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Ikea and the Business Case for a Living Wage
June 27, 2014
This week, the Swedish furniture giant Ikea announced that it plans to start paying its retail workers a living wage. The new hourly minimum will be based on regional estimates derived from the MIT Living Wage Calculator. Beginning next year, the average minimum wage of Ikea ...

Daily Bafflements
June 27, 2014
• Men’s Fashion Week is really something, isn’t it? (Via Noah Schactman.) • 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 . . . ...

On Robot Soldiers and the Recession
June 26, 2014
After more than twelve years in Afghanistan, with approximately 2,200 Americans killed and hundreds of billions of dollars spent, the proposed conclusion to what has ended up being America’s longest war has been met with resigned apathy from many Americans, and predictable ...

Daily Bafflements
June 26, 2014
• Speaking at Google’s I/O conference on Wednesday, futurist Ray Kurzweil shared his prediction that, in ten years, we’ll all be able to download designs and then 3D-print our own open source clothes for just cents. (Kurzweil claims a 75 percent accuracy for his ...

The Joy and Shame of Junket Journalism
June 25, 2014
As Germany continues to grapple with Google over privacy and profit, Google is deploying its strategic pundit reserve. Jeff Jarvis (journalist, author, #innovator, tech-enthusiast and news-guru) was recently brought over to Google’s Big Tent event in Berlin, where he defended ...

Daily Bafflements
June 25, 2014
• In case you missed it yesterday, David Leonhardt at the New York Times wrote about a Brookings Institution study that declared that the student debt crisis in America was not actually that bad, so stop whining. Mike Konczal at The New Republic argued that the long-term ...

I Can’t Recall: A Walker Update
June 24, 2014
 Among the documents released last week as part of the John Doe investigation into Wisconsin recall campaign activities was an email from Governor Walker to none other than Turd Blossom himself. The revelation was cause for jubilation for Team Blue here; it looked like a ...

Daily Bafflements
June 24, 2014
• Today in Bespoke: From perfume manufacturer Bond No. 9, a personalized “at-home scent system” that comes with an expert to help you mix your custom blend; a three-year supply of bespoke fragrance costs about $10,000-20,000. “Bespoke and custom blending is the future, ...

Hillary Clinton 2016 and the Folly of the Left-Flank Push
June 23, 2014
The 2016 Democratic primary will probably include a democratic socialist candidate for president. That would be Bernie Sanders, the irascible senator from Vermont, who has spent the past few months telling the press that he is considering entering the race. Michael Kazin, ...

Daily Bafflements
June 23, 2014
Robber barons of yesteryear: Vanderbilt, Field, andGould. / Illustration from Puck magazine, 1879. • Here’s Baffler co-founder Thomas Frank in Salon on Hillary Clinton’s calling our current economy “a throwback to the Gilded Age of the robber ...