Economic Visions, A Taliban Ban, Voter Purges, & AI Making AI

October 31, 2024

Hello, readers – happy Thursday! Today, we’ll be talking about Trump’s economic vision, the U.K.’s economic vision, Canada vs. India, the Taliban’s ban, Reddit’s economic vision, voter roll purges, and Google’s use of AI.

Here’s some good news: The Department of Transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration, and Delta Air Lines confirmed that they’re working on seating that would allow travelers who rely on wheelchairs to fly seated in their own equipment. Also, Anna Kendrick revealed that she donated her salary from Woman of the Hour to RAINN and the National Center for Victims of Violent Crime.

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” – Barack Obama

A Peek Into Trump’s America 2.0

Many American voters think that Donald Trump would be a net positive for the U.S. economy, but that may not be the case. One of Trump’s biggest policy points is tariffs on all imports to the U.S. Though the former president keeps changing his tune on the details, they’re supposed to be around 10-20% for imports from most U.S. trading partners, about 60% for Chinese imports, and might rise to 1000% in some circumstances. If Trump is elected, producers across the economy, from apparel to auto parts to baby products, say they’ll simply pass on the costs associated with the tariffs on to consumers.

Trump’s joint campaign promise with Elon Musk to make “at least $2 trillion in [budget] cuts” also needs more context. Currently, the U.S. federal budget is about $6.75 trillion. Making $2 trillion in cuts, then, would force the government to shrink its programs by about one-third – including cuts to Social Security and the military. If you’re not a big fan of cutting into those programs, a $2 trillion cut would mean reducing spending in other areas by about 80% – meaning infrastructure repairs, food safety inspections (remember those recent listeria and E. coli outbreaks?), and healthcare.

Trump’s plan to carry out “the largest deportation operation in American history” would also spike inflation and reduce productivity across the U.S. Deporting 1 million immigrants would cost the U.S. an estimated $20 billion – and would leave about 10-11 million other undocumented immigrants still in the U.S.

Labour’s Laborious Budget Cuts

The Labour Party’s young government unveiled its first budget on Wednesday as Rachel Reeves, the chancellor of the Exchequer, presented the spending plan to Parliament. The main takeaway is the government’s plan to increase taxes by 40 billion pounds ($51.8 billion) next year – the majority of that tax growth will come from new taxes placed on employers when they pay workers’ salaries, though money will also come from increased capital gains and inheritance taxes.

“The choices that I have made today are the right choices for our country,” said Reeves in her 80-minute speech. “That doesn’t mean these choices are easy.” Labour leader Keir Starmer has warned about how painful the budget will be since he took the reins of government this year, and Reeves has repeatedly noted that Britons will likely have to deal with some tax hikes to stabilize their country’s checkbook. Besides the rise in taxes, the new budget will also see Britain spend £70 billion more per year over the next five years, with much of that money going towards public employee salaries, new programs, and fresh infrastructure.

The Canada-India Beef Heats Up

Yesterday, Canada’s foreign minister alleged that India’s Home Affairs Minister was directly involved in plots to violently attack Sikh separatists living within Canada’s borders. That Indian minister is one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s closest political allies, dragging the head of the struggling Bharatiya Janata Party closer to the center of the international scandal.
Last year, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused “agents of the Indian” government of plotting to attack or kill Sikh separatists living in Canada for multiple years. In May, four people were arrested in relation to the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, one Sikh activist who called Canada home. The four are still awaiting trial. Last November, the U.S. Department of Justice also alleged that a separate employee of the Indian government was involved in a plot to kill a U.S. attorney who supported the Sikh separatist cause – that person is awaiting trial as well.

Even Praying Isn’t Sacred Anymore

Afghanistan’s Taliban government has announced its latest policy aimed at restricting women’s rights. Now, Afghan women won’t (legally) be allowed to pray loudly (whatever that means) or recite the Quran in front of other women. The new laws add to a pile of existing morality laws, which block women from accessing any education past the sixth grade, bar them from entering public spaces, and restrict them from holding most jobs.
Women also won’t be allowed to say “subhanallah,” which translates to “Glory be to Allah” or “glorious is God,” a basic word in Islam. “So, there is certainly no permission for singing,” Afghanistan’s Vice and Virtue Minister, Khalid Hanafi, added.

More Mixed Nuts

Reddit Brings Home The Bacon

Reddit claimed a profit of $29.9 million, or 16 cents per share, for the second quarter of 2024, and reported sales of $348.4 million. This marks the first time in its 20-year history that it’s been profitable. In a letter to shareholders, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said its new AI translation feature was a big contributor to the growth.
Advertising remains its main source of income, but other sources have popped up lately as well – both Google and OpenAI have signed deals with the company to train their artificial intelligence models on its content. Reddit also grew its number of daily users to 97.2 million, a 47% increase from the same time last year.

A Shadowy Approval Of A Scattershot Order

Back in August, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed an order that required election officials to identify residents who self-identified as noncitizens at the DMV and purge those matches from voter rolls. Voting rights groups provided evidence that the voter purge effort had also removed citizens who were eligible to vote.
The National Voter Registration Act bars states from making “systematic” changes to voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election, so the law was, temporarily, paused and the citizens were to be re-added to the voter rolls. Well, that undoing of Youngkin’s law has now been re-done by the Supreme Court, which ruled yesterday (6-3, liberals dissenting) that the program can continue. Because the case was handled on the “shadow docket,” reasoning for the decision wasn’t provided by the justices.

More Nuts In America

The Future Is AI-Made AIs

According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, over a quarter of his company’s code is now written by artificial intelligence. The portions of code generated by larger amounts of code are overseen by human programmers, and the company plans to expand its use of AI going forward. That’s despite recent studies showing that when software engineers use AI coding assistants, their output contains more bugs while they think it’s more secure.
“We’re also using AI internally to improve our coding processes, which is boosting productivity and efficiency,” Pichai said during Google’s Q3 earnings call. The company – and the tech industry as a whole – seems all too happy to pivot away from human coders to AI. Yesterday, GitHub Copilot, which offers AI coding services based on a special coding AI model from OpenAI, announced it would also be releasing new features using AI models created by Anthropic and Google.

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