantifiable but no less important are some of the sociological factors that have undermined manufacturing and factory jobs. Take the impact of the success of the IT sector—located in urban areas with better working conditions, such as air-conditioned offices, good schools for children and attractive entertainment options. It became a more attractive place for engineering and management graduates to flock to. … Consider manufacturing and female employment. Indian society makes it difficult for women to work, reflected in India’s unusually low female labour force participation (elaborated in Chapter XIII). Indian society, in particular the routine harassment of women in public spaces, makes it even more difficult for them to travel long distances to take up work.37 Combined with onerous regulations on creating hostels and dormitories for women—which, in turn, prevents multiple shifts of operation—factories need to be located in areas with a large female labour pool. While firms can take apparel plants to female labour or bring them to the plants by building large-scale dormitories, this raises costs. If there was a case for subsidies to encourage labour-intensive manufacturing, housing subsidies to build dormitories for women workers would be a good place to start. All of this meant, that when opportunities did open up, in part thanks to adjustments in China, India was in no position to take advantage. Here is the account of the 2020s from Kapur and Subramanian. It stands in dizzying contrast to the one-sided, “China squeeze” argument delivered in the Peterson and Foreign Affairs pieces: In 2022, for example, India’s share of global exports in clothing (the canonical labour-intensive sector) was 3.1 per cent compared to 32 per cent for China. This is extremely disappointing because China started vacating export space in this sector after the Global Financial Crisis as its wages started rising; it then vacated further space in the aftermath of geopolitical developments that led investors to seek alternative investment locations. Between its peak and today, China lost about 7.5 percentage points of global export share (worth about $43 billion in 2022); over this period, India’s export share remained stagnant at 3 per cent, while that of Vietnam and Bangladesh rose by 3.5 to 4 percentage points. China’s loss did not translate into any gain for India in terms of low-skill exports and employment. Put differently, when the conditions for dynamism and prosperity were established after 1991, and even more tantalizingly when the global export opportunities opened up, it was as if India was a high-wage economy and only skilled labour could benefit from the dynamism. It had converted its physically abundant unskilled workforce into an economically expensive resource, penalizing its use. It is not my mission here to argue for or against Kapur and Subramanian’s interpretation of India’s development trajectory. The point in this context is simply that the “China squeeze” such as it is can only be understood, in relation to the heavy burden of domestic constraints that Kapur and Subramanian so unsparingly enumerate. I am concentrating here on India because it is the great counterpart to China and the unspoken reference point of the “China squeeze” discourse. But the point is more general. Can anyone with a straight face suggest that the main problems afflicting the development of South Africa or Nigeria, the great centers of mass underemployment in sub-saharan Africa, are cheap competition from China driven by Beijing’s industrial policy and an undervalued RMB? Likewise, is the main problem of the American working-class the threat of Chinese competition or the manifest crisis of social reproduction in the United States itself? The point here, as in the discourse around China shock 2.0 in Europe, is to insist that we should not normalize the world and pathologize China, without actually investigating what is going on in America’s industrial wastelands, the German car industry, or India’s lopsided labour market. One-sided pathologization should be understood for what it is, a polemical gesture. Concepts like China shock and China squeeze are, what Reinhart Koselleck, following Carl Schmitt, would have described as “asymmetrische Kampfbegriffe”, or “asymmetrical counter-concepts” or “asymmetrical combat concepts”. If the function of arguments like the “China squeeze” is to alert elites in the rest of the world of the need to rejuvenate and energize their development projects, so be it. But let us see the resulting discourses as the mobilizing interventions that they are. Interestingly, a significant slice of China’s public sphere - the so-called industrial party - have been obsessed for the last twenty years with precisely these questions of counterfactual economic history. Since the mid 2000s, a massive online discourse developed around an alternative history in which Chinese techno-patriots were asked to imagine how they would proceed if they had the possibility of traveling back in time to transport modern technology into the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) thus averting the “great divergence” of the 18th and 19th centuries. It is a fantasy of course, but also a goad. The point was not directed at Westerners. The alternate history is dramatically nationalist, but few n the West had even heard of it until recently. The adherents of the industrial party are not liberal moralists. They don’t project natural ladders of international development and ask why others don’t cede space. They take the Realpolitik of global economic development for granted. Their pointe was directed against fellow Chinese. The rallying cry of the alternative narrative was this: Now that we are beginning to gain steam and push forward on our national development path, now that we are breaking out of the inferior position assigned to us even in the early years following WTO accession, do not lose yourself in humanistic imaginings about better futures. In the spirit of Deng, they called on China to embrace the hard truth of development. Perhaps one might of the Industrial Party as a cultural trend born out of desire for symbolic revenge against those who had inflicted the century of humiliation. In terms of the various temporalities of the “China shock” - retrospective, prospective and counterfactual - one might think of the Industrial Policy discourse as truly speculative, conjuring up the China shock that never was. Or perhaps one might better think of it as imagining a world in which a powerful China was no shock at all, but simply a defining fact of modern history. I love putting out Chartbook. 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