Dimly lit office with isolated workers, clearly overworked

The Invisible Burden: Overwork, Mental Health, and the Systems That Normalize Exhaustion

In today’s hyper-connected world, busy has become a badge of honor. Long hours and overflowing inboxes are worn like medals, often at the expense of our well-being. But beneath the accolades and hustle lies a far deeper issue: the normalization of overwork—not just as an individual challenge, but as a cultural, legal, and media-driven phenomenon…

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Dollar bill partially buried in soil, showing that shrinkflation is costing us.

How Much Shrinkflation Is Really Costing Americans

Shrinkflation has become one of the most persistent and least transparent forces shaping household budgets in the United States. Unlike rent hikes or interest rate increases, it does not arrive as a single shock. There is no clear moment when it “hits.” Instead, it embeds itself into daily life through smaller packages, shorter product lifespans,…

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Handshake in a in a room with people with hidden faces

Who Really Shapes Policy? The Top Lobbying Spenders of 2025 and the Power Behind Them

Lobbying is often discussed as a background feature of American politics—something abstract, technical, or inevitable. But in practice, lobbying is one of the clearest ways to see whose interests have the most consistent access to lawmakers, regulators, and the policy-writing process itself. Money does not guarantee outcomes, but it determines proximity: who gets meetings, who…

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Person holding laptop next to resume

The November Jobs Report Is Bad — and It Still Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story

Even with October’s missing jobs report, November’s numbers are strange — and they still don’t show the full picture, the November jobs report is bad. Yes, the data is weak. Yes, the outlook is deteriorating. But thanks to the government shutdown, delayed data collection, structural labor shifts, and long-building demographic pressures, this report captures only part of what is actually happening in the economy.

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