Articles

Articles and analyses from the INET community on the key economic questions of our time.

Article

Russell’s Teapot: Dispatches From the Final Stage of the AI Bubble

Apr 27, 2026

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.

Article

One Affordability Battle After Another: What to do about the growing damage from the AI-Fossil Fuel Industrial Complex

Feb 17, 2026

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.

Article

Failed State, Failed Market: Europe’s Bid to Reprice Social Media Harms

Feb 13, 2026

Europe’s social media crackdown is less about “speech wars” than a long-overdue attempt to price the public damage created by large platforms.

Article

Debt, Austerity, and the New EU Rules: Why Italy’s “Reform” Path Still Leads Nowhere

Nov 26, 2025

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.

Article

AI, Antitrust, and the Future of the Marketplace of Ideas

Nov 17, 2025

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.

Article

Not the Fix—The Tell: The Meaning of a $100,000 H-1B Fee

Oct 20, 2025

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.

Article

Labor Day 2025: The Great Crash (of the Economists)

Aug 29, 2025

Contrary to what many economic models suggest, salaries aren’t constantly recalibrated based on skills or technology. They follow the economy and politics—and common sense: hire when needed, promote from within, and slow hiring when budgets tighten.

Article

Economists Warn: Trump’s Intel Move Looks Like Performance, Not Policy

Aug 26, 2025

Two economists who have studied Intel warn that Trump’s move to take a stake in the company amounts to flashy optics, incoherent strategy, and a creeping politicization of economic policy.