Skip to content

Daily Bafflements

• Plans for more living-wage protests against Walmart are underway. “The company made a $16bn profit last year; the Walton family, which owns more than half of Walmart, is worth almost $145bn,” the Guardian reports. “The company pays 825,000 workers, around two-thirds of its workforce, less than $25,000 a year.”

• The New York Times’s Dealbook on a “philanthropy class” at Northwestern, which teaches teenaged future hedge-funders how to research nonprofits, and then gives them $50,000 of real money to award to the worthiest causes: “Many students have embraced the challenge, viewing the courses as preparation for work in the nonprofit sector or even as training to one day become wealthy philanthropists themselves.” These students might be interested to read Jim Newell’s piece from last month, “Rich Kids Philanthropy Club.”

• In case you missed it, Susie Cagle on the suckers-left-empty-handed from the so-called “sharing economy.” The sharing economy is “still young and discovering itself,” she writes. “So far it looks, at worst, like neoliberal solutionism — and at best, a little confused.” With moving pictures.

• The most expensive drink ever made at Starbucks contained fifty-five shots of espresso and cost $54. Happy Friday!