Numlock News: March 28, 2023 • Crocs, Billionaire Mystery, Ghost Kitchens

Mar 28

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By Walt Hickey

Mystery

There is an exciting mystery afoot in U.S. tax data, where the Treasury issues a daily report of financial transactions and on February 28, 2023, the feds reported a deposit of $7 billion. The money was filed under the category “estate and gift taxes” and is completely an outlier, the highest collection of that tax since 2005. This is weird, because it would seem to imply that one of the richest people in the world died, passed on an estate that necessitated $7 billion in estate taxes, and we never heard about it. This would imply an estate worth $17.5 billion at the absolute minimum, but more likely ballpark $35 billion, one of the richest people in the world, which means that either Forbes missed one, the feds got some extra after enforcement, or we have a dead billionaire mystery afoot.

Tim Fernholz, Quartz

Livers

In 2020, the rules regarding who got priority when it comes to liver transplants changed, where the sickest patients on waitlists are prioritized no matter where they live. This has benefitted patients in some states and disadvantaged those in others, and it’s confirmed worries that the change would reduce the number of surgeries done and lives saved in areas that lag the country in access to health care. In seven states — Alabama, Louisiana, Kansas, North Carolina, South Dakota, Iowa and Pennsylvania — and Puerto Rico, the number of transplants declined by 603 in 2021. In New York and California, they increased by 959 livers.

Malena Carollo and Ben Tanen, The Markup

Ghost Kitchens

Uber Eats is rife with fake restaurants that don’t actually exist, so-called “virtual brands” that are typically just the kitchens of other restaurants hawking their menus under different brands. This can have the effect of crowding out actual, bona fide restaurants and reducing the genuine variety of food on Uber Eats. There are 40,000 such brands on Uber Eats as of this year, up from 10,000 in 2021, and while they account for a total of 8 percent of all storefronts on the app they account for less than 2 percent of bookings. The company announced they’re purging 5,000 of the storefronts, knocking out online-only brands with duplicate menus while the actual restaurant will be able to remain.

Preetika Rana and Heather Haddon, The Wall Street Journal

Nestle

Nestle, the world’s largest food company, has conceded that most of their products are not, generally speaking, “healthy.” Based on ratings from the Health Star Rating system, just 37 percent of the company’s net sales comes from food and beverages that are considered to be healthy, while fully 43 percent of its net sales comes from products that “should be consumed occasionally” or should have nutritional value “improved.”

Christopher Doering, Food Dive

Sri Lanka

Generally speaking, it’s against Facebook’s rules to seek out drugs on Facebook, understandable for an application originally designed for college students. However, Facebook is able to make exceptions to its rules in keeping with the “spirit” of the rules, and has done so in this case for a very specific reason: The deepening crisis in Sri Lanka, where 85 percent of medical supplies are imported from other countries, has meant that many people have turned to social media to try to obtain or raise funds for hard-to-access pharmaceuticals they need, and Facebook has given the go ahead that in Sri Lanka’s case that’s cool.

Andrew Deck and Zinara Rathnayake, Rest of World

Crocs

People bought lots of Crocs during the lockdown era of the pandemic, and that trend has continued. Since 2019, annual sales are up 200 percent, and Crocs makes a lot of money from the flagship clogs, with an operating margin of 26 percent. Quarterly sales were up 61 percent as of last month, so the thought is that growth is not going to reverse anytime soon. As of November, Crocs was projecting it was going to book $5 billion in revenue from Crocs in three years, up 90 percent.

Jordyn Holman, The New York Times

Higher Education

The NCAA divvies up the pot from each men’s March Madness to the schools by just distributing money from the pot to the schools’ conferences, which then distribute it as they see fit. A team gets one “unit” for every game it plays before the final, which means that there are 132 units that go around each tournament. Based on current NCAA revenue and expectations for the next few years, each game played this year for a team is going to be worth an estimated $2,001,400 paid out to their conference. This odd payout structure means that the SEC, which has no teams in the Final Four, will still walk away with a high of $34 million.

Eben Novy-Williams and Lev Akabas, Sportico

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