Trader Joe’s fans are now going to have a harder time defending the store’s “great treatment” of workers. Famous for providing health benefits to even part-time employees, the company announced that all those who work under 30 hours a week will no longer be eligible for company-provided insurance in the new year. Instead they will be forced to pick their insurance policy from the exchanges created under the Affordable Health Care Act.

The collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh last April— which killed more than 1,000 people— sparked a slew of promises from major retailers to reform their sourcing standards and increase safety. But as it stands today, that doesn't seem to be anywhere near happening.

Three more bodies were recovered today bringing the official death toll to 17 for a mine collapse in Papua, Indonesia. The mine, which extracted both gold and copper, is owned by a Phoenix-based company.

You're a good person, right? You have morals. You would never betray your ethical code. Unless there was a bidding war for your morals— in that case, you could scarcely resist selling out. It's human nature.

Eli Lake, one of the surviving workers still huddled in the ruins of Newsweek and the Daily Beast, celebrates May Day by gloating about the glories of capitalism.

Russian oligarchs have had a pretty crazy week (as opposed to their standard weeks, which range from the "insane" to "delightfully sinister") — Brooklyn Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov watched as Jay-Z walked away from the franchise and called his ticket-holders "dweebs," while fellow-oligarch Roman Abramavich's insane luxury yacht, The Eclipse, remained mysteriously docked on Manhattan's West Side. Oh, and the daughter of billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev (you guessed it — oligarch), bought an entire Greek island.

There is sufficient blame to go around after cafeteria workers at a middle school in Attleboro, Massachusetts reportedly ordered over two dozen students to throw their food away because they had a negative balance on their pre-paid lunch cards.

After Obamacare passed, a broad variety of employers—including many of America's Most Asshole-ish Bosses—are going so far as to lay off employees in anticipation of the new health care costs they'd have to pay. Well, good news: business owners can just leave their employees uninsured. Problem solved!

From reader John: a rotten, cling-wrapped Twinkie (a "scientific and historical curiosity") is yours for the bidding, starting at $25, less shipping.

A hedge funder is making noise about bringing down the salaries of executives at Morgan Stanley. Good. The government sure hasn't been successful at holding down corporate executive salaries, so maybe the market should work its magic—let hedge funds squeeze a few extra percentage points of profit in return for holding down the paychecks of the bosses of the banks they invest in. A worthwhile deal for the public. And a vindication of capitalism's mythical self-regulatory powers!

We live in a world in which wealth is distributed in a wildly unequal way. A tiny few have billions of dollars, while many more have nothing. Though the reactions to this persistent and growing state of inequality span the ideological spectrum, it's fair to say that most people consider it a problem. For the very wealthy—and their sympathizers—extensive philanthropy is often held up as their personal nod to the world's unfairness. These generous philanthropists are considered to be the good ones.

Our roundup of Black Friday arrests and violence sadly wasn't complete. A report from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution tells the story of an unidentified man who died after he was allegedly caught shoplifting two DVD players from a Walmart in Lithonia, Georgia.

Here are your Worst Humans of Black Friday 2012:

Let's get a few things straight right off the bat. Number ONE, the "Millennial" generation is the best generation, because they are currently the most fuckable-looking, and therefore their every whim and desire must be obsequiously catered to by the corporate forces seeking to exploit their "cool" factor for profit; Number TWO, all food must be recast in the image of whatever a corporation imagines the Millennial Image to be; and Number THREE, soup is great, mmmm, soup. We must have some Campbell's Millennial Soup.

One thing you can do on Friday, at the end of the day, when you have a couple free minutes, is to pick up the phone fire all of your "financial adviser" and "investment consultants" and anyone else who takes money from you in exchange for recommending investments to you. Then just buy some low-cost index funds in a mix of stock and bonds, and then go to bed, because that is what smart people who don't like getting hustled do.

Darden Restaurants Inc., the parent company of popular casual dining establishments such as Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and LongHorn Steakhouse, is no longer offering full-time work schedules to employees at "a select number" of restaurants in four markets across the country.

The Chicago teacher's strike is over. It worked. The Verizon strike is over. It worked. Strikes work. Workers should have them more often.

I'd say because it lets white supremacist Charles Murray write its op-eds for it. But maybe the pay was too shitty to get anyone else, I dunno.

Ubiquitous GOP "message guru" Frank Luntz is the guy who teaches Republicans how to kill things. When Democrats introduce a bill and Republicans decide that they'd like to kill it, for sport, they ask Luntz to come up with a couple of phrases to reiterate hundreds of times a day, so as to terrify the American people.

If we didn't attend the week-long Burning Man festival in Nevada every year, we probably wouldn't be the deeply spiritual, open-minded individual that we are today. We'd just be another emotional eunuch living in America, ignorant in the ways of radical self-expression. Sadly, we and our collection of fruit-flavored body paints and hovercrafts won't be able to go hang out on the Black Rock City playa this year, because last week festival tickets completely sold out for the first time in its 25-year history.