Catching up on Business

        Industrialization in America is like a double edged sword, our lives have become easier and our economy greater, yet still we find ourselves creating new problems. Since childhood, we have been bred into materialism, constantly chasing the latest trends such as the new iPhone, Tesla, or Gucci clothes. Whether we’d like to admit it or not, there’s a aching consumer in all of us, but how did we get here and how dangerous has it truly become?

        According to the New York Times, we are now producing 47% more consumer goods than we had only 20 years ago. The introduction of automation through robots and machinery may have reduced the cost and sped up the production of that nice wishlist item you’ve been eyeing, but is this really a good thing?

In the end, the only one who benefits in that purchase is the big brand selling you the item. Did you really need that Prada bag?

Every single day, we witness first hand how we are fed new advertisements through apps such as Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, yet still we fail to realize how damaging this really is to our psychology. Worst of all these brands are more than happy to exploit this psychological weakness, constantly flooding us with their logos and slogans, deeply implanted within our brains. We don’t need to upgrade our iPhone’s every year, every other year, or in many cases, ever. Regardless we feed into this trend anyway, as these consumer goods have become status symbols in our current world, in truth taking advantage of our competitive nature and our undying need to seem better or at least on par with our peers around us.

Times are changing and so are our values. Rather than save up to buy a home or to invest our money into assets which may provide real value to our lives and the lives of our children, we still throw our money into useless items to fill the void that is a need for instant gratification.

Consumerism has plunged not only ourselves but our planet with it. Currently we overuse Earth’s resources by 70%, and if all people on the planet were to live like an average American, we would need 5.2 planets to support us.

        If Earth’s history is compared to a calendar year, modern human life has existed for 37 minutes and we have used one third of Earth’s natural resources in the last 0.2 seconds. We clearly have a problem, and we need to fix it quick. We have to stop consuming!

 

 

 

  What is workplace diversity? Well, workplace diversity means having a range of people with different, genders, ages, religions, ethnicity, and much more in the workplace environment. Here we are going to explore the meaning and the impact of diversity in the workplace.

        Over time as seen in the graph above diversity in gender and race from 2015 to 2018 has grown and is still currently growing. However, as seen in 2015-2016 inclusion/diversity wasn’t as high as in 2018. Many individuals were being underrepresented. Also part of the reason that there wasn’t much diversity was that there weren’t many people willing to join job sectors such as tech. Many businesses lacked diversity because many people didn’t want to apply and there weren’t many to recruit. This is because minorities and women already felt unrepresented and felt like they weren’t going to be appreciated in the workplace. Especially since many major companies didn’t take the necessary actions to help and if they did many failed. Some of these include the hiring process, false job advertising, or no advertising at all. 

If you haven’t got the best talent you’re not going to be the best, if you’re not representing properly the available pool of talent then you’re missing an opportunity.

-ALEX WILMOT-SITWELL

          However, this had a large impact on businesses and how they operated. An environment with no workplace diversity is like only having one type of drink. Diversity in the workplace allows for more ideas, different perspectives, and a chance to also gain more customers. When a customer feels like they are being represented in a workplace they are much more likely to go into that business and spend. Also when every worker is being represented in the workplace they are more likely to feel comfortable and productive in helping the business bloom.

A few things that businesses can do to increase workplace diversity is to be more open-minded. They should recruit or accept applicants that have the proper skills, experience, or knowledge in a particular field. They can also make policies that help minorities and all workers feel included and accepted. They can also have workshops that provide proper training and that teach about diversity and inclusion.

           On January 8th, 2022- online sports gambling became legal in New York State. Yes, sports lovers in New York looking to make a quick buck are finally able to test their luck. Their competition (aka “Vegas”) included FanDuel Sportsbook, DraftKings Sportsbook, Caesars Sportsbook and BetRivers which were the available online sportsbooks at the time.

          Basically as soon as everything went live for sports gambling in NYC, the state economy exploded.

Only a month after legalization, Governor Kathy Hochul “announced the successful launch of mobile sports wagering in New York State, with nearly $2 billion in wagers taken during the first 30 days of operation. This record-breaking success, more than any other state has ever reported, will generate more than $70 million in tax revenue for New York State, providing funds to be allocated toward programs that support education, youth sports, and more.” https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-nearly-2-billion-wagers-over-first-30-days-mobile-sports-wagering

As soon as sport gambling became legal, it almost felt like instantaneously commercials were being ran advertising new sign-up promotions for participants in New York. These promotions basically gave away free money to all new registrations in New York City and allowed for people to win. Winning can be the most dangerous aspect of sports gambling…

Now that sounds counter-intuitive- you should want to win your bets. Winning is what keeps on bringing you gamblers back because they want to chase that same feeling. This what leads to gambling addiction and it ruin lives. People that become addicted to gambling lose money and then chase the money that they lost believing they can just make more and then some. When they don’t win again- the vicious cycle repeats.

Here is a Ted Talk by former gambling addict Justyn Larcombe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AN3VLLlkdI&t=489s

Larcombe details his struggles with gambling addiction and why he fell down a dark path that tore apart everything/everyone he loved. It all started off with a free $5 bet and a small win. Larcombe also talked about how the modern gambling addiction is extremely dangerous now- anyone is able to place a bet on their phone whenever and wherever and no one will know. Other dangerous addictions have physical signs- you can smell alcohol or tell when someone is under the influence of something- not gambling.

Please be careful when it comes to any sort of gambling. Only risk what you are comfortable with and never chase your losses- it is never worth it.

IF YOU OR ANYONE YOU KNOWS HAS A GAMBLING ADDICTION PLEASE CALL: 1-800-GAMBLER

 

Ultimately the goal of a business is to flourish enough to the point where it is recognized amongst the fortune 500. Which as the name implies the top 500 businesses. What the business model allows for a company to do is enter the competitive scene amongst other companies at a point of advantage. As the image shows the business model has a lot of strong points within it, which is what makes it so strong because it’s not that you have to use all these tactics. But more so that you can focus on one and utilize the rest to guide the company to the path that they want to take with it.

      Nabil Amara states in Journal of business research volume 69, Issue 5, May 2016, “ Firms compete not only via their products or processes but also through their BMs. The BM is as, or even more, important than the product, meaning that it has a considerable impact on performance.”  When you look at the competitive aspect of a company when compared to other companies the main focus is to look at how much is being produced and how much is being sold. However, when you look at the impact of BM the company starts to realize that the BM also has control of the economic value.

The graph shows how BM literature has been progressively used more over the years and shows over the course of time that the BM is being published more and discussed more. Around 2013 it started becoming more integrated and started being used more allowing for it to develop more into a stronger strategy. By 2018 you can see the highest results and from onward it only got higher.

 

Hello, we are the Finance Group and welcome to our website.

This website is a culmination of all of our long hours of researching specific business topics. The motivation behind creating this website is to close the gap between the common people and the rich Wall Streeters.

Our goal is to make the business world more accessible- not covered up with some fancy financial jargon.

We hope you enjoy!