Growing up, I expected to live the fast-paced life of a performer. I'm a Jersey girl with a New York City spirit. My dreams were set on being a principal actor on Broadway.
Roughly one in four new openings around Milwaukee now advertise some version of hybrid work, while most roles still expect people in the office full time. The split is rippling through downtown, where vacancy rates remain stubbornly high and landlords are rethinking how to fill all that space.
Back in the post-WWII era, being middle class meant something clear and attainable- a steady job, a home you could afford on one income, being able to buy a new car, and the ability to raise a family without constant money stress. Pew Research defines the middle class as households earning about two-thirds to double the national median income, with the exact dollar figure depending on where you live.
Amazon has sought a tax abatement that would see its datacenter exempt from paying property taxes for 30 years in exchange for the funding of local schools and infrastructure projects. The people up on city council are, for the most part, good people. They care about the community, [but] they have been taken advantage of by these companies.
U.S. President Donald Trump, with his lust for Greenland and hectoring of Europe, thinks the world is at his mercy,and thatthe U.S. is invincible. He's right on the first point. But he discovered this week that he's wrong about the second one. In Davos at the World Economic Forum, Trump climbed down on his Greenland threats after his actions caused chaos in the markets.
People still want children, and the question is why are they not having them? A sense of security is essential for realizing the desire to have children. The succession of crises has prevented many people from turning that wish into reality.
New York's neo-communist mayor Zohran Mamdani's new budget raises a disquieting question: Is Mamdani putting America's foremost city in irreversible decline? During his campaign for mayor, Mamdani didn't disguise his radical intentions or his deep antisemitism. Since winning election, he hasn't moderated his agenda one bit, appointing far-left fringe figures as aides and as heads of city departments. He hasn't missed an opportunity to display his hatred of Israel.
Then, through a series of blunders and missteps, things started to unravel. There was the fuel crisis of the 1970s, which led to an influx of Japanese imports that bested Detroit in fuel savings and reliability. And then there were various global financial collapses throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, and a significant decline in automotive quality as the Big Three continued to push bigger and more expensive vehicles, at the expense of road safety and global competitiveness.
Although De Noire is based in Europe, she believes that economic upheaval in the United States "triggers huge uncertainty" across the pond because of America's global influence. De Noire first noticed a decline in business right after Donald Trump was elected in November 2024, as Americans and the rest of the world anticipated upheaval. "I didn't even bother working South by Southwest because the first Friday night I attempted to work, I walked into a completely empty club and didn't make any money at all,"
Whirlpool began cutting production lines from the plant and moving those to Mexico several years ago. Now we're seeing that they're making our product in Mexico. The number of workers at the plant has declined from nearly 3,000 just a few years ago to close to 1,300, and more cuts are likely.
Based on our analysis of the Zillow Home Value Index, U.S. home prices are up just 0.1% year over year from December 2024 to December 2025. That marks a deceleration from the +2.6% growth rate a year earlier-though national price growth has recently stabilized, ticking slightly higher from a low of -0.01% in August 2025. In the first half of 2025, the number of major metro-area housing markets seeing year-over-year declines climbed. That count has since pretty much stopped ticking up.
While it's appropriate to lament the lack of bipartisan cooperation in Washington, just because something's bipartisan doesn't mean it's a good idea. Exhibit A could be Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Senator J.D. Vance's (R-OH) "Invent It Here, Make It Here" bill. Despite the name and its good intentions, it condemns promising federally funded inventions to waste away without doing a thing to build our domestic manufacturing base. It's scheduled to be considered this Thursday in the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
