Stephan: Here is a little noticed trend that is having a significant effect on consumer transactions; you may have experienced it.
Amazon packages in front of a FedEx truck in New York on Nov. 26. Credit: Christopher Lee/Bloomberg/Getty
Returning unwanted gifts this holiday season is becoming so expensive for retailers that they just might let customers keep the products — and issue refunds anyway.
Why it matters: The cost of online returns is soaring, contributing to increased prices, product shortages and supply chain stress.
The big picture: Returning a $50 item is expected to cost an average of $33, up 59% from 2020, according to Optoro, a returns processor.
Worker shortages and supply chain problems are taking a toll, Optoro CEO Tobin Moore tells Axios.
About three in 10 online purchases are returned, according to CBRE Supply Chain.
The impact: Retailers are expected to pass on the cost of returns in the form of higher prices.
“The consumer pays the price of a free return,” Columbia Business School retail studies professor Mark Cohen told Today.
Some retailers, namely Amazon, sometimes tell returners to keep it. It would cost them too much to process a return, […]
Stephan: This is what the anti-vaxxer movement, whether young or conspiracy freak, is doing to the rest of Americans.
Dale Weeks, center, died last month in Iowa. His family blames the surge in unvaccinated covid-19 patients in the state for him not getting the treatment he needed. Credit: Jenifer Owenson
Throughout his life, Dale Weeks was characterized by family and friends in Iowa as “a good neighbor,” someone who would do anything for anyone. So when he was diagnosed with sepsis last month, the retired schools superintendent and his family hoped he would get immediate care and be okay to reunite with them for the holidays.
But at a time when unvaccinated covid-19 patients have again overwhelmed hospitals because of the fast-spreading omicron variant, finding an available bed at a large medical center able to give him the treatment he needed proved to be difficult. Weeks was being treated at a small, rural hospital. He had waited 15 days to be transferred to a larger hospital with better treatment options, because facilities throughout Iowa did not have an open bed for him as a result of the latest hospital surge of unvaccinated patients, his children told […]
Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan, - Eureka Alert
Stephan: If you have a dog, or grew up with a dog in your family, I think you will find his peer-reviewed research report very interesting.
Credit: Daily Paws
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN — From pugs to labradoodles to huskies, dogs are our faithful companions. They live with us, play with us and even sleep with us. But how did a once nocturnal, fearsome wolf-like animal evolve over tens of thousands of years to become beloved members of our family? And what can dogs tell us about human health? Through the power of genomics, scientists have been comparing dog and wolf DNA to try and identify the genes involved in domestication.
Amanda Pendleton, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research fellow in the Michigan Medicine Department of Human Genetics, has been reviewing current domestication research and noticed something peculiar about the DNA of modern dogs: at some places it didn’t appear to match DNA from ancient dogs. Pendleton and her colleagues in assistant professor Jeffrey Kidd, Ph.D.’s laboratory are working to understand the dog genome to answer questions in genome biology, evolution and disease.
“We convinced ourselves that previous studies found many genes not associated with being a dog but with being a breed dog,” says Pendleton. […]
Stephan: This is a trend that should concern everyone, particularly politicians. However, the quality of politicians in the U.S., particularly Republican politicians, as human beings is so degraded today many of them aren't capable of understanding the implications of a survey like this. And about a third of the population daily demonstrates the racism, lack of education, and inability to sustain rational thought that is the hallmark of MAGAt world.
You should pay particular attention to the difference in age cohorts. People like me who grew up in the U.S. before the Nixon administration, took civics courses in school, and lived in the glow of the progressive forward thinking achievements of the Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower administrations, and the pride of their parents for America winning World War II, and enacting the Marshall Plan afterwards. If you grew up from Reagan onwards, well, it was a different country, as is reflected in the steeply declining social outcome data. The rest of the world, as I have reported in earlier SR reports, thinks less and less of the U.S. each year, and now so do large numbers of young people. That is a trend with long term, and negative, social implications.
Young people in the United States express far more skeptical views of America’s global standing than older adults. They are also more likely to say it would be acceptable if another country became as militarily powerful as the U.S., according to a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted in July. How we did this
Overall, about half (52%) of Americans say the U.S. is “one of the greatest countries, along with some others.” Nearly a quarter say instead that the U.S. “stands above all other countries” (23%), while an identical share (23%) says “there are other countries that are better than the U.S.”
Opinions about the nation’s global standing have changed little since 2019. However, the share of adults saying there are other countries that are better than the U.S. is higher than it was a decade ago, with most of the increase coming among Democrats.
There continue to be wide age differences in views of how America compares with other countries. Roughly four-in-ten adults ages 18 to 29 (42%) […]
Stephan: If you read this story in a novel it would seem cheap, obvious, and contrived. That it is true and coming from a major figure in the Trump administration, coming in addition to the war rooms at the Willard Hotel, and the multiple calls between Trump and his orcs can there be any doubt how pre-planned by Republican leaders was the 6th January insurrection? Be very clear, it may be incompetent, it may be almost buffoonish, it may be nasty and ignorant, but we are living through a real attempt to transform America from a democracy into a White supremacy, male dominant christofascist authoritarian nation. A small group of people, supported by one third of Americans is attempting to take over the country. In November we are going to discover which way we will go. How you vote matters.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro. Credit: Fox Business screengrab
The Daily Beast reported on Tuesday that former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro plotted along with other Republican lawmakers to block the certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win and pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject the results from key swing states.
Navarro appeared on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast to explain his last-ditch plan to keep Trump in power — and he went so far as to claim that the only reason it failed was because the FBI incited the Capitol riots to disrupt the plot.
As evidence, Navarro pointed to one MAGA rioter who allegedly incited violence at the Capitol but who was apparently not charged by law enforcement officials.
“The only explanation that would make sense is if he were working for the FBI to instigate that violence, and the only reason they would try to instigate that violence is to try to stop Donald Trump from getting a legal accounting of what happened,” he said. “So instead […]
