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Economy
Meet the $165 Billion 'Annoyance Economy' That Drives You Nuts—and Sucks Us Dry—All Year Long
"While seemingly minor, these little annoyances add up."
Feb 09, 2026
Corporate profits in the US have surged in recent decades, with subscription-based businesses reporting some of the biggest revenue growth as more Americans use streaming services and sign up for "subscribe and save" models in a quest for ease and convenience.
While promising consumers that subscribing to a service will save them money and time, subscription-based businesses have made canceling the services increasingly difficult, contributing to Americans spending 60% longer on the phone with customer service lines than they did two decades ago.
And although corporations hardly need the extra money, making cancellations more arduous for customers can boost their revenue by anywhere from 14% to over 200%, according to the think tank Groundwork Collaborative, which released a report Monday on what it calls "the annoyance economy."
The labyrinthine processes that millions of Americans face each year when they try to cancel subscription services is just one part of the annoyance economy, according to Groundwork, which detailed the seemingly endless time, money, and patience people spend "just trying to get basic things done"—as well as efforts by corporations and the Trump administration to make sure it stays that way.
While millions are struggling with the rising costs of groceries, healthcare, housing, childcare, and just about everything else, the report explains how—thanks to corporate greed and a White House intent on enabling it—Americans are also shelling out at least $165 billion per year in fees as well as lost time.
In addition to cancellation processes, the annoyance economy includes the $90 billion people across the US spend every year on junk fees when they buy concert tickets, make hotel reservations, and order food delivery; rental application fees that keep people from even attempting to move to new housing that could put them closer to work or school; and administrative healthcare tasks like obtaining coverage information and resolving questions about premiums and deductibles.
"While seemingly minor, these little annoyances add up," wrote Groundwork policy fellow Chad Maisel and Stanford University economist Neale Mahoney, the authors of the report, who cited a 2019 survey that found 1 in 4 respondents delayed getting healthcare or avoided it altogether specifically because of the administrative tasks they had to complete in order to get an appointment and make sure it was covered.
"All told, American workers collectively spend about $21.6-billion-worth of time each year dealing with healthcare administration, between calls, claims, explanations, and paperwork, according to a recent analysis."
Another new poll from Data for Progress found that nearly 80% of Americans reported "at least a little frustration" when coordinating their healthcare and filling out health insurance paperwork.
"All told, American workers collectively spend about $21.6-billion-worth of time each year dealing with healthcare administration, between calls, claims, explanations, and paperwork," reads the report, citing another recent analysis. "Polling confirms this: More than 1 in 3 Americans report dealing with health insurance headaches more than 20 times per year."
With frustration over health insurance companies' practices increasingly common, reads the report, "policymakers are missing important opportunities to take on a handful of egregious and particularly annoying practices."
Lawmakers could require insurance companies to make it easy for patients to fill out and submit claims online—instead of downloading, printing, and physically mailing claim forms with itemized receipts as Cigna requires patients to do.
Congress could also create a "healthcare sludge unit" to monitor and root out "needless friction throughout the healthcare experience."
Such a project could leverage tools "like 'blind shopper' experiments, public feedback lines, and direct engagement with industry to surface and fix barriers that waste patients’ time and erode trust."
The report also takes on the spam texts and calls that have become all-to-familiar to anyone with a cellphone.
"Text messaging, once reserved for conversation with friends and family, now resembles our email spam folders, dominated by unsolicited offers from companies, politicians, and fraudsters," wrote Maisel and Mahoney, who shared that on the day they wrote about spam in the report, "one of us received five spam calls, a text from 'Victoria' offering a $500-a-day job, and two breathless fundraising messages from political candidates we’ve never supported—or even heard of."
Those spam communications were some of the more than 130 million scam and illegal marketing calls Americans receive each day and the nearly 20 billion texts that were sent each month over the past year—leading "virtually all respondents" to Data for Progress' poll to report that the calls and texts are at least "a little frustrating" and 68% call them "very frustrating."
State and federal lawmakers could and should take action against spam calls and texts, said Maisel and Mahoney. Congress should modernize the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which was passed in 1991—well before companies began inundating Americans' inboxes with the newest robocalling and texting software.
"If a platform automatically dials from a stored list of numbers, it’s now exempt from the TCPA’s rules," reads the report. "The result: far more robocall and spam text operations can legally target people without their consent. Congress should update the definition of autodialer to include any callers and texters who automatically contact stored numbers, unless there’s real human involvement in sending each message."
Former President Joe Biden's Federal Communications Commission tried to close the "lead generator loophole,” which allows third-party marketers to collect people's contact information and sell it to dozens, sometimes hundreds, of businesses, but companies sued over the FCC's action and won in court.
President Donald Trump could issue an executive order directing federal agencies "to leverage all available resources and authorities to end robocalls and spam texts once and for all," said Maisel and Mahoney.
But the authors noted that the Trump administration's mass layoffs across the government would make enforcement more difficult.
"The Department of Justice also needs to prioritize enforcement against bad actors," they wrote. "While the FCC can levy fines for violations, it cannot pursue their collection without the DOJ. Of the eight robocalling forfeiture orders referred by the FCC, the DOJ has pursued only two for collection."
In the case of the hoops consumers are made to jump through in order to cancel subscriptions and services, the report emphasizes that the federal government has made significant inroads before to help the public.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) intervened in 2023 and stopped Toyota Motor Credit from continuing its practice of routing all consumer calls through a hotline "where representatives were instructed to keep promoting products until a consumer asked to cancel three times, at which point they were told cancellation was only possible by submitting a written request."
Under the Biden administration, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was lauded by consumer advocates for its click-to-cancel rule in 2024, requiring sellers to “make it as easy for consumers to cancel their enrollment as it was to sign up."
But Trump's FTC last year delayed implementation of the rule after industry groups said that "it would take a substantial amount of time to come into compliance.” A federal appeals court then effectively killed the rule altogether.
While the fees that gradually trickle out of Americans' bank accounts into the annoyance economy are often small individually, the report emphasizes that they add up—and the consequences of these business practices and the government's failure to stop them "extend beyond wasted time and money."
"When life is reduced to jumping through an endless series of hoops—just to fix a billing error, secure a refund, or cancel a subscription—it breeds cynicism and disengagement," reads the report. "If the government can remove even a few of those obstacles, we can show the American people that someone is paying attention and begin the long process of rebuilding public trust."
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Sweeping Coalition Backs AOC-Sanders Bill to Cap Credit Card Interest Rates at 10%
"Working families continue to struggle with unprecedented credit card debt and deserve to see Congress take legislative action to address this growing crisis."
Feb 06, 2026
As polling continues to show US consumers are pessimistic about an economy in which they face rising costs for everything from groceries to healthcare and housing under President Donald Trump, a "historic and diverse coalition" this week called on Congress to pass a bipartisan bill that would cap credit card interest rates at 10%.
The current average credit card interest rate is nearly double that, at 19.61%, according to Bankrate. It was even higher, over 20%, when US Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced the bill a year ago. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) lead the legislation in the House of Representatives.
Their push came in response to an unfulfilled pledge from Trump, whose campaign said in September 2024 that he "has promised to cap interest rates at 10% to provide temporary and immediate relief for hardworking Americans who are struggling to make ends meet and cannot afford hefty interest payments on top of the skyrocketing costs of mortgages, rent, groceries, and gas."
The Thursday letter to congressional leaders—signed by dozens of civil rights, consumer protection, labor, veteran, and other groups—points to that promise, as well as Trump's January social media post calling for a one-year 10% cap. It also notes that "in response to widespread Wall Street opposition to the president's recent announcement, Trump officials have begun to backtrack—instead promoting 'Trump Cards' that banks could voluntarily offer with temporary 10% interest rates."
"While the Trump administration appears to be twisting itself into knots to appease Wall Street bankers, working families continue to struggle with unprecedented credit card debt and deserve to see Congress take legislative action to address this growing crisis," the coalition stressed. "We urge your offices/committees to advance these bipartisan bills immediately and make this policy a reality."
Illustrating the need for the policy, the letter states that "Americans owe $1.21 trillion in aggregate credit card debt," "groceries now make up the majority of credit card purchases for most Americans," and "older Americans are charging everyday purchases like gas, food, healthcare expenses, and even utilities on their credit cards."
"Not only are more Americans having to lean on their credit cards to make ends meet, but more are falling behind. Today, more than 12% of credit card debt is 90 days or more past due," the letter continues. "As Americans find themselves deeper in debt, credit card companies have been raking in record profits."
The federal bill would "save families $100 billion per year and provide interest savings of $899 per person on average per year," but also "not restrict most Americans' access to credit—directly refuting common banking lobbyist talking points," the coalition explained, citing research from Vanderbilt University. "Instead, banks would absorb the rate cut through a combinationof reduced profits, reduced advertising expenses, and reduced rewards to customers with lower credit scores (who would benefit more from the rate cuts)."
It also cites a recent analysis by the letter's lead group, Protect Borrowers, showing that "credit card delinquency rates in states that President Trump won are nearly 5 percentage points higher than in other states—with states like Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas and South Carolina having the highest credit card delinquency rates."
When big banks charge 24% or 30% interest on credit cards, they are not engaged in the business of "making credit available." They are involved in extortion and loan sharking.Yes, we need to cap credit card interest rates at 10% and stop Wall Street from ripping off Americans.
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— Senator Bernie Sanders (@sanders.senate.gov) February 2, 2026 at 4:36 PM
"By providing billions of dollars in economic relief to working families, this legislation directly responds to the promises that candidate Donald Trump made to the American people last year," the groups wrote. "Recent polling has found that it is also incredibly popular by a jaw-dropping 8-to-1 margin among American voters across all political parties, spanning age, gender, race, and education level."
"It is clear: the American people support policymakers taking action to address the growing credit card crisis that is drowning millions of American families across the country in debt," the coalition concluded. "We stand ready to work with your offices to ensure that this bill becomes law and that working families get the economic relief they were promised and deserve."
Sanders and Hawley have similarly highlighted Trump's calls for the 10% rate cap in Fox News op-eds pushing for their legislation. In a Monday piece, Sanders wrote that "when Wall Street's greed and recklessness brought the economy to the verge of collapse in 2008, causing millions of Americans to lose their homes, jobs, and life savings, the taxpayers came to the rescue."
"The Federal Reserve gave these huge banks trillions of dollars in emergency loans at virtually zero interest. We bailed out the banks," he added. "Now it's time for Congress to stand with working families, end Wall Street greed, and pass legislation that caps credit card interest rates at 10%."
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Experts Warn That MAHA Bait-and-Switch by RFK Jr. and Trump 'Means Big Money for Big Wellness'
"They sell consumers their own version of the grift."
Feb 05, 2026
Government watchdog Public Citizen on Thursday issued a report outlining the major conflicts of interest held by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his allies in the Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement.
In particular, the report focuses on Kennedy and three key allies: Wellness influencer Dr. Casey Means, who is President Donald Trump's nominee to be US surgeon general; her brother Calley Means, a senior adviser to Kennedy at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); and the siblings' business partner Dr. Mark Hyman.
Public Citizen centers its report on these individuals' ties to the wellness industry, which "encompasses nutritional supplements and fitness products, and increasingly overlaps with non-science-based health beliefs."
Taken as a whole, the report says, "MAHA's influence in US healthcare means big money for Big Wellness."
Among other things, the report noted that Casey Means owns a metabolic testing company that "may have already benefited from Secretary Kennedy’s promotion of wearable health tracking devices."
The report states that Dr. Means "has also potentially violated [Federal Trade Commission] rules on influencer marketing by failing to adequately disclose sponsorship relationships in dozens of web and social media posts" that promote assorted wellness products.
"Public Citizen’s review of Dr. Means’ website, newsletter, and social media feeds found that for the almost two dozen companies from which Dr. Means reported receiving affiliate fees, Dr. Means disclosed her financial relationship inconsistently and ambiguously," the report says. "In total, she failed to disclose her financial relationship 79 out of 140 (56%) times she promoted affiliated products."
Calley Means, meanwhile, comes under scrutiny for his company TrueMed, which Public Citizen said "relies on a legally dubious business model." The report also criticizes Means for regularly promoting "dangerous and false health information," including attacks on fluoridated water and Covid-19 vaccines, and the promotion of drinking raw milk.
And Mark Hyman, states the report, "oversees a wellness empire that stands to benefit significantly from HHS policies under Kennedy."
Eileen O’Grady, a researcher in Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division, acknowledged the appeal of many MAHA influencers' sales pitch, stating that "they accurately identify that much of the US healthcare system is beholden to corporate interests like Big Pharma and the insurance industry."
However, O'Grady said that what the Means siblings and Hyman are peddling isn't much different than what they criticize in the US healthcare system.
"They sell consumers their own version of the grift," she explained. "Excessive testing, unproven and underregulated health supplements, and assurances that only their products hold the key to better health. While MAHA influencers reap the benefits of lucrative sponsorship contracts and, in some cases, political appointments, regular Americans are once again being cheated."
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Sanders Probes Trump's Corporate Welfare as Walmart Hits $1 Trillion Market Cap
"Do the right thing: Get off of corporate welfare and pay all of your workers a living wage with good benefits," the democratic socialist senator implored Walmart's multibillionaire owners.
Feb 05, 2026
US Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday launched an investigation into how corporations including Walmart—which hit $1 trillion in market value earlier this week—benefit from tax breaks in Republicans' so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act while many of their workers can't make ends meet.
Sanders (I-Vt.) informed Walmart president and CEO Doug McMillon and the heads of Kroger, Dollar General, and Dollar Tree in separate letters that he's probing how the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) passed by the GOP-controlled Congress and signed by President Donald Trump last year "has negatively impacted the health and well-being of workers at large corporations... and how it has financially benefited the owners and executives of these multinational conglomerates."
"This legislation made the largest cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in history to pay for $1 trillion in tax breaks to the top 1% and over $900 billion in tax cuts to large corporations," noted Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
"As you know, Walmart is the largest corporation in America with over $680 billion in revenue, $19.4 billion in profits, and more than 2 million workers," Sanders wrote in his letter to McMillon. "Walmart also recently became the first retailer ever to hit $1 trillion in market value. It is owned by one of the wealthiest families in America, the Walton family, which has become over $348 billion richer since 2017 and is now worth more than half a trillion dollars."
"Yet, despite the enormous wealth of the Walton family and these huge corporate profits, Walmart pays wages so low that many of its workers rely on public assistance to survive," the senator said. "At Walmart, tens of thousands of low-wage workers are forced to depend on SNAP to feed their families and Medicaid to get the healthcare they need—all paid for by US taxpayers."
"Walmart pays wages so low that many of its workers rely on public assistance to survive."
Sanders is asking the heads of the companies in his probe to "disclose how much they expect to make from the Republicans’ tax breaks and whether any of these savings will be passed along to workers."
“It has never been acceptable that incredibly profitable companies like Walmart—owned by one of the richest families on Earth—pay their workers starvation wages, forcing many of them to rely on programs like Medicaid and SNAP," Sanders wrote to McMillon. "But it is even more unacceptable when those benefits are being slashed so that corporate executives and billionaires like the Walton family can become even richer.”
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