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A new West Coast Model is emerging with ballot measures in the states of Washington, California and Oregon. The model is to make up for decades of faulty income distribution which favored tech communities in west coast states leaving behind people from minority communities and the working class outside tech hubs such as San Francisco, San Jose and Seattle. During this period budgets for education and healthcare, social services and essential infrastructure suffered as budgets were squeezed for local governments. Minimum wage also lagged behind and communities struggled to keep up. Washington votes for a ballot measure that raises the minimum wage to $13.25 statewide and mandate paid sick leave for workers. In California a ballot measure makes permanent an income tax surcharge on millionaires to use these funds for education. In Oregon measure 97 places a gross receipts tax on corporations with annual sales in Oregon over $25 million, raising $3 billion a year for schools, health care and other programs. The California and Washington measures are likely to pass, Oregon uncertain, say experts. And even in Oregon supporters have learned from the experience to put forward new proposals on the ballot. The Washington measure is supported by Nick Hanauer, and Zach Silk, president of Civic Ventures in Seattle, who say it is essential to put more money in workers wages to increase growth and to bring better lives outside the tech hub areas. Most of the tech booms of the last two decades have not touched the areas outside tech hub metropolitan areas. The conservative approach adopted in Louisiana and Kansas of reducing taxes first and then when holes in state budgets developed to cut education, health and other service expenditures has not worked, and it has led to the backlash in the form of the new West Coast Model, which is expected to be brought up in other states in the east and midwest. The tech hub areas have grown with the boom in tech but this has largely ignored the rural areas, communities just outside of the tech cities, and led to uneven and distorted growth shortchanging the working class and the middle class, and hurting investment in education and healthcare across each state. Bill Whalen, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution conservative think tank ,says that its hard to deny that the balanced growth for all communities across the state has lagged far behind as the tech booms boosted growth in the economies of California, Oregon and Washington. An article in the German online site Zeit on Silicon Valley described this vividly showing how this can happen in communities sitting side by side in the San Jose area, with minority Hispanic communities and working class communties seeing very little of the benefits of growth. ...

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Toyota's new startup Woven Planet was supposed to create a startup to produce the software that run's cars for today, and do this within a company that produces 10 million cars using tested quality control and factory efficiency methods. It has not worked as shown in this report in WSJ. Deadlines for the software were put off till 2027 and Toyota was falling behind. Toyota had planned a separate city near Mount Fuji for the company and separate cultural setting. This has not happened and Toyota is now integrating the software startup into its own operations bringing forward deadlines to 2025.

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Apple's new privacy rules are reducing the extensive tracking of internet users that took place in an unregulated industry for the last decade. Apple has introduced a long overdue privacy change that restricts how users can be tracked on apps such as Facebook, Instagram and other apps. Users are now asked if they want to be tracked and can opt out. US users opt to allow tracking only 16% of the time they see the Apple privacy prompt. This will be one more needed step to protect the privacy of users that had suffered  in the last 10 years from rampant and unrestricted tracking of users.

 

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As farm product rotted on farms because of a lack of buyers, India has come up with new ways of getting farm agricultural product to buyers in urban areas. The Indian government has approved online sales direct from farmers to buyers outside the country. Within the country enterprising farmers  and app developers for farm produce sales directly to consumers in cities are changing the way agricultural produce distribution works. This report in the Guardian shows how sales are being made from remote Meghalaya state to buyers in cities for product ranging from turmeric, pineapple, jackfruit, and cashew. Prices are about 70% higher helping boost farmers incomes.  Several states have relaxed rules allowing farmers to sell anywhere in the country.  In other parts of the country this is happening with a proliferation of such apps creating a virtual marketplace. Other examples are a grape orchard farm in Gudahalli with sales made in Bengaluru at 30 apartment complexes. One site founder in Chandigarh says he has in 2 months sold 20,000 tons of produce ranging from avocados of the Nilgiris to papaya from Chattisgarh. His app Harvesting Farmer Network also helps with packaging and delivery. In other developments Gaia Agritech is helping farmers on the Konkan coast in Maharashtra hit hard by a pause in exports, sell to housing societies in Pune and Mumbai. This is part of a broader debate in India after coronavirus pandemic. One idea is that people have a family farmer just like they have a family doctor, encouraging organic agriculture, fresh produce for healthier living. By helping farmers it makes for a better economy, as about a sixth of India's GDP comes from farmers and most of the jobs are in farming and agricultural economy. ...

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Tech company VK makes Russia's contribution to the Internet with Max to rival WeChat and Whats App. Max has the backing of the Russian government and is a messaging, ecommerce, all aspect platform. Russia learned over the years that its governmental processes could be subverted by apps from overseas. This is also the experience in India where democratic processes can be subverted by apps from overseas. As a result the idea of one internet is not real, internet not of the world, not of the US, not of India, not of China or Russia, but of one company monopoly of Google with a sub monopolist of Meta with its control of Whats App and social media- clearly unacceptable. 

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Japan will become the first country to issue climate bonds to finance action against climate change. This will bring in private capital. Japan will issue $5 billion in climate bonds (800 billion yen). A total of 20 trillion yen of climate bonds, sovereign debt securities, will be issued.

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Former employees of Google and Facebook have joined together to form The Center for Humane Technology. It plans to fight tech addiction in schools. A ad campaign is planned with $7 million from Common Sense, capital it has raised, and $50 million in donated media and airtime by DirecTV and Comcast. The idea is to educate students, teachers and parents about overuse of tech media leading to depression, other dysfunctional health issues. 

In one report even Tim Cook, Apple CEO says he realizes the dangers and is trying to discourage such use by his nephew. Some early investors such as Roger McNamee say they are horrified at what has happened with overuse of social media, especially health effects for a generation of school children and young adults.