We’ve inherited a stubborn reflex for resisting fatcats, oligarchs, profiteers, and anyone who tries to run roughshod over us.
“If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire?”
~American singer-songwriter Billie Eilish
“This land was made for you and me.”
~American folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie
As America marks 250 years of independence, Adam Smith is again being pressed into service as a founding myth. A deeper reading of The Wealth of Nations reveals a far richer thinker than today’s easy invocations of markets and liberty suggest.
As America marks 250 years of independence, Adam Smith is again being pressed into service as a founding myth. A deeper reading of The Wealth of Nations reveals a far richer thinker than today’s easy invocations of markets and liberty suggest.
Europe’s new fiscal rules still bind policy to fragile estimates of potential output. For Italy, targeting lower unemployment could sustain stronger growth, improve deficit outcomes, and expose the self-defeating logic of austerity when debt is measured against a stagnating economy.
1. Introduction
Central bank money is still accounted for as debt, a legacy of an earlier monetary order. Treating sovereign money as equity would clarify central bank balance sheets, strengthen institutional transparency, and better prepare monetary systems for future digital-era design choices.
Global health financing is collapsing just as demands on health systems are rising. As funding retreats and reform debates intensify, a deeper question emerges about who bears the costs, and whether today’s fixes risk creating lasting damage that will be difficult to reverse.
Equality runs deeper than preference or policy fashion, rooted in human social instincts and reflected in outcomes across societies. It is time for economics and policy alike to reckon with how profoundly distribution shapes well-being and social stability.
Equality runs deeper than economics textbooks or policy fashions suggest. Across disciplines, evidence increasingly links more equal societies to stronger well-being, greater social trust, and healthier democracies, challenging the assumption that fairness must come at the expense of prosperity or economic dynamism.
The same technology that promises efficiency in offices is fueled by a system that is making life more costly for everyday workers. Part of “AI and the Future of the American Worker,” a series on how artificial intelligence is impacting labor, power, and the meaning of work.
You can’t open a news site without tripping over a grand declaration about how AI is remaking the economy. But often there’s a crucial part of the story missing: Who exactly is paying for the sprawling, power-guzzling machinery it needs to run on?
What if the AI future being sold to markets rests on claims that cannot survive scrutiny? From superintelligence to mass job loss, the loudest promises around generative AI begin to look less like foresight than hype dressed up as inevitability.
