Rent Control Fever Catches Boston & Tide Unveils Most Unappetizing Detergent

What It Covers

Morning Brew Daily covers four stories: Massachusetts proposes the strictest rent control in the US, capping annual increases at 5% or inflation; remote work trends shift by company age; Tide launches a new tile-format detergent called EVO; and Norway's deliberate youth sports philosophy explains its Winter Olympics dominance.

Key Questions Answered

• •Rent Control Trade-offs: Massachusetts proposes capping rent increases at the lower of 5% or inflation — stricter than California, Oregon, or Maryland. Historical precedent from 1970–1994 in Massachusetts shows available units declined and 11,000 Boston rentals sat vacant by the mid-1980s. Minneapolis versus Saint Paul offers a recent natural experiment confirming that rent control suppresses multifamily construction permits.
• •Company Age Predicts Remote Work: Firms founded after 2015 are twice as likely to offer remote work compared to those founded before 1990. Companies launched in 2020 lead all cohorts at 1.74 remote days per week, built around Slack, Zoom, and async workflows. As younger CEOs rise, researchers project overall US remote work rates will reverse their 2023–2025 decline within five to ten years.
• •Gen Z Office Preference Paradox: Despite younger-founded companies offering more remote flexibility, Gallup data shows Gen Z is the least likely generation to prefer fully remote work — only 23% favor it exclusively, compared to 35% across every other generation. This creates a structural tension: remote-native companies led by younger executives may face pushback from employees who actually want in-person work.
• •Tide EVO Design Strategy: Tide's new tile-format detergent, launching nationwide in April, took 15 PhD-level chemists over a decade to develop. Each tile contains 15-plus miles of layered fibers and dissolves in cold water. Procter & Gamble deliberately made the product dry and fibrous — a direct response to the Tide Pod Challenge — while targeting e-commerce with lightweight packaging to cut shipping costs.
• •Norway's Sports Development Model: Norway leads Winter Olympics medal counts with 2% of US population by banning official scorekeeping in organized youth sports until age 13, keeping participation fees low, and maintaining a robust used-equipment resale market. A centralized training organization called Olympiatoppen, created after a medal drought at the 1988 Sarajevo Games, coordinates cross-sport athlete development camps one year before each Olympics.