By George Walker Sep. 16, 2026 Automation was once heralded as humanity’s ticket to prosperity—a force that would free workers from drudgery and ignite productivity booms across every sector. Yet the modern reality of automation, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, has exposed a paradox: the more efficient our machines become, the more unequal our societies grow. While corporations and capital owners reap record profits from labor-saving technologies, worker

By Adam Li Sep. 17, 2025 For two centuries, growth has been the world’s religion. Every budget, every election, every metric of national pride begins with one sacred question: How fast are we growing? But what if growth — once the measure of success — has become the symptom of decay? The planet is overheating, debt is compounding, and productivity is stagnating. The World Bank (2024)  forecasts that global GDP growth will average just 2.2 percent per year  this decade, the lo

By Simon Dupont Sep. 17, 2025 The global refugee crisis has long been framed as a humanitarian burden—an emergency demanding aid, camps, and containment. Yet this framing overlooks an equally powerful truth: refugees are not only victims of conflict but also potential drivers of economic growth. With more than 114 million people  forcibly displaced worldwide as of 2024, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) , integrating these populations into host econom

By Aditi Joshi, India Sep. 19, 2025 For two centuries, growth has been the world’s religion. Every budget, every election, every metric of national pride begins with one sacred question: How fast are we growing? But what if growth — once the measure of success — has become the symptom of decay? The planet is overheating, debt is compounding, and productivity is stagnating. The World Bank (2024)  forecasts that global GDP growth will average just 2.2 percent per year  this dec

By Kenji Mori, Japan Sep. 20, 2025 Artificial intelligence has become the defining technology of the 21st century—transforming economies, rewriting social contracts, and redrawing the boundaries of human decision-making. Yet while the technology races ahead, governance lags dangerously behind. From Washington to Brussels to Beijing, policymakers are struggling to control an innovation that evolves faster than the laws meant to restrain it. The result is a widening governance

By Rebecca Wilson, UK Sep. 21, 2025 For most of history, central banks were quiet institutions — guardians of currency, supervisors of inflation, and lenders of last resort. But in the past two decades, they have quietly evolved from monetary technicians into the world’s most powerful unelected policymakers. Their balance sheets now determine housing markets, stock valuations, and even climate policy. Their interest rates define the rhythm of democracy itself. According to th

By Jingyi Wu, China Sep. 24, 2025 The promise of artificial intelligence (AI) was once bold: to elevate productivity, democratize opportunity and unlock the next frontier of global growth. But a troubling reality is emerging — AI is not just transforming work, it's deepening the divide between the winners and losers of the digital economy. Wealth is consolidating at the top, labour income is stagnating, and entire regions are being left out. Unless policy intervenes decisivel

By Aarav Reddy, India Sep. 27, 2025 The twentieth century built capitalism on scarcity — of goods, of labor, of information. The twenty-first century destroyed that last pillar. We now live in an economy where every possible insight, metric, and dataset is available at all times, yet clarity has never been rarer. Businesses, governments, and individuals operate not in ignorance but in saturation . And saturation, unlike scarcity, cannot be solved with more production. It must

By Riko Matsumoto, Japan Sep. 29, 2025 For centuries, the map of the world was defined by borders — lines carved through history, culture, and conflict. But as rising seas redraw the planet’s geography, a new kind of displacement has begun: one where countries themselves are disappearing. The slow submersion of low-lying island nations is not only an environmental crisis but a legal and political one. For the first time in human history, entire populations may become stateles

By Michelle Luo Oct. 13, 2025 I — Introduction If the twentieth century commodified labor and the twenty-first commodified data, the next frontier of capitalism is poised to commodify emotion . Artificial intelligence — specifically affective computing — is making it possible to quantify, predict, and manipulate human feeling with a precision that once belonged to fiction. From sentiment analysis in financial markets to emotion-tracking wearables and camera-based affect recog

By Sofia Alvarez Oct. 16, 2025 Humanitarian aid has long been reactive—mobilized only after crises erupt. Yet as refugee flows become more frequent and prolonged, this model is increasingly unsustainable. Artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive analytics are now offering a transformative alternative: anticipating displacement before it occurs and channeling funding to where it is needed most. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the aver

By Vivek Nair Oct. 22, 2025 I — Introduction The green transition was meant to end the logic of extraction. By replacing oil with renewables, policymakers promised a post-carbon economy liberated from the geopolitics of scarcity. Yet as electric vehicles, battery storage, and renewable grids surge, the world is rediscovering an old pattern in a new metal: lithium. Once an obscure ingredient for ceramics, lithium has become the most traded critical mineral on Earth , with dema

By Chloe Taylor Oct. 26, 2025 I — Introduction For decades, automation anxiety revolved around factory floors — robots replacing welders, kiosks replacing cashiers. Yet the rise of generative AI has inverted that hierarchy. The new automation frontier is not the assembly line but the spreadsheet. Tasks once protected by education, cognitive complexity, and professional prestige are now the easiest to simulate. This inversion is measurable. A 2024 Goldman Sachs Global Economic

By Haruto Sato Oct. 28, 2025 Refugees are often portrayed as dependents of international aid, yet this framing conceals a powerful truth: displaced people are active economic agents managing substantial financial capital. According to the World Bank’s Global Concessional Financing Facility , refugees collectively control more than US$150 billion  in assets worldwide, most of which lie outside formal banking systems. These flows sustain local economies, fund cross-border trade

By Alex Wang Oct. 28, 2025 Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming how governments manage migration. What was once a domain of humanitarian discretion and legal review is now increasingly filtered through algorithms and predictive models. While policymakers promote AI as a solution to backlog and inefficiency, this technological shift risks redefining who deserves protection—and on what basis. By embedding automation into asylum processing, border surveillance, a

By Joshua Lee Oct. 29, 2025 I — Introduction The global economy runs on a paradox: the movement of goods across oceans is both the engine of globalization and one of its least-priced externalities. Nearly 90 percent  of world trade travels by sea, yet maritime fuel — the sulfur-heavy bunker oil that powers container ships — remains among the least-taxed energy sources on the planet. While the aviation industry faces increasing carbon scrutiny and land transport is rapidly ele

By Saanvi Patel Oct. 30, 2025 When policymakers discuss refugees, the conversation usually revolves around cost: the fiscal strain on welfare systems, housing, or border control. Yet, the economic narrative of displacement is far more complex. Across Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, refugee entrepreneurs have begun turning humanitarian crises into engines of local growth. According to the World Bank , forcibly displaced people would collectively form the world’s 17th-larg

By Anna Müller Oct. 25, 2025 I — Introduction Artificial intelligence promised a financial renaissance — algorithms that could neutralize human bias and open credit access to the underbanked. Yet as nations digitalize finance at breakneck speed, a quieter paradox is unfolding. Machine-learning lending models are expanding credit quantitatively  but constraining it qualitatively : optimizing portfolios for predictability rather than inclusion. Global data now suggest that algo