De La Paz has $96 deducted from her paycheck every month for her employee lodging, which covers her bed in a dorm room she shares with up to two roommates, as well as Wi-Fi and utilities. Dorm living comes with a communal bathroom, laundry facilities, common areas and social events.
It’s as simple as this: as long-term interest rates continue moving higher, virtually every important piece of financial math gets worse, all at the same time.
The discount rate used to value stocks rises, which makes future earnings worth less today. Mortgages get more expensive. Corporate borrowing gets more expensive. Private equity deals and private credit…much of which is already FUBAR but not showing it yet…become harder to finance. Leveraged companies have to refinance debt at higher rates. Consumers pay more to borrow and the federal government pays more to service its enormous pile of debt.
Cost of living continues to be one of the most powerful forces shaping where Americans choose to move. In 2025, the relationship between affordability and migration was especially clear: states that offered lower everyday expenses consistently attracted more new residents on a per-capita basis. Oklahoma, Mississippi, and West Virginia rank as the three least expensive states to live in, and all three landed within the top 15 states for net migration per 10,000 residents. Their performance reinforces the idea that when housing, utilities, and daily necessities remain accessible, people are far more willing to relocate. The 2026 HireAHelper Moving Migration Report – https://www.hireahelper.com/moving-statistics/migration-report/2026/
Gas in bay park San Diego today BAHAHHAHAHAH 8.99 regular 9.99 diesel (probably higher that’s just as high as the sign can go hahahaha) pic.twitter.com/2B5yMVe8mP
Drawing on a nationally representative survey of 1,591 U.S. adults ages 22–75, this research uncovers a five-year difference between when current retirees, on average, actually left the workforce (age 57) and when future retirees expect to retire (age 62), with half of those planning to retire anticipating they’ll need to delay even further. Future retirees are shifting away from traditional income sources like Social Security and pensions, planning instead to rely more heavily on personal savings and continued employment. Career interruptions remain a significant but underappreciated threat to retirement security, as half of U.S. adults have left the workforce for more than a year.
The entire study Bridging retirement expectation gaps New evidence and insights can be downloaded here:
The class disparity in happiness is nothing new. The GSS data reveal that college-educated men were happier than their less-educated peers going back to the 1980s. And while the GSS shows somewhat steady levels of happiness from the 1980s through the 2000s, other well-being metrics suggest rising discontent in earlier decades. Mortality data, for instance, shows a steady and concerning rise in what researchers call “deaths of despair”—fatalities attributable to drug overdoses, suicide, and alcoholism. The rise in “deaths of despair” has been especially dramatic among white working-class men. Our analysis of death records and population estimates finds that the suicide rate per 100,000 white non-Hispanic men ages 25 to 44 has risen from 31 in 1992 to 54 in 2023, a shocking 71% increase over just three decades.
The entire study and more scary charts can be downloaded here:
As construction began, Newsom says he spoke with Amazon and Clark Construction representatives, who knocked on his door and, as they put up the fencing around the construction site, told him that if he ever had issues to come to them as they’d “make it right.”
“Then I started having problems, lots of problems,” he says. Innumerable dump trucks came down the road and sent dust through the air day after day. Flashing blue lights from security cameras poured into his bedroom all night. The roads became covered in mud. And eventually, that mud made its way into Newsom’s well, he claims.
“A lot of people in this county have what’s called a bored well, which is a shallow surface water well. So when they’re moving this amount of dirt and earth, digging and vibrations—all those microvibrations over time will work that sediment into the water stream, into that well, and flow straight into my water,” he explains.
He adds that a hydrologist he brought in agreed that the work was disturbing the water table. But when he tried to get in touch with the Amazon superintendent who promised to help address issues, he was met with silence.
Manhattan led the city with the median asking rent jumping 9% ($427) in a single year to reach $5,117. Brooklyn recorded the second-biggest annual spike of 5.9% ($225), as the median rent rose to $4,054. Queens followed closely with rents rising 5.6% to $3,561 from last year. Fresh College Grads Face NYC’s Toughest Rental Market Yet as Asking Prices Surge to 7-Year High – https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/college-grads-toughest-rental-market-nyc-july-2026-rent-report/
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