Irina Ivanova

Housing

• Florida is now the least affordable place to live in the U.S. Sally Starkey thought moving from Chicago to Florida would be easy. Then the 33-year-old ran headlong into the Sunshine State’s housing crisis. (CBS News)
• Corporate landlords’ profits have surged despite eviction ban fears Big property owners warned that a federal eviction freeze would hurt them. Instead, they have flourished. (CBS News)
• How Wall Street is driving up homelessness The housing collapse of 2008 taught us housing isn’t always a good investment, but it’s proving a great one for Wall Street. (CBS News)
• Home prices in some Virginia suburbs have shot up $100,000. Thank Amazon. Homeowners are holding on to their property, anticipating a big payoff once the ecommerce giant’s HQ2 is built .(CBS News)
• Rents are going through the roof in much of the U.S. “Two years ago people might not have wanted it, but now it was a feeding frenzy,” said one small-time landlord. (CBS News)

Work

• Buckle up, America: The Fed plans to sharply boost unemployment. Fed Chair Jerome Powell says curbing inflation will cause pain. Critics say putting millions out of work is unnecessary. (CBS News)
• Striking is about to get much harder for American workers Supreme Court will hear a case that could let employers sue workers for economic damage during strikes. (CBS News)
• Managers with MBAs have one major skill: Lowering employees’ pay, study finds If managers with MBA degrees aren’t good for workers, are they in fact good for corporations? Attempts to answer this question have concluded with a resounding “no.” (CBS News)
• No, rising wages are not chiefly to blame for inflation Instead, look at rising fuel costs and surging corporate profits. (CBS News)
• They were laid off from full-time jobs, but made too little to get unemployment Millions of U.S. workers make their living off tips. Now, some are finding they don’t qualify for jobless benefits. (CBS News)
• A giant inflatable rat called “Scabby” is constitutionally accepted free speech Cross-burning, flag-burning and anti-gay demonstrations are all protected free speech — a giant rat should be, too, labor board says. (CBS News)
• Uber and Lyft drivers accuse companies of holding up unemployment benefits Nearly a month after Congress expanded jobless aid to cover them, drivers say they’re still waiting for help. (CBS News)
• People are quitting their jobs at record rates. That’s a good thing for the economy. Workers want more pay, better conditions or to be their own boss — and for now, they’re getting what they want. (CBS News)
• Unpaid federal workers are looking for new jobs on Indeed Website’s data show a spike in job searches from workers at agencies that have gone unfunded — and it’s spreading. (CBS News)

Climate + energy

• Congress is spending billions on carbon capture. Is it a climate savior or a boondoggle? “Carbon capture on power plants looks as big as solar, or wind. It’s bigger than nuclear in most models. It’s as big as stopping eating meat.” (CBS News)
• Recycling plastic is a total bust, industry critics say. Plastic use surged during the pandemic while already-dismal recycling rates fell even lower. (CBS News)
• U.S. oil producers don’t feel like drilling more, despite sky-high prices Consumers who were expecting relief from high gas prices have another thing coming. (CBS News)
• Climate change could wipe out mortgages as we know them Climate change could punch a hole through the financial system by making 30-year home mortgages — the lifeblood of the American housing market — effectively unobtainable in entire regions across parts of the U.S. (CBS News)
• Greenpeace sues Walmart, claiming it lies about its plastic being recyclable The vast majority of recycling facilities in the U.S. can only accept two types of plastic, but even they can only process a small fraction of the plastic waste that’s created every year. (CBS News)

Taxes

• Make more than $100,000? Your audit risk just doubled. The IRS says it’s dramatically increasing audit rates for the highest earners. (CBS News)
• The IRS wants your selfie. ID.me’s CEO says, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ After outrage from lawmakers and privacy advocates, ID.me’s CEO defends his vision of the future. (CBS News)
• Treasury defends IRS plan to track most bank accounts Critics say small business owners and independent contractors would be caught in a “dragnet” of surveillance. (CBS News)
• Wall Street bank proposes taxing work-from-home to help economy Deutsche Bank suggests a 5% wage tax, or $2,500 a year for average WFH employee “lucky enough to be able to ‘disconnect.'” (CBS News)

Tech

• Thousands of Americans turned to crowdfunding during the pandemic. For most, it didn’t work out. Out of 175,000 GoFundMe campaigns that mentioned the pandemic, 90% didn’t reach their goal — while 4 in 10 raised no money at all. (CBS News)
• How websites use “dark patterns” to manipulate you. From endless website pop-ups and unavoidable cookies that track your every online move to chirpy “notifications” that try to shame us into registering for useless lists, using the web today is to be pushed, pulled and generally manipulated into paying attention to something. (CBS News)
• Facebook’s charge of anti-conservative bias shows the problem with work today. There is no free speech in corporate America. (CBS News)
• Wall Street isn’t sold on Mark Zuckerberg’s version of the metaverse Facebook’s plan to build a new digital world could prove either a bold step into the future or a massive financial folly. (CBS News)
• How manufacturers make it impossible to repair your gadgets Americans are throwing away $40 billion a year unwillingly upgrading items we can’t fix, a consumer group claims. (CBS News)
• On Twitter, bad news spreads faster than good. Most social media content is positive, but the negative stuff is what captures people’s attention, research shows. (CBS News)
• Facebook didn’t read the “terms and conditions” of developers on its platform Tech executives, they’re just like us (CBS News)