INVENIRE

Black Friday has come and gone. The day following America's national holiday of Thanksgiving, Black Friday, is traditionally the day of the year on which retailers offer the largest discounts to consumers, with large price cuts on a wide variety of products. The holiday has a long, illustrious tradition, with a variety of stories as to how it began, including the slave trade. The term was first used in September 1869, to describe the financial crisis that occurred after two Wall Street financiers attempted to buy as much of America's gold as possible, in the hope that prices would rise, leaving them with a large profit. The two men, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, failed in this attempt. The earliest use of the term "Black Friday", as we know it, originated in the city of Philadelphia. It was used by police officers to describe the chaos that ensued, as tourists and shoppers travelled to the city for the weekend's Army-Navy American football game. It was only in the 198

In early October, Amazon announced that they would be raising their minimum wage to USD 15.00 an hour, for all employees in the United States, and to £9.50 for British workers. If examined at face value, this may seem to make no sense, as this would only create more cost for the employer and reduce profits for the company. In this article, I will aim to argue the opposite: this decision by Jeff Bezos is a potentially manipulative move. News organisations like MSNBC and Business Insider tell their audiences of the extent to which Amazon workers suffer, with stories of 80-hour work weeks, missing wages and gruelling shifts. Prominent socialist senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has been a vocal critic of the company. In one speech, he stated that "Thousands of Amazon employees are forced to rely on food stamps, Medicaid [a healthcare programme for low-income Americans] and public housing because their wages are too low..." On the 2nd of October, the company said that it had "