The Washington Post - 20.10.2019

(Darren Dugan) #1
BY KATHY ORTON

The marks on the living room window
frame gave it away. William Hart re-
members seeing those scratches when
he sat in his cubicle, gazing out the
window as he tried to puzzle out a
particularly thorny problem with the
IRS’s acquisition software.
When he and his wife were shown the
apartment, Hart examined the window.
There was no doubt. The software devel-
oper’s new home would be where his
cubicle once was. After spending 10
years working for the IRS in the Oxon
Hill, Md., office building, Hart returned
in June to live there with his wife.
“When I visited this apartment, I
already knew that I used to work on the
eighth floor,” Hart said. “To see this, it
was like, wow, you worked right here in
this very same apartment.”
In a city overrun with Ty pe A worka-
holics who spend so much time in their
SEE APARTMENTS ON G5

BILL O'LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST

THE WEEK
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10-YEAR TREASURY
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CURRENCIES
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KLMNO


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EE AX FN FS LF PW DC BD PG AA FD HO MN MS SM SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20 , 2019. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/BUSINESS G


For toddlers,


sweet excess


New foods and beverages marketed to parents and
in on-the-go containers are often high in sugar

Your new home: Your old o∞ce


With the region awash in underused workspaces, some are being made into apartments


BY LAURA REILEY

stronger a nd smarter:
Dietary supplements said to boost the immune
system. Squeezy pouches boasting three grams of
protein and three grams of fiber. Oven-baked stone-
ground wheat “wafflez,” superfood puffs and a baf-
fling a rray o f toddler milks purported t o aid brain and
eye development.
Billy Roberts, senior analyst of food and drink at
market research firm Mintel, says there were four
times m ore product launches i n the baby a nd t oddler
food aisle in 2018 than in 2005, with a huge surge in
new toddler foods and drinks, most of which are
extremely high i n sugar.
What’s driving this surge? Experts point to several
factors. Parents are demanding convenient, on-the-
SEE TODDLERS ON G4

A milk-based toddler drink contains 3^1 / 2 teaspoons of sugar per serving. A 2015 report found that
29 percent of toddlers’ calories were coming from snacks, mostly salty or sweet processed foods.

L


eading health organizations recently re-
leased their first consensus recommenda-
tions about what young children should be
drinking: only breast milk or, if necessary,
infant formula until a baby is 6 months old,
with water introduced around then and plain cow’s
milk around their first birthday.
That’s i t. No j uice, no flavored or plant-based m ilks,
no caffeinated b everages or sodas.
The good news is parents of infants seem to be on
the right track — breast-feeding is on the rise. But
once children get into the toddler zone, it’s p andemo-
nium.
There’s b een a boom in unhealthy foods a nd bever-
ages for children 6 months t o 3 years old, packaged for
convenience and often promising to make children

KATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST
The space formerly occupied by William Hart’s cubicle when he worked
for the IRS is now part of the apartment he shares with his wife, Sheila.

THE COLOR OF MONEY


A nurse worked 30 years at the same hospital. Then the pension plan went bust. G2


TECHNOLOGY
For kids and teens, circumventing Apple’s Screen Time controls is child’s play. G3

For 40 years, the all-
purpose elixir peddled by
Republicans for any
economic malady —
declining
competitiveness,
financial crises,
unemployment, stagnant
wages, poverty, soaring
costs of health care, housing and college
education — has been some form of tax
cut. We now see the result of that folly
in a loophole-ridden tax system that
distorts economic behavior, coddles the
rich and can’t raise enough revenue to
finance the government Americans
want and need.
Now, progressive Democrats seem
determined to make the same kind of
mistake, with sweeping soak-the-rich
tax plans designed to punish greed,
break up the concentration of economic
and political power and raise vast sums
SEE PEARLSTEIN ON G2


Punitive taxes


on the wealthy


make no sense


Steven
Pearlstein


BY ELI ROSENBERG

detroit — Todd Piroch, 47, is from a
General Motors family. His parents
worked at t he company for d ecades, start-
ing in the 1960s.
And Piroch and his two brothers
worked at the company’s plant in Lords-
town, Ohio, for more than 20 years —
until GM abruptly announced its closure
last year, shipping his brothers off to
Michigan and To ledo and To dd to another
plant in Bowling Green, Ky., a 7^1 / 2 -hour
drive from the home he shares with his
wife and two high school-aged children.
So as union officials met about a con-
tract deal t hat, if approved, would end the
five-week strike of some 46,000 United
Automobile Workers members — one of
the longest private-sector strikes in re-
cent years — Piroch was here with three
vanfuls of other displaced workers from
the Lordstown plant to voice dissent.
SEE GM ON G3

Long GM strike


may embolden


other unions

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