When economists talk about wealth inequality, they often focus on the gap between the rich and the poor. But to understand what’s really happening in the U.S., they ought to talk more often about the gap between the young and the old, and between different races. A new paper from Federal Reserve economists Jeffrey Thompson and Gustavo Suarez provides a detailed look at patterns of wealth in America. (The Wall Street Journal)

Those expense reports you’ve been putting off for months? That power yoga class you never seem to make? Chances are, there are at least one or two projects on your plate that have taken up permanent residence on your to-do list. You know you need to get them done, and yet you push them to the side to focus on something – anything – else, whether it’s diving into a less-urgent work project or spring-cleaning your entire closet. In other words, you’re procrastinating.(Fast Company)

They’re down 30%. Investors aren’t endorsing LinkedIn’s stock Friday morning. After the professional social networking company revealed weaker than expected guidance Thursday afternoon, Wall Street sent the stock tumbling. It’s down nearly 30% in pre-market trading. (Fortune)

We speak of looking up to people we admire. And so often, when we look up to successful people in our line of work, it seems like they must have always been at the top. But the reality is so often the very opposite. As Fast Company has learned by interviewing a variety of creative and successful people over the past year, failure often contains the seeds of success. (Fast Company)

After more than 20 years as an electronics engineer, Pete Edwards reached the low six-figure pay level. Now, as he looks for a job following a layoff, he finds that salary success a burden. Although his experience includes the sought-after field of 3-D printing, the 53-year-old hasn’t been able to land a permanent full-time job. Time and again, he says, employers seem to lose interest after he answers a question that they ask early on: "What was your last salary?" (The Wall Street Journal)

Have you ever been in a meeting where someone spoke to a colleague or to you in such a way that everyone in the room froze? Everyone seemed shocked, not by what was said, but how it was said — the tone of voice being used. Haven’t those issues come up a lot in this year’s presidential debates (not just the content of the message but the delivery of them)? And yet, we seem to allow colleagues at work to continue to badger others with disrespectful tones or nasty nonverbal behaviors (rolling eyes, intense stares). (The Washington Post)

This year, laborer Fan Fu and 20 or so colleagues working on the Zixia Garden apartment complex in Hebei province have not joined China’s legion of migrant workers returning home to celebrate new year with their families. Instead, they have camped in the offices of the property developer’s subcontractor, demanding almost a year’s unpaid wages and too angry and proud to go back to native towns and villages empty-handed. (Fortune)

HSBC – one of the two most pivotal banks in the global financial system, according to regulators, alongside JPMorgan Chase – exudes permanence. Its buildings are guarded by lions cast in bronze which passers-by touch for luck. HSBC has never been bailed out, nationalised or bought, a claim no other mega-bank can make. It has not made a yearly loss since its foundation in 1865. While its peers took emergency loans from central banks in the crisis of 2008-10, HSBC, long on cash, supplied liquidity to the financial system. (The Economist)

For all the thought that families put into choosing a college, very often the decision is dominated by a simple line of reasoning: The more prestigious the school you attend, the higher your salary will be after you graduate. So, they focus their efforts on getting their children into the best possible college they can afford, figuring that even if they’re paying more tuition now, they’re maximizing earnings down the road. (The Wall Street Journal)

Until his cash-starved university reopened last month, 22-year-old orthodontics student William Saavedra and some classmates spent their time offering free checkups from a dentist chair set up on this capital city’s bustling Plaza Brion. His motivation wasn’t purely altruistic; that was the only way he could keep logging clinical experience. (The Wall Street Journal)

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The National Black MBA Association® (NBMBAA) announced the selection of M320 Consulting as marketing services agency of record. Selected after a competitive RFP bidding process, M320 Consulting will manage the organization’s brand development, media outreach, public engagement and marketing strategy for its annual national conference and other initiatives supporting NBMBAA’s membership growth, fundraising and partner development.

In the fall of 2013 a young software engineer named Charles Pratt arrived on Howard University’s campus in Washington. His employer, Google, had sent him there to cultivate future Silicon Valley programmers. It represented a warming of the Valley’s attitude toward Howard, where more than 8 out of 10 students are black. The chair of the computer science department, Legand Burge, had spent almost a decade inviting tech companies to hire his graduates, but they’d mostly ignored him. (Bloomberg)

Ask a hacker if your digital security is at risk, and the answer is always yes. You could hide in a mountain bunker lined with tin foil and twigs, and somebody still might drain your bank account. It’s no reason to feel helpless. You can make yourself less of an easy target for hackers, money-hunting phishers and overly aggressive marketers by bolstering your security and data privacy. I’ll show you how to do it in an hour or less. (The Wall Street Journal)

In the early 1990s, a group of screenwriters proposed something that had never been done at Disney: They wanted to make an animated movie based on an original concept. Departing from a half century of hits based on time-honored tales, such as Cinderella and Snow White, they set out to write a story from scratch. Jeffrey Katzenberg, the studio chief at the time, was skeptical, telling colleagues it was an experiment. "No one had any confidence in it," the project’s director, Rob Minkoff recalls. "It was seen as the B movie at Disney." (The Atlantic)

A few months after last season’s Super Bowl, I was listening to two anchors banter on my favorite business news network. The topic turned to best Super Bowl ads, which led both to agree that they loved "the one with the blue pill." Then one of the anchors, who happens to be the network’s car guru, commented that the commercial must have done well for its advertiser, Viagra. With a snicker and smile, the other anchor quickly corrected her colleague: "That ad was for Fiat." (Entrepreneur)

The economic gap within the African-American community is one of the most important factors in the rise of Black Lives Matter, led by a new generation of college graduates and students. (The New York Times)

It’s clear what threw prognosticators and policy makers for the biggest loop with their economic forecasts for 2015: oil. Crude oil prices stayed unexpectedly low this year and those low prices didn’t prove as beneficial as many had hoped. A year ago, the price of oil had collapsed but many expected it to gradually rebound. Lower gas prices usually provided a boost to consumers, and higher gas prices certainly hurt consumers, but the boom that many had hoped for failed to materialize. (The Wall Street Journal)

I wanted to break my children of a bad habit they had of dropping things into my shopping cart without first checking the price. So now there’s a money rule they must follow when we go shopping: If they put something in the cart and they can’t tell me how much it cost, out it goes. There are two reasons for the rule. First, since they aren’t paying, they often don’t think they need to know how much something costs. (The Washington Post)

There's a new world order when it comes to claiming Social Security benefits. In late 2015, Congress axed two popular strategies that helped couples maximize benefits. But all's not lost. It's just time to turn to Plan B. Married couples can still make the most of basic Social Security benefits, especially by coordinating the timing of their claims. (Kiplinger's)

The average cost of a 30-second Super Bowl ad has increased roughly 50 percent in the last decade when adjusted for inflation, according to data provided by WPP’s Kantar Media. And this year is more expensive than ever, putting blockbuster-level pressure on brands to produce ads that justify the hefty price tag. (The New York Times)

Nothing is more costly to an organization’s culture than a toxic employee. Research shows that rudeness is like the common cold – it’s contagious, spreads quickly, and anyone can be a carrier. Dylan Minor, a visiting assistant professor at Harvard Business School, and Michael Housman, chief analytics officer at Cornerstone OnDemand, studied just how costly toxic employees are. (Harvard Business Review)

The meeting seemed to go smoothly. Bill, the executive vice president of sales at a global company, had gathered his extended leadership team – a group of more than 20 people – and outlined his latest plan to reconfigure the sales organization. When he asked if anyone had concerns, there were a few questions, but no one raised any significant obstacles or issues, and a few of the more senior team members spoke up in support of the plan. Bill felt that everyone was on board and ready to go. (Harvard Business Review)

The personal productivity future is clear: Anybody and everybody who wants to succeed in tomorrow’s 21st Century organizations will have to commit to levels of self-monitoring, self-surveillance, and self-quantification that makes Orwell read like Pollyanna. The reason isn’t post-industrial intrusiveness or invasiveness but an imperative for professional self-preservation and self-improvement. (Harvard Business Review)

At Salare, a restaurant in Seattle, Edouardo Jordan serves winter squash with fried okra and a seed-based sauce modeled on the egusi stews of Nigeria. In "The Up South Cookbook" by the Brooklyn author Nicole A. Taylor, collard greens are cooked Japanese style, with a coating of sesame dressing. (The New York Times)

For most Americans, Super Bowl Sunday will be spent preparing for, and then watching, the big game. Party hosts and partygoers will load up on pizza, chicken wings, and beer, among other game-time essentials, before settling in to view the game – and, of course, the commercials. But what about the millions of people who have no interest in any of the above? Or who will watch a little of the game but see no reason to spend the bulk of the day busying themselves in pregame mode? (Money)