Regulations have cleaned up cars, power plants and factories, leaving cleaner air while economies have grown. Cavan Images/Josh Campbell via Getty ImagesRichard E. Peltier, UMass Amherst The Trump administration is “reconsidering” more than 30 air pollution regulations, and it offered industries a brief window to apply for exemptions that would allow them to stop following many air quality regulations immediately if approved. All of the exemptions involve rules finalized in 2024 and include regulations for hazardous air pollutants that cause asthma, heart disease and cancer. The results – if regulations are ultimately rolled back and if those rollbacks and any exemptions stand up to court challenges – could impact air quality across the United States. “Reconsideration” is a term used to review or modify a government regulation. While Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin provided few details, the breadth of the regulations being reconsidered affects all Americans. They include rules that set limits for pollutants that can harm human health, such as ozone, particulate matter and volatile organic carbon. Zeldin wrote on March 12, 2025, that his deregulation moves would “roll back trillions in regulatory costs and hidden “taxes” on U.S. families.“ What Zeldin didn’t say is that the economic and health benefits from decades of federal clean air regulations have far outweighed their costs. Some estimates suggest every $1 spent meeting clean air rules has returned $10 in health and economic benefits.
How far America has come, because of regulations
In the early 1970s, thick smog blanketed American cities and acid rain stripped forests bare from the Northeast to the Midwest. Air pollution wasn’t just a nuisance – it was a public health emergency. But in the decades since, the United States has engineered one of the most successful environmental turnarounds in history. Thanks to stronger air quality regulations, pollution levels have plummeted, preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths annually. And despite early predictions that these regulations would cripple the economy, the opposite has proven true: The U.S. economy more than doubled in size while pollution fell, showing that clean air and economic growth can – and do – go hand in hand. The numbers are eye-popping. An Environmental Protection Agency analysis of the first 20 years of the Clean Air Act, from 1970 to 1990, found the economic benefits of the regulations were about 42 times greater than the costs. The EPA later estimated that the cost of air quality regulations in the U.S. would be about US$65 billion in 2020, and the benefits, primarily in improved health and increased worker productivity, would be around $2 trillion. Other studies have found similar benefits. That’s a return of more than 30 to 1, making clean air one of the best investments the country has ever made.
Science-based regulations even the playing field
The turning point came with the passage of the Clean Air Act of 1970, which put in place strict rules on pollutants from industry, vehicles and power plants. These rules targeted key culprits: lead, ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter – substances that contribute to asthma, heart disease and premature deaths. An example was the removal of lead, which can harm the brain and other organs, from gasoline. That single change resulted in far lower levels of lead in people’s blood, including a 70% drop in U.S. children’s blood-lead levels.Air Quality regulations lowered the amount of lead being used in gasoline, which also resulted in rapidly declining lead concentrations in the average American between 1976-1980. This shows us how effective regulations can be at reducing public health risks to people.USEPA/Environmental Criteria and Assessment Office (1986) The results have been extraordinary. Since 1980, emissions of six major air pollutants have dropped by 78%, even as the U.S. economy has more than doubled in size. Cities that were once notorious for their thick, choking smog – such as Los Angeles, Houston and Pittsburgh – now see far cleaner air, while lakes and forests devastated by acid rain in the Northeast have rebounded.Comparison of growth areas and declining emissions, 1970-2023.EPA And most importantly, lives have been saved. The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to periodically estimate the costs and benefits of air quality regulations. In the most recent estimate, released in 2011, the EPA projected that air quality improvements would prevent over 230,000 premature deaths in 2020. That means fewer heart attacks, fewer emergency room visits for asthma, and more years of healthy life for millions of Americans.
The economic payoff
Critics of air quality regulations have long argued that the regulations are too expensive for businesses and consumers. But the data tells a very different story. EPA studies have confirmed that clean air regulations improve air quality over time. Other studies have shown that the health benefits greatly outweigh the costs. That pays off for the economy. Fewer illnesses mean lower health care costs, and healthier workers mean higher productivity and fewer missed workdays. The EPA estimated that for every $1 spent on meeting air quality regulations, the United States received $9 in benefits. A separate study by the non-partisan National Bureau of Economic Research in 2024 estimated that each $1 spent on air pollution regulation brought the U.S. economy at least $10 in benefits. And when considering the long-term impact on human health and climate stability, the return is even greater.Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles in 1984: Smog was a common problem in the 1970s and 1980s.Ian Dryden/Los Angeles Times/UCLA Archive/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
The next chapter in clean air
The air Americans breathe today is cleaner, much healthier and safer than it was just a few decades ago. Yet, despite this remarkable progress, air pollution remains a challenge in some parts of the country. Some urban neighborhoods remain stubbornly polluted because of vehicle emissions and industrial pollution. While urban pollution has declined, wildfire smoke has become a larger influence on poor air quality across the nation. That means the EPA still has work to do. If the agency works with environmental scientists, public health experts and industry, and fosters honest scientific consensus, it can continue to protect public health while supporting economic growth. At the same time, it can ensure that future generations enjoy the same clean air and prosperity that regulations have made possible. By instead considering retracting clean air rules, the EPA is calling into question the expertise of countless scientists who have provided their objective advice over decades to set standards designed to protect human lives. In many cases, industries won’t want to go back to past polluting ways, but lifting clean air rules means future investment might not be as protective. And it increases future regulatory uncertainty for industries. The past offers a clear lesson: Investing in clean air is not just good for public health – it’s good for the economy. With a track record of saving lives and delivering trillion-dollar benefits, air quality regulations remain one of the greatest policy success stories in American history. This article, originally published March 12, 2025, has been updated with the administration’s offer of exemptions for industries.Richard E. Peltier, Professor of Environmental Health Sciences, UMass Amherst This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Doing things alone is on the rise, and businesses should pay more attention to that – even on Valentine’s Day
Peter McGraw discusses the increasing prevalence of solo living and its implications for businesses, particularly during Valentine’s Day, which typically emphasizes couples. Despite many individuals enjoying activities alone, the marketplace often neglects this growing demographic. Recognizing and catering to solo consumers can yield significant opportunities for businesses.
Doing things alone is on the rise, and businesses should pay more attention to that – even on Valentine’s Day
Every February, Valentine’s Day amplifies what single people already know – that public life is built for two. Restaurants roll out prix fixe menus for couples. Hotels promote “romantic getaway” packages designed for double occupancy. A table for one still invites the question, “Just you?”
Yet there’s irony that’s hard to miss. While Valentine’s Day doubles down on togetherness, more adults are living – and moving through the world – alone.
As a behavioral economist, I study what I call the “solo economy.” A growing share of economic life today is organized around people who live, spend and make decisions on their own.
1-person households aren’t outliers
Half of U.S. adults are unmarried, and one-person households are now the nation’s most common living arrangement. This isn’t a temporary phase confined to young adults waiting to settle down. It includes never-married professionals, divorced empty nesters, widows and widowers, and people who simply prefer to live independently.
It’s a slow-moving demographic shift away from long-term partnership as the dominant adult life path, but a consequential one – reshaping everything from housing and travel to social policy and commerce. One of its clearest expressions is the number of people doing things alone in public.
The rise of public solo life
It would be one thing if the economy were built for two and solos stayed home. But they are going to museums, traveling and, of course, dining alone in restaurants. To assess this behavior, I surveyed single and married Americans about their participation in 25 activities that occur in public – from shopping and dining to attending movies and concerts.
The pattern was striking. Overall, singles were much more likely to do things alone in public than their married counterparts – 56% versus 39%. The difference held across every activity I measured.
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The biggest gaps weren’t for practical tasks like grocery shopping. They were for leisure experiences like going to the movies, dining out and attending concerts. In fact, seven of the 10 largest differences involved retail or entertainment settings – the very places most designed and marketed with couples in mind.
Why hasn’t the business world paid more attention to the singles market?
The answer lies in psychology. Some reluctance stems from the belief that other customers will perceive solo diners or moviegoers as sad or lonely. These fears are amplified by what psychologists call the spotlight effect – our tendency to overestimate how much other people notice and judge us.
Findings by consumer researchers Rebecca Hamilton and Rebecca Ratner can help explain why this bias is so persistent. Across studies conducted in the U.S., China and India, people consistently predicted they would enjoy activities less if they did them alone – even though they’d be seeing the same movie or visiting the same museum.
But when people actually went alone, they enjoyed the experience just as much as those who went with others. The fear, it turns out, is largely imagined.
Another problem is that solo consumers don’t always feel welcome.
While behavior is changing, markets have been slower to adapt. Most businesses still design experiences around pairs, families or groups. Consider restaurants that seat solo diners at the bar or near the kitchen or bathrooms, or ticketing systems that require purchasing in pairs. The result is friction for solo consumers – and missed opportunities for companies.
Valentine’s Day promotions make that mismatch especially visible. In 2024, IKEA Canada offered a Valentine’s Day dining experience in its showroom priced and designed for two – and only two – people.
After backlash, the company revised the promotion the following year to be more inclusive: “Bring a loved one, a good friend, or the whole family.” It was a small change, but a revealing one.
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Why solo shoppers have outsized influence
Solo consumers represent a large, growing and profitable market segment, yet they’re navigating a marketplace that still treats them as edge cases.
Another study that Ratner conducted with business school professor Yuechen Wu adds an important twist.
Analyses of more than 14,000 Tripadvisor reviews of restaurants and museums show that reviews written by solo diners and solo museumgoers are rated as more helpful – and receive more positive feedback – than reviews written by people who went with others.
Follow-up experiments showed that when otherwise identical recommendations differed only in whether the reviewer experienced the activity alone or with others, respondents were more likely to rely on the solo reviewer when deciding what to do.
Why? Observers infer that people who go alone are more genuinely interested in the experience and more focused on its quality, rather than simply going along with someone else’s preferences.
Being alone, it turns out, functions as a credibility cue. For businesses, that means solo customers aren’t just customers − they can be very influential customers.
Designing for 1 in Asia
Asian businesses are far ahead of the West in recognizing the buying power of people doing things alone.
In South Korea, for example, “honjok,” which translates as “alone tribe,” culture has fueled products and services designed explicitly for solo living. Think single-serve meals at convenience stores, one-person karaoke booths, and restaurants that promise judgment-free service.
Similarly, in Japan, the ramen chain Ichiran built its brand around the idea of “flavor concentration,” which encourages diners to eat alone in private booths.
Officially, the design is meant to eliminate distractions and heighten the dining experience. In practice, it does something more important: It legitimizes solo dining.
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Progress in the US
In the U.S., Disney theme parks and some of the company’s competitors have long used single-rider lines that reward solo visitors with shorter waits, turning independence into operational efficiency – a logic ski resorts adopted decades ago to fill empty seats on chairlifts.
And solo tourism has become a major trend. Demand is growing, and tour operators are adapting offerings to meet it, including specialized tours for singles and adjustments to historically prohibitive pricing practices.
Industry analysis also shows the global solo travel market expanding rapidly, with tailored products and experiences emerging worldwide. Some companies now offer dedicated solo travel collections with no single supplement − the extra fee traditionally charged to travelers who occupy a room alone − and tours designed specifically for independent travelers.
Doing things alone is an opportunity
Valentine’s Day offers a chance to see how outdated many widespread assumptions still are.
It treats solitude as a problem to be solved, even as people’s behavior tells a different story. Yet businesses, policymakers and U.S. culture more broadly have not designed a world that fully acknowledges that about 42% of American adults are single.
In the meantime, singles aren’t waiting at home. They’re out there – at the movies, on planes, in museums and restaurants – moving through public life on their own terms.
Valentine’s Day may always be built for two. But the economy won’t be.
Chinamaxxing: The Viral Trend Turning Geopolitics Into Aesthetic Fantasy
A viral social media trend called “Chinamaxxing” is turning geopolitics into aesthetic comparison—revealing more about generational frustration than China itself.
Clean subways gliding into spotless stations. Neon skylines glowing at night. Clips of high-speed trains, cashless stores, orderly crowds. Overlaid text reads something like, “Meanwhile in China…” or “They figured it out.”
This is “Chinamaxxing,” a loosely defined but increasingly visible social media trend where mostly young users frame China as a model of efficiency, stability, and modernity—often in contrast to life in the West.
What makes the trend notable isn’t just its subject, but its tone. Chinamaxxing is rarely explicit political advocacy. It’s not a manifesto. It’s a mood. Aesthetic admiration blended with subtle critique, delivered through short, visually compelling clips that invite comparison without context.
And that’s precisely why it has sparked debate.
What Is “Chinamaxxing,” Really?
Despite the provocative name, Chinamaxxing isn’t a coordinated movement or ideology. It’s better understood as an algorithm-driven pattern—a recurring style of content that rewards certain visuals and emotional cues.
Most Chinamaxxing content emphasizes:
Infrastructure and urban design
Technology embedded in daily life
Perceived order and efficiency
Implicit contrast with Western dysfunction
What it typically omits:
Political repression and censorship
State surveillance
Limits on speech and dissent
The lived diversity of Chinese experiences
The result is a highly curated portrayal—less about China as a nation, and more about what viewers want to believe is possible somewhere else.
Why It’s Gaining Traction Now
The rise of Chinamaxxing says as much about the West as it does about China.
For many young users, particularly Gen Z, the backdrop is familiar: rising housing costs, student debt, healthcare anxiety, political polarization, and a growing sense that institutions no longer function as promised.
In that environment, visually persuasive content showing order and functionality carries emotional weight. It offers relief from chaos—real or perceived.
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Social platforms amplify this effect. Short-form video rewards clarity, contrast, and immediacy. A clean subway platform communicates more in five seconds than a policy analysis ever could. Nuance does not trend well. Aesthetics do.
The Social and Political Criticism
Critics argue Chinamaxxing crosses a line from curiosity into distortion.
By focusing exclusively on infrastructure and surface-level efficiency, the trend risks:
Normalizing authoritarian governance through lifestyle framing
Reducing political systems to consumer experiences
Ignoring the tradeoffs that make such systems possible
Supporters counter that Western media has long flattened China into a single negative narrative, and that admiration for specific aspects of another society is not the same as endorsing its government.
Both perspectives, however, miss something important.
What the Trend Actually Reveals
Chinamaxxing isn’t primarily about China. It’s about disillusionment.
It reflects a generation that:
Feels let down by existing systems
Engages politics emotionally rather than institutionally
Uses visual culture to express dissatisfaction indirectly
In this context, China becomes a projection surface—not because it is perfect, but because it appears functional.
That distinction matters.
Why This Matters
Chinamaxxing highlights how political understanding is evolving in the digital age. Governance is increasingly consumed not through debate or civic participation, but through comparison clips, memes, and aesthetics.
The risk isn’t admiration. It’s oversimplification.
When complex societies are reduced to visuals alone, public discourse loses depth. But when those visuals resonate, they also signal real unmet needs: stability, competence, and trust in institutions.
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Ignoring that signal would be a mistake.
The STM Daily News Perspective
Chinamaxxing is not an endorsement, a conspiracy, or a joke. It is a cultural artifact—one that reflects generational anxiety, algorithmic storytelling, and the widening gap between expectations and reality.
The question it raises isn’t whether China is better.
It’s why so many people feel their own systems are no longer working.
Stay tuned to STM Daily News for more stories exploring internet culture, social media trends, and how digital platforms shape public perception. We’ll be publishing in-depth pieces that break down the societal impact of viral phenomena like Chinamaxxing, the psychology behind online political trends, and the evolving language of Gen Z culture.
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Rod: A creative force, blending words, images, and flavors. Blogger, writer, filmmaker, and photographer. Cooking enthusiast with a sci-fi vision. Passionate about his upcoming series and dedicated to TNC Network. Partnered with Rebecca Washington for a shared journey of love and art. View all posts
What if universal rental assistance were implemented to deal with the housing crisis?
A significant number of American families facing unaffordable rents are living in motels. While many believe a housing shortage causes high rents, experts suggest that expanding rental assistance is more effective. Making subsidies available to all eligible low-income households could tackle this affordability crisis significantly.
Rents and home prices would fall, the argument goes, if rules such as minimum lot- and house-size requirements and prohibitions against apartment complexes were relaxed. This, in turn, would make it easier to build more housing.
As experts on housingpolicy, we’re concerned about housing affordability. But our research shows little connection between a shortfall of housing and rental affordability problems. Even a massive infusion of new housing would not shrink housing costs enough to solve the crisis, as rents would likely remain out of reach for many households.
However, there are already subsidies in place that ensure that some renters in the U.S. pay no more than 30% of their income on housing costs. The most effective solution, in our view, is to make these subsidies much more widely available.
A financial sinkhole
Just how expensive are rents in the U.S.?
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a household that spends more than 30% of its income on housing is deemed to be cost-burdened. If it spends more than 50%, it’s considered severely burdened. In 2023, 54% of all renters spent more than 30% of their pretax income on housing. That’s up from 43% of renters in 1999. And 28% of all renters spent more than half their income on housing in 2023.
Renters with low incomes are especially unlikely to afford their housing: 81% of renters making less than $30,000 spent more than 30% of their income on housing, and 60% spent more than 50%.
Estimates of the nation’s housing shortage vary widely, reaching up to 20 million units, depending on analytic approach and the time period covered. Yet our research, which compares growth in the housing stock from 2000 to the present, finds no evidence of an overall shortage of housing units. Rather, we see a gap between the number of low-income households and the number of affordable housing units available to them; more affluent renters face no such shortage. This is true in the nation as a whole and in nearly all large and small metropolitan areas.
Would lower rents help? Certainly. But they wouldn’t fix everything.
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We ran a simulation to test an admittedly unlikely scenario: What if rents dropped 25% across the board? We found it would reduce the number of cost-burdened renters – but not by as much as you might think.
Even with the reduction, nearly one-third of all renters would still spend more than 30% of their income on housing. Moreover, reducing rents would help affluent renters much more than those with lower incomes – the households that face the most severe affordability challenges.
The proportion of cost-burdened renters earning more than $75,000 would fall from 16% to 4%, while the share of similarly burdened renters earning less than $15,000 would drop from 89% to just 80%. Even with a rent rollback of 25%, the majority of renters earning less than $30,000 would remain cost-burdened.
Vouchers offer more breathing room
Meanwhile, there’s a proven way of making housing more affordable: rental subsidies.
In 2024, the U.S. provided what are known as “deep” housing subsidies to about 5 million households, meaning that rent payments are capped at 30% of their income.
These subsidies take three forms: Housing Choice Vouchers that enable people to rent homes in the private market; public housing; and project-based rental assistance, in which the federal government subsidizes the rents for all or some of the units in properties under private and nonprofit ownership.
The number of households participating in these three programs has increased by less than 2% since 2014, and they constitute only 25% of all eligible households. Households earning less than 50% of their area’s median family income are eligible for rental assistance. But unlike Social Security, Medicare or food stamps, rental assistance is not an entitlement available to all who qualify. The number of recipients is limited by the amount of funding appropriated each year by Congress, and this funding has never been sufficient to meet the need.
By expanding rental assistance to all eligible low-income households, the government could make huge headway in solving the rental affordability crisis. The most obvious option would be to expand the existing Housing Choice Voucher program, also known as Section 8.
The program helps pay the rent up to a specified “payment standard” determined by each local public housing authority, which can set this standard at between 80% and 120% of the HUD-designated fair market rent. To be eligible for the program, units must also satisfy HUD’s physical quality standards.
Unfortunately, about 43% of voucher recipients are unable to use it. They are either unable to find an apartment that rents for less than the payment standard, meets the physical quality standard, or has a landlord willing to accept vouchers.
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Renters are more likely to find housing using vouchers in cities and states where it’s illegal for landlords to discriminate against voucher holders. Programs that provide housing counseling and landlord outreach and support have also improved outcomes for voucher recipients.
However, it might be more effective to forgo the voucher program altogether and simply give eligible households cash to cover their housing costs. The Philadelphia Housing Authority is currently testing out this approach.
The idea is that landlords would be less likely to reject applicants receiving government support if the bureaucratic hurdles were eliminated. The downside of this approach is that it would not prevent landlords from renting out deficient units that the voucher program would normally reject.
Homeowners get subsidies – why not renters?
Expanding rental assistance to all eligible low-income households would be costly.
The Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, estimates it would cost about $118 billion a year.
However, Congress has spent similar sums on housing subsidies before. But they involve tax breaks for homeowners, not low-income renters. Congress forgoes billions of dollars annually in tax revenue it would otherwise collect were it not for tax deductions, credits, exclusions and exemptions. These are known as tax expenditures. A tax not collected is equivalent to a subsidy payment.Only about 25% of eligiblge households receive rental assistance from the federal government. Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
For example, from 1998 through 2017 – prior to the tax changes enacted by the first Trump administration in 2017 – the federal government annually sacrificed $187 billion on average, after inflation, in revenue due to mortgage interest deductions, deductions for state and local taxes, and for the exemption of proceeds from the sale of one’s home from capital gains taxes. In fiscal year 2025, these tax expenditures totaled $95.4 billion.
Moreover, tax expenditures on behalf of homeowners flow mostly to higher-income households. In 2024, for example, over 70% of all mortgage-interest tax deductions went to homeowners earning at least $200,000.
Broadening the availability of rental subsidies would have other benefits. It would save federal, state and local governments billions of dollars in homeless services. Moreover, automatic provision of rental subsidies would reduce the need for additional subsidies to finance new affordable housing. Universal rental assistance, by guaranteeing sufficient rental income, would allow builders to more easily obtain loans to cover development costs.
Of course, sharply raising federal expenditures for low-income rental assistance flies in the face of the Trump administration’s priorities. Its budget proposal for the next fiscal year calls for a 44% cut of more than $27 billion in rental assistance and public housing.
On the other hand, if the government supported rental assistance in amounts commensurate with the tax benefits given to homeowners, it would go a long way toward resolving the rental housing affordability crisis.
