How a Smart Home Can Save You Time and Money
More than a quarter of Americans have smart home products and they report that the devices save them an average of 30 minutes a day and more than $1,000 per year, according to a new report by Coldwell Banker and CNET.
Adoption of smart home products is even higher among millennials, with more than half embracing the technology. Additionally, parents of young children are twice as likely to have installed smart home products than non-parents.
“Smart home technology is catching on because it is literally changing the way we live in our homes,” Coldwell Banker Chief Marketing Officer Sean Blankenship said in a statement. “Not only is it shifting the financial perception of the home, but it is also transforming our emotional connection to our homes.”
Related: Want a Smarter Home? You Don’t Have to Wait
More than eight in 10 of those surveyed said they’d be more likely to buy a home if it included smart technology like connected lights, thermostats or security systems. Nearly three-quarters said that smart home products provide peace of mind when it comes to home security.
Those numbers are expected to grow as technology gets better and cheaper, and millennials start purchasing and upgrading homes in larger numbers. A 2013 report by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and development found that a four-person family had about 10 connected devices, but projected that number to grow to about 25 in five years and as many as 50 in 10 years.
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Chart of the Day: Boosting Corporate Tax Revenues
The leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have all proposed increasing taxes on corporations, including raising income tax rates to levels ranging from 25% to 35%, up from the current 21% imposed by the Republican tax cuts in 2017. With Bernie Sanders leading the way at $3.9 trillion, here’s how much revenue the higher proposed corporate taxes, along with additional proposed surtaxes and reduced tax breaks, would generate over a decade, according to calculations by the right-leaning Tax Foundation, highlighted Wednesday by Bloomberg News.
Chart of the Day: Discretionary Spending Droops
The federal government’s total non-defense discretionary spending – which covers everything from education and national parks to veterans’ medical care and low-income housing assistance – equals 3.2% of GDP in 2020, near historic lows going back to 1962, according to an analysis this week from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Chart of the Week: Trump Adds $4.7 Trillion in Debt
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated this week that President Trump has now signed legislation that will add a total of $4.7 trillion to the national debt between 2017 and 2029. Tax cuts and spending increases account for similar portions of the projected increase, though if the individual tax cuts in the 2017 Republican overhaul are extended beyond their current expiration date at the end of 2025, they would add another $1 trillion in debt through 2029.
Chart of the Day: The Long Decline in Interest Rates
Are interest rates destined to move higher, increasing the cost of private and public debt? While many experts believe that higher rates are all but inevitable, historian Paul Schmelzing argues that today’s low-interest environment is consistent with a long-term trend stretching back 600 years.
The chart “shows a clear historical downtrend, with rates falling about 1% every 60 years to near zero today,” says Bloomberg’s Aaron Brown. “Rates do tend to revert to a mean, but that mean seems to be declining.”
Chart of the Day: Drug Price Plans Compared
Lawmakers are considering three separate bills that are intended to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. Here’s an overview of the proposals, from a series of charts produced by the Kaiser Family Foundation this week. An interesting detail highlighted in another chart: 88% of voters – including 92% of Democrats and 85% of Republicans – want to give the government the power to negotiate prices with drug companies.
