Companies
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Markets
Mercedes-Benz and the Protection Machine
Mercedes-Benz spent 140 years proving that a high price and a good wage belong to the same argument. This summer it wrote to its own workforce that the hour has to get cheaper, and the letter says more about the company than about the hour.
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15 min read
Cities
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Companies
Who Pays for the Chair
In 1983 Howard Schultz found a sense of community in the espresso bars of Milan and took the idea home to Seattle. In 2018 he brought it back, with chairs. Now a pastry shop in Florence charges one euro to sit down, and the question underneath is who pays for the chair, because that decides who gets to stay.
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18 min read
Cities
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Narrative
The Borrowed Lake
Como 1907 was a fourth-tier club with two bankruptcies behind it when its owners bought it for about 200,000 euros. They tied it to Lake Como, and the lake now sells the shirts. Whether that money can pay for the team depends on which side of a UEFA label it lands.
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11 min read
