Yahoo has found a buyer for its core Internet business: the nation’s largest telecom provider, Verizon Communications. The two companies are set to announce a $4.8-billion deal on Monday, according to Bloomberg.

For Yahoo, this ends the final act of one of the longest-running Internet companies. Founded in 1994, it survived the dot-com boom; the company now has the third most popular search engine in the United States, trailing behind Google and Bing.

Aside from the search, Yahoo also has finance, news, mail and other specialty verticals as well as the blogging site Tumblr and photo site Flickr.

Yahoo’s biggest value, however, has rested in its stakes in the Chinese online retail giant Alibaba and in Yahoo Japan — and those will remain with Yahoo. The deal also could spell an end of the tenure of Yahoo’s high-profile CEO Marissa Mayer.

For Verizon, this is the latest purchase in its push to refashion itself into a digital conglomerate of various mobile, Internet, video and advertising services. Last year, the telecom company bought AOL for $4.4 billion, acquiring its content sites, including the Huffington Post and TechCrunch, as well as ad targeting technology.

A merger with AOL’s assets may add heft to Yahoo’s Internet real estate. As NPR’s Laura Sydell has reported, Yahoo’s share of worldwide digital ad revenues is around $2.6 billion, according to eMarketer, but that’s 1.5 percent of the online ad market — it pales in comparison to Google and Facebook, which control about 40 percent.

As Bloomberg puts it, “Yahoo got fat over the years as it navigated the rapidly changing industry in a sprawling effort to be all things to all people — from search to shopping to news outlet to blogging hub.” And that means high spending on acquisitions and recruiting to make up for decline in ad revenue.

Apart from Verizon, other bidders for Yahoo’s Internet business were said to include AT&T, buyout firms and Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert.

The details of Verizon’s deal did not specify the value of the “!” at the end of “Yahoo!”

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Fox News CEO Roger Ailes in his New York City studios in 2006. Ailes served as CEO from Fox News’ first day in 1996. Jim Cooper/AP hide caption

toggle caption Jim Cooper/AP

The news that sexual harassment allegations have cost Roger Ailes his job threatens to obscure Ailes’ singular career and his almost unrivaled influence in the public sphere.

But no contemporary figure has done more to shape the intersection of American media and politics than Ailes, who, until Thursday, had been the Fox News chief since its very first day on the air in 1996.

In his long career, Ailes advised a succession of Republican presidents on how to gain power and maintain it — both on their payrolls and off the books.

He showed how to bring flair and flash to financial coverage as president of CNBC.

Then Ailes gave a turbo boost to the Republican movement in the mid-1990s, just in time to fuel opposition to the Clinton White House, with the creation of Fox News. It was a partnership and mind meld between Ailes and his new patron, media magnate Rupert Murdoch.

Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard and a familiar figure on Fox News, told me the new network gave conservatives hope.

“They were so used to thinking that the media was completely barren as far as they were concerned,” Barnes said. “There was nothing there for them. It was all for liberals. And then Fox comes along — and they really glommed on it.”

Fox served as the home of debate within the conservative movement. At its default setting, Fox blended pugilistic, right-of-center populism, resentment of changing demographics and sexual mores, and a strong nationalistic tone.

Fox News’ success also drove television news as a whole more toward conflict, given its emphasis on assertion over reporting.

From Entertainment To Politics

Fred Barnes spoke to me outside the arena for the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. It was perhaps fitting that the end game for Ailes played out as Republicans gathered there.

Ailes, an Ohio native, enjoyed his first big professional success in Cleveland, as a producer of a local variety and talk program called The Mike Douglas Show.

In time, the show went national. So did Ailes.

After Richard Nixon appeared on the show during the 1968 campaign, Ailes gave the candidate some advice: use televised appearances to go around the press and interact with voters. More to the point, be seen interacting with voters.

Roger Ailes was a political consultant in 1971, advising many leading Republicans, including Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Karl Rove. Jerry Mosey/AP hide caption

toggle caption Jerry Mosey/AP

In one such encounter, former college football coach Bud Wilkinson, a Nixon fan and friend, served as moderator. “No one has any idea what questions will be asked,” Wilkinson told viewers. “Mr. Nixon cannot possibly know. His answers must be immediate and direct — and our panel is representative.”

In reality, the panelists were pretty carefully screened.

Ailes ended up advising the Nixon White House. He also rose to be executive producer of The Mike Douglas Show, which lasted for thousands of episodes. Ailes dabbled in Broadway, producing two shows, including The Hot l Baltimore.

He advised President Reagan’s re-election campaign in 1984, helping Reagan revive his fortunes following a disastrous first debate against Walter Mondale.

Reagan dominated the second debate with remarks that became political legend. Pressed on his age, for example, Reagan said, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Reagan never looked back.

Ailes kept toggling between producing television specials and serving as a political consultant, sometimes doing both at once.

In 1988, Ailes played a key role in George H.W. Bush’s White House bid. A climactic moment arrived early that year. Ailes warned Bush that CBS News anchor Dan Rather was primed to go after him on the Iran-Contra scandal during a live interview. The conversation turned testy.

Bush ordinarily displayed a patrician reserve. Ailes goaded Bush to rumble. When pressed by Rather, the vice president roared back, “It’s not fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?”

Bush was jabbing Rather over a 1987 incident in which the network delayed the start of CBS Evening News to carry the end of a U.S. Open tennis match. Rather, infuriated, walked off the set (on location in Miami, not New York). When the match ended, the network went black for more than six minutes before Rather returned.

That year, Ailes published the book, You Are the Message, a primer on how candidates and corporate executives should communicate with the public. He proceeded to manage several unsuccessful Republican campaigns, starting with Rudy Giuliani’s first mayoral bid in New York City in 1989.

Ailes left politics once more, though hardly definitively. He produced Rush Limbaugh’s radio show and then joined CNBC to build it up into a recognizable version of what the channel is today.

The Era Of Fox News

He later jumped at the chance to run Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News — defined as an alternative to the liberal media at its launch in fall 1996.

Roger Ailes (left) speaks at a news conference with Rupert Murdoch in January 1996 after it was announced Ailes would be chairman and CEO of Fox News. Richard Drew/AP hide caption

toggle caption Richard Drew/AP

Fox built up momentum during the impeachment process of President Bill Clinton and then surged after the disputed 2000 presidential election and the September 2001 terrorist attacks.

The channel draped itself in patriotism — a constant Ailes refrain. Fox would become the top-rated cable news channel and has remained so ever since.

Before Thursday evening, many with ties to the network said there is no way to disentangle what they felt about Fox from what they felt about Ailes.

“At Fox, everything is due to Roger,” Fred Barnes said. “It was entirely his vision. And what he created — one guy creating that. I’m still amazed.”

News reports were often straight ahead. But common themes cropped up on the opinion shows, including some racial undercurrents.

In a 2009 appearance on Fox & Friends, Glenn Beck, who at the time hosted his own show on Fox, said of President Obama, “This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

Ultimately Beck’s conspiracy-driven rhetoric and his belief that his star shined brighter than the network’s was too much for even Ailes, who did not renew Beck’s contract.

Ailes never fully shed his partisan activities. He counseled President George W. Bush’s chief adviser, Karl Rove, during the invasion of Iraq.

In 2012, he personally encouraged New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to run against Obama and sent an emissary to Afghanistan to try to coax Gen. David Petraeus into the race. (That secret mission, carried out by a Fox News national security analyst, was taped.)

Ailes had put many of the candidates in the past few cycles on the Fox payroll; John Kasich and Mike Huckabee used to be Fox News hosts, while Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ben Carson had all been paid Fox News commentators.

Fox News host Megyn Kelly moderates the Republican presidential debate in Des Moines, Iowa, on Jan. 28. Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

Above all, Ailes wanted Fox News to referee Republican Party politics.

That backfired, in a sense, last August, when Fox News host Megyn Kelly confronted Donald Trump in the first Republican debate.

Kelly said, “You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.”

Trump interjected, “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Kelly said.

After the debate, Trump attacked Kelly and Fox News and appeared repeatedly on rival networks, driving up their ratings.

Ailes effectively sued for peace with Trump, alienating Kelly.

The Obsessions Of Roger Ailes

One of Ailes’ former executives once told me you just had to watch Fox to understand his obsessions.

The channel was drenched in stories about sex.

Female presenters on Fox were often overtly sexualized. They were steered to wear revealing outfits, while cameras lingered over their legs.

The morning show Fox & Friends, a peppy mix of fraternity humor, gossip and conservative chat, was a particular source of charged banter.

Gretchen Carlson had been a co-host on the show for years. She filed suit earlier this month alleging that Ailes had demoted her to an early afternoon show several years ago, cutting her pay, as a result of her complaints of sexism on the set. He then proceeded to make increasingly plain sexual advances, according to her suit.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie appears on Fox & Friends with co-anchors Steve Doocy, Gretchen Carlson and Brian Kilmeade in 2011. Carlson filed suit earlier this month alleging that Ailes had demoted her to an early afternoon show several years ago, cutting her pay, as a result of her complaints of sexism on the set. Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images

Some anchors and hosts defended Ailes, including some women, in what appeared to be a coordinated effort.

Megyn Kelly, by contrast, held back from public comment and cooperated with an inquiry set up by parent company 21st Century Fox. She reportedly told the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison — which was conducting the inquiry — that Ailes had harassed her, too, when she was a young reporter in the network’s Washington bureau. Others have also come forward.

Ailes’ management style knit together fierce loyalty and paranoia. Many Fox News journalists have told me of their deep fears of offending Ailes, including one who, like Carlson, says she was sexually harassed by him in recent years.

One way such loyalty can be enforced: Ailes’ PR department has peddled negative stories about colleagues who fell out of favor. In one instance, a publicist successfully planted a story in the Washington Post depicting then-anchor Laurie Dhue as drunk at a black-tie affair; after leaving the network, she acknowledged she was an alcoholic. Her lawyer said Thursday she, too, is writing a book about her interactions with Ailes and others at Fox.

Ailes is receiving a severance package in the tens of millions of dollars, though he will remain an adviser to Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch will oversee the network in the short term.

Carlson’s attorney, Nancy Erika Smith, tells me the payment of such an astonishing sum to get Ailes to resign falls short given all the accusations against him.

Until Carlson’s lawsuit, Ailes’ charisma, his accomplishments and his stature held sway.

No longer.

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At Green House Data in Cheyenne, Wyo., energy efficiency is an obsession.

When someone enters one of the company’s secured data vaults, they’re asked to pause in the entryway and stomp their shoes on a clear rubber mat with a sticky, glue-like finish.

“Dust is a huge concern of ours,” says Art Salazar, the director of operations.

That’s because dust makes electronics run hotter, which then means using more electricity to cool them down. For data centers, the goal is to use as little electricity as possible, because it’s typically companies’ biggest expense.

In 2013, data centers consumed 2 percent of all U.S. power — triple what they consumed in 2000. Wendy Fox, Green House Data’s communications director, says the sector has a responsibility to source that electricity sustainably.

The power Green House Data draws from the grid mostly comes from coal. The company offsets that by purchasing green energy credits that support renewable energy development elsewhere.

But larger companies are no longer interested in simply buying credits. Instead, they want to get more of their power directly from renewables.

“Direct sourcing is important to us because our goal is really the transformation of the electric grid,” says Brian Janous, the director of energy for Microsoft, which owns Wyoming’s largest data center.

Microsoft is teaming up with dozens of other powerful companies, including Facebook and Google, to push for easier access to renewable energy.

Janous says they have leverage.

“We’re going back to our utility every year and saying, ‘We’re going consume more power next year than we did the year before,’ ” Janous says.

Green House Data used 15 million kilowatt-hours last year, enough to power 1,500 homes.

“This is the cloud,” Salazar says, standing in front of rows and rows of glass and metal cabinets.

The cloud — where you upload photos and stream video — is a real, physical thing. Those cabinets are chock-full of humming electronics and colorful cables, all fed by enormous black power lines, snaking along the ceiling of the room.

And they consume an enormous amount of electricity.

“The electrical resources of the planet are finite, but our need for data seems to be infinite,” Fox says.

A recent study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab suggests that electricity consumption growth is slowing, but even so, data companies are much larger consumers of electricity today than they were in the past.

Janous says that puts tech companies in a unique negotiating position with utilities, and with the states that want to attract their business.

“We want to influence policy, we want to influence the availability of these resources,” he says.

And it appears to be working.

In Nevada, a data company was able to convince the utility NV Energy to build new renewable capacity for its project. In Virginia, Microsoft has negotiated an agreement for a new solar farm.

Microsoft has already invested around $1 billion in data centers in Wyoming. Shawn Reese of the Wyoming Business Council hopes that’s just the beginning.

“We want Microsoft to continue to grow here and, frankly, we want some of their competitors to be here in the state of Wyoming as well,” he says.

But Wyoming doesn’t have a lot of renewable energy available. Reese says that needs to change — or the state will risk losing out on business from one of the nation’s fastest growing sectors.

“The markets are changing,” he says. “The technologies are changing and the state’s got to keep up with those.”

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Airbnb, the popular site that lets people rent rooms and houses, is hoping to fight racism and discrimination on its platform — and it’s recruited former Attorney General Eric Holder to help.

The company has spent more than a month reviewing its policies, after widespread reports of a pattern of bias against people of color looking to rent rooms.

The review is still ongoing, the company said in a blog post Wednesday, but they’ve already started taking some steps to address the problem, including bringing in Holder and other experts to help write a new anti-discrimination policy.

The site also plans to offer training about “unconscious bias” to more hosts, and hire employees “whose full-time job will be to detect and address instances of discrimination.”

This spring, NPR’s Hidden Brain explored the issue of racial bias on Airbnb. Quirtina Crittenden, a user on the site, described getting declined for room after room — until she changed her profile image to a landscape photo, and shortened her name to “Tina.” After that, getting a room was no problem.

Researchers have found a widespread pattern of racial discrimination on Airbnb. Here’s Hidden Brain:

“Michael Luca and his colleagues Benjamin Edelman and Dan Svirsky at Harvard Business School … sent out 6,400 requests to real AirBnb hosts in five major American cities—Baltimore, Dallas, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and Washington.

“All the requests were exactly the same except for the names they gave their make-believe travelers. Some had African American-sounding names like Jamal or Tanisha and others had stereotypically white-sounding names like Meredith or Todd.

“Luca and his colleagues found requests with African American sounding names were roughly 16 percent less likely to be accepted than their white-sounding counterparts. They found discrimination across the board: among cheap listings and expensive listings, in diverse neighborhoods and homogenous neighborhoods, and with novice hosts as well as experienced hosts. They also found that black hosts were also less likely to accept requests from guests with African American-sounding names …

“In a separate study, Luca and his colleagues have found that guests discriminate, too, and black hosts earn less money on their properties on Airbnb.”

Another study found that Asian-American hosts make less money than white ones.

When NPR’s Code Switch reached out to individual Asian-American hosts, they said they didn’t feel like race played a factor in their room prices. But researchers examining the issue — like researchers looking into bias against black Airbnb users — noted that subconscious bias can play a powerful role in decision-making.

In the company’s Wednesday blog post on the issue, Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky opened by mourning the recent shootings in Minnesota, Louisiana and Texas, and expressing support for both the Black Lives Matter movement and for police officers. He continued:

“We aren’t so naïve to think that one company can solve these problems, but we understand that we have an obligation to be honest about our own shortcomings, and do more to get our house in order. That’s why we’ve been talking more openly about discrimination and bias on our platform, and are currently engaged in a process to prevent it. …

“We will not simply ‘address the issue’ by doing the least required for liability and PR purposes. I want us to be smart and innovative and to create new tools to prevent discrimination and bias that can be shared across the industry.”

Former Attorney General Holder will be assisting as outside counsel, working with civil rights attorney John Relman to help write a new anti-discrimination policy.

In a statement, Holder said he’s looking forward to helping Airbnb “craft policies that will be the model for companies who share Airbnb’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.”

Airbnb says they will require all users to read and commit to the policy.

Chesky also admits that the company has failed on this issue in the past — with inadequate transparency, and with a “lack of urgency” on addressing discrimination.

“Joe [Gebbia], Nate [Blecharczyk], and I started Airbnb with the best of intentions, but we weren’t fully conscious of this issue when we designed the platform,” Chesky wrote. “I promise you that we have learned from the past and won’t repeat our prior mistakes and delays.”

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Federal authorities are investigating Fiat Chrysler over allegations that it encouraged dealers to falsely report the number of cars sold, the automaker confirmed Monday.

In a statement, the company said it was cooperating with a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation and that the numbers in its financial statements were based on shipments to dealers, not on sales to customers.

Fiat Chrysler also added it had fielded questions from the Justice Department on a similar matter. The Wall Street Journal reports that FBI agents visited the homes of Fiat regional managers “allegedly involved in the potential misconduct.”

Furthermore, the Journal reports, the investigation seems centered on allegations made in a lawsuit filed by an Illinois car dealer in January alleging that Fiat Chrysler had “manipulated” new-vehicle sales:

“The dealer, Napleton Automotive Group, accused Fiat Chrysler of financially rewarding stores that manipulated sales reports, inflating the company’s overall U.S. sales results. Napleton operates dealerships in Illinois and Florida.

“The lawyer for Napleton, Steve Berman, said the people the FBI interviewed are those implicated by the lawsuit.”

The Associated Press reports the company has had an exceptional record since leaving bankruptcy protection in 2009 with 75 straight months of year-over-year sales increases. And as NPR’s Sonari Glinton adds for our Newscast unit, car sales are a crucial measure for determining an auto manufacturer’s operation:

“Every month the car companies report on their sales. The numbers are important for almost everything. They affect the stock price, government regulations, union issues.”

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The air conditioner at Jim and Julie Powell’s house has been fending off the 100-degree summertime heat for two decades — ever since they came to the Sun City retirement community just west of Phoenix.

“It’s been a workhorse,” Julie says. “It’s probably 20 years old, but it does the job.”

Inside, Jim leafs through their summer bills from the power company Arizona Public Service, or APS. He counts: “$183, $262, $250.”

Steep, but predictable. Ever since he’s heard about a new fee, though, he’s begun to worry.

“With this demand charge, it could be out of the blue, every month something different,” Jim says.

For that so-called “demand” charge, the power company will look at the one hour of the month during peak time when the couple uses the most energy.

This kind of rate’s been around for decades — mostly for commercial operations, though as of 2015 at least 14 utilities across the country offer it to residences as an option, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute. But APS would be the first utility in the country to mandate it for almost all residential customers.

Julie peers at the old unit from the shade of her back porch. Like many here, they keep close tabs on their electric bill during this time of year.

“I’m a turn-the-fan-off, turn-the-light-off, turn-everything-off person,” she says.

But those energy saving efforts may soon not be enough.

Jim wonders what happens if they turn up the AC one evening, while the oven and washer are running.

“All of a sudden we’ve spiked our kilowatt usage way up from what it normally is for a short period of time, but yet we’re going to get stuck with a bill for that,” Jim says. “And I don’t think that’s right.”

Retirees Jim and Julie Powell of Sun City worry their electric bill could be subject to unpredictable swings if Arizona’s largest utility puts in place a new charge tied to their hourly power demand. Will Stone/KJZZ hide caption

toggle caption Will Stone/KJZZ

The Powells aren’t the only ones upset.

Within a week of the utility proposing the charge, protesters had taken to the streets with signs like “Surge Pricing is Unfair” and “Profits Over People.”

“It’s not as complicated as some make it sound,” says Stefanie Layton of APS. “Really, if you just stagger the use of your major appliances, that’s an excellent way to manage your demand.”

Layton says the charge gives customers another tool to actually save money, but acknowledges some will not.

“It better aligns how much customers pay with the costs they impose on the system,” she says.

Most of a utility’s costs are fixed — things like substations, transmission lines, power plants. All that infrastructure must be in place for when demand spikes. APS hopes to encourage customers to put less strain on the grid, especially during summer afternoons and evenings.

“In order to send customers a signal that says our costs are driven by demand, if you can lower your demand, you can lower your costs,” Layton says.

James Sherwood, who studies rate design at the Rocky Mountain Institute, says there’s a void of data about how residential customers respond to this kind of rate.

“There are still a lot of unknowns around this and whether demand charges send a price signal that is effective,” he says.

But more utilities might use demand charges as they adjust to new technology. “Like rooftop solar and batteries and things like that, which are coming onto the market in a way that people can afford them and adopt them,” he says.

He says energy use has shifted to more appliances later in the day, which drives up the utility’s costs.

About 10 percent of APS residential customers voluntarily use a demand charge, and the utility says most are saving money.

“It’s certainly good for the company,” says Pat Quinn, one of those volunteers. But he isn’t happy.

Quinn is a former consumer advocate for the state and says demand charges lead to unexpected swings in the monthly bill. In fact, last year, his charge varied month to month from $30 to $150.

“Think if you’re somebody that’s basically homebound,” Quinn says. “You need the air conditioner in the summer. You may not have an option to change the way you’re actually living.”

After all, rates aren’t just about recovering costs; they also need to work for customers. Whether this kind of charge can do that will be the question facing regulators in Arizona and across the country.

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Herbalife has agreed to pay $200 million to reimburse consumers who lost money on its nutrition supplements and will also make major changes in its sales and distribution practices, the Federal Trade Commission announced on Friday.

The FTC filed a complaint accusing the company of deceiving consumers about how much money they could make selling its products, noting that most Herbalife distributors make no money at all.

But federal officials stopped short of calling the company a pyramid scheme and allowed it to keep operating. That was seen as a victory for the company on Wall Street, where Herbalife had become the target of a short-selling campaign by investor William Ackman.

Still, the FTC had extremely tough words for Herbalife and made clear it sees many of its practices as deceptive.

“Herbalife is going to have to start operating legitimately, making only truthful claims about how much money its members are likely to make, and it will have to compensate consumers for the losses they have suffered as a result of what we charge are unfair and deceptive practices,” said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez.

Among other things, the FTC said Herbalife would have to revamp its compensation system so that participants are rewarded for how much they sell, not simply for signing up new distributors.

At least two-thirds of a participant’s compensation must be based on actual sales that can be tracked and verified, it said.

“This settlement will require Herbalife to fundamentally restructure its business so that participants are rewarded for what they sell, not how many people they recruit,” Ramirez said.

The FTC said in a statement that the overwhelming majority of Herbalife distributors earn little or no money:

“Finding themselves unable to make money, the FTC’s complaint alleges, Herbalife distributors abandon Herbalife in large numbers. The majority of them stop ordering products within their first year, and nearly half of the entire Herbalife distributor base quits in any given year.”

Harsh as the decision seems, it is a big blow to hedge fund manager Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management, who has been trying for years to tar Herbalife as little better than a pyramid scheme.

Ackman reportedly shorted the company by a billion dollars, essentially betting that it would fail, in which case he would have made a lot of money. But after the FTC’s announcement allowing Herbalife to keep operating, its stock price rose.

Herbalife said in a statement that many of the FTC’s allegations are “factually incorrect” but chose to accept the settlement to avoid lengthy and costly litigation.

“Moreover, the Company’s management can now focus all of its energies on continuing to build the business and exploring strategic business opportunities,” the statement said.

“The settlements are an acknowledgment that our business model is sound and underscore our confidence in our ability to move forward successfully, otherwise we would not have agreed to the terms,” said chairman and CEO Michael O. Johnson.

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Ever feel as though you’re not getting ahead financially?

Join the club. The very big club.

A new study shows that across the world’s 25 advanced economies, two-thirds of households are earning the same as, or less than, they did a decade ago.

McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the global consulting firm McKinsey & Co., studied incomes for 2014. It found that between 540 million and 580 million people are living on lower or stagnant incomes compared with similarly situated people in 2005 — just before the Great Recession hit.

Between 1993 and 2005, less than 2 percent of households — with fewer than 10 million people — found themselves worse off than in previous years. “That has now changed,” according to the study with the discouraging title of “Poorer than their Parents? Flat or Falling Incomes in Advanced Economies.”

When comparing the income brackets, McKinsey finds that these days, even in the world’s wealthiest countries, families in the bottom 60 percent have lower incomes, while those in the 60th to 80th percentile are just treading water.

“The recession that followed the 2008 financial crisis was one of the deepest and longest lasting downturns of the post-World War II era, and the recovery that followed it has been unusually sluggish in many advanced economies, especially in Western Europe,” the study said.

And here’s the big problem for many workers in this recovery: “Robots and computers have automated tasks that once required workers,” McKinsey said. “Demand for low- and medium-skill workers has been lower than for high-skill workers,” it concluded.

So even when orders rebound for companies, the jobs don’t come back. That puts downward pressure on wages. In this country, young workers in the lower third of educational attainment saw wages fall on average by 15 percent between 2002 and 2012.

“There are 20 times as many single mothers in the lowest income decile as in the highest,” the study said, and the income drops for them have been faster than other households.

At the same time, many families in advanced economies have fewer spouses and children than in the past, so today’s shrunken households have fewer wage earners, the study shows.

But here’s a finding that also stands out: Affluent Americans are flourishing.

McKinsey says in this country, upper income households saw rising wages as more and more jobs opened up for people with higher skill sets. They actually made larger gains on a percentage basis than the wealthiest people whose incomes had shot up like rockets in the years before the recession.

Economists are not shocked to see such data about affluent, well-educated workers doing well, according to Lindsey Piegza, chief economist at Stifel Fixed Income in Chicago. “This study seems very much in line with what we have seen” in one survey after another, she said.

Incomes are rising if you happen to work in information technology, accounting, engineering and other high-demand fields, she said. But for low-skilled workers, automation is replacing labor and causing a wage downdraft, she added.

“When you see incomes falling year after year after year, you can’t look at it as a blip,” she said. Even as the impact of the Great Recession fades, the wage trends identified by McKinsey are likely to continue, she said.

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When we meet the heroin dealer called Bone, he has just shot up. He has a lot to say anyway. He tells us about his career—it pretty much tracks the evolution of drug use in America these past ten years or so. He tells us about his rough past. And he tells us about how he died a week ago. He overdosed on his own supply and his friend took his body to the emergency room, then left.

Bone’s addiction is so fierce that he was looking for his next fix almost as soon as he left the hospital. In Bone’s world, death isn’t a deterrent. Death is an obsession, even an attraction. It means a higher high if you can get close to death.

And that is easy for Bone, because heroin is very cheap right now.

America is facing a heroin epidemic. Deaths from overdoses are about three times what they were a decade ago. Part of what is driving this is price. Part of it is newer, stronger heroin. Neither of those two factors are an accident.

Today on the show, how heroin became America’s bargain drug and why so many people bought in. We hear from a dealer, a user and a DEA agent about the hurt, the want, and the twisted economic forces driving addiction.

Music: “My Name Is Trouble” and “Take It Back.” Find us: Twitter/ Facebook

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