MinnPost Picks: on Sears, Britney Spears, and Wisconsin’s Foxconn boondoggle

“When Sears Flourished, So Did Workers. At Amazon, It’s More Complicated,” The New York Times

Sears and other legacy retail businesses are in deep financial trouble these days, while internet sales behemoth Amazon continues to rise amid a reputation of innovation and prosperity. But at their respective heydays, Sears did far more to benefit its workers than Amazon. In the 1950s, workers owned a quarter of Sears. At Amazon, the CEO and founder, Jeff Bezos, owns 16 percent of the company and is the richest man on the planet. — Walker Orenstein, environment and workforce reporter

“‘Britney Spears wanted to be a star’: An oral history of  ‘… Baby One More Time,’” Entertainment Weekly

“Baby One More Time” is older than Britney Spears was when she donned a school-girl getup from Kmart for the music video that would launch her career. Twenty years on, Entertainment Weekly looks back at the song’s origins, and at Spears’ surprisingly good early instincts about what would make her now decades-long career. — Greta Kaul, data reporter
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“The Reddit Forum That Guesses Who You Are Based on What’s in Your Fridge,” The New Yorker

Some days (more than others) we need simple stories that everyone can relate to — and maybe even play along with. The New Yorker gives us just that with a story on one particular corner of Reddit called Fridge Detective. There, people post raw, unfiltered photos of their refrigerated food and drinks for commenters to decide what the items say about their owners. “Crisper drawers bursting with a rainbow of produce? Neatly marshalled rows of bottled water? A half-eaten yogurt, a packet of cheese, fifteen types of mustard, and a single bottle of beer? In these oddly intimate snapshots of place, class, and culture, everything — even nothing — says something,”  story says. — Jessica Lee, local government reporter

“Wisconsin’s $4.1 billion Foxconn Boondoggle,” The Verge

For the Verge, Bruce Murphy takes a long look at why the people of Wisconsin have seemingly soured, quickly, on the once-heralded deal to bring a massive Foxconn factory to the state. The short version: They were bamboozled: “As the size of the subsidy has steadily increased to a jaw-dropping $4.1 billion, Foxconn has repeatedly changed what it plans to do, raising doubts about the number of jobs it will create,” Murphy writes. “Instead of the promised Generation 10.5 plant, Foxconn now says it will build a much smaller Gen 6 plant, which would require one-third of the promised investment … . And instead of a factory of workers building panels for 75-inch TVs, Foxconn executives now say the goal is to build an “ecosystem” of buzzwords called “AI 8K+5G” with most of the manufacturing done by robots.” — Andy Putz, editor

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