Goldman Sachs has launched a new financial product aimed at helping communities writes Esmé E. Deprez:

• Goldman Sachs has given the government of Massachusetts a $9 million loan to reduce crime.
• If a targeted group of people spend less time in jail than expected, then the government of Massachusetts will have to spend less money jailing people and Goldman Sachs could stand to make up to $22 million.
• If crime isn’t reduced then the financial services company will lose almost everything it lent.
• Such financial products are expanding under “double bottom-line” initiatives that aim to align a company’s profits with its values.
• There are about $80 million of these social justice bonds in America today. They are expected to grow to $500 million by next year.

Read about what critics have to say of such bonds, social workers who are charged with ensuring that people stay out of jail, and more over here.

Source: Bloomberg

For this Mother’s day Kevin Voigt took a look at the tradeoffs that mothers make:

• It takes about $241,000 to raise a child. And that doesn’t even include the cost of college.
• But that is just the tip of the iceberg. According to one estimate a mother produces $119,000 worth of unpaid output a year.
• If this were included in GDP calculations it could boost many country’s GDPs by up to 50%.
• The longer women wait to have children the more their lifetime wages increase – even if they return to work after.
• And for highly skilled women being a mother can mean a loss of $230,000 in lifetime earnings.
• Father’s, on the other hand, see no financial penalty from parenthood.

Read more about the financial decisions that mothers have to make, details about the studies referenced, and more over here.

Source: The Christian Science Monitor

People sink (heh) incredible amounts of money into expeditions to recover precious cargo from sunken ships. It’s a breathtakingly bad investment write Peter B. Campbell & Rodrigo Pacheco-Ruiz:

• Investors are convinced to fund such expeditions due to incredible estimates of the potential wealth in the cargo hold of a sunken ship.
• However these estimates are almost always wildly exaggerated. One ship’s treasure was meant to be worth $400 million. To date as little as $13 million has been extracted.
• Moreover the first coin found on a wrecked ship might be worth a lot of money. If there are 50,000 of those coins then it quickly becomes a flooded market and each coin is worth little.
• This helps explain why the shares of companies that specialize in treasure hunting usually trade for mere pennies.
• It is also indicative that mineral extraction companies who are experts at deep water operations have never tried their hand at salvaging lost artifacts.
• The business is only going to get harder. The 2001 UNESCO convention protects any shipwrecks over 100 years old and governments have independently been cracking down on the activity.

Read more about treasure hunting, some famous wrecks that have come to disappoint, the one treasure hunting company that still does alright, and more over here.

Source: Bloomberg

Jessica Festa delver into the world of luxury RVs for the super-rich:

• RVs unlike private jets have the advantage of being able to take you to your destination door-to-door.
• A “base” model 1.4 million dollar luxury RV comes with 10 flat screen TVs, a personal bar, and a luxury spa.
• Extras such as a fireplace cost extra.
• For $2.4 million you can get heated hardwood floors, a pop-out patio with a grill and fridge, and a “home” cinema.
• If you’re rich enough to buy one of these things then you’re probably not going to be driving yourself around. Companies that sell such behemoths also help provide certified drivers.
• These vehicles only get about 6-8 miles on the gallon although gas prices are hardly your biggest budgetary concern when it comes to deciding if you want one of them.

See the photos of what the interiors of these beasts look like, find out what an even more expensive RV will get you, and read which celebrities currently own some of them over here.

Source: Details

Neal Ungerleider wrote about the benefits that restaurants derive from people ordering food online:

• Online and touchscreen menus can more effectively steer customers to ordering add-on items such as extra sauces and cheeses boosting sales.
• A typical menu can’t show all the possible combinations for each dish the way that an online menu can.
• Online menus also take away from the social stigma of ordering combinations that others might find weird.
• An online menu makes customers aware of offerings that they didn’t know the restaurant had. While calling a pizza joint a typical customer might order a large cheese pizza and a drink. When ordering online they might see that the eatery also had a wide range of deserts and consider those.
• Dining locations, for their part, can better track sales, customer preferences, and inventory levels through online orders.

Read more about how notable chains such as Sheets and Dominoes have benefitted from digital orders and more over here.

Source: Fast Company

TripAdvisor did an analysis of room service across the world:

• The average total cost of room service in American cities is $55.
• In the rest of the world it is $45.
• Denver, Seattle, and Minneapolis have the cheapest room service in the US.
• Las Vegas, New York City, and Washington D.C. are the most expensive American cities for in room dining.
• Three of the cheapest cities for room service around the world are in Africa. The cities are Tunis (Tunisia), Cape Town (South Africa), and Marrakech (Morocco).
• On the other end of the scale Scandinavian cities such as Helsinki (Finland), Oslo (Norway), and Stockholm (Sweden) will make you pay dearly for your food.
• Surprisingly the price of the hotel you stay at has no correlation with the price you pay for room service.

Read more details from the study, see its methodology, find out where other cities rank, and how things like dry cleaning and vodka costs compare over here.

Source: TripAdvisor

Via: Quartz

Go to a high end luxury store and chances are you’ll get a posh assistant who looks down at you. It’s genius writes Paul Bisceglio:

• A study has found that snobby salespeople at high end stores actually increase sales.
• This is because of the human desire for inclusion and fear of social rejection.
• When a salesperson clearly judges a customer as being unworthy, the customer is more likely to want to purchase luxury items.
• This effect becomes even stronger if the salesperson is dressed in a way that embodies the brand’s value. Sloppy salespeople aren’t intimidating.
• Those who want a particular brand the most are most likely to be influenced into purchasing things through rejection.
• Unsurprisingly this effect is only true for luxury brands

Read more about the long term effects that salespeople standoffishness might have on sales, why some stores are trying to educate their salespeople to be more welcoming, and more over here.

Source: Pacific Standard

Via: Marginal Revolution

Marian Burros wrote about Big Flower’s successful effort to lobby The White House:

• The White House first started displaying fresh flowers instead of wax ones in the 1850s on the suggestion of Harriet Lane, President James Buchanan’s niece.
• Under Nancy Reagan the White House started importing flowers from abroad – a White House tradition that has carried on since.
• In 1991 The United States signed free trade agreements with South American countries. Cheap imports of flowers from abroad flooded the American market.
• One expert estimates that the American share of the domestic cut flower market fell from 75% to 25% after the deals were signed.
• Big Flower realized that it had to lobby Washington just like Big Oil did. Farmers flew into Capitol Hill to plead their case and try to convince people to buy American flowers.
• A Californian Congressman was travelling with President Obama on Air Force One and personally asked the President to start using American flowers.
• Separately a Californian Senator asked the First Lady to buy domestic flowers – just as she uses locally grown food and American wine.
• The lobbying efforts were successful. At the State Dinner held for the President of France earlier this year the flowers on display were from the United States.

Read more about the flower preferences of various Presidents and First Ladies, which of the President’s destinations are filled with flowers, and more over here.

Source: The New York Times

How many people have actually watched Netflix’s House of Cards or Orange is the New Black? It turns out, Jason Lynch writes, that we don’t know:

• Netflix is in a better position than most other content creators to track exactly how many individuals watch each show.
• Yet it doesn’t ever release the numbers. We know, for example, that House of Cards is popular but we don’t know how its viewership compares to other TV shows.
• This is in part because Netflix doesn’t want its show producers or stars to know how popular they are. If they did then they could demand substantial pay hikes in the future.
• Netflix also points out that given that they don’t have advertizers they don’t need to release such metrics to try to lure commercial partners.
• Yet other networks such as HBO have kept a running tally of their show viewership, even though they don’t have adverts either.
• What we do know is that Netflix has about 47 million subscribers. How many of them watch Netflix’s shows is anyone’s guess.

Read more about this over here.

Source: Quartz

Colleges are spending millions to compete in the top chess leagues writes Michael S. Rosenwald:

• Webster University spends $635,000 a year on its 15 player college chess team.
• University officials argue that the media coverage this generates is worth $2.8 million.
• Others can spend even more. One coach was looking for $1 million in funding – a quarter of which was to be her base salary.
• The rest of that money would be used for scholarships to attract top chess prodigies from around the world.
• UMBC, for example, funds five fellows who receive free tuition and $15,000 a year for food and housing.

Read more about the world of collegiate chess competitions, who the leading universities are, and more over here.

Source: The Washington Post