Daily Bafflements

• Today in Billionaires: venture capitalist Nick Hanauer writes an open letter to his “fellow zillionaires” in Politico, warning them that “the pitchforks are coming for us plutocrats . . . no society can sustain this kind of rising inequality.” You may remember Hanauer as the guy whose TED talk was banned from the TED website for being too “controversial.”
• How many American billionaires (of which there are 492) donate to the Republican Party and the Democratic Party? Politifact crunches the numbers: nine give predominantly to Republican and conservative groups, thirteen give predominantly to Democrats and liberal groups.
• The most head-shaking bafflement of that whole Starbucks/Arizona State University tuition arrangement, argues Audrey Williams June in the Chronicle of Higher Education, is that the ASU professors may earn even less than the baristas they’ll be teaching. Happy Friday!