finance

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The Productivity Trap: Why Working Smarter Isn’t Always Working Less

A marketing manager I spoke with recently had just finished a two-hour task in thirty minutes, thanks to a new AI-driven content tool. She was proud — until her boss, seeing the speed, handed her two more projects “while she had time.”

That’s the productivity trap in action: efficiency gains that should free us end up filling the same hours — or more — with extra work.

Economists call this the “rebound effect,” and it’s been quietly shaping labor markets for over a century. The technologies that make us faster, more accurate, or more organized can paradoxically tighten the workload rather than loosen it.

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The Era of Cheap Debt is Over—Now What?

For more than a decade, the global economy ran on money so cheap it felt almost free. From the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis through the pandemic years, near-zero interest rates and central bank asset purchases fueled an unprecedented era of borrowing. Governments financed stimulus packages without immediate pain, corporations refinanced at bargain rates, and households locked in historically low mortgages.

That era is over. And the transition will be neither smooth nor evenly felt.

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