We’re All Becoming Distracted Victims of Smartphones

We’re All Becoming Distracted Victims of Smartphones

		<p>The interview isn't the time or place to prove you're an early adopter of new technology. So don't whip out your new iPhone or any other gadget in an effort to win cool tech points. Some job candidates arrive at interviews with more than just their r
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By Millie Dent

Your phone buzzes at work. You promised yourself you wouldn’t check your phone until you turn in your half-finished assignment that’s due in an hour, so you don’t. But you start to wonder — who is texting you? What does the text say? Your mind wanders.

A new study has found that even when we try to disregard a notification, just being aware of a new message distracts us enough to impair our concentration and hurt our performance. These distractions are equal to actively opening the notification on your mobile device.

A Gallup poll reveals that 81 percent of smartphone users keep their phone in close proximity “almost all the time during waking hours.” Depending on the volume of notifications users receive, keeping a phone so close could lead to a noticeably negative impact on work performance.

Related: The New Workplace Trend — Smartphone Mini-Vacations

The study adds to the growing list of negative affects smartphones can have on users. Other effects include impaired sleep, increased pressure to communicate with friends and family, and the inability to detach from work.

Smartphones are only going to affect more and more individuals. The number of people who own a smartphone has increased from 35 percent in 2011 to 64 percent in April of this year. Among millennials, 84 percent report owning a smartphone.

As millennials begin to enter the workforce and the number of apps available for download increases, the potential for distraction only grows larger.

4.2 Million Uninsured People Could Get Free Obamacare Plans

FILE PHOTO: A sign on an insurance store advertises Obamacare in San Ysidro
Mike Blake
By Michael Rainey

About 4.2 million uninsured people could sign up for a bronze-level Obamacare health plan and pay nothing for it after tax credits are applied, the Kaiser Family Foundation said Tuesday. That means that 27 percent of the country’s 15.9 million uninsured people could get covered for free. The chart below breaks down the eligible population by state. 

Takedown of the Day: Ezra Klein on Paul Ryan's Legacy of Debt

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump meets with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan on Capitol Hill in Washington
REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
By The Fiscal Times Staff

Vox’s Ezra Klein says that retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan’s legacy can be summed up in one number: $343 billion. “That’s the increase between the deficit for fiscal year 2015 and fiscal year 2018— that is, the difference between the fiscal year before Ryan became speaker of the House and the fiscal year in which he retired.”

Klein writes that Ryan’s choices while in office — especially the 2017 tax cuts and the $1.3 trillion spending bill he helped pass and the expansion of the earned income tax credit he talked up but never acted on — should be what define his legacy:

“[N]ow, as Ryan prepares to leave Congress, it is clear that his critics were correct and a credulous Washington press corps — including me — that took him at his word was wrong. In the trillions of long-term debt he racked up as speaker, in the anti-poverty proposals he promised but never passed, and in the many lies he told to sell unpopular policies, Ryan proved as much a practitioner of post-truth politics as Donald Trump. …

“Ultimately, Ryan put himself forward as a test of a simple, but important, proposition: Is fiscal responsibility something Republicans believe in or something they simply weaponize against Democrats to win back power so they can pass tax cuts and defense spending? Over the past three years, he provided a clear answer. That is his legacy, and it will haunt his successors.”

Read Klein’s full piece here.

Number of the Day: $300 Million

White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney speaks about the budget at the White House in Washington
REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
By The Fiscal Times Staff

Mick Mulvaney, the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, wants the agency to be known as the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, the name under which it was established by Title X of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law. Mulvaney even had new signage put up in the lobby of the bureau. But the rebranding could cost the banks and other financial businesses regulated by the bureau more than $300 million, according to an internal agency analysis reported by The Hill’s Sylvan Lane. The costs would arise from having to update internal databases, regulatory filings and disclosure forms with the new name. The rebranding would cost the agency itself between $9 million and $19 million, the analysis estimated. Lane adds that it’s not clear whether Kathy Kraninger, President Trump’s nominee to serve as the bureau’s full-time director, would follow through on Mulvaney’s name change once she is confirmed by the Senate.

Why Trump's Tariffs Are Just a Drop in the Bucket

A Hanjin Shipping Co ship is seen stranded outside the Port of Long Beach, California, September 8, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo
© Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
By Michael Rainey

President Trump said this week that tariff increases by his administration are producing "billions of dollars" in revenues, thereby improving the country’s fiscal situation. But CNBC’s John Schoen points out that while tariff revenues are indeed higher by several billion dollars this year, the total revenue is a drop in the bucket compared to the sheer size of government outlays and receipts – and the growing annual deficit. 

Bank Profits Hit New Record Thanks to 2017 Tax Law

iStockphoto/The Fiscal Times
By Yuval Rosenberg

Bank profits reached a record $62 billion in the third quarter, up $14 billion, or 29.3 percent, from the same period last year, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The FDIC said that about half of the increase in net income was attributable to last year’s tax cuts. The FDIC estimated that, with the effective tax rates from before the new law, bank profits for the quarter would have risen by about 14 percent, to $54.6 billion.