Mystery lurks everywhere. Like an undersea treasure box, it lurches in every object, whispering sweet nothings in spaces long abandoned. From closed attics to vintage journals, mystery hangs in everything. At least, this is what Mr. Jimmie Smith would think, from now on, each time he looks at anything. He found this mystery and hit the jackpot, literally, in one of the shirts hanging in his closet. And this mystery turned out to be a 24-million-dollar winning lottery ticket, according to NJ.com
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Pixabay
A retired security guard by profession, and a father of two, the 68-year-old Jimmie went through his closet after he heard an announcement on television that this particular lottery ticket hadn’t found its prize winner yet. Jimmie, who had been an avid buyer and collector of lottery tickets, gave it a thought to do a quick check inside his closet. And there he found it, the ticket to his jackpot, lying among stacks of booklets and piles of crisp tickets.
Jimmie couldn’t believe his luck, especially considering it was tucked away in his closet. “I ended up with a stack – a pile of tickets, including the one they were talking about on the news,” he told lottery officials. He also said that he’s been buying tickets in New Jersey and New York since the 1960s, but has never been in a rush to see if he’s the winner of some prize. This time, he checked the numbers and stood stunned. He wasn’t sure he could believe it as he sat there gazing at the piece that had brought golden fortune to him, “I stood there for a minute thinking, ‘Do I see what I think I see?’” he told NJ.com. “I had to stick my head out the window and breathe some fresh air. I was in serious doubt. I really had to convince myself this was real.” But it was real indeed.
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Pixabay
On the other side of it, Gweneth Dean, director of the New York Gaming Commission’s Division of the Lottery, said, “A lucky New Yorker has a $24 million Lotto payday just waiting — but the winner has to act fast as time is running out. We urge New York Lottery players: Check your pockets. Check your glove box. Look under the couch cushions. If you have this winning ticket, we look forward to meeting you,” according to The Washington Post.
Representative Image Source: Pexels | markus winkler
On May 25, 2016, Jimmie, a resident of East Orange, New Jersey, won $24.1 million from the New York Lottery. The winning numbers were 5, 12, 13, 22, 25 and 35. Jimmie had earlier bought the ticket at a grocery and tobacco shop at 158 Church Street in the Tribecca neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, according to NJ.com. “I always told myself, ‘I’ll check them when I have the time,’” he said. However, post this prize-winning and claiming himself as the owner of the winning ticket, Jimmie suddenly disappeared. He reappeared five months later only to complete the required paperwork and disappear again, as reported by The Washington Post. He chose to receive his $24 million in installments over 26 years, according to the commission.
In the current economy, people are looking for ways to make and save save money more than ever, given the poorer economic outlook. One way folks have been trying to make extra money, or even a full living, is through rideshare services like Uber. However, after one man shared his take-home pay once Uber took its cut, the result has both passengers and passengers and drivers seething.
An English Uber driver shared a breakdown of his seven-day earnings summary. He worked 13 hours, with Uber taking out 1.5% of his pay for rider promotions, 4.5% in third-party fees, and a whopping 26.1% going directly to Uber itself. In the end, the driver took home only 67.9% of his earnings. That means that out of the 13 total hours he drove, he was effectively paid for just under nine hours of work. How is this the case?
In 2023, Uber introduced an algorithm to determine fares and pricing, dubbed “dynamic pricing,” as an alternative to the old “surge pricing” model, which increased fares during periods or areas of high rideshare demand. The new system uses a different supply-and-demand formula to calculate the cost of a ride. There was a presumption that while rides would cost more, a greater portion of the fare would go directly toward the driver’s earnings.
In 2025, a study from the University of Oxford found that Uber’s “dynamic pricing” not only raised the cost of rides for passengers but also took a significantly larger cut of the driver’s overall pay. Research by academics at Columbia University found that the algorithm harmed both American Uber drivers and their passengers..
Haa anybody heard of Uber’s “dynamic pricing”? First it was surge pricing & NOW you’re just showing us cheap prices to charge us expensive prices once the ride is complete?
According to study author Len Sherman, Uber’s dynamic or “upfront” pricing model has allowed the rideshare company to “raise rider fares and cut driver pay on billions of rideshare trips, systematically, selectively, and opaquely.”
This is just one of several issues that has led Uber drivers to take the company to court. After all, many frequent Uber passengers assume that higher fares mean drivers earn more, not less—especially when those same drivers take a financial hit for rider discounts or promotions they aren’t responsible for offering.
There’s also the reminder that Uber drivers are still considered independent contractors, meaning that fuel costs, repairs, and other vehicle maintenance are their responsibility and must be paid out of pocket in order to work. However, some areas have driver pay rates or compensation structures that are fixed or adjusted to comply with state or city laws, but those changes appear to be handled on a case-by-case, city-by-city basis.
If you want to see improvements in both prices and driver take-home pay, rideshare drivers and frequent riders should contact their app’s customer service and reach out to local elected officials to push for fairer fares in their area. After all, drivers and riders should benefit more than the company that isn’t even in the vehicle.
This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.
She’d paid $5 for her coffee, skipped the card tip prompt at checkout, and left a bill in the jar on her way out the door. The barista noticed, glanced at the cash in her customer’s wallet, and said loudly enough for the room to hear: “Oh wow! A whole dollar… that’s SO generous! Thank you SO much.”
Reddit’s reaction was not especially sympathetic to the barista. “Should have picked that dollar back,” was among the most upvoted responses. Others said they would have asked for a full refund on the drink. The OP herself landed on a version of that position: if a tip is going to be met with sarcasm, why tip at all?
But the incident is a little more complicated than a straightforward etiquette violation, because the math here actually favors the customer. A dollar on a $5 drink is a 20% tip, the same percentage most people consider the standard for a sit-down restaurant with table service. Industry veterans generally say a dollar a drink is a reasonable coffee shop tip, and that baristas at most cafés (unlike servers) are paid standard minimum wage rather than the lower tipped-employee rate that makes gratuities more essential.
None of which makes a public sarcastic remark the right response. But it does situate the incident inside a broader frustration that’s been building for a few years. A Pew Research Center survey found that 7 in 10 American adults say tipping is now expected in more places than it was a few years ago. A Bankrate survey found that 41% of Americans think tipping culture has gotten out of hand, and around 63% have at least one negative view about tipping overall. More than 60% agreed that employers should simply pay workers better so tips don’t have to fill the gap.
The tip jar and the checkout screen have become the place where all of that tension gets concentrated into a single uncomfortable moment. The barista’s comment was out of line. The customer’s dollar was not stingy. And the fact that it’s hard to say either of those things without someone disagreeing is probably the actual story.
This article originally appeared earlier this year.
Several Danish policies are intended to help mothers stay employed.
For example, subsidized child care is available for all children from 6 months of age until they can attend elementary school. Parents pay no more than 25% of its cost.
Using administrative data from Statistics Denmark, a government agency that collects and compiles national statistics, we studied the long-term effects of motherhood on income for 104,361 Danish women. They were born in the early 1960s and became mothers for the first time when they were 20-35 years old.
They all became mothers by 2000, making it possible to observe how their earnings unfolded for decades after their first child was born. While the Danish government’s policies changed over those years, paid parental leave and child allowances and other benefits were in place throughout. The women were, on average, age 26 when they became mothers for the first time, and 85% had more than one child.
We estimated that motherhood led to a loss of about the equivalent of US$9,000 in women’s earnings – which we measured in inflation-adjusted 2022 U.S. dollars – in the year they gave birth to or adopted their first child, compared with what we would expect if they had remained childless. While the motherhood penalty got smaller as their children got older, it was long-lasting.
The penalty only fully disappeared 19 years after the women became moms. Motherhood also led to a long-term decrease in the number of the hours they worked.
We estimated that motherhood cost the average Danish woman a total of about $120,000 in earnings over the first 20 years after they first had children – about 12% of the money they would have earned over those two decades had they remained childless.
Most of the mothers in our study who were employed before giving birth were eligible for four weeks of paid leave before giving birth and 24 weeks afterward. They could share up to 10 weeks of their paid leave with the baby’s father. The length and size of this benefit has changed over the years.
The Danish government also offers child benefits – payments made to parents of children under 18. These benefits are sometimes called a “child allowance.”
Denmark has other policies, like housing allowances, that are available to all Danes, but are more generous for parents with children living at home.
Using the same data, Christensen and I next estimated how motherhood affects how much money Danish moms receive from the government. We wanted to know whether they get enough income from the government to compensate for their loss of income from their paid work.
We found that motherhood leads to immediate increases in Danish moms’ government benefits. In the year they first gave birth to or adopted a child, women received over $7,000 more from the government than if they had remained childless. That money didn’t fully offset their lost earnings, but it made a substantial dent.
The gap between the money that mothers received from the government, compared with what they would have received if they remained childless, faded in the years following their first birth or adoption. But we detected a long-term bump in income from government benefits for mothers – even 20 years after they first become mothers.
Cumulatively, we determined that the Danish government offset about 80% of the motherhood earnings penalty for the women we studied. While mothers lost about $120,000 in earnings compared with childless women over the two decades after becoming a mother, they gained about $100,000 in government benefits, so their total income loss was only about $20,000.
Benefits for parents of older kids
Our findings show that government benefits do not fully offset earnings losses for Danish moms. But they help a lot.
Because most countries provide less generous parental benefits, Denmark is not a representative case. It is instead a test case that shows what’s possible when governments make financially supporting parents a high priority.
That is, strong financial support for mothers from the government can make motherhood more affordable and promote gender equality in economic resources.
Because the motherhood penalty is largest at the beginning, government benefits targeted to moms with infants, such as paid parental leave, may be especially valuable.
The motherhood penalty’s long-term nature, however, indicates that these short-term benefits are not enough to get rid of it altogether. Benefits that are available to all mothers of children under 18, such as child allowances, can help offset the long-term motherhood penalty for mothers of older children.
