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Debt After Death: How Unchecked Corporate Power Even Makes Dying More Expensive
"No one should be forced into debt just to bury a loved one, but as corporations exploit families," said Groundwork Collaborative's leader, "loved ones are being driven to the brink to pay for a dignified death."
Oct 29, 2026
Americans are struggling with the soaring cost of living—and dying, according to a Groundwork Collaborative report released Thursday.
The think tank's associate director of policy and advocacy, Zoe Butler, analyzed data on related topics, from life insurance to funeral expenses, and explained how deaths—especially unexpected ones—can affect US households.
As "Death, Debt, and Paperwork: How the Business of Dying Is Burying American Families" details, "the average funeral now costs $7,726, before cemetery plots, headstones, and other add-ons that can push the total above $10,000."
Data from 2023 shows that "funeral homes charge a nondeclinable basic services fee of $2,495 for both cremation and burial, along with $395 to transfer the body to the funeral home," plus additional charges for using facilities for services. The report notes that "even lower-cost options still carry added fees, including about $400 for cremation and $295 for an urn."
"For burial, costs increase further with additional required services," the publication continues. "These include over $1,000 for embalming and other preparation of the body, as well as $2,500 for a casket. Burial also introduces a separate set of expenses outside the funeral home, including $1,000 to $3,000 for a headstone, around $1,000 for a burial vault, and $1,000 to $2,500 to open and close the grave."
"Prices have surged 310% since 1986, far outpacing overall inflation of 193%," Butler highlighted. "As prices increase, more families are going into debt to cover funerals, with the share rising from 14% in 2024 to 37% in 2025."
Deaths can also mean navigating probate, "the often costly legal process of settling a loved one's estate," she wrote. Probate fees can take 3-8%, so "even modest estates in probate can lead to thousands of dollars in legal and administrative expenses."
"For example, a family inheriting a $250,000 home may have to pay $7,500 to $20,000 in probate-related expenses," the document says. "Fewer than 1 in 4 Americans have a will, and just 13% have a living trust, one of the few tools that lets assets pass to heirs without going through probate."
Some families dealing with a relative's death are assisted by life insurance, but "coverage is uneven and increasingly inadequate," the report stresses. "Nearly half of Americans do not have life insurance, meaning many families cannot cover funeral expenses or manage immediate costs after a loss."
"Access to employer-sponsored coverage is also highly unequal," according to the analysis. "While 77% of full-time workers have access to employer-provided life insurance, only 14% of part-time workers do. Just 20% of workers in the bottom tenth of wages have access to coverage, compared to 91% of top earners."
Additionally, 40% of new policies "are term-limited rather than permanent, meaning coverage can expire before a person dies," the report explains—so some "families may spend years paying into life insurance policies that ultimately provide no support for funeral expenses or other end-of-life costs."
It not only catalogs the costs of death in the US, it also points out that "median household savings are roughly $8,200, meaning many households have little cushion to absorb these costs."
The publication also offers "a path forward," urging Congress to cut prices and boost transparency with legislation that would "require funeral homes to provide standardized and itemized pricing online, including all fees and third-party costs," as well as "prohibit hidden fees and forced bundling of services."
Other actions Congress could take include expanding the Social Security Death benefit and creating a basic life insurance program administered through the Social Security Administration. There are also several probate-related proposals for states and localities.
"No one should be forced into debt just to bury a loved one, but as corporations exploit families at their most vulnerable moments, more and more grieving loved ones are being driven to the brink to pay for a dignified death," said Groundwork president and CEO, Lindsay Owens in a statement.
"Funeral companies are raising prices, hiding costs, and taking advantage of a system that gives grieving families no time and no transparency," she added. "Policymakers must act to bring down prices, increase accountability, and ensure families can access what is already theirs without delay."
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'Consumers Are Feeling Spooked': Trump's Failed Economic Policies Send Price of Halloween Candy Soaring
"Trick-or-treaters will have to make due with miniature candy bars this year to accommodate Trump’s king-size price hikes."
Oct 20, 2026
President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran and his global tariffs have tag-teamed to jack up the price of Halloween candy, according to a report published Tuesday.
The new analysis by Groundwork Collaborative and The Century Foundation finds that the price of popular Halloween candy has increased by more than 15% during the last year, which is several times the overall rate of inflation over the same period.
The biggest jump in price came from candy maker Mondelez, whose sour gummy candy variety pack saw its price shoot up by more than 39% in the last year.
Other notable price hikes included the Hershey variety pack, which increased by nearly 20%; the Ferrero chocolate pack, which increased by 19%; the Mars chocolate variety pack, which increased by over 13%; and Tootsie seasonal lollipops, which increased by over 7%.
The report notes that Trump's illegal Iran War and his aluminum tariffs have had an impact on candy prices by driving up packaging costs for sweets.
However, the report also points the finger at the candy companies, which have continued to raise prices even after receiving a tariff exemption for cocoa and getting refunds for illegal tariffs Trump charged them last year.
"Hershey’s profit margin jumped 50% year over year, helped by pocketing a $9 million tariff refund that never made its way back to shoppers," the report notes, "while Mondelez saw a similar 30% bump in margins."
Kyle K. Moore, chief economist at The Century Foundation, said that Trump's policies had helped turn "a fun family tradition into another terrifying bill."
"With debt and high prices eating into families’ Halloween budgets," said Moore, "it's no wonder consumers are feeling spooked."
Elizabeth Pancotti, vice president of policy and advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative, pointed out that consumer sentiment recently hit record lows, as Americans are also struggling with the rising costs of gasoline and groceries.
"Trick-or-treaters will have to make due with miniature candy bars this year to accommodate Trump’s king-size price hikes," Pancotti said.
A Sunday report in The Cleveland Plain Dealer highlighted an additional reason for the high price of Halloween candy: The price of sugar, which has been affected by "poor weather and weaker production forecasts in several major sugar-producing regions."
A survey released earlier this month by Lending Tree found that Americans expect to spend significantly less on Halloween overall this year, with 23% saying they plan to buy fewer overall Halloween items compared to a year ago, while 24% said they expected to go into debt while celebrating the holiday.
Data released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics last week showed inflation in September rising to its fastest level in six months, driven in large part by costs related to the Iran War.
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As Walmart Denies Accusations of Predatory Tactics, Watchdog Reveals Patents for Price-Gouging Tech
"Walmart has amassed the most intimate information about its customers and is developing the technology that can be used to put that data to work at checkout," said Lindsay Owens of Groundwork Collaborative.
Oct 06, 2026
As Walmart attempted to debunk research into its pricing practices by watchdog group Groundwork Collaborative on Monday, the organization released a new report detailing more than a dozen patents the $833 billion corporation holds or has applied for—all aimed at monitoring customers' behavior to determine what products to market to them, deceiving them about an item's price, and upcharging them.
“Corporations don’t spend years building high-tech pricing tools, hiring experts, and filing patents just to let them collect dust. They do it because they see a path to higher profit—one that runs right through everyday consumers’ budgets," said Lindsay Owens, president and CEO of Groundwork and the author of the book Gouged: The End of a Fair Price—And What That Means for Your Wallet.
On Monday, Owens and Elizabeth Pancotti, Groundwork's vice president of policy, advocacy, and research, released “The Walmart Watchtower: Patents Speak Louder Than Pledges,” noting that Walmart CEO John Furner just recently attempted to do damage control on Owens' reporting in Gouged regarding the company's artificial intelligence-enabled pricing tactics.
While Walmart executives have "openly touted" the ability of "Sparky," the AI shopping assistant the company launched last year, to push customers to spend an average of 40% more during a shopping trip, Furner insisted last month that Walmart will "price the product, not the person.”
But Groundwork said that beyond its deployment of Sparky, "Walmart’s own investments and patents suggest that the retail giant is building a vast arsenal of tools that can be used to track shoppers and even potentially determine what they pay."
The report reveals that technology patented by Walmart can:
- Estimate a child's age through past purchases and steer families toward certain products and price points as they grow;
- Run pricing experiments on shoppers to determine how much they are willing to pay, by pushing prices higher and higher over a period of time;
- Withhold coupons from customers the store believes will be willing to pay full price;
- Change prices of items based on what is already in a customer's cart; and
- Set the price a customer sees in search results on Walmart's website based on their purchase history, where they live, and other identifying characteristics, with one customer being charged $90 while another sees a $110 price tag.
The company has also filed applications for technology that could:
- Use facial recognition, in-store cameras, Wi-Fi signals, and heart-rate or glucose data to measure how shoppers react to any given product;
- Monitor customers' social media activity to determine whether they should be offered a coupon or be expected to pay full price; and
- Monitor customers' daily routines, including kids' sports practices, exercise classes, work, and visits to friends and relatives.
"Walmart has amassed the most intimate information about its customers and is developing the technology that can be used to put that data to work at checkout," said Owens. "Shoppers will have to decide whether to believe Walmart’s patent applications or its PR statements.”
As the report was released, Dan Bartlett, Walmart's executive vice president of corporate affairs, released a public letter accusing Owens of "mischaracterizations" regarding the company's pricing practices.
"Walmart does not and will not use an individual customer’s personal information, income, shopping history, urgency, or willingness to pay to set an individualized price," said Barlett. "We do not engage in dynamic pricing, raising prices in response to a hot afternoon or an approaching snowstorm, for example."
He also said Groundwork has wrongly taken Walmart's patents "as evidence that we will pursue individualized or dynamic pricing," and said the company has "committed not to."
Although Bartlett denied that the company uses AI to upcharge customers, Walmart US CEO Dave Guggina told investors just last month that “when customers engage with Sparky, their average order value jumps 40%.”
Owens responded to Bartlett's letter by saying that any "confusion around Walmart’s pricing practices is of its own making."
"Walmart says one thing in its damage-control letters to customers, another to its investors behind closed doors, and a different thing entirely to the United States Patent and Trademark Office," said Owens.
She called on Walmart to publicly release information about "what data Sparky can see, how that information shapes the recommendations and purchases it makes, and whether sensitive consumer information could be exposed, misused, or used against shoppers," especially considering recent hacking incidents by AI models.
"The arsenal of technologies the company is building that can be used to profile and track us should worry every American who is concerned about their privacy and pocketbooks," Owens said. "This personal data, according to Walmart’s own patents, is a critical element of the new pricing strategies the company is developing."
The report on Walmart's patents released by Groundwork on Monday, said Owens, will allow Americans to "decide for themselves" whether to believe executives' denials.
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12-Point 'Shopper's Bill of Rights' Proposed to Guard Against Corporate Greed in the Digital Age
"Shoppers shouldn’t have to outsmart an algorithm, decode the fine print, or fight their way out of a subscription just to get a fair deal."
Sep 28, 2026
Groundwork Collaborative on Monday unveiled a proposal for a "Shopper's Bill of Rights," which it said would shield US consumers from rampant corporate greed.
Noting the long history of consumer protection legislation, Groundwork Collaborative makes the case that new rules are desperately needed in an era where companies can use artificial intelligence to construct elaborate pricing schemes aimed at extracting every last dollar from shoppers.
The group cites its own past work documenting Instacart's use of AI to target specific shoppers with higher prices to argue that corporate America badly needs stronger oversight to stop them from gouging consumers.
"Instacart is hardly a lone actor," the group writes. "Unchecked pricing shenanigans are spreading to every corner of our economy, and consumers are rightfully angry."
With this in mind, Groundwork Collaborative proposes 12 regulations aimed at protecting consumers from getting relentlessly nickel-and-dimed by big corporations.
The first proposal is giving consumers the right to an all-in price, meaning companies must let shoppers buy a good or service for its advertised price without tacking on assorted fees.
"The takeout order that looked like a quick fix for a hectic night can double in price once delivery fees pile up," the group explains, "while a few clicks to buy concert tickets can leave a fan staring at a final box office bill that is more than 25% higher than the base price that lured them in. This deception is lucrative, as hidden fees get shoppers to spend 20% more than they would if they saw the full price upfront."
Another proposal takes on the kind of surveillance pricing documented in Groundwork Collective's Instacart report, where companies use consumers' personal data to individually increase prices based on a number of factors in their personal browsing and shopping histories.
"Rapid advances in cloud computing, data collection, surveillance technologies, and artificial intelligence now equip companies to purchase, track, store, and analyze consumers’ personal data at an unimaginable scale," the group writes. "Armed with troves of personal data, companies can increasingly determine your particular pain point: how much you, specifically, can be pushed to pay."
Groundwork Collaborative recommends banning surveillance pricing altogether, while also cracking down on companies' powers to collect and sell consumers' personal browsing data.
The group also says that lawmakers should look into stopping dynamic pricing schemes, which don't target consumers on an individual basis but nonetheless make unpredictable prices changes depending on a wide number of factors.
While dynamic pricing was originally designed for industries to handle scarcities, Groundwork Collaborative notes that it has since spread to businesses that are in no danger of facing product shortages.
"Grocery stores are not rationing cans of beans and Wendy’s is not running out of fries," the group explains. "Still, shoppers have no way to tell the difference. Pricing algorithms are a black box, so when the price spikes, you have little way to know whether supply actually tightened, demand really surged, or the company simply spotted an opportunity to squeeze you."
Here is a full list of policies Groundwork Collaborative is proposing:
- Right to an All-In Price: The Price You See Is The Price You Pay
- Right to a Fair Price: Pricing Products, Not People
- Right to a Predictable Price: Reining In The Dynamic Pricing Rollercoaster
- Right to Cancellation: Cancel With a Click
- Right to Repair: If You Own It, You Can Fix It
- Right to Your Own Agent: AI That Works For You, Not The Corporate Bottom Line
- Right to Resale: What You Buy Is Yours to Sell
- Right to a Level Playing Field: Giving Small Businesses a Chance to Compete
- Right to Comparison Shop: Taking the Guesswork Out of Comparison Shopping With Unit Pricing
- Right to a Refund: Ending The Runaround on Refunds
- Right to Proper Billing: Know What You Owe and Why
- Right to a Competitive Price: Bring Antitrust Into the 21st Century
Lindsay Owens, president and CEO of Groundwork Collaborative, accused corporate America of "deploying a dizzying array of tricks and tactics to reinvent the ripoff and squeeze American consumers," and said it's well past time for the government to step in.
"Shoppers shouldn’t have to outsmart an algorithm, decode the fine print, or fight their way out of a subscription just to get a fair deal," Owens said. "Policymakers should put simple guardrails in place to protect consumers from the high-tech ways corporations are gouging us—the Shoppers’ Bill of Rights is a good place to start."
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How Greedy Corporations Are Weaponizing AI to 'Squeeze' Consumers and Working Class Families
"It's another attack on household budgets that add up, and which working people certainly shouldn’t be on the hook for."
Sep 23, 2026
A report released on Wednesday by Groundwork Collaborative and Reset Tech details how corporate America and assorted nefarious actors are using artificial intelligence to gouge US consumers.
The report begins by noting that while AI is "often promoted as a technology that will boost productivity, reduce costs, and improve efficiency," the reality so far is that it is "enabling new forms of fraud, expanding surveillance-based pricing, and increasing costs for essential services such as health insurance, transportation, and electricity."
As one example of how AI is hurting consumers, the report highlights AI's role in helping health insurers more rapidly deny claims, even as many physicians have expressed concerns about the technology's accuracy.
"AI adjudication tools like UnitedHealth’s nH Predict have been accused of often erroneously denying needed care, hoping that patients and providers don’t take the time to appeal," the report notes. "A recent lawsuit alleges that the 0.2% of patients who do appeal win about nine times out of ten, reversing the AI-powered tool’s denial."
On the other side of the coin, AI-powered medical scribes used by healthcare providers have been found to bill insurers for procedures more complex or expensive than the services that were actually delivered. The report points to a recent analysis conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which found that AI-powered tools are now one of the top drivers of medical inflation in the US.
Groundwork Collaborative and Reset Tech also document how AI allows companies to implement surveillance pricing systems, which use customers' personal data to determine how much they should be charged for a given product or service to maximize the amount of revenue generated per sale.
According to the report, data brokers collect and analyze data taken from internet users and then sell their findings to corporations who can use that knowledge to create detailed profiles of individual consumers.
One area where this kind of pricing is increasingly being used is in the car insurance industry, which thanks to modern technology has vastly more information about drivers' habits than ever before.
"This information—known as telematics—includes speed, braking patterns, acceleration, and location tracking," the report explains. "Insurers analyze this information with AI to assess risk and set personalized premiums. While this may reward some safe drivers, it can also lead to higher premiums and be used to deny coverage entirely."
The report finds that airlines have also been using customers' information to create a dynamic pricing system that charges different fares based on "demand, search activity, booking patterns, and other consumer data."
Rishi Bharwani, US director of Reset Tech and co-author of the report, said that elected officials need to wake up to how cutting-edge technology is being used to gouge consumers with what he described as "a hidden tax on households."
"Families feel it every day, even if they can’t see it," Bharwani explained. "Lawmakers need to act now to stop greedy corporations from using AI to squeeze consumers."
Janelle Jones, senior fellow at Groundwork Collaborative and report co-author, noted that AI pricing is becoming more popular even as families across the US are struggling to afford basics such as food and energy.
"As working people face an affordability crisis, higher prices caused by AI are the last thing they need," Jones said. "It's another attack on household budgets that add up, and which working people certainly shouldn’t be on the hook for."
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'Working Families Foot Trump's Bill Twice' as Fed Hikes Rates Amid Worsening Affordability Crisis
One campaigner asserted that Trump's "recklessness in the White House has pushed working families’ budgets to their breaking point."
Sep 16, 2026
The US Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised its benchmark interest rate for the first time since 2023, prompting renewed criticism from progressive economists and Democratic lawmakers who argue that President Donald Trump’s tariffs and warmongering are fueling inflation and further squeezing working families.
The 12-member Federal Open Market Committee unanimously lifted its federal funds target range by a quarter percentage point, to 3.75-4%, while signaling that it could raise the rate again to around 4.1% in the coming months. Fed officials cited persistently elevated inflation and said the move would support a “timelier return” to their 2% inflation target.
The increase came despite months of pressure from President Donald Trump for the central bank to cut rates. Trump has repeatedly demanded substantially lower borrowing costs, including calling for rates as low as 1%, while accusing the Fed of holding rates too high.
"Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World—BY FAR," Trump said on his Truth Social network in response to the hike. "Our Country is BOOMING with new Investment! If we stopped Trading with every country that we have a Deficit with, which is most of them, we would make, at least, 1.5 Trillion Dollars a year."
The United States is actually rated AA+ by S&P and Fitch—which is not the "best credit in the world" by any measure. Numerous nations have AAA ratings from major agencies, the highest level of creditworthiness.
"The word 'Deficit' is nothing more than a fancy word for LOSS," Trump added. "We are 'carrying' almost every country in the World, and that cannot go on any longer. LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!"
Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh—whom Trump tapped to lead the central bank—nonetheless backed the increase. The Fed's latest projections indicate that inflation will remain above its target and that most officials anticipate at least one additional rate increase before the end of the year.
The rate hike means consumers and businesses will face higher borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans, and other debt. The average 30-year mortgage rate had already risen above 7% by Wednesday.
Referring to the worsening affordability crisis caused by Trump administration choices like tariffs and the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran, the progressive economic advocacy group Groundwork Collaborative lamented how "working families foot Trump's bill twice."
Trump's "never-ending war with Iran and his chaotic tariffs have driven inflation high enough that his own pick for chairman raised rates anyway, in a unanimous vote—a decision that will lead to higher borrowing costs for families and small businesses but does little to combat high prices from Trump’s economic mismanagement," the group said in a statement.
Groundwork Collaborative chief economist Breyon Williams said that "Trump can deny, disparage, and deflect from Americans’ economic reality all he wants, but there’s no hiding the truth: His recklessness in the White House has pushed working families’ budgets to their breaking point."
"Under his watch, inflation has skyrocketed, prices on essentials like gas and groceries have emptied wallets, and the labor market has lost steam," Williams added. "Today’s decision from the Federal Reserve confirms Americans’ fears of continued price pains to come, and its own forecast now says families will not see borrowing costs go down until 2028.”
Addressing the Fed rate hike, US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Wednesday that "the chaos of Trump’s disastrous war and costly economic policies are drowning Americans in inflation. Trump has sown chaos in our economy, scared off potential investors, rattled our markets, and made it harder for American workers and businesses alike to succeed."
"Ever since taking office, Trump has taken aim at the Fed and other institutions designed to keep our economy stable and growing. That has only added to the economic chaos plaguing our country," he added. "But what does Trump care? Trump doesn’t care that Americans have to pay to more; he only cares about raking in as much money as he can off the presidency before Americans send him and his Republican Party packing."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said during a Wednesday interview on CNN that "it's the American people who are paying the price" for Trump's policies.
"There is no happy solution at this moment based on interest rates," she added.
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Guess What Happened After New York Raised Taxes on the Rich? More Millionaires Moved In
"Tax flight is nothing more than a myth, and should be given as much credence as flat-earthers.”
Sep 10, 2026
The threats came in a steady stream last year from Fox News, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, and Gristedes grocery chain CEO John Catsimatidis, who insisted that wealthy New York City residents were "panicking" at the possibility that then-state Rep. Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, could become the mayor and ensure rich locals pay more in taxes to help fund crucial services.
"It only takes a handful of successful people to leave to decimate the city’s tax base," cautioned Ackman, while Catsimatidis suggested many rich New Yorkers would likely join him in fleeing to "the promised land": Florida, which has no state income tax.
But the progressive think tank Groundwork Collaborative said Thursday that new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data should be "the final nail in the coffin" of the evidence-free, perennial claim that higher taxes cause wealthy residents to leave their cities and states.
The agency released its 2023 Statistics of Income (SOI) data, covering the period before Mamdani became mayor and introduced a tax on second homes, ranging from 0.8% to 1.3% for properties valued at $5 million or more, which he estimated will raise $500 million annually.
The data shows how the tax base was impacted after the state imposed a separate tax policy in 2022, raising its top tax rate on the highest earners.
Poking a giant hole in the persistent theory that wealthy people won't want to live in states that require more from them in taxes, the number of New Yorkers reporting more than $1 million in income grew by about 3% after the tax rate was raised, the SOI data shows.
"If there was any merit to the myth that tax increases on New York’s wealthy drive them away, the new IRS data should show it. It doesn’t."
The number of millionaires nationwide went down in 2023, but New York counted 2,000 more than it had the previous year. The number of tax filers earning between $500,000 and $1 million also grew by over 8,500—more than 7%.
The average adjusted gross income of New Yorkers who left the state from 2022-23 fell 15%, from over $125,000 to $106,900.
"If the past is prologue, the SOI data suggest few, if any, of the city’s wealthiest residents will leave as a result of a modest tax. Instead they are likely to remain rooted in the social, business, and economic networks that make New York uniquely valuable to them," said Groundwork Collaborative. "The New Yorkers actually at risk of leaving the city are the lower-income workers who power the economy."
Lindsay Owens, president and CEO of Groundwork Collaborative, said the new data makes clear that "tax flight is nothing more than a myth, and should be given as much credence as flat-earthers.”
"If there was any merit to the myth that tax increases on New York’s wealthy drive them away, the new IRS data should show it," said Owens. "It doesn’t—New York’s millionaire population kept climbing years after the state raised taxes on top earners."
Wealthy New Yorkers, said Groundwork, are shown by the data to be "a settled population that may squawk about a tax increase, but not pack up and leave."
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Latest Data Shows Ultra-Rich Continue to Win While Working Class Gets Crushed in Trump’s Economy
"Despite his bluster, Trump has built an economy for billionaires while working families are left in the dust."
Aug 26, 2026
Newly released economic data shows that the benefits of President Donald Trump's economy keep accruing to major corporations while US workers get left with scraps.
As noted in an analysis published on Wednesday by Groundwork Collaborative, the latest gross domestic product (GDP) numbers from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) show that workers' wages in the second quarter of 2026 accounted for just 54.7% of national income, the lowest share ever recorded.
Labor compensation once accounted for 60% or higher of GDP over a span of six decades until the start of the Great Recession in 2008. Since then, wages have only risen above 60% of GDP for one year, in 2020, when the federal government sent people stimulus checks and boosted benefits to help get through the economic shutdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
While workers' wages account for an ever-shrinking share of GDP, corporations have seen their fortunes rise. Groundwork Collaborative pointed out that corporate profits last quarter surged by 9.1%, as companies received refunds for the Trump-enacted tariffs that the Supreme Court ruled were illegal earlier this year.
According to macroeconomic researcher Eric Basmajian, corporate profits accounted for over 12% of GDP on the quarter, which marks a record high.
In addition to its GDP report, the BEA also released its monthly report for personal consumption expenditures (PCE), which showed overall prices posted a yearly rise of 3.7%, above economists' expectations.
Elizabeth Pancotti, vice president of policy, advocacy, and research at Groundwork Collaborative, said Trump's tariffs and his illegal war with Iran were big factors in driving up prices in July.
"Today’s report reveals that corporate bosses and Wall Street investors are cashing in as working families pay the price for the president's economic mismanagement," said Pancotti. "Despite his bluster, Trump has built an economy for billionaires while working families are left in the dust."
A separate report released Wednesday by Oxford Economics warned that Trump's trade war with Canada, America's largest trading partner, is likely to do further damage to the US economy unless quickly reversed.
Economist Bernard Yaros, author of the report, warned that Trump's threatened 50% tariffs on Canadian cars could be particularly painful for US consumers as its "inflationary fallout is unlikely to be benign" if implemented.
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Bring Back the Sears Home! Proposal Calls for 500,000 High-Quality, Affordable Starter Houses to Ease Crisis
"Policymakers must pursue creative, tangible, and lasting solutions that bring homeownership back into reach."
Aug 19, 2026
As young families are increasingly priced out of the housing market, a group of economic researchers is pushing to revive an idea from the past to bring the distant dream of homeownership back within reach: mass-produced homes.
A report published Wednesday by the Groundwork Collaborative proposes a federal program to subsidize the creation of 500,000 prefabricated houses over the next eight years—starter homes that they estimate would be drastically more affordable than the ones currently on the market.
The report was written by three economic policy analysts who served under former President Joe Biden: Noah Ball-Burack and Emily DiVito, who worked on policy for the Treasury Department, and Alex Jacquez, who was Biden's special assistant for economic development and industrial strategy at the White House National Economic Council.
The proposal draws from history: From 1908-40, around 75,000 Americans ordered mass-produced homebuilding kits from Sears, Roebuck & Co. through catalogs, which provided pre-cut lumber, doors, windows, and other materials to construct a home that ended up being considerably cheaper to build than those constructed conventionally.
These "Sears homes" were not only fully functional but also durable: More than 80 years after the program was discontinued, thousands of them are still standing today.
Groundwork's researchers argued that, by marshaling the government's resources, a modern Sears home program could go great lengths toward combating the housing affordability crisis.
"For too many families, homeownership has gone from a milestone to a mirage. Decades of under-building have left us with an affordable housing shortage that’s pricing people out of their communities," DiVito said. "Policymakers must pursue creative, tangible, and lasting solutions that bring homeownership back into reach. The Modern Sears Home program does just that.”
The group called for Congress to appropriate between $44 billion and $75 billion over eight years—less than the US spends on the military in a single month—to guarantee large orders of factory-built homes, acquire and prepare land for them, and then sell the completed houses to eligible buyers with government-backed affordable mortgages.
They estimate that factory-produced single-family homes could be sold for roughly $170,000-$215,000 each. That's around half the median price of a new single-family home, which has increased nearly 25% since the start of the decade.
"Sears offered these homes for profit," the researchers wrote. "The federal government—with greater resources, lower borrowing costs, and unmatched power to scale—can do it better."
Unlike private capital, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which would administer the program, doesn't have a profit motive and is capable of guaranteeing large amounts of demand so that manufacturers can build scale.
And since the goal is to ensure that people are housed rather than to increase profit margins, the researchers argued that the homes are less vulnerable to the fluctuations of the housing market, which currently disincentivizes lowering rent.
"Private developers build only when projects pencil, meaning that expected rents, net of construction and financing costs, clear the rate of return their investors demand," the report explains. "This math ties new housing supply to high rents. If rents begin to fall, private capital will walk away.”
The researchers argued that their proposal would not just benefit those who are able to purchase new Sears homes, which HUD would target at households earning 60%-100% of a local area's median income, but everyone in the housing market, by driving up supply.
"Sustainably lowering housing prices relative to other prices in the economy requires public investment," they wrote. "The government can either build housing itself or finance private construction at below-market returns. It should do both.”
The proposal comes as pre-fab homes are being viewed increasingly as a policy solution to confront the housing crisis and as an opportunity for developers looking to attract young homebuyers.
Eager to build cheap starter homes fast, developers are experimenting with entire subdivisions of factory-built houses, as The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
New York state, meanwhile, is trying out a miniature version of what Groundwork has proposed, building 1,500-square-foot homes in Syracuse, Schenectady, and Newcomb. The state has completed three homes so far and awarded funding for 211 more.
According to a 2023 report by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, these kinds of higher-end manufactured homes, known as "CrossMods," cost 27% less on average compared to an identical home built on-site.
The ones that have gone up in New York have borne out these cost-saving projections. They took about a third of the time to construct as traditional homes and cost about $250,000 to build and install, about half the cost of a comparable house, according to the state's affordable housing agency.
An affordable housing law that passed Congress in June also took steps toward expanding factory-built housing with a bipartisan bill passed last month that removed regulatory barriers to manufactured homes and sought to make construction easier to finance. However, the law does not provide any new federal funding for housing production.
The researchers said this was a good start that could help speed up the process of building homes. But they said it was far too narrow to really address the problem.
"It will take a government willing to act not at the margins of the market, but at its center—financing cheaply, building at scale,” they wrote. "The technology and policy levers to realize this vision already exist. The question is not whether the federal government can act at this scale—but whether it will."
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New Inflation Numbers Prove 'Catastrophic Mismanagement of Our Economy' by Trump
"Today's report is yet another reminder that Trump's promise to lower costs on 'Day One' was a lie," said the House Budget Committee's top Democrat.
Aug 12, 2026
As Americans continue to struggle with the cost of gasoline, groceries, healthcare, housing, and more under President Donald Trump, congressional Democrats and economists on Wednesday used his own government's latest inflation figures to call out the Republican's handling of the US economy.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the consumer price index—a measure of goods and services bought by households—increased 0.1% on a seasonally adjusted basis in July after falling 0.4% in June. The annual inflation rate was 3.4% before seasonal adjustment.
The brief reprieve for American consumers in June was tied to Trump's illegal Iran War cooling off a bit, so the new numbers were expected, given the ramped-up hostilities that followed and persist. The conflict and its various consequences are expected to hurt Republicans in the November elections.
"Prices started climbing again in July, and Trump's catastrophic mismanagement of our economy means more spikes in the months ahead," warned Alex Jacquez, a former Obama administration official who is now senior vice president of policy and advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative, in a statement.
"The president said it himself: He is only 'semi-negotiating' an end to the war, all while slapping new tariffs on 99% of our imported goods," noted Jacquez. "Trump is not serious about bringing much-needed relief to working families who are weary of higher prices at the pump and on the shelves, and who are pessimistic about an economy that is bleeding jobs."
US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Wednesday that "as inflation continues to spiral out of control and gas prices remain well above $4, this is how Donald Trump is spending your taxpayer dollars. $900 million for a gilded ballroom at the White House. $0 to lower your costs. The Trump White House in a nutshell."
House Budget Committee Ranking Member Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) recalled when Trump was asked in May how much "Americans' financial situations" were on his mind as he tried to negotiate an end to the Iran War, and the president replied, "Not even a little bit," then returned to his misleading talking points on nuclear weapons.
"Month after month, Donald Trump continues to prove that he doesn't 'think about Americans' financial situation,'" Boyle said. "Over the last year and a half, Trump and Republicans in Washington have ripped healthcare away from millions of Americans, forced families to pay expensive tariff taxes, and started a disastrous war with Iran."
"Today's report is yet another reminder that Trump's promise to lower costs on 'Day One' was a lie," the congressman added. "American families deserve better."
House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) declared on social media Wednesday, "Donald Trump's economy is a disaster."
"His war is spiking gas costs. Wages are down. Inflation is up," she said, looking to the midterms. "In November, Democrats will take back the House and fight for an affordable America."
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