Author: Hugo Stern
Rent-to-own contracts charge two to four times retail price through weekly payments that hide effective APRs often exceeding 100 percent, trapping low-income buyers.
Egg prices stayed high long after flocks recovered from avian flu. Here’s how producer market structure and retail contracts kept consumers paying a crisis premium.
A System Built for Crisis, Now Stuck in Its Own Red Tape Federal rental assistance was designed to be a lifeline. Funded through the Emergency Rental Assistance Program – known as ERAP – billions of dollars were allocated by Congress starting in 2021 to help tenants cover back rent and keep landlords solvent during a period of widespread economic disruption. The mechanics seemed straightforward: tenants apply, landlords verify, funds flow. What actually happened was something far messier, and the consequences are still playing out across the country. The program’s rollout varied wildly by state and county. Some jurisdictions processed applications…
The federal overtime salary threshold has reverted to its 2019 level, stripping protections from millions of salaried workers earning between $35,568 and $58,656 per year.
Tariff policy swings are freezing capital investment across U.S. manufacturers. CFOs can’t model costs when rates shift week to week, and the damage is compounding.
Several states have depleted unemployment insurance trust funds, forcing federal borrowing and quietly eroding benefits for laid-off workers. Here’s how the system broke down.
The Pell Grant now covers less than 30% of public university costs, down from 80% in the 1970s. Here’s how decades of inaction eroded its value.
Childcare worker wages remain below $14/hr as center closures accelerate, hitting rural and low-income communities hardest. The structural economics behind the crisis.
Federal student loan servicer consolidation is leaving borrowers with lost payments, PSLF count errors, and unreachable customer service as accounts migrate at scale.
Egg prices are falling after record highs, but grocery retailers face a harder problem: shoppers who changed habits during the crisis may not come back.