Americans lived through the worst bout of inflation in about 40 years at the start of this decade, but the sting of higher prices differed significantly depending on where you live. Even though wages also rose during that period, residents of only nine states have actually come out ahead, according to a new study.
From 2020 to 2024, consumer prices for things like housing, groceries, energy, and everyday essentials climbed 21%, as measured by the consumer price index. During that same period, the average American workers pay rose 18%, from about $64,000 to $75,600, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Those differences illustrate what many Americans have experienced: Inflation erased much of the apparent progress of wage increases, according to a recent analysis by MyPerfectResume, an online resume building site. In fact, the typical U.S. worker is now earning approximately 2.6% less in real termsafter adjusting for inflation and cost of livingthan in 2020, the study found.
The findings highlight a crucial truth: A high-paying job doesnt automatically mean a higher standard of living, Jasmine Escalera, a certified career coach who provides career advice for MyPerfect Resume, wrote in the report. The nation got a pay raise on paper, but a pay cut in reality.
Thats because inflation has erased years of progress and workers paychecks arent stretching so far, according to MyPerfectResume, which didnt immediately respond to an interview request from Fast Company.
And despite a recent claim by President Donal Trump that inflation has been defeated, economists expect it to tick up from a 2.7% annual rate in 2025. Inflation is forecasted to increase at an annual rate of 2.9% in 2026, according to the consensus forecast of about 50 professional economic forecasters surveyed by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
WHERE WORKERS CAME OUT AHEAD
The sting of inflation hasnt been the same for all Americans. Residents in 40 states lost purchasing power from 2020 to 2024, while Utahns saw no change in their standard of living during that same period, MyPerfectResume found, based on an analysis of the changes in real earnings and purchasing power across all 50 U.S. states from 2020 through 2024.
But Americans in the following nine states, mostly concentrated in the West and South, saw their paychecks stretch farthest:
Idaho: +3.1%
Florida: +2.6%
Washington: +2.3%
Montana: +2.3%
Wyoming: +1.8%
South Carolina: +1.5%
North Carolina: +0.9%
Tennessee: +0.9%
Maine: +0.5%
Workers there actually came out ahead once inflation and local prices were taken into account, Escalera wrote.
WHERE WORKERS ARE FALLING BEHIND
Workers in the vast majority of states, however, are grappling with higher paychecks that feels like less money to spend on essentials.
The analysis pointed to particular pain for workers on the East Coast, where the decline in real purchasing power from 2020 to 2024 was worstled by New Jersey:
New Jersey: -7.0%
Rhode Island: -6.9%
Maryland: -5.4%
New York: -5.3%
Massachusetts: -5.3%
For workers in these states, nominal wage growth was insufficient to keep pace with inflation and high living costs, in some cases prompting workers to choose job security over career moves, Escalera wrote.
SIDE GIGS
To grapple with paychecks that buy less today than they did just a few years ago, many Americans rely on supplemental income or side gigs.
In fact, MyPerfectResume conducted a recent survey that found that 72% of American workers currently rely on at least one source of secondary income, with the majority citing inflation as making such side gigs more necessary.
What began as a stopgap during high inflation has transformed into a long-term financial strategy, shaping how Americans navigate rising costs, stagnant wages, and economic uncertainty, Escalera wrote in that report.
Wild swings that swept through financial markets overnight eased after Wall Street opened for trading on Monday. U.S. stocks rose modestly following gains in Europe and sharp drops in Asia, while gold and silver prices rallied back from severe earlier losses.
The S&P 500 added 0.5% and is on track to snap a three-day losing streak. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 317 points, or 0.6%, as of 10:15 a.m. ET, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.6% higher.
Stocks of companies that make computer storage helped lead the market, adding to gains from last week following several profit reports that topped analysts’ expectations. Airlines and cruise-ship operators were also strong, benefiting from a sharp easing of oil prices.
The center of the action in financial markets was again precious metals, where momentum suddenly halted after golds price roughly doubled in 12 months.
Gold briefly dropped below $4,500 per ounce in the overnight hours, down more than $1,000 from its high point reached just last week. It later pulled back to $4,742.80, down 0.1% from Friday.
Silvers price has been on an even wilder ride recently, and it swung from a 9% loss overnight to a 0.3% gain.
Gold and silver prices had earlier been surging as investors looked for safer things to own amid a wide range of worries, including a Federal Reserve that may be set to become less independent, a U.S. stock market that critics say is expensive, threats of tariffs, and heavy debt loads for governments worldwide.
Their prices cratered on Friday, including a 31.4% plunge for silver. Some on Wall Street saw it as a result of President Donald Trumps nomination of Kevin Warsh as the next chair of the Fed. Warshs reputation as a former Fed governor may have raised expectations among some investors that he may keep interest rates high to fight against inflation, which would reduce the need to hide out in gold and silver for protection.
But many on Wall Street are also skeptical of that initial reading and say the expectation from Trump is likely that Warsh will cut interest rates, something the president has been demanding. That could give the economy a boost, but also inflation.
The Fed chair has a big influence on the economy and markets worldwide by helping to dictate where the U.S. central bank moves interest rates. That affects prices for all kinds of investments, as the Fed tries to keep the U.S. job market humming without letting inflation get out of control.
The recent swoons for gold and silver are likely more about the washout for some traders who had borrowed money to bet on metals prices continuing to soar, rather than about a wholesale change in expectations for demand for metals, according to Darrell Cronk, chief investment officer for Wealth & Investment Management at Wells Fargo
On Wall Street, Sandisk leaped 11.4% to lead the S&P 500. The data-storage company added to its 6.9% gain from Friday, after it reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It credited demand created by the artificial-intelligence boom, among other things.
That helped offset a 1.3% drop for Nvidia, whose chips are powering much of the worlds move into AI technology. The losses were worse in Asia, where AI winners plunged. South Koreas Kospi fell 5.3% from its record for its worst day in almost 10 months after chip company SK Hynix lost nearly 9%.
In the bond market, Treasury yields edged higher after a report said that U.S. manufacturing grew last month, when economists were expecting a contraction. The yield on the 10-year Treasury erased an earlier dip and rose to 4.27%, up from 4.26% late Friday.
Oil prices dropped more than 4% after Trump told reporters that Iran is seriously talking to us. Its a potential signal of improving relations between the two countries, which could prevent a possible disruption to the global flow of oil.
In stock markets abroad, European indexes rose nearly 1% following Asias washout. Japans Nikkei 225 fell 1.3%, while stocks fell 2.2% in Hong Kong and 2.5% in Shanghai.
By Stan Choe, AP business writer
AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
When we return to work after the holidays, we tend to bring renewed energy, a laundry list of annual goals, and a few aspirational New Years resolutions. This is the year youre going to run the marathon.
Though we arrive ready to hit the ground running, actual business momentum might tell a different story. I call it the Q1 paradox. Were prepared for a flurry of activity, but in reality, we experience a slower cadence. With GDP growth typically slower in Q1, consumer and business spending may lag. Demands feel less urgent. Phones are quieter.
As CEO of Jotform, Ive found that the first quarter is the perfect time to lay the groundwork for the years success.
Heres how my team and I make the most of this valuable window.
Lead by example
For leaders, the first order of business is getting your team to start projecting themselves and the organization into the following 12 months. When theyve just closed out 2025 and wrapped up year-end reports, that can be easier said than done.
While getting your team into this mindset begins with clear directives, thats only half the equation. Modeling the behavior is just as important. Formal policies may attempt to create organizational culture and norms, but routinesthe way leaders and employees actually show up and functionare just as vital. As Harvard Business Impact notes, leaders uphold and demonstrate their character through the daily habits they follow and the decisions they make. Thats why leaders must model proactive behaviors that encourage forward-thinking across the team.
At Jotform, for example, I start with a nudge in early January, sharing my objectives for the new year with the entire organization. I try to keep these big-picture, beginning with my most audacious goals, since those tend to be the ones that excite and inspire me. They keep the momentum going during inevitable lulls in motivation. Often, Ill include a brief road map outlining how we can reach each objective. Finally, I encourage employees to reach out if they have questions or ideas. And, of course, to think about what they most want to achieve in the year ahead.
Modeling this forward-looking behavior can help employees rise above the busywork from day one and gain much-needed perspective on where were headed.
Reflect and refine your strategies
If the first step is looking forward, the second involves gazing back and taking stock of your current business strategies. In todays fast-changing world, where AI stands to reinvent workflows at breakneck speed, this is more vital than ever.
At my company, I work with our teams to evaluate strategies, identify gaps, and determine which adjustments are needed to move toward our goals with confidence. With each department, we begin by reviewing their respective strategies and considering whether they serve our larger purpose: making users lives easier through automation. We then map out the processes and workflows that carry out those strategies, looking for weak spotsfor example, tasks that could be accelerated through automation without sacrificing the essential human elements, such as strategic judgment and creative thinking. Finally, we ensure that each workflow within a strategy has a clear human owner to oversee decision-making and step in when issues arise.
As Ive found, this balance of reflection, automation, and human accountability helps ensure continued progress, year after year.
Carve out time for experimentation
If Ive learned one thing in two decades of entrepreneurship, its the importance of scheduling everything. If you dont deliberately carve out time for it, chances increase that youll kick it down the road. Thats why everything, including creativity, must be built into your schedule.
When we do our first quarter strategizing, I urge our employees to create space for experimentation: to test new ideas, refine processes, tool around with new AI applications, and explore innovative approacheswithout the usual time pressure.
On an organizational level, we hold demo dayswhere each team shares their latest ideas and projectsand regular hack weeks. These five-day creative sprints allow our product teams to laser-focus on a single idea, while completely putting aside their day-to-day to-do lists. Hack weeks have led to some of our biggest innovations, and we schedule them as soon as we return to work in January.
With some proactive thinking, moments for reflection, and dedicated time for experimentation, the quiet first quarter can become less of a pause, and more of a launchpad for a year of meaningful progress.
The one thing N. Lee Plumb knows for sure about being laid off from Amazon last week is that it wasnt a failure to get on board with the companys artificial intelligence plans.
Plumb, his teams head of AI enablement, says he was so prolific in his use of Amazons new AI coding tool that the company flagged him as one of its top users.
Many assumed Amazon’s 16,000 corporate layoffs announced last week reflected CEO Andy Jassys push to reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.
But like other companies that have tied workforce changes to AI including Expedia, Pinterest, and Dow last week it can be hard for economists, or individual employees like Plumb, to know if AI is the real reason behind the layoffs or if it’s the message a company wants to tell Wall Street.
AI has to drive a return on investment, said Plumb, who worked at Amazon for eight years. When you reduce head count, youve demonstrated efficiency, you attract more capital, the share price goes up.
So you could potentially have just been bloated in the first place, reduce head count, attribute it to AI, and now youve got a value story, he said.
Amazon said in an emailed statement that AI was not the reason behind the vast majority of these reductions.
These changes are about continuing to strengthen our culture and teams by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and helping reduce bureaucracy to drive speed and ownership, it said.
Plumb is atypical for an Amazon worker in that he’s also running what he describes as a long shot bid for Congress in Texas, on a platform focused on stopping the tech industry’s reliance on work visas to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor.
But whatever it was that cost Plumb his job, his skepticism about AI-driven job replacement is one shared by many economists.
We just don’t know, said Karan Girotra, a professor of management at Cornell University’s business school. Not because AI isnt great, but because it requires a lot of adjustment and most of the gains accrue to individual employees rather than to the organization. People save time and they get their work done earlier.
If an employer works faster because of AI, Girotra said it takes time to adjust a company’s management structure in a way that would enable a smaller workforce. He’s not convinced that’s happening at Amazon, which he said is still scaling back from a glut of hiring during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A report by Goldman Sachs said AI’s overall impact on the labor market remains limited, though some effects might be felt in specific occupations like marketing, graphic design, customer service, and especially tech. Those are fields involving tasks that correlate with the strengths of the current crop of generative AI chatbots that can write emails and marketing pitches, produce synthetic images, answer questions, and help write code.
But the bank’s economic research division said in its most recent monthly AI adoption tracker that, since December, very few employees were affected by corporate layoffs attributed to AI, though the report was published Jan. 16, before Amazon, Dow and Pinterest announced their layoffs.
San Francisco-based Pinterest was the most explicit in asserting that AI drove it to cut up to 15% of its workforce. The social media company said it was making organizational changes to further deliver on our AI-forward strategy, which includes hiring AI-proficient talent. As a result, weve made the difficult decision to say goodbye to some of our team members.
Pinterest echoed that message in a regulatory disclosure that said the company was reallocating resources to AI-focused roles and teams that drive AI adoption and execution.”
Expedia has voiced a similar message but the 162 tech workers the travel website cut from its Seattle headquarters last week included several AI-specific roles, such as machine-learning scientists.
Dow’s regulatory disclosures tied its 4,500 layoffs to a new plan utilizing AI and automation to increase productivity and improve shareholder returns.
Amazon’s 16,000 corporate job cuts were part of a broader reduction of employees at the ecommerce giant. At the same time as those cuts, all believed to be office jobs, Amazon said it would cut about 5,000 retail workers, according to notices it sent to state workforce agencies in California, Maryland and Washington, resulting from its decision to close almost all of its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores.
That’s on top of a round of 14,000 job cuts in October, bringing the total to well over 30,000 since Jassy first signaled a push for AI-driven organizational changes.
Like many companies, in technology and otherwise, but particularly those that make and sell AI tools and services, Amazon has been pushing its workforce to find more efficiencies with AI.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last week that 2026 will be when AI starts to dramatically change the way that we work.
Were investing in AI-native tooling so individuals at Meta can get more done, were elevating individual contributors, and flattening teams, he said on an earnings call. Were starting to see projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person.
So far, Metas layoffs this year have focused on cutting jobs from its virtual reality and metaverse divisions. Also driving job impacts is the industry shifting resources to AI development, which requires huge spending on computer chips, energy-hungry data centers and talent.
Jassy told Amazon employees last June to be curious about AI, educate yourself, attend workshops and take trainings, use and experiment with AI whenever you can, participate in your teams brainstorms to figure out how to invent for our customers more quickly and expansively, and how to get more done with scrappier teams.
Plumb was fully on board with that and said he demonstrated his proficiency in using Amazon’s AI coding tool, Kiro, to solve massive problems in the company’s compensation system.
If you werent using them, your manager would get a report and they would talk to you about using it, he said. There were only five people in the entire company that were a higher user of Kiro than I was, or had achieved more milestones.
Now he’s shifting gears to his candidacy among a field of epublicans in the Houston area looking to unseat U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw in the March primary.
Cornell’s Girotra said it’s possible that increasing AI productivity is leading companies to cut middle management, but he said the reality is that those making layoff decisions just need to cut costs and make it happen. Thats it. I don’t think they care what the reason for that is.
Not all companies are signaling AI as a reason for cuts. Home Depot confirmed on Thursday that it was eliminating 800 roles tied to its corporate headquarters in Atlanta, though most of the affected employees worked remotely.
Home Depots spokesman George Lane said that Home Depots cuts were not driven by AI or automation but truly about speed, agility and serving the needs of its customers and front-line workers.
And exercise equipment maker Peloton confirmed on Friday that it is reducing its workforce by 11% as part of a broader cost-cutting move to pare down operating expenses.
Matt O’Brien, AP technology writer
AP Retail Writer Anne DInnocenzio contributed to this report.
An outbreak of Nipah virus outbreak in India is currently causing alarm for health officials and travelers across a number of countries in Asia.
On January 26, health officials from India notified the World Health Organization (WHO) of two laboratory-confirmed cases of Nipah virus (NiV) infection in West Bengal State. No additional NiV cases have been detected.
Following news of the outbreak, authorities in some Asian countries, including Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, have ramped up airport health screening efforts.
However, according to Reuters, the screenings are more for “reassurance” than a tactic to stop the spread. The WHO says risk of spread at the national, regional, and global levels is low.
The latest developments
Both recent West Bengal cases involved healthcare workers who began showing typical NiV symptoms in late December 2025.
The cases were confirmed by Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) and Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) testing, according to the WHO. Local health officials identified 196 contacts, all of whom tested negative for NiV and showed no symptoms.
NiV is serious, but rare. It is a zoonotic virus, meaning it usually spreads from animals to humans. Fruit bats or flying foxes are natural hosts for the virus.
However, the virus can also be transmitted through contaminated food and from person to person through close contact with an infected persons bodily fluids, such as saliva or urine.
Person-to-person contact is less common, according to the National Emerging Special Pathogens Training & Education Center (NETEC). Person-to-person transmission is most commonly reported in hospital or healthcare settings.
According to the WHO, the case fatality rate is estimated to be 40% to 75%. There are no licensed medications or vaccines for NiV infection, but early supportive care can improve survival.
Additional details can be found in the WHO’s January 30 disease outbreak news report.
A brief history of the virus
NiV was first identified in 1998 in Malaysia during an outbreak among pig farmers.
Since then, cases have been reported in less than a handful of countriesBangladesh, India, Malaysia, and Singapore. The most recent outbreak marks the third NiV infection outbreak reported in West Bengal.
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.
Back in 2023, this single-family home at 19374 Rizzuto St. in Venice, FL (34293 ZIP Code) was purchased for $565,000. By the time the transaction closed, the housing market had already begun to enter a period of cyclical coolingwith Florida seeing a sharper power swing to buyers and some pockets of Southwest Florida moving into what ResiClub considers correction mode.
By February 2025, the homeowner listed the property above for sale at $519,000. After 4 subsequent price cuts and a brief delisting, the home finally sold in December 2025 for $455,000or -19.5% below its 2023 sales price. While thats certainly a material home price correction from its Pandemic Housing Boom peak, we should note that the December 2025 sales price ($455K) was still +38.7% above the $328,000 price the same property fetched in 2017.
As weve closely documented for ResiClub readers for the past few years (heres our past feature on just Punta Gorda), Southwest Florida has been one of the two weakest regional chunks of the U.S. housing market. Among major U.S. metros, only Austin, Texas metro area (-27.3% since its 2022 peak) has seen a larger overall price drop this cycle than metros in Punta Gorda, FL (-25.3% from its 2022 peak), Cape Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL (-18.8% from its 2022 peak), and North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, FL (-17.4% from its 2022 peak). The North Port-Sarasota metro is where the home highlighted above is located.
Pulling from the ResiClub Terminal, single-family home prices in the ZIP Code highlighted in todays article (34293) are down -11.3% year-over-year.
Pulling from the ResiClub Terminal, single-family home prices in the highlighted ZIP Code (34293) are down -21.5% from their 2022 peak. Thats broadly in line with the -19.5% decline at which the highlighted property sold relative to its 2023 price.
Pulling from the ResiClub Terminal, single-family home prices in the highlighted ZIP Code (34293) are still up +37.3% above March 2020 levels. Thats broadly similar to the +38.7% increase the highlighted property sold for in December 2025 relative to its pre-pandemic sale in 2017 ($328,000).
Again, todays ResiClub article is not about a property in a market performing anywhere near the U.S. average right now. Instead, it highlights a market that has been among the weakest since the Pandemic Housing Boom fizzled out. Indeed, U.S. home prices, as measured by the Zillow Home Value Index, entered 2026 at +1.9% above their July 2022 levels. Meanwhile, home prices in the North PortSarasota metrowhere the home in the 34293 ZIP Code is locatedentered 2026 at -17.4% below their July 2022 levels.
Click here to view an interactive of the chart below
There are several factors that have come together to tilt the supply-demand balance in Southwest Florida more decisively toward homebuyers since the Pandemic Housing Boom ended.
One key factor is that home prices in Southwest Florida rose too far, too faststretching housing fundamentals well beyond what local incomes could reasonably support in a region that also happened to have relatively lower building costs and ample entitled land. When the Pandemic Housing Booms domestic migration surgeparticularly the influx of retirees and near-retireesbegan to decelerate, the Southwest Florida market experienced an even bigger demand shock. With fewer in-migrants, Southwest Florida increasingly had to rely on local incomes to support pricesin a market that already had strained fundamentals.
At the same time, as market conditions shifted, elevated levels of new single-family andmultifamily supply came online across parts of Southwest Florida. Builders and landlords were forced to offer larger incentives to move product, which pulled some marginal demand away from the resale market and added another layer of cooling.
Put more simply: Pockets of Southwest Florida had overshot, and the market needed a period of mean reversion.
Click here to view an interactive of the chart below
There are other factors, of course.
Following the Surfside condo collapse in June 2021, which killed 98 people, Florida passed new structural safety rules, requiring more inspections and additional funds for repairs to be set aside by the end of 2024. That has led to Florida HOAs issuing sky-high special assessments and monthly HOA fee increases to cover these costs. This has had a greater impact on older coastal Florida condo buildings.
Looking ahead, one big question is whether home prices in markets like Punta Gorda and Cape Coral (and metro area Austin, TX) have fallen enough to recapture the attention of homebuyers, mom-and-pop single-family investors, and single-family acquisition capital?
Its worth noting that while many pockets of Southwest Florida still have inventory/months of supply levels above the national average, the pace of inventory growth has slowed significantly over the past yearand some areas in SWFL have even begun to see modest year-over-year declines in active listings.
Back in spring 2022, while working at Fortune, I suggested that pockets of Southwest Florida could be at greater risk of a home price correction. At the time, Moodys Analytics model believed Punta Gorda, for example, was overvalued by 57.8%.
The correction Punta Gorda has gone through since thencoupled with additional income gainsmeans the market is now only overvalued by 9.0%, according to Moodys model. In other words, the ongoing correction in Southwest Florida has significantly reduced downside risk going forward relative to where things stood a few years ago.
In the early 20th century, sociologist Max Weber noted that sweeping industrialization would transform how societies worked. As small, informal operations gave way to large, complex organizations with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, leaders would need to rely less on tradition and charisma, and more on organization and rationality.
He also foresaw that jobs would need to be broken down into specialized tasks and governed by a system of hierarchy, authority, and responsibility. This would require a more formal mode of organizationa bureaucracyin which roles and responsibilities were clearly defined. Power would be entrusted to institutions, not individuals.
Yet today, according to Gallup, our faith in institutions has been shattered. From political institutions to schools to big business, support has fallen precipitously, and now only the military and small business enjoy majority support. In essence, the process Weber described has been reversed: weve discarded institutions and embraced individuals. It is not serving us well.
How Institutions Shape Societies
In 1776, Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations. Today, regarded as the seminal work of capitalism, it wasnt seen that way at the time (the term did not exist in common usage). Rather, it was a powerful critique of mercantilism, the dominant economic model at the time, which sought to accumulate a countrys resources through promoting exports and minimizing imports.
Yet Smith pointed out that the wealth of a nation lies in what it produces, not what it can sock away in vaults. Moreover, he argued that when wealthy merchants have the opportunity, they tend to corrupt political systems in order to extract more wealth for themselves, and that free markets are the most effective way to allocate resources productively.
More recently, economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson build on Smiths ideas in Why Nations Fail. They explain why the fate of nations rests less on innate factors such as geography, culture, or climate and more on the quality and types of institutions they build: inclusive institutions or extractive institutions.
Inclusive institutions protect property rights broadly across society, establish fair competition, and reward innovation. Extractive institutions, on the other hand, concentrate wealth in the hands of a small elite who exploit the broader population. These elites control resources and use state power to enrich themselves at societys expense.
In other words, the wealth of nations is linked to the well-being of their people and this is largely a function of institutions. We depend on schools to educate, corporations to produce, governments to serve, and the media to inform. The health of a society is inextricably tied up in the health of its institutions.
Institution Building And Institutional Capture
Great leaders are remembered for the institutions they create. Napoleon is remembered for his civic code as much as for his military victories. Franklin Roosevelt will always be associated with the New Deal and Lyndon Johnson with the Great Society. We recognize great industrialists like Walt Disney not just for their individual deeds, but for the organizations they left behind.
Autocrats understand that their power is directly a function of their ability to control or influence institutions. Many of these, of course, are political institutions, such as ministries, parliaments, and courts. Many others, such as corporations, religious organizations, educational institutions, and the media, are not.
Thats why when Vladimir Putin assumed the presidency in Russia, he moved quickly to consolidate private media under Gazprom, install his own oligarchs and cultivate a close partnership with the Orthodox Church. Power is never monolithic, but distributed across institutions. To control a society, you need to control its institutions.
Pro-democracy activists often employ a similar strategy. They target institutions that are important to the regime. For example, the Serbian activist group Otpor targeted the police with an elaborate strategy that both hampered their efforts and gradually recruited them to join the cause. When major protests broke out after an attempt to steal an election, the key security forces defected and joined the protestors.
As Dostoevsky explained in The Grand Inquisitor, there will always be a conflict between churches and their messiahs. If people truly love the messiah, they wont need priests to provide mystery and authority. They would be free to pursue truth for themselves.
The Erosion of Institutional Authority
In his first inaugural address, Ronald Reagan declared, Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem, and vowed to unleash the private sector. What followed was not a renaissance of institutional strength, but a steady erosion of it. His deregulation led to the Savings and Loan crisis. Then came the dot-com bubble and crash, two long and destructive wars, the Great Financial Crisis, and the Covid pandemic.
Each time there was a villain to execrate: Big Business, Wall Street, Neocons, the Military-Industrial Complex, Big Banks, Big Pharma, the media, and of course, nameless government bureaucrats (sometimes also known as public servants). As the Gallup dat clearly shows, we no longer trust our institutions.
It is, in a strange sort of way, like The Grand Inquisitor in reverse. With no more churches to worship, weve gone in search of messiahs: demagogues, tech billionaires, podcast hosts, and many others. Were not craving altars. We seek parasocial relationships, hoping that our personal saviors will free us from institutional authority.
The difference today is that we are often interacting with institutions without even knowing it. As the Filipino activist Maria Ressa has long documented, nation states are fighting an active information war, seeding our conversations on social media with divisive messaging, then amplifying the response with massive bot farms. Those tech oligarchs and podcast hosts arent just passive observers, but often actively pursuing an agenda for their own benefit.
What were left with is the worst of both worlds: less freedom and less prosperity.
The End Of History All Over Again
In the 1990s, Western-style liberal democracy was triumphant. The Berlin Wall had fallen and the Cold War had been won. Teams of diplomats and consultants rushed to spread the Washington Consensus, an agreed-upon set of reforms that poor countries were pressured to undertake by their richer brethren.
Francis Fukuyama noted at the time that we had reached an endpoint in history, when one model had achieved dominance over all others. Yet even as he laid out the rational case, he invoked the ancient Greek concept of thymos, or spiritedness, to warn that even at the end of history, some would insist on going their own way, no matter the consequences.
The truth is that every revolution inspires its own counterrevolution and the pendulum will continue to swing until there can be some agreement about shared values and how to move forward. Today, we can see the consequences. Populists arent so much anti-elite as they are anti-institution, and todays media environment rewards those who attack them. The result is a world that feels far more divided and dangerous than it did even during the Cold War.
Our mistake was that we were far too triumphant about a unipolar world to recognize that we needed to redesign our institutions to adapt to a new era. We are still largely living in a society governed by postwar institutions designed for how the world was nearly 80 years agono Internet, no cheap air travel, global GDP roughly five percent of what it is today.
Today, much like after World War II and in 1989, we are in the midst of a fundamental realignment. To build a different future, we need to rethink our institutionswhat values we want to embed in them and what our relationship to them should be. How should schools educate? Corporations produce? Governments serve? And the media inform?
We dont need saviors or messiahs. We need to redesign and rebuild institutions that can serve and sustain us for the 21st century.
Over the past two decades, the concept of mindfulness has become hugely popular around the world. An increasingly ubiquitous part of society, its taught everywhere from workplaces and schools to sports programs and the military.
On social media, television, and wellness apps, mindfulness is often shown as one simple thingstaying calm and paying attention to the moment.
Large companies like Google use mindfulness programs to help employees stay focused and less stressed. Hospitals use it to help people manage pain and improve mental health. Millions of people now use mindfulness apps that promise everything from lowering stress to sleeping better.
But as a professor of religious studies who has spent years examining how mindfulness is defined and practiced across different traditions and historical periods, Ive noticed a surprising problem beneath the current surge of enthusiasm: Scientists, clinicians, and educators still dont agree on what mindfulness actually isor how to measure it.
Because different researchers measure different things under the label mindfulness, two studies can give very different pictures of what the practice actually does. For someone choosing a meditation app or program based on research findings, this matters.
The study youre relying on may be testing a skill like attention, emotional calm, or self-kindness that isnt the one youre hoping to develop. This makes it harder to compare results and can leave people unsure about which approach will genuinely help them in daily life.
From ancient traditions to modern science
Mindfulness has deep roots in Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Sikh, and other Asian contemplative lineages. The Buddhist Satipatthana Sutta: The Foundations of Mindfulness emphasizes moment-to-moment observation of body and mind.
The Hindu concept of dhyna, or contemplation, cultivates steady focus on the breath or a mantra; Jain samayika, or practice of equanimity, develops calm balance toward all beings; and Sikh simran, or continuous remembrance, dissolves self-centered thought into a deeper awareness of the underlying reality in each moment.
In the late 20th century, teachers and clinicians began adapting these techniques for secular settings, most notably through mindfulness-based stress reduction and other therapeutic programs. Since then, mindfulness has migrated into psychology, medicine, education, and even corporate wellness.
It has become a widely usedthough often differently definedtool across scientific and professional fields.
Why scientists disagree about mindfulness
In discussing the modern application of mindfulness in fields like psychology, the definitional challenge is front and center. Indeed, different researchers focus on different things and then design their tests around those ideas.
Some scientists see mindfulness mainly in terms of emphasizing attention and paying close attention to whats happening right now.
Other researchers define the concept in terms of emotional management and staying calm when things get stressful.
Another cohort of mindfulness studies emphasizes self-compassion, meaning being kind to yourself when you make mistakes.
And still others focus on moral awareness, the idea that mindfulness should help people make wiser, more ethical choices.
These differences become obvious when you look at the tests researchers use to measure mindfulness. The Mindful Attention Awareness Scale, or MAAS, asks about how well someone stays focused on the present moment. The Freiburg Mindfulness InventoryFMIasks whether a person can notice thoughts and feelings as they come and accept them without judgment. The Comprehensive Inventory of Mindfulness ExperiencesCHIMEadds something most other tests leave out: questions about ethical awareness and making wise, moral choices.
As a result, comparative research can be tricky, and it can also be confusing for people who want to be more mindful but arent sure which path to take. Different programs may rely on different definitions of mindfulness, so the skills they teach and the benefits they promise can vary a lot.
This means that someone choosing a mindfulness course or app might end up learning something very different from what they expected unless they understand how that particular program defines and measures mindfulness.
Why different scales measure different things
John Dunne, a Buddhist philosophy scholar at the University of WisconsinMadison, offers a helpful explanation if youve ever wondered why everyone seems to talk about mindfulness in a different way. Dunne says mindfulness isnt one single thing, but a family of related practices shaped by different traditions, purposes, and cultural backgrounds.
This explains why scientists and people trying to be mindful often end up talking past each other. If one study measures attention and another measures compassion, their results wont line up. And if youre trying to practice mindfulness, it matters whether youre following a path that focuses on calming your mind, being kind to yourself, or making ethically aware choices.
Why this matters
Because mindfulness isnt just one thing, that affects how its studied, practiced and taught. Thats important both at the institutional and individual level.
Whether for places like schools and health care, a mindfulness program designed to reduce stress will look very different from one that teaches compassion or ethical awareness.
Without clarity, teachers, doctors, and counselors may not know which approach works best for their goals. The same rough idea applies in business for organizational effectiveness and stress management.
Despite the disagreements, research does show that different forms of mindfulness can produce different kinds of benefits. Practices that sharpen attention to the moment are associated with improved focus and workplace performance.
Approaches oriented towards acceptance tend to help people better manage stress, anxiety, and chronic pain. A focus on compassion-based methods can support emotional resilience. Programs that emphasize ethical awareness may promote more thoughtful, prosocial behavior.
These varied outcomes help explain why researchers continue to debate which definition of mindfulness should guide scientific study.
For anyone practicing minfulness as an individual, this is a reminder to choose practices that fit your needs.
Ronald S. Green is a professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Coastal Carolina University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The goal is to become disgustingly educated, dozens of videos have proclaimed across social media over the new year.
On platforms like TikTok and Instagram, instead of sharing clothing hauls or skincare routines, creators are sharing their book stacks or media diets promising to make their viewers disgustingly educated in a matter of minutes. For further optimization potential, take note of these brain hacks to improve memory (so that your time cracking open Platos Republic wont go to waste).
While this trend that champions being erudite is marketed as an antidote to braintrot content, its origins on the internet date back as far back as 2022: I have two aspirations in life: to be beautiful and to be disgustingly overeducated, a viral X post read.
Since then, subreddits like r/booksuggestions and r/selfimprovement started to fill with questions and answers on different ways to become disgustingly educatedfrom reading the classics to consuming video summaries of various topics. (Maybe even just consuming video summaries of the classics.)
The trend has since found its way to TikTok, where it mirrors other self-improvement trends that crop up on the platform like clockwork every couple months. Last year, it was the curriculum trend, in which creators came up with monthly curricula based on new skills they want to learn, creative projects they want to tackle, and books on subjects they want to focus on for the month. After all, self-development is one of social medias favorite subjects.
In an era where many are outsourcing their brains to artificial intelligence, its encouraging, of course, to see people embrace a trend that reclaims curiosity and engages with learning just for fun. Especially since its widely documented that social media does have a real deleterious impact on our memory, focus, and attention spans, which are all key tools in the pursuit of becoming disgustingly educated.
Still, scratch beneath the surface, and the pursuit of education for educations sakeand the pursuit of education to appear educated to othersare two very different things.
As Substack becomes the new social media platform in vogue, and intellectualism becomes another aesthetic to be sold, any trend that hopes to hook you with promises of lower screen time, while simultaneously keeping you on the algorithmic hamster wheel, should be taken with a pinch of salt.
In many ways, the disgustingly educated trend is yet another example of the intelligence Olympics online. But what is the internet, if not a bunch of people on their soap boxes, lecturing others on topics they are underqualified to speak on?
And with America sliding towards anti-intellectualism, as the current administration wages war on the arts, science, and the nature of truth, pseudointellectualism is the lesser evil here.
If the most insufferable person you know has taken it upon themselves to become disgustingly educated in 2026 . . . honestly, more power to them.
Biographies of exceptional achievers tend to explain their success through personality traits, highlighting the killer psychological weapons that made them great. So, Steve Jobss abrasiveness is reframed as visionary perfectionism, Elon Musks impulsivity as bold risk-taking, and Jeff Bezoss relentlessness as uncompromising customer obsession. The same retrospective alchemy applies to women: Oprah Winfreys emotional intensity becomes radical empathy and authenticity; Indra Nooyis discipline and conscientiousness are recast as values-driven, long-term strategic leadership; and Diane Hendrickss toughness and impatience with incompetence are celebrated as decisive execution and operational rigor. In every case, traits that might once have seemed problematic are retrofitted into virtues once success makes the story worth telling.
The reality, as always, is a lot more nuanced than our limited patience and attention span appears to tolerate these days, namely all human traits or behavioral patterns can be both good and bad depending on the context, level, or outcome examined. So, for instance, confidence is generally good but when its decoupled from actual competence or extremely high, it may impede learning, make people look foolish and arrogant, and lead to significant underestimation of risks, delusional grandiosity, and reality distortion. To add yet another caveat: this is more likely in certain cultures (collectivistic, self-critical, humble) than others (individualistic, optimistic, and arrogant).
{"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-16X9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-1x1-2.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic","dek":"Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of organizational psychology at UCL and Columbia University, and the co-founder of DeeperSignals. He has authored 15 books and over 250 scientific articles on the psychology of talent, leadership, AI, and entrepreneurship. ","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/drtomas.com\/intro\/","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91424798,"imageMobileId":91424800,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
All things in moderation
This is why Aristotle wisely argued (as did Confucius before him) that virtue lies in moderation: the sweet midpoint between two equally problematic extremes. Courage, for example, sits between cowardice and recklessness; generosity between stinginess and wastefulness; ambition between apathy and obsession. Modern science quietly (because few people seem to listen or be interested in grasping this) agrees with him: too little of a good thing leaves potential unrealized, but too much turns strength into liability.
One of the traits that illustrates this nicely is perfectionism, which evokes both positives and negatives in the general publicso much so, that its often suggested as a universal answer to the dreaded (and not very useful) whats your biggest weakness job interview question. At low levels, perfectionism may reflect carelessness or disengagement. At moderate levels, it can signal high standards, diligence, and pride in ones work. But once it crosses a certain threshold, perfectionism stops being about excellence and becomes about fear: fear of mistakes, fear of judgment, fear of falling short. At that point, it no longer improves performance. Instead, it fuels anxiety, indecision, micromanagement, burnout, and strained relationships.
The challenge for organizations is that perfectionism often looks like commitment, especially in cultures that reward overwork, self-criticism, and constant busyness. But the real leadership task is not to eliminate high standards, but to prevent standards from hardening into self-punishment or control over others. Thus, as with confidence, ambition, or drive, the goal is not more or less, but enough (or the right amount), and knowing when enough has tipped into too much.
A new approach
In line, a new academic review synthesizes decades of research into perfectionism, defined as a stable tendency to set excessively high standards for oneself or others, combined with overly critical self-evaluation and a chronic concern with mistakes, evaluation, and failure. This research distinguishes between striving for excellence and being driven by fear of imperfection; a distinction that helps explain why perfectionism so often undermines well-being and collaboration while delivering only fragile or short-lived performance gains.
More specifically, the review highlights both the pros and cons of being a perfectionist, evaluating its broad impact on individuals, teams, leadership, and organizations.
Three pros (when its the right kind)
Higher engagement and goal attainment (under narrow conditions)Perfectionistic strivings (high personal standards driven internally) are associated with greater work engagement, persistence, goal achievement, and satisfaction, especially in structured, predictable roles where quality and precision matter. This can translate into diligence and follow-through rather than brilliance.
Attention to detail and decision thoroughness in leadersLeaders high in self-oriented perfectionism tend to pay closer attention to detail and, in some contexts, make more comprehensive strategic decisions. In relatively stable environments, this has been linked to better decision quality and organizational resilience.
Short-term performance signaling and credibilityPerfectionism can function as a reputational signal, conveying conscientiousness, reliability, and seriousness, particularly early in careers or in performance-pressured environments. This may support initial career progression, even if the advantages fade over time.
Three cons (and these are generally more robust)
Worse well-being with little performance payoffAcross studies and meta-analyses, perfectionism shows weak or no association with job performance, but moderate to strong associations with burnout, stress, anxiety, depression, sleep disturbance, and poor recovery. In short, it reliably depletes people without reliably improving output.
Workahoism, rumination, and inability to switch offPerfectionistic concerns are consistently linked to overcommitment, presenteeism, procrastination, and difficulty psychologically detaching from work. Even breaks become cognitively exhausting because perfectionists continue to ruminate about mistakes and unfinished tasks.
Toxic leadership and downstream harm to othersWhen perfectionism shows up as socially prescribed or other-oriented (imposing flawlessness on others), leaders are more likely to micromanage, punish mistakes, undermine psychological safety, trigger deviance, and reduce creativity and well-being in followers. This is one of the strongest and most consistent findings in the leadership section of the review.
Try excellencism instead
In short, perfectionism is not a performance or self-presentational strategy, but a personality trait linked to a fragile motivational style that works under limited conditions; at worst, it is a scalable mechanism for burnout, toxic leadership, and self-sabotage. The authors explicitly point to excellencism (very high but flexible standards without fear of failure) as a healthier and more sustainable alternative.
For leaders and organizations, the implication is clear: the goal is not to hire, promote, or reward perfectionists, but to cultivate excellence without fear. High standards are essential, but only when paired with flexibility, learning, and psychological safety. In an economy that increasingly rewards speed, adaptation, and collaboration over flawless execution, the most effective leaders are not those who never err, but those who know when precision matters and when good enough is not a compromise but a strategic choice. Perfectionism mistakes control for quality. Excellence optimizes for impact.
{"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-16X9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-1x1-2.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic","dek":"Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of organizational psychology at UCL and Columbia University, and the co-founder of DeeperSignals. He has authored 15 books and over 250 scientific articles on the psychology of talent, leadership, AI, and entrepreneurship. ","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/drtomas.com\/intro\/","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91424798,"imageMobileId":91424800,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
