The economy is roaring and the boom cycle has gone on years longer than usual. So why would roughly two in five American adults struggle to come up with $400 in an emergency? Annie Lowrey in The Atlantic: The Great Affordability Crisis Breaking America. “This crisis involved not just what families earned but the other half of the ledger, too—how they spent their earnings. In one of the best decades the American economy has ever recorded, families were bled dry by landlords, hospital administrators, university bursars, and child-care centers. For millions, a roaring economy felt precarious or downright terrible.”

+ “Wedged between a dental office and a liquor store in a Pennsylvania strip mall, the place hardly looks like a cogwheel of international commerce. But that’s precisely what it is: part of a far-flung corporation that’s raking in hundreds of millions a year thanks in large part to hard-pressed people.” Family Builds $3.8 Billion Fortune, One Pint of Blood at a Time.