Articles
Articles and analyses from the INET community on the key economic questions of our time.
No Country Makes Its Own Inflation
Sixty years of data show inflation moving in step across the world. Economic theory still treats it as a national affair.
Social Security and the Vanishing Paycheck
Social Security runs on the paycheck. But a growing share of American wealth now comes from profits, assets, and ownership. The program that ended old-age poverty was never built for an economy that pays people this way.
Big Money and the Maine Election: Round 2
The upheaval in Maine’s Senate race has focused attention on candidates and party leaders. Less noticed is what the campaign finance data reveal about the state’s Democratic Party and its structural dependence on national organizations and large out-of-state donors.
AI is Hungry for Power and You are Footing the Bill
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.
Russell’s Teapot: Dispatches From the Final Stage of the AI Bubble
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.
One Affordability Battle After Another: What to do about the growing damage from the AI-Fossil Fuel Industrial Complex
Affordability of electricity and concerns about fossil fuel pollution, water resources, and job loss, have driven a rebellion against data centers that is both grassroots and bipartisan. It’s time for cleaner, faster and cheaper solutions.
Failed State, Failed Market: Europe’s Bid to Reprice Social Media Harms
Europe’s social media crackdown is less about “speech wars” than a long-overdue attempt to price the public damage created by large platforms.
Debt, Austerity, and the New EU Rules: Why Italy’s “Reform” Path Still Leads Nowhere
Europe’s revamped fiscal rules promise discipline and stability, but Italy’s numbers tell a different story. Once realistic multipliers and hysteresis are built in, consolidation pushes debt up, growth down, and recessionary pressure outwards across the eurozone, hardly a recipe for sustainability.
AI, Antitrust, and the Future of the Marketplace of Ideas
AI was sold as a tool to broaden the marketplace of ideas. Instead, a handful of platforms now control how truth travels, shaping what we see, starving journalism, and locking new AI rivals out of the data democracy needs to survive.
Not the Fix—The Tell: The Meaning of a $100,000 H-1B Fee
The new $100,000 H-1B fee tacitly acknowledges what early policy architects signaled: expanding temporary tech visas can depress domestic wages. By bringing the fully loaded cost of a new H1B hire closer to what the local market would require to recruit and retain comparable talent, it narrows the wedge between visa-enabled staffing and hiring Americans at market rates.