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Biden’s plan for higher ed is good—but it could be better

Biden’s plan for higher ed is good—but it could be better

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3 years ago

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By Dick Startz

With President-elect Joe Biden’s transition underway, let’s consider what may be in store for higher education. “The Biden Plan for Education Beyond High School” offers a broad proposal for making public higher education accessible to more Americans. The Biden plan has a number of features, but when it comes to free tuition, it draws heavily on the College for All Act of 2017 proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.). The headline news of the proposal is that the government will cover tuition at community colleges for all students and at four-year public universities for students with family incomes below $125,000, with the financial cost split between the federal government (67%) and the states (33%). On net, a very fine plan which will increase educational opportunities and raise national income. Nonetheless, some tweaking may be in order.

The benefit of the plan to students and families and the cost of the plan to taxpayers should be of wide interest. But because there are some potential landmines for how higher education institutions run, I want to focus here on improving the plan. (For a broader picture, I recommend a recent report, “The Dollars and Sense of Free College,” by Anthony Carnevale and his co-authors. It’s both informative and a pleasant read to boot.)

Now on to some of the rough edges in the plan.

Tuition vs. State Contributions

Here’s the issue: States differ in both tuition rates and in their financial support for higher ed. Because the plan brings in federal support for tuition, states that have kept tuition high get a bigger federal subsidy than states that have kept tuition low. For example, three states already have some type of free college program for eligible students at public four-year colleges, and 12 states have free community college programs. Here’s a picture for proposed federal subsidies for tuition at four-year schools:

F1 Federal tuition subsidy by state

Are we sure that we want to give Florida students and colleges only a fraction of the federal payments that we send to Vermont?

What’s more, some states have chosen to make relatively large appropriations to public higher education. As you can see in the next picture, states with low tuition tend to be the states with high (combined state and local) appropriations.

Penalizing states where the taxpayers have already stepped up to help keep down tuition doesn’t seem right. One solution would be for the federal government to send money to the states to partially offset state and local appropriations, on top of covering part of tuition. That would raise the cost of the program to the federal government, but with an equal reduction in cost to state taxpayers. Due to COVID-19, this may be a good time for the federal government to send extra money to the states. Alternatively, the feds could reduce their portion of the tuition-sharing rule and use the funds for sharing the cost of state appropriations.

F2 Appropriations vs tuition in US states

Tenure-track faculty vs. adjuncts

The College for All Act requires that at least 75% of instruction be from tenured or tenure-track faculty within five years of enactment. The requirement is across each state, not within each institution, and each state has five years to meet the goal. Thus, there is some amount of flexibility.

If you follow trends in higher education, you know that one of the big changes has been the substitution of cheap adjunct positions for tenure-track positions, and that adjuncts are not treated well in many institutions. One report says that about a third of adjuncts make under $25,000 a year. In and of itself, shifting back toward tenure-track faculty would be a big and desirable change. Currently, very roughly 63% of full-time faculty are tenured or tenure-track. (However, the difference between 63% and the 75% target likely underestimates the size of the required change; there are almost as many part-time faculty as full-time faculty, and few part-time faculty are on a tenure track.)

There is a cheap and very bad way to comply with the new rule: just give tenure to a bunch of adjunct faculty in their current titles. No raises, no real change except better job security. Presumably, this is not what the drafters of College for All intend. Rather, the more likely intention is to shift back toward more tenure-track faculty. Since tenure-track faculty are more expensive than adjuncts, increasing the number of tenure-track faculty is going to cost money. Where is the money going to come from?

Tuition freeze and other cost controls

As parents of college-age students know, college has gotten a lot more expensive. For those who haven’t been faced with writing big checks, here’s a picture of the inflation-adjusted cost of tuition and fees at public universities. For comparison purposes, I include inflation-adjusted current expenditures per student in K-12.

F3 University tuition vs K-12 per-pupil cost

While the rate of increase has slowed in recent years, the real cost of a college education is still going up. Not surprisingly, part of the Biden plan is to freeze tuition at current levels (except for adjustments for inflation) in order to hold down costs. If the feds pick up a big part of the tuition tab, it’s reasonable to ask what the incentives will be to keep “tuition” under control. Historically, there have been two elements limiting tuition increases: (1) the market and the willingness of families to pay, and (2) political control by state governments. Under Biden’s plan, the effectiveness of the first of these controls will be reduced; the second isn’t as clear.

Once tuition is free to students and families, there will no longer be so much of a market incentive to hold down on tuition. However, higher-income students don’t get tuition coverage, so there will still be a significant minority of students who will be price sensitive. In this way, the College for All Act does maintain some partial market incentives.

State legislatures currently have considerable influence over tuition rates and face political pressure to keep rates low. Political pressure would mostly disappear when tuition mostly disappears. On the other hand, because states would have to kick in one dollar out of three to cover tuition, they would have incentive to keep tuition low. It’s hard to know which of these two changes would dominate.

But isn’t low tuition clearly a good thing? Well, no. As any economist will tell you, putting on price controls leads to undesirable changes in the quality of the product that gets delivered. Universities are no different. In fact, there is a specific reason to expect that maintaining the quality of a college education will continue to become gradually more expensive. Higher ed is a labor-intensive industry, and people don’t get cheaper over time. (Economists call this “Baumol’s disease.”) In some ways, the closest comparison for thinking about long-term trends in the cost of higher education is the cost of K-12. Spending on K-12 is decided almost entirely by a combination of state governments and local voters. You can see in the figure above that the per-student cost of K-12 has increased in pretty much the same way as the cost of higher-ed tuition. Apparently, voters and political leaders have thought it worthwhile.

In addition to realizing that higher-ed costs will gradually rise because “people costs” will rise, there is also a cross-state argument. Some states have developed better colleges than other states. Some of this development followed from higher state spending and some from allowing for higher tuition. Historically, we’ve let each state decide on the trade-off between quality and cost. Freezing tuition will make it very hard for any state in the future to decide to increase quality. That’s probably not what we want.

Drawing a balance between preventing a free-for-all of colleges raising tuition versus the likely drop in quality as costs outrun current tuition levels isn’t easy. But an essentially complete freeze on tuition is probably a step too far in one direction.

The College for All Act contains a couple of other provisions that are intended to control costs but are ill-thought out.

First, the proposed plan bans use of any of the federal or state tuition replacement money “to pay the salaries or benefits of school administrators” or “for capital outlays or deferred maintenance.” Really? Colleges do need administrators. Who do they think is going to do the paperwork required to comply with the College for All Act? And no capital outlays? Does that mean my university doesn’t get the new classroom building that’s being planned for, even though an express purpose of the plan is to make college affordable for more people?

In the same spirit, the bill forbids charging “out of state students an amount that exceeds the marginal cost of attending.” Something like a quarter of students attend school out of state. Out-of-state tuition is typically much higher than in-state tuition. Presumably, students who go out of state, and their parents, find the extra tuition worthwhile. The truth is that out-of-state students often pay sufficiently higher tuition that they significantly subsidize in-state students.

What’s more, somewhat oddly, the College for All Act puts price controls on out-of-state tuition even though students going out of state are not eligible to have their tuition covered. This certainly means there will be fewer students going out of state. While I can understand limiting an out-of-state subsidy to the amount of in-state tuition, it’s hard to understand a rationale for eliminating out-of-state coverage entirely.

Finally, the most “out of state” you can get is, of course, the significant number of international students who currently bring large amounts of money into American universities and the surrounding communities. In fact, higher education is one of America’s most successful exports. In what is likely a completely unintended consequence, the bill as written forces universities to hold down the price charged to international students—thus managing to simultaneously reduce a source of subsidy to American students while also hurting our balance of trade.

The College for All Act would cut back on out-of-state tuition and out-of-state attendance. What would make up for the missing money in colleges’ budgets?

Knife-edge eligibility

One more weakness in the College for All Act is quite glaring. A student is eligible for tuition coverage if their parents earn $125,000 or less in adjusted gross income. In 2018, that was, on average, worth about $7,250 a year. According to the bill, if her parents’ income goes to $125,001, her tuition subsidy disappears entirely! This knife-edge cut off must surely be an oversight; almost all subsidy programs have a fade-out rule. One would expect to see something more like full tuition coverage for incomes up to $125,000, with coverage being reduced proportionately as income rose to some ceiling level, perhaps $175,000. As written, the College for All Act proposes a more than 100% effective tax on the first dollar above $125,000. Using $175,000 as a ceiling, just as an example, would reduce the extra effective tax to $7,250 out of $50,000, or 14.5%.

A better way to achieve college access for all

Make no mistake, Biden’s adoption of the College for All Act offers a major improvement on the status quo. Looking at the details though, there is room for improvement. While some of the issues discussed above may sound esoteric, they do matter if we are to improve access for all to high-quality higher education.

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Your financial plan may be riskier without bitcoin

It might actually be riskier to not have bitcoin in your portfolio than it is to have a small allocation.

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1 hour ago

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March 14, 2024

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This article originally appeared in the Sound Advisory blog. Sound Advisory provide financial advisory services and are specialize in educating and guiding clients to thrive financially in a bitcoin-powered world. Click here to learn more.

“Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.”

- Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal only lived to age 39 but became world-famous for many contributions in the fields of mathematics, physics, and theology. The above quote encapsulates Pascal’s wager—a philosophical argument for the Christian belief in the existence of God.

The argument's conclusion states that a rational person should live as though God exists. Even if the probability is low, the reward is worth the risk.

Pascal’s wager as a justification for bitcoin? Yes, I’m aware of the fallacies: false dichotomy, appeal to emotion, begging the question, etc. That is not the point. The point is that binary outcomes instigate extreme results, and the game theory of money suggests that it’s a winner-take-all game.

The Pascalian investor: A rational approach to bitcoin

Humanity’s adoption of “the best money over time” mimics a series of binary outcomes—A/B tests.

Throughout history, inferior forms of money have faded as better alternatives emerged (see India’s failed transition to a gold standard). And if bitcoin is trying to be the premier money of the future, it will either succeed or it won’t.

“If you ain’t first, you’re last.” -Ricky Bobby, Talladega Nights, on which monies succeed over time.

So, we can look at bitcoin success similarly to Pascal’s wager—let’s call it Satoshi’s wager. The translated points would go something like this:

  • If you own bitcoin early and it becomes a globally valuable money, you gain immensely. ????
  • If you own bitcoin and it fails, you’ve lost that value. ????
  • If you don’t own bitcoin and it goes to zero, no pain and no gain. ????
  • If you don’t own bitcoin and it succeeds, you will have missed out on the significant financial revolution of our lifetimes and fall comparatively behind. ????

If bitcoin is successful, it will be worth far more than it is today and have a massive impact on your financial future. If it fails, the losses are only limited to your exposure. The most that you could lose is the money that you invested.

It is hypothetically possible that bitcoin could be worth 100x more than it is today, but it can only possibly lose 1x its value as it goes to zero. The concept we’re discussing here is asymmetric upside - significant gains with relatively limited downside. In other words, the potential rewards of the investment outweigh the potential risks.

Bitcoin offers an asymmetric upside that makes it a wise investment for most portfolios. Even a small allocation provides potential protection against extreme currency debasement.

Salt, gasoline, and insurance

“Don’t over salt your steak, pour too much gas on the fire, or buy too much insurance.”

A little bit goes a long way, and you can easily overdo it. The same applies when looking at bitcoin in the context of a financial plan.

Bitcoin’s asymmetric upside gives it “insurance-like” qualities, and that insurance pays off very well in times of money printing. This was exemplified in 2020 when bitcoin's value increased over 300% in response to pandemic money printing, far outpacing stocks, gold, and bonds.

Bitcoin offers a similar asymmetric upside today. Bitcoin's supply is capped at 21 million coins, making it resistant to inflationary debasement. In contrast, the dollar's purchasing power consistently declines through unrestrained money printing. History has shown that societies prefer money that is hard to inflate.

If recent rampant inflation is uncontainable and the dollar system falters, bitcoin is well-positioned as a successor. This global monetary A/B test is still early, but given their respective sizes, a little bitcoin can go a long way. If it succeeds, early adopters will benefit enormously compared to latecomers. Of course, there are no guarantees, but the potential reward justifies reasonable exposure despite the risks.

Let’s imagine Nervous Nancy, an extremely conservative investor. She wants to invest but also take the least risk possible. She invests 100% of her money in short-term cash equivalents (short-term treasuries, money markets, CDs, maybe some cash in the coffee can). With this investment allocation, she’s nearly certain to get her initial investment back and receive a modest amount of interest as a gain. However, she has no guarantees that the investment returned to her will purchase the same amount as it used to. Inflation and money printing cause each dollar to be able to purchase less and less over time. Depending on the severity of the inflation, it might not buy anything at all. In other words, she didn’t lose any dollars, but the dollar lost purchasing power.

Now, let’s salt her portfolio with bitcoin.

99% short-term treasuries. 1% bitcoin.

With a 1% allocation, if bitcoin goes to zero overnight, she’ll have only lost a penny on the dollar, and her treasury interest will quickly fill the gap. Not at all catastrophic to her financial future.

However, if the hypothetical hyperinflationary scenario from above plays out and bitcoin grows 100x in purchasing power, she’s saved everything. Metaphorically, her entire dollar house burned down, and “bitcoin insurance” made her whole. Powerful. A little bitcoin salt goes a long way.

(When protecting against the existing system, it’s important to remember that you need to get your bitcoin out of the system. Keeping bitcoin on an exchange or with a counterparty will do you no good if that entity fails. If you view bitcoin as insurance, it’s essential to keep your bitcoin in cold storage and hold your keys. Otherwise, it’s someone else’s insurance.)

When all you have a hammer, everything looks like a…

A construction joke:

There are only three rules to construction: 1.) Always use the right tool for the job! 2.) A hammer is always the right tool! 3.) Anything can be a hammer!

Yeah. That’s what I thought, too. Slightly funny and mostly useless.

But if you spend enough time swinging a hammer, you’ll eventually realize it can be more than it first appears. Not everything is a nail. A hammer can tear down walls, break concrete, tap objects into place, and wiggle other things out. A hammer can create and destroy; it builds tall towers and humbles novice fingers. The use cases expand with the skill of the carpenter.

Like hammers, bitcoin is a monetary tool. And a 1-5% allocator to the asset typically sees a “speculative insurance” use case - valid. Bitcoin is speculative insurance, but it is not only speculative insurance. People invest and save in bitcoin for many different reasons.

I’ve seen people use bitcoin to pursue all of the following use cases:

  • Hedging against a financial collapse (speculative insurance)
  • Saving for family and future (long-term general savings and safety net)
  • Growing a downpayment for a house (medium-term specific savings)
  • Shooting for the moon in a manner equivalent to winning the lottery (gambling)
  • Opting out of government-run, bank-controlled financial systems (financial optionality)
  • Making a quick buck (short-term trading)
  • Escaping a hostile country (wealth evacuation)
  • Locking away wealth that can’t be confiscated (wealth preservation)
  • As a means to influence opinions and gain followers (social status)
  • Fix the money and fix the world (mission and purpose)

Keep this in mind when taking other people’s financial advice. They are often playing a different game than you. They have different goals, upbringings, worldviews, family dynamics, and circumstances. Even though they might use the same hammer as you, it could be for a completely different job.

Wrapping Up

A massive allocation to bitcoin may seem crazy to some people, yet perfectly reasonable to others. The same goes for having a 1% allocation.

But, given today’s macroeconomic environment and bitcoin’s trajectory, I find very few use cases where 0% bitcoin makes sense. By not owning bitcoin, you implicitly say that you are 100% certain it will fail and go to zero. Given its 14-year history so far, I’d recommend reducing your confidence. Nobody is 100% right forever. A little salt goes a long way. Your financial plan may be riskier without bitcoin. Diversify accordingly.

“We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.” - Blaise Pascal.

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Shakira’s net worth

After 12 albums, a tax evasion case, and now a towering bronze idol sculpted in her image, how much is Shakira worth more than 4 decades into her care…

Published

3 hours ago

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March 14, 2024

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Shakira’s considerable net worth is no surprise, given her massive popularity in Latin America, the U.S., and elsewhere. 

In fact, the belly-dancing contralto queen is the second-wealthiest Latin-America-born pop singer of all time after Gloria Estefan. (Interestingly, Estefan actually helped a young Shakira translate her breakout album “Laundry Service” into English, hugely propelling her stateside success.)

Since releasing her first record at age 13, Shakira has spent decades recording albums in both Spanish and English and performing all over the world. Over the course of her 40+ year career, she helped thrust Latin pop music into the American mainstream, paving the way for the subsequent success of massively popular modern acts like Karol G and Bad Bunny.

In late 2023, a 21-foot-tall bronze sculpture of Shakira, the barefoot belly dancer of Barranquilla, was unveiled at the city's waterfront. The statue was commissioned by the city's former mayor and other leadership.

Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images

In December 2023, a 21-foot-tall beachside bronze statue of the “Hips Don’t Lie” singer was unveiled in her Colombian hometown of Barranquilla, making her a permanent fixture in the city’s skyline and cementing her legacy as one of Latin America’s most influential entertainers.

After 12 albums, a plethora of film and television appearances, a highly publicized tax evasion case, and now a towering bronze idol sculpted in her image, how much is Shakira worth? What does her income look like? And how does she spend her money?

Related: Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson's net worth: How the new TKO Board Member built his wealth from $7

How much is Shakira worth?

In late 2023, Spanish sports and lifestyle publication Marca reported Shakira’s net worth at $400 million, citing Forbes as the figure’s source (although Forbes’ profile page for Shakira does not list a net worth — and didn’t when that article was published).

Most other sources list the singer’s wealth at an estimated $300 million, and almost all of these point to Celebrity Net Worth — a popular but dubious celebrity wealth estimation site — as the source for the figure.

A $300 million net worth would make Shakira the third-richest Latina pop star after Gloria Estefan ($500 million) and Jennifer Lopez ($400 million), and the second-richest Latin-America-born pop singer after Estefan (JLo is Puerto Rican but was born in New York).

Shakira’s income: How much does she make annually?

Entertainers like Shakira don’t have predictable paychecks like ordinary salaried professionals. Instead, annual take-home earnings vary quite a bit depending on each year’s album sales, royalties, film and television appearances, streaming revenue, and other sources of income. As one might expect, Shakira’s earnings have fluctuated quite a bit over the years.

From June 2018 to June 2019, for instance, Shakira was the 10th highest-earning female musician, grossing $35 million, according to Forbes. This wasn’t her first time gracing the top 10, though — back in 2012, she also landed the #10 spot, bringing in $20 million, according to Billboard.

In 2023, Billboard listed Shakira as the 16th-highest-grossing Latin artist of all time.

Shakira performed alongside producer Bizarrap during the 2023 Latin Grammy Awards Gala in Seville.

Photo By Maria Jose Lopez/Europa Press via Getty Images

How much does Shakira make from her concerts and tours?

A large part of Shakira’s wealth comes from her world tours, during which she sometimes sells out massive stadiums and arenas full of passionate fans eager to see her dance and sing live.

According to a 2020 report by Pollstar, she sold over 2.7 million tickets across 190 shows that grossed over $189 million between 2000 and 2020. This landed her the 19th spot on a list of female musicians ranked by touring revenue during that period. In 2023, Billboard reported a more modest touring revenue figure of $108.1 million across 120 shows.

In 2003, Shakira reportedly generated over $4 million from a single show on Valentine’s Day at Foro Sol in Mexico City. 15 years later, in 2018, Shakira grossed around $76.5 million from her El Dorado World Tour, according to Touring Data.

Related: RuPaul's net worth: Everything to know about the cultural icon and force behind 'Drag Race'

How much has Shakira made from her album sales?

According to a 2023 profile in Variety, Shakira has sold over 100 million records throughout her career. “Laundry Service,” the pop icon’s fifth studio album, was her most successful, selling over 13 million copies worldwide, according to TheRichest.

Exactly how much money Shakira has taken home from her album sales is unclear, but in 2008, it was widely reported that she signed a 10-year contract with LiveNation to the tune of between $70 and $100 million to release her subsequent albums and manage her tours.

Shakira and JLo co-headlined the 2020 Super Bowl Halftime Show in Florida.

Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

How much did Shakira make from her Super Bowl and World Cup performances?

Shakira co-wrote one of her biggest hits, “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa),” after FIFA selected her to create the official anthem for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. She performed the song, along with several of her existing fan-favorite tracks, during the event’s opening ceremonies. TheThings reported in 2023 that the song generated $1.4 million in revenue, citing Popnable for the figure.

A decade later, 2020’s Superbowl halftime show featured Shakira and Jennifer Lopez as co-headliners with guest performances by Bad Bunny and J Balvin. The 14-minute performance was widely praised as a high-energy celebration of Latin music and dance, but as is typical for Super Bowl shows, neither Shakira nor JLo was compensated beyond expenses and production costs.

The exposure value that comes with performing in the Super Bowl Halftime Show, though, is significant. It is typically the most-watched television event in the U.S. each year, and in 2020, a 30-second Super Bowl ad spot cost between $5 and $6 million.

How much did Shakira make as a coach on “The Voice?”

Shakira served as a team coach on the popular singing competition program “The Voice” during the show’s fourth and sixth seasons. On the show, celebrity musicians coach up-and-coming amateurs in a team-based competition that eventually results in a single winner. In 2012, The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Shakira’s salary as a coach on “The Voice” was $12 million.

Related: John Cena's net worth: The wrestler-turned-actor's investments, businesses, and more

How does Shakira spend her money?

Shakira doesn’t just make a lot of money — she spends it, too. Like many wealthy entertainers, she’s purchased her share of luxuries, but Barranquilla’s barefoot belly dancer is also a prolific philanthropist, having donated tens of millions to charitable causes throughout her career.

Private island

Back in 2006, she teamed up with Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame and Spanish singer Alejandro Sanz to purchase Bonds Cay, a 550-acre island in the Bahamas, which was listed for $16 million at the time.

Along with her two partners in the purchase, Shakira planned to develop the island to feature housing, hotels, and an artists’ retreat designed to host a revolving cast of artists-in-residence. This plan didn’t come to fruition, though, and as of this article’s last update, the island was once again for sale on Vladi Private Islands.

Real estate and vehicles

Like most wealthy celebs, Shakira’s portfolio of high-end playthings also features an array of luxury properties and vehicles, including a home in Barcelona, a villa in Cyprus, a Miami mansion, and a rotating cast of Mercedes-Benz vehicles.

Philanthropy and charity

Shakira doesn’t just spend her massive wealth on herself; the “Queen of Latin Music” is also a dedicated philanthropist and regularly donates portions of her earnings to the Fundación Pies Descalzos, or “Barefoot Foundation,” a charity she founded in 1997 to “improve the education and social development of children in Colombia, which has suffered decades of conflict.” The foundation focuses on providing meals for children and building and improving educational infrastructure in Shakira’s hometown of Barranquilla as well as four other Colombian communities.

In addition to her efforts with the Fundación Pies Descalzos, Shakira has made a number of other notable donations over the years. In 2007, she diverted a whopping $40 million of her wealth to help rebuild community infrastructure in Peru and Nicaragua in the wake of a devastating 8.0 magnitude earthquake. Later, during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Shakira donated a large supply of N95 masks for healthcare workers and ventilators for hospital patients to her hometown of Barranquilla.

Back in 2010, the UN honored Shakira with a medal to recognize her dedication to social justice, at which time the Director General of the International Labour Organization described her as a “true ambassador for children and young people.”

On November 20, 2023 (which was supposed to be her first day of trial), Shakira reached a deal with the prosecution that resulted in a three-year suspended sentence and around $8 million in fines.

Photo by Adria Puig/Anadolu via Getty Images

Shakira’s tax fraud scandal: How much did she pay?

In 2018, prosecutors in Spain initiated a tax evasion case against Shakira, alleging she lived primarily in Spain from 2012 to 2014 and therefore failed to pay around $14.4 million in taxes to the Spanish government. Spanish law requires anyone who is “domiciled” (i.e., living primarily) in Spain for more than half of the year to pay income taxes.

During the period in question, Shakira listed the Bahamas as her primary residence but did spend some time in Spain, as she was dating Gerard Piqué, a professional footballer and Spanish citizen. The couple’s first son, Milan, was also born in Barcelona during this period. 

Shakira maintained that she spent far fewer than 183 days per year in Spain during each of the years in question. In an interview with Elle Magazine, the pop star opined that “Spanish tax authorities saw that I was dating a Spanish citizen and started to salivate. It's clear they wanted to go after that money no matter what."

Prosecutors in the case sought a fine of almost $26 million and a possible eight-year prison stint, but in November of 2023, Shakira took a deal to close the case, accepting a fine of around $8 million and a three-year suspended sentence to avoid going to trial. In reference to her decision to take the deal, Shakira stated, "While I was determined to defend my innocence in a trial that my lawyers were confident would have ruled in my favour [had the trial proceeded], I have made the decision to finally resolve this matter with the best interest of my kids at heart who do not want to see their mom sacrifice her personal well-being in this fight."

How much did the Shakira statue in Barranquilla cost?

In late 2023, a 21-foot-tall bronze likeness of Shakira was unveiled on a waterfront promenade in Barranquilla. The city’s then-mayor, Jaime Pumarejo, commissioned Colombian sculptor Yino Márquez to create the statue of the city’s treasured pop icon, along with a sculpture of the city’s coat of arms.

According to the New York Times, the two sculptures cost the city the equivalent of around $180,000. A plaque at the statue’s base reads, “A heart that composes, hips that don’t lie, an unmatched talent, a voice that moves the masses and bare feet that march for the good of children and humanity.” 

Related: Taylor Swift net worth: The most successful entertainer joins the billionaire's club

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Delta Air Lines adds a new route travelers have been asking for

The new Delta seasonal flight to the popular destination will run daily on a Boeing 767-300.

Published

3 hours ago

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March 14, 2024

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Those who have tried to book a flight from North America to Europe in the summer of 2023 know just how high travel demand to the continent has spiked.

At 2.93 billion, visitors to the countries making up the European Union had finally reached pre-pandemic levels last year while North Americans in particular were booking trips to both large metropolises such as Paris and Milan as well as smaller cities growing increasingly popular among tourists.

Related: A popular European city is introducing the highest 'tourist tax' yet

As a result, U.S.-based airlines have been re-evaluating their networks to add more direct routes to smaller European destinations that most travelers would have previously needed to reach by train or transfer flight with a local airline.

The new flight will take place on a Boeing 767-300.

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Delta Air Lines: ‘Glad to offer customers increased choice…’

By the end of March, Delta Air Lines  (DAL)  will be restarting its route between New York’s JFK and Marco Polo International Airport in Venice as well as launching two new flights to Venice from Atlanta. One will start running this month while the other will be added during peak demand in the summer.

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“As one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Venice is hugely popular with U.S. travelers, and our flights bring valuable tourism and trade opportunities to the city and the region as well as unrivalled opportunities for Venetians looking to explore destinations across the Americas,” Delta’s SVP for Europe Matteo Curcio said in a statement. “We’re glad to offer customers increased choice this summer with flights from New York and additional service from Atlanta.”

The JFK-Venice flight will run on a Boeing 767-300  (BA)  and have 216 seats including higher classes such as Delta One, Delta Premium Select and Delta Comfort Plus.

Delta offers these features on the new flight

Both the New York and Atlanta flights are seasonal routes that will be pulled out of service in October. Both will run daily while the first route will depart New York at 8:55 p.m. and arrive in Venice at 10:15 a.m. local time on the way there, while leaving Venice at 12:15 p.m. to arrive at JFK at 5:05 p.m. on the way back.

According to Delta, this will bring its service to 17 flights from different U.S. cities to Venice during the peak summer period. As with most Delta flights at this point, passengers in all fare classes will have access to free Wi-Fi during the flight.

Those flying in Delta’s highest class or with access through airline status or a credit card will also be able to use the new Delta lounge that is part of the airline’s $12 billion terminal renovation and is slated to open to travelers in the coming months. The space will take up more than 40,000 square feet and have an outdoor terrace.

“Delta One customers can stretch out in a lie-flat seat and enjoy premium amenities like plush bedding made from recycled plastic bottles, more beverage options, and a seasonal chef-curated four-course meal,” Delta said of the new route. “[…] All customers can enjoy a wide selection of in-flight entertainment options and stay connected with Wi-Fi and enjoy free mobile messaging.”

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