I feel like stress as a subject is severely underrepresented in politics. Maybe it seems silly to have things put into place to reduce stress but the knock on impacts of a stress-free workforce would enormous and hugely beneficial.

Stress is one of the main causes of many physical and mental illnesses and is so wide-reaching in its grasp on society.

Things like long commutes, long working hours, monetary struggles, personal debt, bullying, discrimination are huge factors that policies could help to solve.

The modern person's biggest danger to their mental health is probably stress. A nasty side effect of the lives we live now keeping sustained low levels of various fight-or-flight hormones running through the blood for hours of the day.

I don't think it's a "necessary evil" though by any means. We're the most powerful and adaptive species on the planet (and maybe the universe) - we can definitely do do much more to fight it!