For the first time after the financial crisis the Spanish Government in 2017 has made it (barely) to the 3% of GDP limit on public deficits as established by the Stability and Growth Pact. The new socialist government believes that it is time to change course now. According to its view after long years of austerity, it is now time to think about increasing government spending.

While the coverage of today’s 5-4 Supreme Court ruling upholding President Trump’s travel ban will understandably focus on how it is a “win” for the current administration, perhaps the most positive revelation from the decision is that it offered a major defeat for President Franklin Roosevelt. 

Over the last couple of weeks we have been bombarded by news coverage of the US government handling of foreigners illegally crossing the southern border and having their children separated from parents by our government. At first I tried to avoid subjecting myself to this circus, but I have been paying close attention for about a week.

I’m not worried about artificial intelligence, I’m terrified of human stupidity.

The debate about technology and its role in society that we need to have is being used to deceive citizens and scare them about the future so they accept to submit to politicians who cannot nor will protect us from the challenges of robotization. 

However, there are many studies that tell us that in 50 years the vast majority of work will be done by robots. What can we do?

We have lived the fallacies of dystopian estimates for decades.

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name has been stripped, by the Association for Library Service to Children, from the “Laura Ingalls Wilder Award” for children’s literature. It will now be known as the Children’s Literature Legacy Award.

As good as Washington is at making bad things happen, it is just as good at finding other people to blame it on. A great example of this is the push the last year to blame America’s opioid crisis on one of its favorite boogeymen: China. While it’s perhaps not so surprising to see such rhetoric from the Trump Administration, it’s a narrative that has received a bipartisan endorsement in Congress.

The United Nations is at it again with yet another report on how bad poverty is in the United States — and how things would improve greatly if the US raised taxes. This time, the UN denunciation of the US has raised the ire of US ambassador Nikki Haley who has called the report “patently ridiculous.”