Get yourself friends like Korean Air and Japan Airlines: Bad-news magnet Boeing got a nice shot in the arm from its two partners, which combined to order up to 70 jetliners from the struggling plane manufacturer yesterday. It's like picking up a dejected pal's drink after a breakup, except the tab is for a few billion.
In today's email:
Basic income: What Sam Altman's yearlong study shows.
Data point: Side hustles are paying off.
Weird patents: At long last, a safer banana.
Around the web: What a 129-degree day feels like, and more.
👇 Listen: What happens in a world where AI replaces jobs?
The Big Idea
What happened in Sam Altman's basic income study
The results of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's basic income study.
2024-07-23T00:00:00Z
Juliet Bennett Rylah
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman conducted a basic income study that gave low-income residents $1k each month for three years, making it the largest such study in the US yet.
The results are now in — and at a time when AI is driving the conversation surrounding basic-income programs and the future of work.
How did the study work?
It involved 3k residents of Texas and Illinois with annual incomes less than $28k, perBusiness Insider.
1k received $1k per month
A control group of 2k received $50 per month
Altman — a billionaire — put up $14m and raised an additional $46m to fund the study.
How did participants spend the money?
Those who received $1k spent an average of $310 more per month. This largely went to basic needs (e.g., rent, food, and transportation) — but they were also more willing to help others financially.
This aligns with an Austin, Texas, study that gave 135 households $1k per month for a year: They spent over half on rent, followed by basic needs, bills, investments, and giving to others.
Other impacts of the study…
… included a 20% decrease in problematic drinking, greater agency over where they lived, and the ability to pursue a new field or hold out for a better job. They still worked, though perhaps slightly less.
But while stress and food insecurity decreased in the first year, that faded over the next two.
"Cash alone cannot address challenges such as chronic health conditions, lack of childcare, or the high cost of housing," the report found.
Why it matters
Altman has a vested interest in exploring what happens in a world where AI replaces jobs, and has long proposed studying basic income programs as a possible solution.
But, as the study found, they aren't a magic bullet for poverty, and they often face pushback. Tying them to AI could render them dead in the water if AI never advances enough to replace human workers, or if it creates new jobs.
Economist Michael Strain toldNPR that a better idea might be offering tax credits to lower-income workers.
Takeaway? A big duh: More money gives people more freedom to improve their lives. But how do we ensure that for everyone?
Toolbox
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Toy maker Mattel received an acquisition offer from LVMH-backed private equity firm L Catterton. Other suitors may come forward, but if the luxury goods company's takeover proceeds, parents can look forward to spending $2k for Barbie's Louis Vuitton companion handbag.
SNIPPETS
Another headache for CrowdStrike: Following last week's outage that affected ~8.5m devices, hackers quickly got to work exploiting the shutdown, sending some customers a malicious file posing as a quick fix to the glitch.
… That's not all: As CrowdStrike works to rebound from the outage, its stock price is doing anything but rebounding — it dropped 13% on Monday, after falling 11% on Friday.
Turns out people like not spending a fortune on dinner: Around93% of McDonald's US locations voted to extend the chain's $5 value meal offer into August, citing increased traffic.
Sketchers is suing LL Bean for allegedly infringing on its patented "heel cup" design. Sketchers has settled other infringement cases against Hermes, Steve Madden, Reebok, and Fila.
Krispy Kreme is ditching cookies to double down on doughnuts, selling its majority stake in Insomnia Cookies to two private equity firms for $172.4m.
Cohere, a Canadian AI startup that crafts custom models for businesses, had a very, very good funding round: It raised $500m at a $5.5B valuation.
Goodyear is selling its off-the-road tire business to Japanese competitor Yokohama for $905m in cash. Goodyear's OTR division produces tires for mining and construction machinery.
Over 60 people across 28 states have fallen ill after eating Diamond Shruumz's candies, which were found to contain psilocin, a psychedelic mushroom derivative.
Unleash AI at work: Make AI a powerful personal assistant. Take these five Google Sheets templates to begin building your own playbook.
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Efficiently budgeting time is tricky as hell, so we tapped some sales leaders to tell us about their industry's common time-wasters and how to avoid them. Even if you don't work in sales, you're gonna pick up something valuable here.
Data Point
Do the hustle: While we might love the hustle more than the average American, it turns out that earning some cash on the side has become quite popular: Over a third (36%) of American adults earn money in addition to their main source of income, according to a Bankrate survey of 2.3k+ people.
It's some serious piggy bank padding, with 28% making $500+ per month. The monthly median earning is $250, up $50 from last year's survey.
And most Americans are new to the grind, with 52% saying they've only been earning on the side for two years or less.
How are they doing it? All sorts of ways, but the most in-demand gig on Taskrabbit in 2024 is furniture assembly while one of the top-requested skills on Upwork is data analytics.
Fit The Bill
There are thousands of companies valued at $1B+. How many clues do you need to identify today's billion-dollar brand?
Clue 1: This one's for the design nerds: This multinational communications company's logo has picked up an appetizing nickname — the "three sausages."
Clue 2: In 1994, this company's mobile phone division developed something that everyone uses (and sometimes curses) to this day: Bluetooth technology.
Clue 3: When Lars Magnus [this company's name] got things going back in 1876, he probably didn't expect his Stockholm-based company to make ~$25B a year as a global leader in 5G.
👇 Scroll to the bottom for the answer 👇
Weird patents
This is bananas: Sure, Mother Nature invented a pretty cool solution for protecting bananas. But David Agulnik of Vancouver, British Columbia, said, "Hold my beer," when he patented a "banana protective device" in 2003. The protective, banana-shaped case fastens closed and is padded to protect your banana from bruising. Is it yet another bulky thing to schlep in your backpack during your commute? Sure — but surely no effort is too great for an unbruised lunchtime banana.
AROUND THE WEB
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