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Category: Economics/Business

The rise of a new American oligarchy: Top 10 billionaires’ collective wealth grew by $698bn in past year

The rise of a new American oligarchy: Top 10 billionaires’ collective wealth grew by $698bn in past year

The Guardian reports: The collective wealth of the top 10 US billionaires has soared by $698bn in the past year, according to a new report from Oxfam America published on Monday on the growing wealth divide. The report warns that Trump administration policies risk driving US inequality to new heights, but points out that both Republican and Democratic administrations have exacerbated the US’s growing wealth gap. Using Federal Reserve data from 1989 to 2022, researchers also calculated that the top…

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Zohran Mamdani has a point about rent control

Zohran Mamdani has a point about rent control

Rogé Karma writes: Few policies disgust academic economists quite like rent control. In the 1970s, the Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck famously described it as the “most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.” In a 2012 poll of prominent economists, just 2 percent said that rent-control laws have had “a positive impact” on the “amount and quality of broadly affordable rental housing in cities that have used them.” (The Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler sarcastically proposed a…

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Trump and GOP join Big Oil’s all-out push to shut down climate liability efforts

Trump and GOP join Big Oil’s all-out push to shut down climate liability efforts

Inside Climate News reports: As efforts continue to hold some of the world’s largest fossil fuel corporations liable for destructive and deadly climate impacts, backlash from the politically powerful oil and gas industry and its allies in government is on the rise, bolstered by the Trump administration’s allegiance to fossil fuels. From lobbying Congress for liability protection to suing states over their climate liability laws and lawsuits, attempts to shield Big Oil from potential liability and to shut down climate…

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It’s Trump’s casino economy now and you will probably lose

It’s Trump’s casino economy now and you will probably lose

Kyla Scanlon writes: Step into the casino that now passes for the American economy. Donald Trump campaigned on bringing back American manufacturing and rebuilding what America once was — factories, workers in hard hats — from the ground up. But the investment needed to get there, in both the factories and the workers, hasn’t happened. What he has ushered in instead is a casino economy, built on speculation and risk. Across markets and policy, wagers on the future are being…

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As U.S. cattle ranchers struggle, Trump wants to Make Argentina Great Again

As U.S. cattle ranchers struggle, Trump wants to Make Argentina Great Again

The Hill reports: President Trump is breaking from his “America First” trade agenda and feuding with some of his most loyal supporters in a fight over U.S. beef prices. Trump has centered his economic agenda on reducing the U.S.’s reliance on cheaper foreign products and boosting domestic production of goods and food. But the president’s plan to boost imports of Argentinian beef while urging American suppliers to lower their prices marks a sharp departure from his platform. The dispute is…

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U.S. hits $38 trillion in debt, after the fastest accumulation of $1 trillion outside of the pandemic

U.S. hits $38 trillion in debt, after the fastest accumulation of $1 trillion outside of the pandemic

The Associated Press reports: In the midst of a federal government shutdown, the U.S. government’s gross national debt surpassed $38 trillion Wednesday, a record number that highlights the accelerating accumulation of debt on America’s balance sheet. It’s also the fastest accumulation of a trillion dollars in debt outside of the COVID-19 pandemic — the U.S. hit $37 trillion in gross national debt in August this year. The $38 trillion update is found in the latest Treasury Department report, which logs…

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Will AI avoid the ‘enshittification’ trap?

Will AI avoid the ‘enshittification’ trap?

Steven Levy writes: As companies like OpenAI get more powerful, and as they try to pay back their investors, will AI be prone to the erosion of value that seems endemic to the tech apps we use today? Writer and tech critic Cory Doctorow calls that erosion “enshittification.” His premise is that platforms like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and TikTok start out aiming to please users, but once the companies vanquish competitors, they intentionally become less useful to reap bigger profits….

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Sequoia Capital COO resigns because of partner Shaun Maguire’s Islamophobic attacks on Mamdani

Sequoia Capital COO resigns because of partner Shaun Maguire’s Islamophobic attacks on Mamdani

Middle East Eye reports: Sumaiya Balbale, the chief operating officer at Sequoia Capital, resigned from the Silicon Valley venture capital firm in August, after partner Shaun Maguire wrote posts about New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani that she reportedly viewed as Islamophobic, the Financial Times revealed on Wednesday. Maguire, an American venture capitalist with close ties to X owner Elon Musk, wrote in a July post on the platform: “Mamdani comes from a culture that lies about everything. It’s…

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Amazon plans to automate 75 percent of its operations with robots

Amazon plans to automate 75 percent of its operations with robots

The New York Times reports: Over the past two decades, no company has done more to shape the American workplace than Amazon. In its ascent to become the nation’s second-largest employer, it has hired hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers, built an army of contract drivers and pioneered using technology to hire, monitor and manage employees. Now, interviews and a cache of internal strategy documents viewed by The New York Times reveal that Amazon executives believe the company is on…

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Small businesses are being crushed by Trump’s tariffs. Economists say it’s a warning for the economy

Small businesses are being crushed by Trump’s tariffs. Economists say it’s a warning for the economy

CNBC reports: Viresh Varma can’t sleep. The CEO of AV Universal Corp., a small footwear company that sells through retailers like Macy’s, Nordstrom and DSW, said he needed to take out a $250,000 loan to pay his tariff bill on a container of shoes he imported from India for the holiday shopping season. Varma didn’t have the cash on hand to pay the duties, which he said used to be around $7,500 for a similar-sized container before President Donald Trump’s…

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Tariffs to cost companies $1.2 trillion this year, mostly hitting consumers, study finds

Tariffs to cost companies $1.2 trillion this year, mostly hitting consumers, study finds

Axios reports: President Trump’s tariffs will cost businesses more than $1.2 trillion this year, with most of that cost being passed on to consumers, according to a new study from S&P Global. Why it matters: It’s the latest sign that Americans will end up bearing the brunt of Trump’s trade war. It also contributes to a picture of a much more difficult economy ahead. Driving the news: In the study published on Thursday, S&P Global found that companies are now expected to pay at least $1.2 trillion…

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Trump causes a $2 trillion loss in U.S. stock market with a single social media post

Trump causes a $2 trillion loss in U.S. stock market with a single social media post

CNBC reports: On Friday morning, the S&P 500 was less than a couple of points from another all-time high. Then, after a single social media post from President Donald Trump, $2 trillion in market value was wiped out. The unraveling shows the sway the president’s one-man trade policy still has over the fate of the global economy. Trump at 10:57 a.m. ET wrote on his Truth Social platform that China was “becoming very hostile” with the rest of the world,…

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Labor Department says Trump’s immigration raids are causing a food crisis

Labor Department says Trump’s immigration raids are causing a food crisis

David Dayen writes: The Department of Labor’s new rule cutting farmworker wages bluntly states that souped-up immigration enforcement has devastated the agricultural workforce and created a significant “risk of supply shock-induced food shortages,” according to a document filed in the Federal Register last week. The document also indicates that American workers are simply not interested in and do not have the skills to perform agricultural jobs, at odds with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’s claim that the farm workforce will soon…

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Threat to global markets: Risks posed by AI bubble and Federal Reserve losing credibility

Threat to global markets: Risks posed by AI bubble and Federal Reserve losing credibility

The Guardian reports: The Bank of England has warned there is a growing risk of a “sudden correction” in global markets as it raised concerns about soaring valuations of leading AI tech companies. Policymakers said there were also threats of a “sharp repricing of US dollar assets” if the Federal Reserve lost credibility in the eyes of global investors. It comes as Donald Trump’s continues to attack the US central bank and threaten its independence. Continued hype and optimism about…

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Marc Rowan: The billionaire behind Trump’s extortion plan targeting universities

Marc Rowan: The billionaire behind Trump’s extortion plan targeting universities

“Traditionally, we are taught to judge the success of a society by how it deals with the least able, most vulnerable members of that society. [But] shouldn’t we judge a society by how they treat the most successful?” Marc Rowan, 2012 The New York Times reports: The Trump administration shook higher education this week when it promised benefits to universities that signed a “compact” closely aligned with conservative priorities. But much of the compact’s construction happened outside of the West…

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Trump’s restrictions on H-1B visas may results in jobs being moved out of the U.S.

Trump’s restrictions on H-1B visas may results in jobs being moved out of the U.S.

Reuters reports: The Trump administration’s hefty new visa fees for H-1B workers have prompted high-level talks inside companies in Silicon Valley and beyond on the possibility of moving more jobs overseas – precisely the outcome the policy was meant to stop. U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday announced the change to the visa program that has long been a recruitment pathway for tech firms and encouraged international students to pursue postgraduate courses in the U.S. While the $100,000 levy applies…

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