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Sergio Rebelo, a finance professor at the Kellogg School, had serious doubts when he heard Gates’s argument. For decades, economists have known that taxing so-called “intermediate goods”—goods that are used to make other goods, like the bricks used to build a house, or the robots used to manufacture cars—can make it harder for suppliers to create and sell their products.

“When you do that, you reduce the level of production in the economy,” Rebelo says.

There are two sound arguments for taxing robots. The easiest is this: Governments need the money. In the United States, income taxes account for half of the $3 trillion collected every year by the Internal Revenue Service; payroll taxes account for another third.

Imagine that the fears about robots taking over jobs actually come true. Two years ago, the McKinsey Global Institute found that the job functions that are “most susceptible to automation” in the United States account for 51 percent of the activities in the economy and $2.7 trillion worth of wages. The institute estimates “half of today’s work activities could be automated by 2055.” If that happens, hundreds of billions of tax dollars would be lost every year.

Sharp rises in global food prices in 2007/08 jolted global political leaders out of any complacency they might have had regarding the future of food and agriculture. Street demonstrations and food riots broke out in more than 40 countries across the world, provoking unrest and violence in several places.

The L’Aquila Food Security Initiative, launched by the G-8 and the G-20 in 2009, brought new funding and energy to the task of quelling the “perfect storm” of food insecurity set off by spiking global food and fuel prices, financial and commodity market turmoil, the competition of biofuel production, and adverse weather in key agricultural regions. The L’Aquila Food Security Initiative successfully reversed a decades-long decline in international support for agricultural development.

However, current research does not yet indicate a clear link between climate change, food insecurity and conflict, except perhaps where rapidly deteriorating water availability cuts across existing tensions and weak institutions. But a series of interlinked problems – changing global patterns of consumption of energy and scarce resources, increasing demands for food imports (which draw on land, water, and energy inputs) can create pressure on fragile situations.

Food security – and food prices – are a highly political issue, being a very immediate and visible source of popular welfare or popular uncertainty. But their link to conflict (and the wider links between climate change and conflict) is indirect rather than direct.

On Tuesday, June 13, 2023, a very important press release hit the wire - a major pharmaceutical company announced its plans to go all-in on AI. Considering how grand and impactful the news was, I expected a massive wave of top-tier media coverage but after a week, only a few specialized pharmaceutical media outlets picked up the news. So here it is - Sanofi, one of the world’s leading global pharmaceutical companies, issued a press release explaining its AI strategy and announcing the launch of its company-wide AI system called “plai” with a very bold press release titled “Sanofi “all in” on artificial intelligence and data science to speed breakthroughs for patients.” The title is very unusual for the pharmaceutical industry, which usually opts for more conservative titles for press releases that require months of legal reviews, so this really stood out as a big deal. Another reason why this announcement is such a big deal is the lengthy and detailed quote from the company’s young superstar CEO, Paul Hudson, with no other executives or partners quoted. “Our ambition is to become the first pharma company powered by artificial intelligence at scale, giving our people tools and technologies that focus on insights and allow them to make better everyday decisions. The use of artificial intelligence and data science already support our teams’ efforts in areas such as accelerating drug discovery, enhanced clinical trial design, and improving manufacturing and supply of medicines and vaccines. We have just scratched the surface as to how we embrace these disruptive technologies to achieve our ambition of transforming the practice of medicine”, Paul Hudson, CEO of Sanofi. In January 2023, during the industry’s largest annual event, the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, I was invited to a lunch Sanofi hosted for its AI partners. During this lunch, Paul Hudson, his trusted R&D general, Dr. Frank Nestle, and other Sanofi executives, sat at different tables and discussed their plans to go big on AI. What impressed everyone most was how hands-on Paul Hudson was with AI. Literally, hands-on, as he was already actively using the plai app and explaining the integration of generative AI across the organization. He also explained that the plai app is designed and developed in collaboration with a Munich start up - AILY LABS. I hope to cover the AILY LABS story in the future articles as its fearless female co-founders, Bianca Anghelina, CEO and Sara Bisbe López, Chief of AI have very interesting backgrounds. The lunch included all the companies mentioned in the press release, including Dr. Tomas Clozel, a dear friend for many years, the CEO of Owkin, a global but proudly French AI company specializing in clinical trial analysis that Sanofi did the biggest partnership and investment deal with in 2021. This deal included a $180 million investment into Owkin which instantly gave the company a unicorn valuation per Owkin’s announcement. Among other guests were Dr. Abraham Heifets, CEO of Atomwise, the AI company using deep learning for molecular screening and drug discovery, and your humble servant, Alex Zhavoronkov, the founder of Insilico Medicine, a generative AI company specializing in end-to-end drug discovery. Both Atomwise and Insilico partnered with Sanofi in 2022. The partnership with Insilico, in addition to the drug discovery deal, included complete access to Insilico’s generative AI suite, which we have used internally to nominate thirteen preclinical candidates and advance three therapeutic programs into human clinical trials. This means that Sanofi now has the entire end-to-end generative AI platform, which in addition to Owkin’s capabilities, can rapidly solve diseases and potentially set new records in drug discovery. Sanofi also partnered and extended its collaboration with Exscientia, which made nice progress with its internal pipeline.

Likely Effects of Radical Tax Reform on State and Local Finance

The effects of reform plans that call for moving away from income taxation and toward consumption taxation will be felt far beyond the federal treasury. The proposals will affect state and local finance in several ways, including by making state and local income taxes more difficult to administer, by curtailing state and local revenue sources, by disrupting the tax exempt municipal bond market, and by hampering the ability of states and municipalities to export their tax burdens through federal deductibility.

The Eurozone and Japan – with the #2 and #3 reserve currencies – normally have large trade surpluses with the rest of the world. This shows that the economy of a major reserve currency doesn’t need to have a trade deficit. The US didn’t have persistent trade deficits until the early 1990s. There were years before then when it even had a trade surplus. The persistent trade deficits didn’t take off until the mid-1990s and exploded from there on amid the rampant “globalization” of Corporate America. The dollar being by far the largest reserve currency has enabled the US to easily finance its big trade deficits, which enables the US to even have those big trade deficits.

If the dollar’s status as top-dog global reserve currency deteriorates a whole lot, it would shake up that equation. At the pace of decline of the past six years, it would take a decade for the dollar’s share to drop to 50%, with other currencies picking up the slack. But for the equation to be shaken up, the dollar’s share would likely have to drop well below 50%.

A couple of recent geopolitical events have prompted the hoary old question of whether the dollar’s hegemony as the world’s reserve currency is at risk. It isn’t. Not in the slightest. If anything, the developments just serve to underline why King Dollar sits atop the throne.

The most recent challenger is a putative South American common currency, with the working title of the sur (south). It’s an idea that’s been kicking about since the 1980s, but my colleague Eduardo Porter believes it is either dangerous or irrelevant. If it ever comes to pass, it would be used to facilitate trade between Brazil and Argentina (though they’d retain their respective currencies). Other South American countries could be tempted to join if it succeeded in smoothing the bumps of illiquid, volatile local currencies. But there is something that does that already — it’s called the US dollar.

Dollar collapse fears are bogus as the greenback can't be replaced anytime soon, Brad McMillan said.

A lot of the talk is often from doomsayers trying to push gold, Commonwealth Financial's CIO said.

The global economy is being battered these days by the fallout from war, disease and great-power competition. This is bad news for global trade, and some even wonder if it will also dramatically shake up a pillar of the global financial system: the U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s “reserve currency,” meaning its position as the currency most widely held by foreign governments and used in international financial and trade transactions.

Early in Russia’s war against Ukraine, some believed the comprehensive nature of the economic sanctions that were quickly slapped on Russia held the potential to accelerate the dollar’s decline. Because the sanctions are primarily and nearly exclusively being imposed by Western economies, the fear is that they could cause the global economy to bifurcate. Indeed, cut off from the Western financial and economic system, Russia has sought alternative economic outlets, primarily China, with China’s currency—the yuan—having supplanted the dollar as the most widely traded currency on the Moscow currency exchange. Similarly, by observing the West’s ability to essentially weaponize Russia’s dependence on their economies, countries like China could seek to decouple from those economies, while also seeking to establish alternatives to the dollar as the dominant global reserve and trade currency.

One of the most common questions people ask me is some variant of: “Is the U.S. dollar going to lose its dominance?” Variations on this include:

Will the BRICS overthrow the dollar?

Inflation in May rose 4 percent from a year ago, down from April’s 4.9 percent annual rate and meaningfully lower than the 9.1 percent reading in June, according to data from the Department of Labor. That slowdown has been helped by cooling food and energy prices — but when excluding those more volatile categories, prices are up a bigger 5.3 percent from a year ago, the data also shows. It’s having a measurable impact on consumers’ wallets. Back in January, for example, the typical consumer would have had to spend $395 more a month to purchase the same goods and services bought a year ago, according to a Moody’s estimate from the month’s consumer price index (CPI) release. It’s also taking longer than economists — and Federal Reserve officials — ever expected for price pressures to cool. Fed Chair Jerome Powell mentioned after the Fed’s May rate-setting meeting that officials don’t think inflation will come down to their preferred annual level of 2 percent quickly, as so-called “stickier” services categories contribute to price pressures the most. It’s putting pressure on U.S. central bankers to keep rates higher for longer. One silver-lining: For the first time since March 2021, workers’ wages in May climbed by a faster pace over the past 12 months than inflation did, additional Labor Department data shows. But the pain of inflation is far from over, and the game of catch may just now be beginning. Americans have had to make major financial sacrifices just to make ends meet during the recent bout of price pressures, Bankrate data reveals. Inflation hasn’t yet shaken its reputation for being higher and more stubborn or persistent than liked.— MARK HAMRICK, BANKRATE SENIOR ECONOMIC ANALYST

Key statistics

On Tuesday, June 13, 2023, a very important press release hit the wire - a major pharmaceutical company announced its plans to go all-in on AI. Considering how grand and impactful the news was, I expected a massive wave of top-tier media coverage but after a week, only a few specialized pharmaceutical media outlets picked up the news. So here it is - Sanofi, one of the world’s leading global pharmaceutical companies, issued a press release explaining its AI strategy and announcing the launch of its company-wide AI system called “plai” with a very bold press release titled “Sanofi “all in” on artificial intelligence and data science to speed breakthroughs for patients.” The title is very unusual for the pharmaceutical industry, which usually opts for more conservative titles for press releases that require months of legal reviews, so this really stood out as a big deal. Another reason why this announcement is such a big deal is the lengthy and detailed quote from the company’s young superstar CEO, Paul Hudson, with no other executives or partners quoted. “Our ambition is to become the first pharma company powered by artificial intelligence at scale, giving our people tools and technologies that focus on insights and allow them to make better everyday decisions. The use of artificial intelligence and data science already support our teams’ efforts in areas such as accelerating drug discovery, enhanced clinical trial design, and improving manufacturing and supply of medicines and vaccines. We have just scratched the surface as to how we embrace these disruptive technologies to achieve our ambition of transforming the practice of medicine”, Paul Hudson, CEO of Sanofi. In January 2023, during the industry’s largest annual event, the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, I was invited to a lunch Sanofi hosted for its AI partners. During this lunch, Paul Hudson, his trusted R&D general, Dr. Frank Nestle, and other Sanofi executives, sat at different tables and discussed their plans to go big on AI. What impressed everyone most was how hands-on Paul Hudson was with AI. Literally, hands-on, as he was already actively using the plai app and explaining the integration of generative AI across the organization. He also explained that the plai app is designed and developed in collaboration with a Munich start up - AILY LABS. I hope to cover the AILY LABS story in the future articles as its fearless female co-founders, Bianca Anghelina, CEO and Sara Bisbe López, Chief of AI have very interesting backgrounds. The lunch included all the companies mentioned in the press release, including Dr. Tomas Clozel, a dear friend for many years, the CEO of Owkin, a global but proudly French AI company specializing in clinical trial analysis that Sanofi did the biggest partnership and investment deal with in 2021. This deal included a $180 million investment into Owkin which instantly gave the company a unicorn valuation per Owkin’s announcement. Among other guests were Dr. Abraham Heifets, CEO of Atomwise, the AI company using deep learning for molecular screening and drug discovery, and your humble servant, Alex Zhavoronkov, the founder of Insilico Medicine, a generative AI company specializing in end-to-end drug discovery. Both Atomwise and Insilico partnered with Sanofi in 2022. The partnership with Insilico, in addition to the drug discovery deal, included complete access to Insilico’s generative AI suite, which we have used internally to nominate thirteen preclinical candidates and advance three therapeutic programs into human clinical trials. This means that Sanofi now has the entire end-to-end generative AI platform, which in addition to Owkin’s capabilities, can rapidly solve diseases and potentially set new records in drug discovery. Sanofi also partnered and extended its collaboration with Exscientia, which made nice progress with its internal pipeline.

In Collier’s later papers on post-conflict reconstruction, he argues that the economic growth rate is the single most (statistically) influential variable in determining whether a country returns to war within a few years of a peace settlement. Employment, he says, is a likely route through which growth might affect the risk of violence. Again, then, an assumption is made that growth translates into employment, and that increased employment reduce s the risk of civil war recurring.

These arguments – and the reasoning they are built on, together with the evidence they present – are important to understand and to discuss in thinking through the assumed relationship between unemployment and conflict. For this reason, Paul Collier’s pieces are important first readings to inform a discussion.

Before March of 2020, it was difficult to imagine what an implementation of UBI would look like. Then, over 22 million Americans filed for unemployment in the month of April alone. It’s important to note that the United States’ single $1200 conditional cash transfer to Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be considered a form of UBI. Though the United States failed to implement a long-lasting relief check for most of the country’s population, stimulus checks still garnered wide public approval. A recent poll conducted by OnePoll also demonstrated that, after receiving their first stimulus checks, 80 percent of those sampled believed that the economic impact payments should continue until the end of the pandemic. On the other hand, the Canadian COVID-19 Economic Response Plan, similar to plans in the majority of other countries facing economic crisis due to the pandemic, guaranteed checks for a larger portion of citizens than the U.S., with a plan to continue payments through the rest of the pandemic. Additionally, only six million Canadians filed for unemployment within April compared to the United States’ 22 million. Through the Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB), citizens who lost their jobs, faced income reduction, or were forced to stop working received $500 per week for up to 26 weeks. This recovery procedure is much closer to UBI than the United States’ response. Aside from the partisan divide between those within the Liberal Party who enacted the policy, and the Conservatives who argued that it lacked a commitment to fiscal restraint and failed to address the needs of “everyday Canadians,” most Canadian citizens were quite content with the package compared to the overwhelming disapproval in the United States. As the last few months have proven, UBI is not as disruptive to our normative system of government as one might assume. However, it is not enough. A consistent cash transfer alone will not remedy wealth and income inequality, the lack of access to adequate healthcare, and, overall, the government’s failure to redistribute tax dollars and provide a  financial safety net. Our current system offers an overly complicated tax process, yet insufficient social benefits to account for many Americans’ difficulties. In the long term, UBI is similar to a form of symbolic redistribution. A genuinely universal UBI program would not be ideal for the economy as a whole, as it presents a short-term solution to more long-term problems. Furthermore, without a wealth tax or a modernized form of NIT, UBI could hurt the economy and the working class more than it would help. An alternative would accurately target the least well-off. In conclusion, UBI has hardly progressed in concept since American revolutionary Thomas Paine originally proposed the idea in Agrarian Justice in 1797. The lack of implementation of UBI and the increasing complexity of the world’s economic systems tell us this: UBI is perceived as an idealistic, symbolic solution to income inequality that fails to address underlying issues. New policy proposals come mostly from former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), who both identify as Democratic-Socialists. These progressive policies cover many aspects of social welfare: climate justice, Medicare, housing, and college for all, and eliminating student and medical debt. Thus, these policies provide a basic social safety net for Americans, while also offering a clear path for funding. All in all, UBI does not meet the same level of planning and support, rendering it a largely unrealistic approach. UBI would be an expensive and virtually useless program for the most vulnerable in our society—the poor, disabled, elderly, and youth.

Before March of 2020, it was difficult to imagine what an implementation of UBI would look like. Then, over 22 million Americans filed for unemployment in the month of April alone. It’s important to note that the United States’ single $1200 conditional cash transfer to Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be considered a form of UBI. Though the United States failed to implement a long-lasting relief check for most of the country’s population, stimulus checks still garnered wide public approval. A recent poll conducted by OnePoll also demonstrated that, after receiving their first stimulus checks, 80 percent of those sampled believed that the economic impact payments should continue until the end of the pandemic. On the other hand, the Canadian COVID-19 Economic Response Plan, similar to plans in the majority of other countries facing economic crisis due to the pandemic, guaranteed checks for a larger portion of citizens than the U.S., with a plan to continue payments through the rest of the pandemic. Additionally, only six million Canadians filed for unemployment within April compared to the United States’ 22 million. Through the Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB), citizens who lost their jobs, faced income reduction, or were forced to stop working received $500 per week for up to 26 weeks. This recovery procedure is much closer to UBI than the United States’ response. Aside from the partisan divide between those within the Liberal Party who enacted the policy, and the Conservatives who argued that it lacked a commitment to fiscal restraint and failed to address the needs of “everyday Canadians,” most Canadian citizens were quite content with the package compared to the overwhelming disapproval in the United States. As the last few months have proven, UBI is not as disruptive to our normative system of government as one might assume. However, it is not enough. A consistent cash transfer alone will not remedy wealth and income inequality, the lack of access to adequate healthcare, and, overall, the government’s failure to redistribute tax dollars and provide a  financial safety net. Our current system offers an overly complicated tax process, yet insufficient social benefits to account for many Americans’ difficulties. In the long term, UBI is similar to a form of symbolic redistribution. A genuinely universal UBI program would not be ideal for the economy as a whole, as it presents a short-term solution to more long-term problems. Furthermore, without a wealth tax or a modernized form of NIT, UBI could hurt the economy and the working class more than it would help. An alternative would accurately target the least well-off. In conclusion, UBI has hardly progressed in concept since American revolutionary Thomas Paine originally proposed the idea in Agrarian Justice in 1797. The lack of implementation of UBI and the increasing complexity of the world’s economic systems tell us this: UBI is perceived as an idealistic, symbolic solution to income inequality that fails to address underlying issues. New policy proposals come mostly from former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), who both identify as Democratic-Socialists. These progressive policies cover many aspects of social welfare: climate justice, Medicare, housing, and college for all, and eliminating student and medical debt. Thus, these policies provide a basic social safety net for Americans, while also offering a clear path for funding. All in all, UBI does not meet the same level of planning and support, rendering it a largely unrealistic approach. UBI would be an expensive and virtually useless program for the most vulnerable in our society—the poor, disabled, elderly, and youth.

Kurt Weyland, “Why US Democracy Trumps Populism: Comparative Lessons Reconsidered,” Political Science & Politics, vol. 55, no. 3, July 2022, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/why-us-democracy-trumps-populism-comparative-lessons-reconsidered/D6EFD45DC709C4D27742C99992FF9417.

In López and Luna’s scenarios, one condition that could create risks of a “democratic breakdown” in the United States is “the possibility of economic and security crises occurring in the US,” which “some scholars might claim…is already” the case “due to the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic and the insurrection by Trump loyalists” (López and Luna Reference López and Luna2021, 424–25). However, these crisis claims are questionable. The January 6 takeover of the US Capitol was far from involving 5,000+ insurgents fighting the state, as I defined a security crisis (see my Reference Weyland2020 online appendix, p. 4). The massive guerrilla insurrections in Colombia and Peru qualified but not the much more limited, less lethal violence of the—undeniably disturbing—US militias. Contrary to the Andean fighters, the heterogeneous, fragmented US groupings lacked any plan for an armed seizure of the government; after invading the building, they soon withdrew.

Kurt Weyland, “Why US Democracy Trumps Populism: Comparative Lessons Reconsidered,” Political Science & Politics, vol. 55, no. 3, July 2022, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/why-us-democracy-trumps-populism-comparative-lessons-reconsidered/D6EFD45DC709C4D27742C99992FF9417.

My comprehensive analysis of populist governments in Europe and Latin America showed that the risk to liberal democracy was lower than many observers stirred up by Donald Trump’s stunning election had feared (Weyland Reference Weyland2020). I define populism as a political strategy through which personalistic, typically charismatic leaders seek and exercise power through unmediated, quasi-direct appeals and connections to an amorphous, heterogeneous, largely unorganized mass of followers. Based on this definition, I theorized that personalistic plebiscitarian leadership suffocated democracy only when two types of conditions intersected: (1) when institutional weakness created room for maneuvering by personalistic leaders; and (2) when conjunctural opportunities, arising from severe and acute but resolvable crises or from hydrocarbon windfalls, allowed such leaders to obtain overwhelming support.

Kamali first maps out the ideo-theological underpinnings of White nationalism. Inspired by a moral imperative named the ‘Fourteen Words’, the slogan ‘We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children!’ penned by David Lane, a member of The Order (a terrorist organization), White nationalism rests on a conviction of the inherent superiority of the White race and concurrent support for a White ethno-state (40–41). The fabric of contemporary White nationalism in the USA, Kamali writes, is largely shaped by racist networks and factions including Christian Identity, Creativity and Wotanism. These factions articulate racism as a foundational driving force for the future of White superiority (57). Religion is exclusively utilized to underpin their racist White supremacist ideology and justify violence. The idea of the survival, expansion and advancement of the White race is a supreme ideological goal, for which utilizing racial and religious discourses, as well as violence and militancy, are considered vital (62). Similarly, Kamali maintains, seven centuries of Islamic theology have been decontextualized or distorted by militant Islamists to provide grounds for violence against the USA and its citizens, including Muslims. She claims that one of the most fundamental religious doctrines of militant Islamists is al-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ, understood as ‘loyalty and solidarity to Muslims and disavowal of anything and anyone considered un-Islamic’ (96). This underlying principle divides the world into the abode of Islam, the abode of unbelief, and the abode of war, reinforcing disparities and divergences.

As with the ideological underpinnings (i.e. the Fourteen Words, and loyalty and disavowal), narratives of victimhood have also been essential conceptual and practical bedrocks for both groups. While White nationalists emphasize the so-called White genocide and the necessity of securing the existence and future of the White race, militant Islamists look to the sufferings of Muslims abroad (e.g. in Palestine, Afghanistan). White nationalists underline immigration and relevant demographic changes to support their allegation of a White genocide (119), whilst militant Islamists ‘proclaim’ that the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the Guantanamo detention facility are stark examples of America’s crusade against Muslims and the Islamic world (151). Kamali thus convincingly shows how a sense of victimhood (citing a White genocide on the one hand and the crusades on the other), combined with ideo-theological propaganda, is deployed to justify violence.

This everlasting road continues more than seven years after Trump’s candidacy, as he was still out on the campaign trail as a former President endorsing candidates for the 2022 midterm elections. Seven years of continuing down the previously described pipeline from moderate to fascist thought can be easily proven when looking at how Trump engages his base today compared to before his presidency. In this section, Trump’s RNC speech will be compared to his campaign rally in Pennsylvania on September 3rd, 2022, the first campaign rally after the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago residence and confiscated classified documents.

The similarities between these two speeches cannot be denied: both start with Trump describing how he wants the audience to envision America as a political dumpster fire. Within the first two minutes of his Pennsylvania speech, he fit in a cavalcade of these qualities: