34justice

Category: Business

  • Big Pharma: Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game

    Martin Shkreli is a man I admire in an odd sort of way. The recent controversy involving Mr. Shkreli and his price hike of the toxoplasmosis drug, Daraprim, seems to have caused misguided furor towards the 32-year-old CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals. He may epitomize a major problem with the pharmaceutical…

  • It’s Not What Employers Are Doing, But What They Can Do, That Matters

    A few days ago, Buzzfeed reported that Staples, the large office supply chain, had stepped up its enforcement of a cap on hours worked for part-time employees. Despite the company’s unconvincing claim* that the policy is longstanding, it appears that Staples implemented the 25-hour-per-week cap in January of 2014 “to…

  • Paid Sick Leave and the Three Lenses of Policy Analysis

    Some political debates have two equally valid sides.  More often than not, however, the evidence is significantly more one-sided than journalists and pundits suggest.  AB 1522, a bill that the California Senate’s Committee on Appropriations just shunted into its Suspense File for consideration on August 14, is an example of…

  • Lessons About Gay Rights and Business from Arizona Bill’s Veto

    On Wednesday, February 26, Republican Governor Jan Brewer vetoed S.B. 1062, a bill that would have helped Arizona businesses deny service to gay customers on religious grounds.  Brewer’s veto and the political controversy surrounding the bill illustrated several important developments in the gay rights movement. First, US society is finally…

  • Starbucks’ Greed Versus San Jose’s Living Wage

    The San Jose City Council will soon decide whether to condone corporate greed and poverty-level wages for workers or apply city law to Starbucks and a large developer who want to lease property at the San Jose Convention Center.  San Jose would normally require businesses leasing the property to pay…

  • Financial Incentives and Social Good: Dan Pallotta’s Faulty Assumptions

    At the suggestion of WOVIN founder Darius Golkar, I recently watched Dan Pallotta’s TED Talk on the nonprofit sector.  Golkar recommended this video to me when I asked him why WOVIN donates only 50% of its profits to charitable causes. Golkar founded WOVIN because clothes we donate to Goodwill, The…

  • Something for Nothing

    College football bowl season is upon us once again and around this time every year there is the discussion of how screwed up the Bowl Championship Series system is (we’ll be able to argue about the playoff system next year), how corrupt and slimy the recruiting process is, and how…