Assorted Links Wednesday

COVID’s deadly trade-offs, by the numbers: How each state has fared in the pandemic.  The State Pandemic Scorecard shows how state decisions impacted lives, jobs, education and social well-being.

The inflation-fighting bill you don’t know about:

An overwhelmingly bipartisan effort would finally crack down on the ocean shipping cartel. To find the root causes, you have to go back to how ocean carriers have used their concentrated power to exploit anyone who wants to send cargo anywhere. As Matt Stoller laid out last month, for most of the 20th century the shipping industry was regulated as a public utility, which of course it is, as getting goods to markets swiftly benefits us all.

What could possibly go wrong? These are the biggest economic risks for 2022: Economists have struggled to see ahead in the pandemic. They’re upbeat about next year, but could easily get blindsided again.

Corner stores are the new darlings of the global tech industry: A billion-dollar effort to turn these unassuming shops into mini–tech hubs is only just beginning.

Will outdoor terraces and chefs lure you back to the office? These buildings hope so: Developers and big tenants in the largest cities are betting that expensive property perks will convince reluctant employees to work under the same roof again.

Future of Work: Requiring workers to return to the office is a ‘doomed approach’ Slack’s CEO Stewart Butterfield says the future of work is being dictated by workers who want more flexibility and better tech tools.

The scramble for EV battery metals is just beginning: Global miners have an opportunity to sell ESG-friendly natural resources to the automotive and energy industries, but it will require investment.

Forget about gold: Study says investing in Lego sets will earn you more money.

Everything’s getting more expensive: Here’s what you can blame it on.  The supply chain is still screwed up, Energy prices spiked in November and People are still spending their stimulus money.

The housing boom could last for a decade:

Housing is booming. Just take a look at Century Communities ’ development in Tumwater, Wash., where more than 140 homes, at prices as high as $500,000, have been sold this year. Tumwater is viewed as a suburb of Seattle—even at 60 miles away. It’s a scene that has been repeated over the past two years in markets all across the country. Are we nearing a peak? No, say the housing bulls on Wall Street, who argue that this is an upturn that could last for a decade. Millions of millennials are now at a point in their lives when they are seeking single-family homes in the suburbs and exurbs. They are entering a market still chastened by an unprecedented collapse in housing more than a decade ago.

The office is an efficiency trap: As office design evolved over the last century, one feature remained: the goal of filling your life with even more work.