Ikea Has Bright Idea To Sell Solar Panels In UK Stores

The store that sells every home good under the sun now also sells solar panels.

The company announced on Monday that it will sell and install solar panels in the United Kingdom.

Three stores, in Glasgow, Birmingham and Lakeside, will act as a U.K. pilot for the company’s new “solar shops,” where the panels will be sold. Customers across the pond can also order and get a cost estimate of the panels online, and Ikea hopes to have solar shops in all of its U.K. stores by the end of the summer.

The announcement coincided with research conducted by Ikea that found that 33 percent of U.K. homeowners would like to invest in home solar panels as a way to help cut their electricity bills. According to the release, the same study says that customers could save up to 50 percent on their electricity bills with the solar panels.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Ikea uses solar power in its stores. In this photo, Joseph Roth checks the installation of South Florida’s largest solar panel array atop the future IKEA store in Miami.

The Guardian reports that Ikea U.K. has made the move to sell the panels even after solar installations experienced a recent decline due to the government cutting subsidies to householders installing rooftop solar panels by a whopping 65 percent. That cut was made just days after the U.K. agreed to help the nation quickly shift to a low-carbon energy future at the climate change conference in Paris in late 2015.

This is Ikea U.K.’s second attempt at selling solar panels. The company had a two-year agreement with the Chinese company, Hanergy, but their partnership ended last year. Ikea UK is now working with the London-based company, SolarCentury, which will provide more efficient panels with a better aesthetic.

“At Ikea we believe that renewable energy is undoubtedly the power of the future,” Joanna Yarrow, head of sustainability at Ikea UK and Ireland said in the announcement. “We’re already using solar power across our operations, and it’s exciting to be able to help households tap into this wonderful source of clean energy.”

Saudi Arabia Can't Quit Oil

Saudi Arabia announced the seemingly impossible. The world’s largest oil producer and owner of an oil company reportedly worth more than $2 trillion, is going to kick its fossil fuel habit, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said yesterday.

 "We have developed a case of oil addiction in Saudi Arabia," he told al-Arabiya television news channel, after officially unveiling a plan whose key parts had already been carefully released.

Forty percent of the kingdom’s GDP and a whopping 90 percent of the government’s revenue comes from oil.

But that is coming to an end, Prince Mohammed said.

“By 2020, if oil stops we can survive,” he said. “We need it, we need it, but I think in 2020 we can live without oil."

It sounds impossible because it is. There is no way the Saudi economy can be reformed to be able to live without oil in just four years. With oil prices at historic lows and looking like they will stay there for a long time, they may wish they could live without oil in a few years.

But the only way to achieve Prince Mohammed’s admirable and ambitious goal is to do bit of entry-level balance sheet gymnastics.

In short, we don’t buy into Mohammed bin Salman’s assertion that Saudi Arabia will no longer by dependent on oil by 2020.

The Gulf kingdom owns all of Aramco oil company. It intends to sell shares of the company to outside investors and list it on the Saudi stock exchange. But the government plans to sell only 5 percent of Aramco to outside investors and retain ownership of 95 percent of the company. It will transfer that huge stake into a sovereign wealth fund, where it will be classified as an investment.

And that’s it, though there there is more to it in the long term. But the only way to meet Prince Mohammed’s 2020 timeline is to use some very basic category shifts. As the prince said, once Aramco is a public company and the Saudi’s shares are in a sovereign wealth fund, “technically, on paper, your income will be provided by investment. The remaining issue is how you diversify your investments.”

“There is less to this than meets the eye,” Jason Tuvey, Middle East economist at Capital Economics wrote in a note to clients. “It reflects a shift of balance sheets rather than any new assets and doesn’t in itself reduce the government’s dependence on oil revenues. In short, we don’t buy into Mohammed bin Salman’s assertion that Saudi Arabia will no longer by dependent on oil by 2020.”

Longer-term, the Saudi’s will keep selling Aramco shares and invest in other companies, slowly but steadily turning their kingdom from a family-owned oil company into a family-owned investment firm that owns an oil company. But that has to be a very deliberate and incremental process.

You just can’t sell trillions of dollars in a single company’s shares at once, and you can’t reform an oil-addicted economy by just moving around stock certificates.

Etsy Is Helping Its Sellers Get Solar Panels On Their Homes

Etsy has already offered flasks emblazoned with solar panels and canvas prints of photovoltaic equipment. 

Now the artisanal goods marketplace is helping people get actual solar panels. 

The site, which lets people buy and sell handcrafted home goods and other items, announced this week a pilot program to offer discounts to Etsy users in four states when they install solar panels on their homes. That could help offset the company's carbon footprint, 95 percent of which comes from shipping products.

The company is partnering with the solar energy marketplace Geostellar to measure the impact of each solar installation in terms of emissions reduction. Solar users can get discounts of up to $37 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, one of the chief greenhouse gases warming the planet and causing the climate to change. Etsy expects its customers to receive a total average discount of $2,000. 

Here's how it works, as explained in a joint press release from the companies: 

When a new participant applies for the Etsy Solar pilot program, Geostellar will instantly and interactively tailor a solar energy installation and financing plan to meet the unique needs of each individual household. Geostellar will then provide a discount based on the potential contribution of the clean solar energy generation toward the comprehensive emissions reduction goals of the Etsy community. Etsy developed the process according to Gold Standard requirements to enable those reduction rights to be validated, verified and registered as carbon offsets.

Etsy said it hopes to expand the program over the next year or so. For now, the company is choosing its starter states strategically. Etsy is based in Brooklyn, so it wanted to make sure it started in New York. In Florida, where big utility companies in 2014 quashed state-issued solar incentives, Etsy said it felt it could help bolster the industry.

The company also chose West Virginia and Utah because of those states’ long histories with mining and other causes of pollution.

“We felt like we could have a larger climate impact by helping solar there,” Chelsea Mozen, Etsy's senior sustainability specialist for energy and carbon, told The Huffington Post on Thursday.

In February, Etsy became the first U.S. company to be recertified as a benefit corporation, or B corp, by the nonprofit B Lab after going public. As part of the voluntary designation, the company must adhere to strict environmental standards.

"The bigger picture here is that we've been very outspoken about how social good and business can go hand-in-hand -- they're not at odds with each other," Mozen said. "A lot of people on both sides want to say 'If you do social good, then you don't care about profit.' We're really trying to hold them in equal balance. They don't have to be either/or."

12 States Struggling With Mental Illness

Close to 10 million Americans suffer from chronic depression, bipolar disorder, or another serious mental illness. Depression alone is the leading cause of disability worldwide. In the United States, mental illness — including depression — takes an enormous toll on health outcomes, quality of life, and economic productivity.

Despite its importance, mental illness is often poorly understood and subject to misperceptions by the general population, government officials, and even those who suffer from mental illness. Partially as a consequence, just under one-third of individuals with serious mental illness — defined as diagnosable mental, behavioral, or emotional disorders that result in functional impairment — go untreated in the United States. In 2014, an estimated 44.7% of the 43.6 million adults with any mental illness, and 68.5% of the 9.8 million adults with serious mental illness received mental health services in the past year.

24/7 Wall St. reviewed the 12 states where the highest shares of the adult population suffers from serious mental illness.

Click here to see the 12 states struggling with mental illness.

Depression and mental disorders are treatable psychiatric illnesses. Therapy, as well as a huge amount of prescription drugs such as anti-depressants, anti-psychotics and mood stabilizers are used to treat serious mental illnesses. Because of this, states with a high share of adults with serious mental illness also tend to have more drugs prescribed per capita. The number of these and other kinds of retail drugs prescribed exceeded the national average of 12.7 prescriptions per capita in all but four of these 12 states. In West Virginia and Kentucky, more than 20 drugs are prescribed per person each year.

While the 12 states struggling the most with mental illness do not necessarily have the nation’s highest poverty rates, mental illness is far more common among people living in poverty. Of adults living in poverty, 8.7% report serious psychological distress, in contrast with 1.2% of adults with incomes at least four times higher than the poverty level — around $50,000 — according to the CDC.

A number of socioeconomic factors are associated with mental illness, either as contributors or outcomes. People with mental illnesses are more likely than others to abuse alcohol or illicit drugs. Residents of states struggling the most with mental illness are not necessarily among the most likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. However, in the majority of states with the highest prevalence of serious mental illness, higher shares of adults report needing, but not receiving, treatment for drug use than the 2.2% national average.

States assign different levels of importance to mental illness. Budget allocation for mental health issues varies considerably between states. Only 12 states have increased their respective mental health authority’s budget in each of the past three years. Idaho is the only state with a disproportionately high share of mentally ill residents to have increased its mental health budget annually over this period. Meanwhile North Carolina, which is also home to one of the highest shares of mentally ill adults, is one of just three states to have reduced its mental health budget every year since 2013.

Several states with a relatively high share of adults with mental illness are implementing progressive policies to better address societal issues associated with mental illness. Indiana, for instance, implemented a policy last year requiring state police academies to provide a crisis intervention overview to all police trainees for emergency instances involving the mentally ill.

To determine the 12 states struggling the most with mental illness, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the share of the adult population with a serious mental illness in each state based on surveys conducted between 2013 and 2014 from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Serious mental illness is defined as “having, at any time during the past year, a diagnosable mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder that causes serious functional impairment that substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities.” The prevalence of any mental illness, which serious mental disorders that may not have impaired life activities for example, also came from SAMHSA. The percentage of adults reporting at least one major depressive episode in the past year, the share of adults who had suicidal thoughts in the past year, and alcohol and illicit drug abuse rates also came from SAMHSA. Per capita drug prescription rates came from the Kaiser Family Foundation. State mental health legislation and spending was compiled by the National Alliance on Mental Illness. We also considered poverty rates, uninsured rates, and educational attainment rates from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) as well as 2015 annual unemployment rates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

These are the 12 states struggling the most with mental illness, according to 24/7 Wall St.

• AP IMAGES FOR AMERICAN EXPRESS
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.7%
> Total adults with serious mental illness: 361,000 (8th highest)
> Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 8.7% (20th lowest)
> Poverty rate: 17.6% (13th highest)

Of North Carolina adults, an estimated 4.7% have a diagnosable mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder — that is, serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress, and eating disorders. This is the 12th highest share of all states. Mental illness is associated in particular with thoughts of suicide. In North Carolina, 4.3% of adults reported having thoughts of suicide in the past year, the eighth highest percentage in the nation.

Like only two other states, North Carolina has cut mental health spending in the last three years. Last year, despite the governor’s proposed 4% mental health spending increase, the legislature cut the budget by $84 million, or 14%.

Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
• Raymond Boyd via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.7%
> Total adults with serious mental illness: 237,000 (13th highest)
> Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 9.3% (17th highest)
> Poverty rate: 15.5% (24th highest)

In Indiana, 7.6% of adults reported having at least one major depressive episode last year, one of the largest shares in the country. Chronic and persistent depression that interferes with day-to-day functioning is one of several serious mental illnesses that an estimated 4.7% of adults in Indiana struggles with.

In light of the relative prevalence of mental illness in the state, Indiana increased its mental health authority’s budget in 2015. The same year, Senate Bill 380 directed the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute to create a central resource for training, funding, and other technical assistance for crisis intervention teams across the state. The bill also requires state police academies to provide mental health crisis intervention overviews to all police trainees.

Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
• George Frey via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.8%
> Total adults with serious mental illness: 97,000 (19th lowest)
> Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 7.8% (3rd lowest)
> Poverty rate: 12.8% (15th lowest)

Slightly more than one in every five adults in Utah are living with some form of mental illness, which includes serious mental illness as well as a range of other less severe disorders, a larger share than in all but four other states. The share of adults living with serious mental illness such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or chronic depression, at 4.8% is considerably higher than the 4.0% of American adults with such an illness.

Unlike some states, Utah is taking active measures to treat mental health issues. Last year, the state was applauded by NAMI for passing House Bill 209, requiring certain behavioral health specialists to complete additional suicide prevention training to renew their license to practice. Of Utah adults, an estimated 4.8% reported having thoughts of suicide in the past year, the highest percentage in the country.

Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
• Tim Graham via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.8%
> Total adults with serious mental illness: 109,000 (21st lowest)
> Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 8.3% (10th lowest)
> Poverty rate: 22.6% (the highest)

Psychological distress is far more common among people living in poverty than it is among more financially well-off individuals. Financial distress may partially explain the relatively high prevalence of serious mental illness in Mississippi, where 22.6% of people live in poverty, the highest poverty rate in the nation. Furthermore, 4.8% of adults in Mississippi are estimated to have a serious, diagnosable mental illness, among the highest percentages nationwide.

In addition to therapy, anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, and mood stabilizers are frequently used to treat serious mental illness. In Mississippi, 17.7 of these and other kinds of medications are prescribed per resident in a single year, the fourth highest prescriptions per capita in the country.

Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
• Bloomberg via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.8%
> Total adults with serious mental illness: 434,000 (5th highest)
> Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 9.3% (18th highest)
> Poverty rate: 15.9% (19th highest) Substance use is more common among those suffering from mental distress.

Substances such as tobacco, alcohol and other drugs are frequently used as self-medication. In Ohio, 9.3% of adults abuse or are dependent on alcohol or illicit drugs, higher than the 8.8% national substance abuse rate. Adults in the state are also more likely than most American adults to suffer from short-term episodes of major depression. Of Ohio adults, 7.2% reported suffering from at least one major depressive episode within the past year, the ninth highest share of any state. Along with substance abuse and depression, adults in the state are also more likely to suffer from serious mental illness than most Americans. In Ohio, 4.8% of adults are living with a serious mental illness, one of the largest such shares in the country.

With relative prevalence of mental illness, Ohio residents are some of the most medicated in the country. Each year, roughly 17.5 prescriptions are filled for every state resident, considerably more than the 12.7 prescriptions filled for every American annually.

Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
• Education Images via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.9%
> Total adults with serious mental illness: 59,000 (12th lowest)
> Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 9.1% (23rd highest)
> Poverty rate: 15.6% (20th highest)

In Idaho, 20.3% of adults have some sort of mental disorder, including serious mental illnesses as well as less severe mental disorders, one of the largest shares in the country and considerably more than the 17.8% share of American adults suffering from a mental illness. Of the state’s mentally ill residents, roughly 59,000 suffer from a serious mental illness — schizophrenia, severe depression, and other disorder that can cause severe functional impairment.

Perhaps because mental illness is more common in Idaho than in much of the rest of the country, the state is investing more in treatment programs. While many states are reducing funding for mental health services, Idaho’s Mental Health Services department’s budget has increased in each of the last three years, one of only 12 states to do so.

Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
• Bloomberg via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.9%
> Total adults with serious mental illness: 230,000 (16th highest)
> Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 8.5% (18th lowest)
> Poverty rate: 15.6% (20th highest)

Nearly one in every 20 adults in Missouri report serious mental illness, which include a range of psychiatric ailments from schizophrenia to eating disorders. Mental illness in the United States has been largely misunderstood, underfunded, and undertreated — even for those with health insurance. Some states have taken notable steps to address the issue. Missouri’s legislature last year enacted Senate Bill 145, an act mandating health care providers to cover eating disorders.

Like most states struggling the most with serious mental illness, Missourians are more likely than adults nationwide to report at least one depressive episode or thoughts of suicide within the past year.

Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
• Bloomberg via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.9%
> Total adults with serious mental illness: 168,000 (21st highest)
> Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 7.9% (5th lowest)
> Poverty rate: 18.9% (5th highest)

Kentucky is home to a relatively high share of adults with a serious mental illness. Roughly 168,000 Kentucky adults have a diagnosable serious mental illness, 4.9% of the state’s adult population. By contrast, only 4.0% of American adults grapple with a serious mental illness. Since anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, and mood stabilizers are frequently used to treat mental illness, the relative prevalence of mental illness in Kentucky may explain the high level of drug prescriptions in the state. Each year, there are 22 of these and other kinds of prescriptions filled per state resident in a single year, the highest drug prescription rate in the country. Despite the relative prevalence of serious mental health issues, Kentucky has cut funding for its mental health department in each of the last two years.

Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
• DANNY JOHNSTON/AP
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 5.1%
> Total adults with serious mental illness: 115,000 (22nd lowest)
> Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 7.7% (2nd lowest)
> Poverty rate: 19.2% (4th highest)

In Arkansas, 7.1% of adults reported having a major depressive episode within the past year, and 4.5% reported having thoughts of suicide, each among the highest shares of any state in the country. Some of those reporting such incidents likely partially comprise the 5.1% of adults in the state with a serious mental illness such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. Like other states with high relative prevalence of mental illness, Arkansas is home to one of the most medicated populations in the country. There are 15.8 prescriptions filled per state resident annually, considerably more than the 12.7 per capita prescription drug rate nationally.

Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
• Beth J. Harpaz/AP
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 5.2%
> Total adults with serious mental illness: 56,000 (11th lowest)
> Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 8.2% (8th lowest)
> Poverty rate: 13.9% (22nd lowest)

Maine is one of only four states where an estimated more than one in every 20 adults suffer from serious mental illness. Accounting for less serious forms of psychiatric illness, more than one in every five adults report some form of mental illness, the seventh largest proportion in the country. Roughly 87,000 Maine adults reported at least one major depressive episode within the past year, or 8.1% of the population, the highest percentage of all states.

Residents of rural areas not only need to travel further to health facilities, but also they may be more vulnerable to social isolation — a major driver and component of a number of mental illnesses. High proportions of Mainers live in very rural areas, which may help partially explain the state’s high prevalence of serious mental illness.

Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
• Education Images via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 5.3%
> Total adults with serious mental illness: 27,000 (5th lowest)
> Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 10.1% (5th highest)
> Poverty rate: 12.0% (13th lowest) Approximately 27,000

Vermonters are beset with serious mental illnesses, comprising 5.3% of the state’s adult population, the second highest percentage of all states. Mental illness in the United States has been largely misunderstood, underfunded, and under-treated — even for those with health insurance. In Vermont, however, the legislature last year enacted Senate Bill 139, a law intended to improve access to and quality of mental health services. Health insurance coverage in the state, which at about 93% is nearly the highest in the nation, may in the future be more valuable to the mentally ill. The state also enacted a law in 2015 prohibiting some state residents from possessing firearms due to mental illness.

People with mental health disorders are more likely to abuse alcohol or other substances than individuals without serious mental illnesses. Of adults in Vermont, 10.1% report abusing or dependence on alcohol or illicit drugs, the fifth highest share nationwide.

Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
• The Washington Post via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 5.4%
> Total adults with serious mental illness: 79,000 (15th lowest)
> Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 9.2% (19th highest)
> Poverty rate: 18.1 (10th highest)

Serious mental illness is treated with therapy, as well as with drugs such as anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, and mood stabilizers. In West Virginia, 21.8 medications are prescribed per resident in a single year, the second highest per capita prescriptions in the country and significantly higher than the national level of 12.7 prescriptions per capita. The 9.2% share of West Virginia adults dependent on illicit drugs or reporting alcohol abuse within the past year, while slightly higher than the national prevalence, is not especially high. However, 2.6% of adults in the state report needing but not receiving treatment for illicit drug use, the fourth highest such percentage nationwide.

According to the CDC, psychological distress is far more common among people living in poverty than it is among financially stable individuals. The typical West Virginia household earns $41,576 annually, nearly the lowest median household income in the nation. The poverty rate of 18.1% is also among the highest in the country. Such conditions may have contributed to the high prevalence of serious mental illness in the state.

Read more on 24/7 Wall St.

Apparently No One Hates Their Job Anymore

American workers are feeling a lot better about their jobs.

Propelled by a stabilizing economy, employee satisfaction is at its highest level in more than a decade, according to a new survey from the Society for Human Resource Management, an association of HR professionals.

Eighty-eight percent of the employees polled reported being satisfied overall with their jobs in 2015. Of them, 37 percent described themselves as “very satisfied,” and 51 percent said they were “somewhat satisfied.” Compare that to results from the organization's 2005 survey, which found just 77 percent of people were pleased with their jobs. 

As you can see in the chart below, satisfaction took a hit between 2009 and 2013, the years following the recession. By now, though, people are feeling more confident about the job market, and workers who were unhappy and switched jobs five or six years ago have likely settled into their new roles, contributing to the higher satisfaction level, the SHRM researchers say.

SHRM

Age apparently has little to do with how much people enjoy their work. Millennials' satisfaction ranks about as high as that of older generations.

“Stop the stereotypes," SHRM researcher Christina Lee wrote in a paper released alongside the survey. "Although Millennials may have slightly different mindsets, on the whole, they tend to place significance on several of the same aspects of job satisfaction that Generation Xers and Baby Boomers do.” 

Compensation remains highly important in how employees feel about their jobs, with 63 percent of those surveyed citing it as a contributor.

Paychecks, meanwhile, just aren’t growing fast enough. A report last year from the Economic Policy Institute found that growth in worker productivity is outstripping wage growth. From 2000 to 2014, productivity increased by 21.6 percent, while median compensation in the U.S. rose by only 1.8 percent.

Yet compensation ranked only as the second-highest factor contributing to job satisfaction, per the new survey. Topping the list was “respectful treatment of all employees at all levels,” which 67 percent of respondents cited.

“The day-to-day experience is what governs their perspective on their work,” Evren Esen, director of survey programs at the Society for Human Resource Management, told The Huffington Post. “That’s where corporate culture comes into play. You want your supervisor to ask for your ideas.”

Workplaces that promote openness, community and equality are increasingly becoming the norm. While these are aspects valued by all employees, millennials in particular have helped to push that shift forward by being direct about what they expect from their employers.

“They see themselves as equal with who they work with in terms of expressing ideas,” Esen said of millennials. “In that way, by sharing their beliefs with the higher-ups, they are heard more than other generations.”

The expectation that employees are treated equally and fairly, in addition to things like having trustful leaders and transparent management, will only grow as millennials take over the workforce.

Take parental leave: Having a family and young children is hardly a new development, but millennial workers have been more vocal than their older counterparts about having decent company support when they have a newborn. Paid time off is gaining traction quickly, and more and more companies are now offering paid time off to new moms and dads. 

“It’s just what they think is normal,” Esen added. “Millennials say, ‘It’s not that way? Why isn’t it that way?’”

These Are The Highest-Paying Companies In America

Career review site Glassdoor on Wednesday released a list of the 25 highest-paying companies in America for 2016 -- and surprise, surprise, tech firms dominate the report. 

Major tech companies (Google, Facebook and Twitter, to name a few) account for nearly the entire list, though a few consulting firms and one credit card company made the cut, too.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Google software engineers work in a game room at the campus in Washington. 

“In technology, we continue to see unprecedented salaries as the war for talent is still very active, largely due to the shortage of highly skilled workers needed,” said Dr. Andrew Chamberlain, Glassdoor chief economist, in a release. “High pay continues to be tied to in-demand skills and higher education.”

The report shares each company’s median total compensation and median base salary. The companies were ranked by their median total compensation figures, based on salary reports anonymously shared on Glassdoor by employees.

Here are America’s 25 highest paying companies for 2016.

1. A.T. Kearney

• Median Total Compensation: $167,534
• Median Base Salary: $143,620
• Industry: Consulting

2. Strategy&

• Median Total Compensation: $160,000
• Median Base Salary: $147,000
• Industry: Consulting

3. Juniper Networks 

• Median Total Compensation: $157,000
• Median Base Salary: $135,000
• Industry: Technology

4. McKinsey & Company

• Median Total Compensation: $155,000
• Median Base Salary: $135,000
• Industry: Consulting

5. Google

• Median Total Compensation: $153,750
• Median Base Salary: $123,331
• Industry: Technology

6. VMware

• Median Total Compensation: $152,133
• Median Base Salary: $130,000
• Industry: Technology

7. Amazon Lab126

• Median Total Compensation: $150,100
• Median Base Salary: $138,700
• Industry: Technology

8. Boston Consulting Group

• Median Total Compensation: $150,020
• Median Base Salary: $147,000
• Industry: Consulting

9. Guidewire

• Median Total Compensation: $150,020
• Median Base Salary: $135,000
• Industry: Technology

10. Cadence Design Systems

• Median Total Compensation: $150,010
• Median Base Salary: $140,000
• Industry: Technology

11. Visa

• Median Total Compensation: $150,000
• Median Base Salary: $130,000
• Industry: Finance

12. Facebook

• Median Total Compensation: $150,000
• Median Base Salary: $127,406
• Industry: Technology

13. Twitter

• Median Total Compensation: $150,000
• Median Base Salary: $133,000
• Industry: Technology

14. Box

• Median Total Compensation: $150,000
• Median Base Salary: $130,000
• Industry: Technology

15. Walmart eCommerce

• Median Total Compensation: $149,000
• Median Base Salary: $126,000
• Industry: Technology

16. SAP

• Median Total Compensation: $148,431
• Median Base Salary: $120,000
• Industry: Technology

17. Synopsys

• Median Total Compensation: $148,000
• Median Base Salary: $130,000
• Industry: Technology

18. Altera

• Median Total Compensation: $147,000
• Median Base Salary: $134,000
• Industry: Technology

19. LinkedIn

• Median Total Compensation: $145,000
• Median Base Salary: $120,000
• Industry: Technology

20. Cloudera

• Median Total Compensation: $145,000
• Median Base Salary: $129,500
• Industry: Technology

21. Salesforce

• Median Total Compensation: $143,750
• Median Base Salary: $120,000
• Industry: Technology

22. Microsoft

• Median Total Compensation: $141,000
• Median Base Salary: $125,000
• Industry: Technology

23. F5 Networks

• Median Total Compensation: $140,200
• Median Base Salary: $120,500
• Industry: Technology

24. Adobe

• Median Total Compensation: $140,000
• Median Base Salary: $125,000
• Industry: Technology

25. Broadcom

• Median Total Compensation: $140,000
• Median Base Salary: $130,000
• Industry: Technology

Mitsubishi Motors Admits Falsifying Fuel Economy Tests To Make Emissions Levels Look More Favorable

Mitsubishi Motors Corp said it falsified fuel economy test data to make emissions levels look more favorable, and its shares slumped more than 15 percent, wiping $1.2 billion from its market value on Wednesday.

Tetsuro Aikawa, president of Japan's sixth-largest automaker by market value, bowed in apology at a news conference in Tokyo for what is the biggest scandal at Mitsubishi Motors since a defect cover-up over a decade ago.

Toru Hanai / Reuters

The scandal prompted Tetsuro Aikawa, president of Mitsubishi Motors, to bow in apology at a news conference in Tokyo.

Shares in the company closed down more than 15 percent at 733 yen, the stock's biggest one-day drop in almost 12 years.

In 2000, Mitsubishi Motors revealed that it covered up safety records and customer complaints. Four years later it admitted to broader problems going back decades. It was Japan's worst automotive recall scandal at the time.

The company said on Wednesday the test manipulation involved 625,000 vehicles produced since mid-2013. These include its eK mini-wagon as well as 468,000 similar cars it made for Nissan Motor.

It said it would stop making and selling those cars, and has set up an independent panel to investigate the issue.

Mitsubishi Motors sold just over 1 million cars last year.

Mitsubishi Motors is the first Japanese automaker to report misconduct involving fuel economy tests since Volkswagen was discovered last year to have cheated diesel emissions tests in the United States and elsewhere.

South Korean car makers Hyundai Motor Co and affiliate Kia Motors Corp in 2014 agreed to pay $350 million in penalties to the U.S. government for overstating their vehicles' fuel economy ratings. They also resolved claims from car owners.

Americans Like To Say They're Eco-Friendly -- They're Not

Calling yourself an environmentally conscious person doesn't actually make you one. And aside from simple tasks like turning off lights, Americans overwhelmingly ignore the environmental impact of their day-to-day actions.

That's according to the real estate website Trulia, which surveyed more than 2,000 Americans, as part of a wider study, about living green and how best to reduce their carbon footprint.

"When it comes to the environment, people kind of want to have their cake and eat it too," study author Felipe Chacon, an economist at Trulia, told The Huffington Post.

Chacon writes in a report published Thursday on the company's site that 79 percent of Americans "agree that they consider themselves an environmentally conscious person," while only 6 percent strongly disagree.

But roughly three in four people don't take action beyond recycling and hitting the light switch.

gidl via Getty Images

Chacon analyzed national, political and sociodemographic differences among adults ages 18 and older for the study. 

He found that money is a barrier to being environmentally conscious -- higher education makes people believe they are better stewards of the planet, and Democrats are "more likely to walk the walk" than Republicans in terms of taking action, Chacon writes.

Oh, and sorry, millennials, you are not America's greenest generation and could stand to learn a few things from your elders.

Trulia

Chacon told HuffPost he found it interesting that living in a smaller home was low on the list of actions people considered to be eco-friendly.

Another striking finding is that millennial women were most likely to disagree when the survey asked if they consider themselves to be environmentally conscious. (29 percent disagreed, compared to 19 percent of millennial men.)

Chacon said in his report that he believes most people aspire to do what is best to protect the planet, but there are "clear time, convenience, and cost limitations."

"The degree to which these limitations push people away from a more green way of living is strongly affected by how they agree or disagree that they are environmentally conscious," he writes. "If changing minds on the environment is hard, then changing behavior is even harder."

Ultimately, we're going to need a lot more than just high-efficiency washers and TVs to help the planet, he warns. Real, substantive action is going to require "collective changes in personal choices and behavior.”

Trulia

Read Trulia's full report here. 

New York City's Public Advocate Just Told Hedge Funds To Shove It

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City's largest public pension fund voted on Thursday to unwind all of its hedge fund investments in a sign of the growing dissatisfaction with the asset class in the $4 trillion public pension fund sector.

The board of the New York City Employees Retirement System (NYCERS) voted to "liquidate NYCERS hedge fund investments as soon as practicable in an orderly and prudent manner" and "cease future hedge fund allocation."

The move by the fund, which had $51.2 billion in assets as of Jan. 31, follows a similar action by the California Public Employees' Retirement System (Calpers), the nation's largest public pensionfund.

"Hedges have underperformed, costing us millions," New York City's Public Advocate Letitia James told board members in prepared remarks. "Let them sell their summer homes and jets, and return those fees to their investors."

New York city's public pension system has five separate pension funds with individual governing structures. The system has total assets of around $154 billion, with about $3 billion invested in hedge funds as of Jan. 31. NYCERS' decision does not affect investments in other funds.

NYCERS had $1.7 billion invested in hedge funds at the end of the second quarter 2015, according to its financial report. That amounted to 2.8 percent of total assets and was the smallest portion of its 'alternative investments' portfolio, which included an $8.1 billion allocation to private equity.

The report shows that NYCERS paid nearly $40 million in fees to hedge funds during its 2015 financial year. Its investments included Luxor Capital Group, Brigade Capital Management and Fir Tree Partners. Its hedge fund portfolio returned 3.89 percent over the year, according to its financial report.

"Hedge funds are charging exorbitant fees for high-risk and opaque investments," said James.

Hedge fund returns have been lackluster for some time with the average fund losing roughly 1 percent last year when the broader stock market was flat, prompting many institutional investors to leave.

The U.S. public pension sector started to heavily invest in hedge funds after the financial crisis in 2008-2009 to diversify assets. A CEM Benchmarking survey of public pensions with a total of $2.4 trillion in assets found that in 2014, 5.2 percent of assets were invested in hedge funds.

Calpers, which had been investing with hedge funds for more than a decade, announced its plans to exit in 2014, saying the investments were too costly and complicated.

 

(Reporting by Edward Krudy, additional reporting by Svea Herbst; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

Tesla Proclaims This The Week Electric Cars Went Mainstream

We may have reached a tipping point.

After a frenzied week watching orders for its Model 3 soar, Tesla declared Thursday that electric cars have gone mainstream.

The electric car manufacturer has received more than 325,000 pre-orders for its first affordably priced sedan. At an average cost of $42,000 apiece after various options are priced in, that comes to nearly $14 billion in sales.

Tesla claimed that eye-popping total makes this "the single biggest one-week launch of any product ever."

"Most importantly," the company added, "we are all taking a huge step towards a better future by accelerating the transition to sustainable transportation."

"We want to thank everyone who has shown their faith in Tesla and the mission of electric vehicles. We would write more, but we need to get back to increasing our Model 3 production plans!"

Tesla CEO Elon Musk had offered a similar thought on Twitter last Friday, just after the Model 3 was released, when orders stood at around 200,000.

Definitely going to need to rethink production planning...

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 1, 2016

For perspective on just how much of a production increase that may be, Autoblog notes that Tesla delivered a total of just 50,000 vehicles in 2015.

“The pent-up demand is something that surprised me," DBL Partners Managing Director Nancy Pfund, whose venture capital firm invested in Tesla a decade ago, told The Huffington Post on Monday. "I knew it was big, but I had no idea how much of a market we were tapping into with the Model 3.”

Pfizer, Allergan Scrap $160 Billion Merger Over Tax Loophole Pressure

(Reuters) - U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc and Ireland-based Allergan Plc formally announced the scrapping of their $160 billion merger on Wednesday, in a big win for President Barack Obama who has been pushing to curb tax-slashing "inversion" deals.

The announcement followed the unveiling of new U.S. Treasury rules on Monday aimed at curbing such deals. The merger would have allowed New York-based Pfizer to cut its tax bill by redomiciling to Ireland, where tax rates are lower.

A source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday that the deal would be terminated.

Pfizer said on Wednesday it would pay Allergan $150 million as reimbursement of expenses related to the deal.

Allergan said it would report first-quarter results by May 10, when it would also update on its plans to simplify its operations after the close of its $40.5 billion deal to sell its generic drug business to Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. The deal is expected to close by June.

While the new Treasury rules did not name Pfizer and Allergan, one of the provisions targeted a specific feature of their merger - Allergan's previous history as a major acquirer of other companies.

The collapse of what would have been the biggest-ever inversion deal allows Obama to claim a major victory in his last year in office.

Obama on Tuesday called global tax avoidance a "huge problem" and urged Congress to take action to stop U.S. companies from tax-avoiding deals.

Pfizer was concerned that any tweaks to salvage its deal with Allergan might have provoked new rules by the Treasury, the source had told Reuters.

This is not the first time that a tightening of U.S. inversion rules has caused a merger to unravel.

U.S. drugmaker AbbVie Inc abandoned its $55 billion takeover of Ireland-domiciled peer Shire Plc in 2014 after the Obama administration cracked down on inversions. AbbVie had to pay Shire a $1.6 billion break-up fee.

 

(Reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Ted Kerr)

Even Tesla Fanatics Are Shocked By Model 3 Preorders

Elon Musk reveled this weekend in the tidal wave of preorders Tesla Motors received for the company's first affordable car, the Model 3, which debuted March 31.

By Saturday night, the electric automaker pulled in an eye-popping 276,000 orders for the $35,000 vehicle, each with a $1,000 deposit, the billionaire chief executive said on Twitter. That's more than double what the company expected. 

276k Model 3 orders by end of Sat

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 3, 2016

Even two of electric carmaker's keenest observers -- one an early investor, the other a high-ranking analyst fixated on the future of transportation -- were wowed by the numbers.

"We were all surprised to sell a quarter of a million cars in two days," DBL Partners Managing Director Nancy Pfund, whose venture firm invested in Tesla a decade ago, told The Huffington Post at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit in New York on Monday. "The pent-up demand is something that surprised me. I knew it was big, but I had no idea how much of a market we were tapping into with the Model 3."

When she first invested in the electric automaker 10 years ago, the company's only offering was the super-fast, super-expensive Roadster, and electric cars in general seemed dead-on-arrival.

"People were telling us Tesla is for rich people," Pfund said. "I mean, we didn't sit around a conference table 10 years ago and say, 'Let's make a car for the wealthy.' It's like the early cellphone or iPhone, these things are expensive at first."

The reaction to the Model 3 could ripple throughout the auto industry.

"That legitimately surprised us," Colin McKerracher, the lead advanced transportation analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, told HuffPost in an interview. "I don't think you want to ignore that. I don't think you want to say that's just a flash in the pan."

Handout . / Reuters

The Tesla Model 3.

Rather, McKerracher said traditional automakers are now scrambling to develop competitors to Tesla's roster of sleek, well-designed electric vehicles. 

"I wouldn't underestimate Tesla's ability to pull other automakers along," he said.

One big difference is that the Nissan LEAF and Chevrolet's Bolt and Volt -- the Model 3's chief rivals -- simply haven't had the same hype as a Tesla.

"If you build a badass product, people will buy it on its own merits," Salim Morsy, senior analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, told HuffPost.

But people need to know about it, he added. 

"For the Bolt, Volt and Leaf, the marketing was abysmal," Morsy said. 

Musk is nothing if not a good hype man. 

The 2 Near-Death Experiences That Changed Mark Bertolini Forever

Before Mark Bertolini became the chief executive of the country's biggest health insurer, before he was celebrated by business publications for being an "unconventional boss" who is "mindful of morality," before he overhauled his company to prioritize the wellness of his workers, he was a father watching his teenage son die.

It was 2001, and Bertolini's son Eric, who was then 16, was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer. Bertolini, now the chief executive of Aetna, quit his job at insurance rival Cigna and moved into his son's hospital room in Boston to help manage his care.

Eric made a full recovery two years later, but was struck by complications and needed a kidney transplant.

Once again, Bertolini stepped in, donating one of his kidneys to his son.

Those experiences, coupled with a severe skiing accident he suffered in 2004, completely changed the way that Bertolini saw health and, by extension, health care. 

"What I found very quickly in both his circumstance and mine was getting our lives back, becoming engaged and productive members of society, was something that the health care system cared very little about," Bertolini says in the sixth episode of "Pioneers," a new video series by The Huffington Post that profiles leaders in various industries who have redefined success by making it their mission to live more meaningful and less stressful lives.

Facing long-term disability and chronic pain after colliding with a tree, Bertolini turned to yoga and meditation. A recent study by Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center found that participants who practiced mindfulness meditation experienced greater pain relief than those who received a placebo. Regular meditation and healthy amounts of sleep essentially work to drain out toxins -- such as molecules associated with the degeneration of brain cells -- that build up during waking hours. 

"I still have my pain, but as we say in the meditative arena, in the mindfulness arena: 'I have pain, I'm aware of my pain, I am not my pain,'" Bertolini says. "I had to learn how to be more 'Zen' in the way I approached my daily life, and meditation was a way to learn how to do that."

That approach bled over into his work life, too. Under Bertolini's leadership, Aetna helped spearhead the movement in corporate culture to focus more on employee health -- as both a means of improving people's lives and a way of reducing health care costs. And perhaps most importantly, he addressed one of the biggest sources of stress for his workers: money. 

Last year, Bertolini raised the minimum hourly base pay for all U.S. workers at Aetna to $16 after reading Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a best-selling 700-page book on income inequality by the French economist Thomas Piketty.

"If people are too busy looking for food, if they're too busy stressing about whether or not they have enough money to pay for their health care, how can they possibly sleep?" Bertolini says. 

Still, for wealthy executives, money shouldn't be everything in business, he says. 

"We view stock price and compensation as ways of measuring the success of an organization, and I think, because of that, we have a very short-term view of how capitalism works," he says. "At Aetna, we actually say: 'You know what, we're here for the long run. Here are the fundamentals we're investing in, like we did with our employees.'" 

To watch previous episodes of Pioneers, head here.

FDA Sued Over Approval Of Genetically Engineered Salmon

• Plaintiffs argue the federal agency overstepped its authority in approving the genetically modified fish.
• Produced by AquaBounty Technologies, the salmon are engineered to grow twice as fast as wild species.
• Critics worry engineered salmon could prove disastrous for wild salmon populations.

Nearly a dozen fishing and environmental groups have filed suit against the Food and Drug Administration in an effort to block its recent approval of genetically modified salmon.

The plaintiffs, represented by the Center for Food Safety and Earthjustice, argue that by green-lighting the first-ever genetically altered animal slated for human consumption, the FDA violated the law and ignored potential risks to wild salmon populations, the environment and fishing communities.

"That's one of the major risks here, is the escape of these fish into the wild," George Kimbrell, senior attorney for Center for Food Safety, told The Huffington Post. "It could be a final blow to our already imperiled salmon stocks."

Produced by Massachusetts-based company AquaBounty Technologies, the AquAdvantage Salmon is an Atlantic salmon engineered with genes from a Pacific Chinook salmon and a deep water ocean eelpout to grow twice as fast as its conventional counterpart.

Handout / Reuters

An AquAdvantage Salmon is pictured in this undated photo provided by AquaBounty Technologies.

The 64-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, challenges whether the FDA has authority to regulate genetically modified animals as "animal drugs" under the 1938 Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. It also argues the agency failed to protect the environment and consult wildlife agencies in its review process, as required by federal law, CFS said in a release. 

"I think it's important to note that FDA has gone ahead with this approval over the objections of over 2 million Americans in the comment period," Kimbrell told HuffPost.

In its approval announcement in November, the FDA said it determined "food from AquAdvantage Salmon is as safe to eat and as nutritious as food from other non-GE Atlantic salmon and that there are no biologically relevant differences in the nutritional profile of AquAdvantage Salmon compared to that of other farm-raised Atlantic salmon."

FDA spokeswoman Juli Putnamn told HuffPost in an email that as a matter of policy, the federal agency does not comment on pending litigation.

SAUL LOEB via Getty Images

Fresh Atlantic salmon steaks and fillets at Eastern Market in Washington, D.C. in 2013.

The lawsuit is the latest development in an ongoing and heated debate over genetically modified organisms, their safety and whether genetically engineered foods should be labeled. While proponents say the technology allows agricultural farmers to be more efficient, opponents argue they result in heavy pesticide use and transgenic contamination.

In the case of its GE salmon, AquaBounty says the fish grows to market size using 25 percent less feed than any Atlantic salmon on the market today.

But if the engineered fish were to be released into the wild -- a risk AquaBounty says is eliminated by raising them on land and away from the ocean -- critics worry they might outcompete endangered wild salmon for food and introduce new diseases.

“Once they escape, you can’t put these transgenic fish back in the bag," Dune Lankard, a salmon fisherman and the Center for Biological Diversity’s Alaska representative, said in a release. "They’re manufactured to outgrow wild salmon, and if they cross-breed, it could have irreversible impacts on the natural world. This kind of dangerous tinkering could easily morph into a disaster for wild salmon that will be impossible to undo."

Plaintiffs in the case include Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, Institute for Fisheries Resources, Golden Gate Salmon Association, Friends of Merrymeeting Bay and others.

Gen X Is The Most Screwed Generation When It Comes To Real Estate

It's fashionable to talk about how the housing crisis hurt millennials. But we tend to forget that the slightly older Generation X bore the brunt of the pain -- and continues to bear it.

True, millennials have been shut out of the housing market through a combination of rising rents and high student debt, which keep them from saving enough for a down payment. But most of the current crop of young adults were too young to feel the acute pain of the housing crisis, and their troubles are only one of the many lasting effects of the late 2000s.

Gen Xers, on the other hand, were mostly in their 30s and early 40s when the housing crisis hit -- just old enough to have bought a house. By 2009, many of them found themselves either underwater on their mortgage, or in foreclosure and completely forced out of their home. Gen X was in the wrong place at the wrong time, economically speaking, and in many cases the consequences of that continue. 

Nineteen million of America's current renters used to be homeowners, according to a new report from the Urban Institute. Some of those are older retirees who have sold their homes and downsized, but most aren't. Nearly a quarter of those former owners (4.2 million) lost their homes to foreclosure as a result of the housing crisis. Most of them are now middle-aged and still renting, as you can see in the chart below:

Urban Institute

Laurie Goodman, one of the authors of the study, told The Huffington Post she was surprised at just how many Gen Xers turned out to be in the renting-but-used-to-own category. The housing crisis changed the profile of renters in this country, adding a huge crop of middle-aged people, who in any previous decade would have owned their homes. 

"You always hear about renting just being the preference of the millennials," she said. But her data show that renting has also been forced on many older people over the last 10 years. "You don’t [often] see it quantified how big an impact the housing crisis had on homeownership." 

Gen X is the unlucky group that was just hitting full adulthood in the mid 2000s. The 35-45 age group in the chart above would have been between 27 and 36 back in 2007, which puts them right at the age when people generally begin starting families and buying homes. New homeowners have the most debt and the least equity in their properties. When the crisis came, newer homeowners didn't have years of payments and value appreciation to cushion the blow when home values around the country fell between 10 and 30 percent.  

Imagine you bought a $100,000 home in Phoenix in 2007. You put 10 percent down in order to get a mortgage, and though that $10,000 was most of your savings, you were taught that housing was safe. By the end of 2008, that house was probably worth less than $70,000, and you were stuck in it. Then, say you lost your job in early 2009 and couldn't make your house payments to the bank. You'd lose your original down payment -- that is, all your savings -- and on top of that you would need to look for new rental housing if you wanted a place to live. Eight years later, maybe you've scraped together enough to make a new down payment, but more likely your credit is shot and you're still living in a rental. 

Of the 9 million people who went through a foreclosure between 2003 and 2015, 4.7 million are still renting, according to the report. That, in turn, added more people to the rental market, driving up demand, and prices. That means rents are higher for younger people who are trying to cobble together savings for a down payment, making it harder for them to buy.

It's a vicious cycle that has left a permanent scar on the American housing market, according to Goodman. 

"People will repair their credit over time but the foreclosure crisis is going to leave a lasting effect on the homeownership rate, permanently raising the number of renters," she said.