Development Roast Giving international development a proper roasting
The concept of a “flipped classroom” emerged in the late 2000s as an alternative (or the beginning of one) to the classical system of teaching where the teacher introduces the content in class and the students practice it at home. Instead, in the flipped classroom, students learn the content at home, and do the “homework” in class. The concept’s creators, two American high school teachers Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams, first recorded lectures for students who had missed classes. Soon, however, the lectures became so popular that they decided to substitute all their classroom lectures with online ones, and use classroom time to engage with students individually. This flipped classroom allowed for students to learn at their own pace, enabling them to skip the online videos that they feel like they master, and repeat those on which they are stuck. The model proved a big success: many of the students’ performances improved, better preparing them for jobs that (should) await them, and they seemed to be having more fun than before.
Graphics: How Corporations Get Out of Paying Taxes
Everyone knows that corporations dodge taxes. If a regulation loop hole exists, they are likely to try and exploit it, inventing a new practice, tool or mechanism for the purpose, with a new, jargon-laden name that gives it an air of legitimacy. Whereas much past evasion of taxes would happen in the corporation’s own country, with the rapid globalization of businesses over the last few decades it now spreads across nations and continents. For example, a huge relatively new field of transfer pricing has mushroomed within the financial accounting realm, with whole teams, even departments, charged with it. What does it mean? In the most basic terms, a parent company sells or trades to its own subsidiary in a different country some goods, services or labor, often at an obscenely low or high price, in order to move income or expenditure of their balance sheet around to make them fit into lower tax brackets and less regulated jurisdictions. In essence, it transfers the price somewhere else that reduces its tax liability, hence the name transfer pricing. All of this is done “for tax purposes,” with tax professionals involved engaging in what they call “tax planning,” evidenced by the fact that transfer pricing is often and increasingly an offshoot of tax departments in companies and accounting firms. Translated, it means legal tax dodging. Read this useful summary by the Tax Justice Network for a closer look.
This is of course but just one example and understanding what fully occurs behind closed doors can be clouded by the terminology. Today, Development Roast brings you an infographic published by The Online MBA that attempts to explain exactly How Corporations Get Out of Paying Taxes in more visual terms. Read More »
Graphics: Exactly why should we protect ecosystems?
To coincide with INESAD’s November Environmental Sustainability month, today’s Monday Graphics series is making a case for the worth of stable ecosystems.
Assessing Forest Growth and Air Quality.
The first infographic based on a UN Seminar on Energy for Sustainable Development conducted in 2011, despite the increase in Europe’s paper production over the past 20 years, forest growth has exceeded the harvest of forest goods by 45 percent. This translates to an increase in air quality as un-harvested forests provide valuable ecosystem services such as carbon capture. Read More »