IDEAS

Every family should be able to choose the child care that’s right for them. When it comes to taking care of their young kids, parents today are on their own in a system that isn’t working for most. Child care is costly, rivaling or exceeding a mortgage or rent in most family budgets. For decades, public funding for child care has fallen short, leaving parents and child care providers

The typical American family loses more than $1,200 a year to junk fees and hours spent being jerked around. It's time we did something about it. Hidden fees. Hours on hold. Headaches and runarounds. These may seem like unfortunate byproducts of navigating daily life, but they're not. Companies engineer it that way, piling on fees and friction until we just give up. The hassle is the business model. We call it the Annoyance Economy, and it's costing the typical American family

It's time to keep kids as safe online as we do on the road or at home. The typical American teen spends about five hours a day on social media and nearly one in three kids demonstrates an addictive pattern of social media use by the time they finish middle school — one researchers have linked to higher rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. At the same time, they have grown lonelier, while reading and math scores have fallen sharply. For generations, government