Japan 2011 © JIJI PRESS

Even when disasters happen in far-away places, you can still help. Donating money is a great place to start, but don’t stop there. Hosting a fundraiser is as easy as inviting some friends over for lunch or making a page on crowdrise.org.

And Alanna Shaikh says that volunteering in your hometown is a lot more valuable than you might think:

“There is a lot of work at aid agency headquarters that can be done by committed volunteers, and that work often has a huge impact. Everything that a volunteer does pushes down overhead costs and frees up money for the organization to spend on international relief.

I was an Oxfam American volunteer back in the day, and I helped transcribe field interviews for qualitative surveys, edit and format documents, and prepare press releases. It was interesting work, and it was part of what led me to the work I do now. At International Medical Corps, our volunteers drafted situation reports, answered correspondence, and did literature reviews, among other things.”

Check out DoSomething.org, idealist.org, or the website of your favorite aid organization to get some ideas.

(photo credit: mi55er)

How much is an hour of bathroom cleaning worth? What about 24 hours of child care? How much would you be paid to do these things in another person’s home?

How about in your own home?

According to a new international study, the “unpaid economy” - jobs like food shopping, washing up, and getting the kids to bed – would represent about a third of a nation’s total economy if it were paid.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development looked for signs of gender equality in this unpaid work, which was traditionally done only by women.

They found that even though men have come a long way toward helping out with these tasks, they’re still not likely to spend as much time on them as women do… even if they’re unemployed.

Bring THAT to your next macroeconomics class.

(photo credit: Andy Welsher)

A new study on longevity reveals that (shocker) slacking off and not caring about anything will probably make you die faster.

“What characterized the people who thrived is a combination of their own persistence and dependability and the help of other people,” Friedman says. The young adults who were thrifty, persistent, detail-oriented and responsible lived the longest.

Time to work on that financial plan you’ve been putting off, no?

Amanda Hocking (photo courtesy Business Insider)

Technology changes everything, again.

Amanda Hocking is living the dream: she’s in her mid-twenties, writing what she wants to write, and making a serious profit without any of the usual middlemen. No publishers, no editors, no marketers, no book-signing tours.

The Kindle store allows her to connect directly with readers, who sometimes pay only a dollar to download her work. But multiply one dollar by 100,000 downloads, and then imagine taking home 70% of that. (Amazon keeps the rest.)

This is good news for young writers looking to make a name (and a profit) for themselves, but what about all those people who make their living as publishers, editors, and marketers?

The United States Budget Proposal for 2010

Click on the image to see the whole thing.

What would YOUR budget look like if it were stuck into a sweet infographic?

If you ask some politicians, they are. And they’re mucking up the whole political system, dag-nabbit. According to a Washington Post article, some Republican lawmakers have had it up to here with whipper-snappers voting with their feelings.

Average taxpayers in college towns, [Sorg] said, are having their votes “diluted or entirely canceled by those of a huge, largely monolithic demographic group . . . composed of people with a dearth of experience and a plethora of the easy self-confidence that only ignorance and inexperience can produce.”

Their “youthful idealism,” he added, “is focused on remaking the world, with themselves in charge, of course, rather than with the mundane humdrum of local government.”

– New Hampshire State Rep. Gregory Sorg

The solution? Proposals differ from state to state, but basically every voter would be required to show ID or proof of residence in order to vote. That would mean anyone without an appropriate ID would have to get one.

But identification costs money! That’s unconstitutional! It’s akin to the poll tax used to disenfranchise African-American voters in the 19th century!

What does this have to do with me and my money, you say? Well, since state governments can’t legally force people to buy the right (or the ID) to vote, taxpayers would have to absorb the costs.

And according to one estimate, the state of Wisconsin alone would have to pony up $2.7 million just to provide valid identification cards to voters who do not currently have them.

What do you think? Do you want to pay for that? Or are you too foolish to know?

i.e., Who’s profiting from your news feed addiction?

Facebook isn’t publicly-traded, which means you can’t buy stock in the company on any stock market. But it seems to have found plenty of well-heeled investors without reaching out to the great unwashed masses (i.e., us).

A lot of different things can influence how you spend your money – your account balance, your blood sugar level, the weather. But one of the most important and overlooked factors is your personal set of values. That’s right. Values.

Take this quick quiz and see how you stack up against others (who may have similar values to yours) when it comes to how you spend your money.

Now look at your last bank or credit card statement. What portion of your money goes to experiences? How about material objects? What kind of experiences and objects do you tend to spend the most money on?

(btw, YourMorals.org isn’t a religious website – it’s a collection of surveys put together by seven social psychologists to explore how morality and political values interact. Once you register, you can take and save your results for any number of surveys.)

When they say the U.S. unemployment rate is 9%, does that mean that only 9% of all possible American workers are out of a job?

Nope. The official unemployment rate doesn’t count people who have given up looking for a job. It also doesn’t include people considered “not in the labor force,” like students. And it definitely doesn’t tell you much about the millions of people who are working part-time but can’t find full-time work. (They’re called the “underemployed.”)

Contrary to popular belief, the unemployment rate has nothing to do with how many people are applying for or receiving unemployment benefits. The Bureau of Labor Statistics collects data by actually going out and asking people about their employment status.

Click the chart for Matt Berger’s explanation.

How do you fit into this chart?