The policy seems straightforward, but there is nothing straightforward about the reality of the working poor, a daily life of unreliable transportation, erratic work hours and capricious living arrangements.

Still, what has happened in the nine counties in West Virginia in the last four years does offer at least an indication of how it will play out on a larger scale.

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The most visible impact has been at homeless missions and food pantries, which saw a big spike in demand that has never receded. But the policy change was barely noticeable in the work force, where evidence of some large influx of new workers is hard to discern. This reflects similar findings elsewhere, as states have steadily been reinstating work requirements in the years since the recession, when nearly the whole country waived them.

... as the new houses have become more luxurious, homeownership itself has become a luxury. Young adults today are one-third less likely to own a home at this point in their lives than previous generations. Among young black Americans, homeownership has fallen to its lowest rate in more than 60 years.

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the most expensive housing markets, such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, haven't built nearly enough homes for the middle class. As urban living has become too expensive for workers, many of them have either stayed away from the richest, densest cities or moved to the south and west, where land is cheaper. This is a huge loss, not only for individual workers, but also for these metros, because denser cities offer better matches between companies and workers, and thus are richer and more productive overall. Instead of growing as they grow richer, New York City, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area are all shrinking.

For a graphic on Interactive graphic on liquidation preference clauses in deals, click here

Safeguards include a higher minimum price on shares in an IPO, "ratchets" that give investors more shares if the shares are priced below what they paid, guarantees of a certain return on investments, and rights to block the IPO.

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Even harder to infiltrate are the increasing number of enviable dining rooms at high-end condominiums -- like 432 Park Avenue, where esteemed chef Shaun Hergatt oversees the kitchen, or 220 Central Park South, which will house the next New York restaurant from uber-chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten. There, all 54 seats will be off limits to anyone who's not a resident (or guest of one) at the building, where a penthouse sold for $238 million... In fact, exclusive restaurants with high-end chefs are becoming the latest in-demand amenity of luxury condos, according to Stacey Kanbar and Julie Kopel from the Kanbar Kopel Team at real estate firm Compass, who say they've noticed an uptick in the trend among clients looking at new upscale buildings.

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Private dining rooms have become important points of distinction and selling tools for the properties in part because the luxury real estate market in New York is suffering a glut of unsold spaces, says Stephen Zagor, a consultant who teaches restaurant and food entrepreneurship at Columbia Business School and New York University. A recent report found that more than 25 percent of new condos in Manhattan hadn't been sold as of September 2019, including some 40 percent of Billionaires' Row.

The bulk of these new units will be in Brooklyn, with more than 13,000 units in 421 buildings due to open. Manhattan takes second place with 79 buildings with 6,342 new units. Queens follows with 154 buildings with more than 6,000 new units. The Bronx, which has experienced significant development activity in recent year, will see 2,470 units open up. Staten Island's pipeline is lagging far behind: only 126 units are set to open in New York's least populous borough this year.

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The glut is a product of a post-recession construction boom aimed at globe-trotting investors, who now show little interest in collecting lavish Manhattan homes. And most newly built apartments are out of reach for the majority of New Yorkers.

There were at least eight incidents in LA where people threw flammable liquids or makeshift explosives at homeless people or their tents this year, according to authorities and the Los Angeles Times.

A 62-year-old beloved musician's tent was set on fire in Skid Row in August, killing him in what police say was an intentional killing. That month, two men also allegedly threw a "firework" at an encampment, causing a blaze that grew into a major brush fire just outside of the city. One of the men arrested was the son of a local chamber of commerce president. Police said this fire was intentional. In a separate attack, a molotov cocktail destroyed tents and donations.

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This month, in a case closely watched by many west coast cities, the US supreme court dealt a victory to homeless advocates by allowing an existing ruling to stand that states governments cannot ban people from living on the street if they don't offer enough shelter beds.

Officials in Oakland have proposed a new policy to cite homeless people in parks while some have suggested setting up a shelter in a defunct jail. Law enforcement leaders in Bakersfield in the Central Valley pushed a plan to throw homeless people in jail for misdemeanor offenses. A state taskforce has also suggested a similar system of forcibly placing homeless people into shelters.

These efforts ignore the overwhelming evidence that criminalization and locking people up are costly and harmful responses that fail to fix the crisis, said Eve Garrow, homelessness policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

"There's a dangerous and disturbing movement in California to address homelessness not by expanding access to safe, affordable and permanent housing ... but by jailing people," she said. "It's a terrifying prospect of a world in which we segregate, incarcerate and restrict the civil liberties of people just because they have disabilities and they are too poor to afford a home in our skyrocketing private rental market."

In my decades of looking at the stock market, there has never been a better setup. Exuberance is pandemic and sky-high. And even after today's dip, the S&P 500 is up nearly 29% for the year, and the Nasdaq 35%, despite lackluster growth in the global economy, where many of the S&P 500 companies are getting the majority of their revenues.

Mega-weight in the indices, Apple, is a good example: shares soared 84% in the year, though its revenues ticked up only 2%. This is not a growth story. This is an exuberance story where nothing that happens in reality -- such as lacking revenue growth -- matters, as we're now told by enthusiastic crowds everywhere... The unanimity of it all was astounding. I've seen this before, but not in this magnitude.