problem

Artificial intelligence could deliver the productivity surge policymakers have been hoping for since the global financial crisis. But even if it does, economists caution that faster growth will not be enough to solve the mounting debt burdens weighing on advanced economies.

Public debt already exceeds 100% of GDP across most rich nations and is projected to rise further as ageing populations strain pension and healthcare systems, interest bills climb and governments ramp up defence and climate spending. Against that backdrop, AI is increasingly being framed as a potential fiscal lifeline.

The reality is more complicated.

Productivity: The “Magic” Ingredient-With Limits

Economists broadly agree that sustained productivity growth can dramatically improve fiscal dynamics. Higher output boosts tax revenues without raising tax rates, makes existing debt easier to service and reassures bond investors worried about long-term solvency.

At the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), modelling suggests that if AI meaningfully raises labour productivity and if employment also expands public debt across member countries could be about 10 percentage points lower by the mid-2030s than otherwise projected. Even then, debt would still climb to roughly 150% of GDP on current trajectories, up from around 110% today.

In the United States, best-case projections from several economists suggest debt could rise more gradually, to roughly 120% of GDP over the next decade rather than accelerating more sharply. But that still represents historically elevated levels.

As one economist put it, productivity is “like magic” for fiscal sustainability yet today’s debt challenges are too large for productivity gains alone to offset.

Demographics: The Structural Headwind

The fundamental constraint is demographic.

Ageing populations mean fewer workers supporting more retirees, pushing up pension and healthcare costs. In the United States, Social Security alone accounts for roughly one-fifth of federal spending, and benefits are indexed to wages. If AI lifts wages, it may simultaneously increase future benefit obligations.

Slowing immigration in some countries, particularly the U.S., compounds the issue by limiting labour force growth. If AI boosts output per worker but the total number of workers stagnates or declines, overall fiscal relief may be limited.

In short, AI may buy time but it does not reverse the demographic arithmetic driving long-term deficits.

Growth vs. Interest Rates: A Delicate Balance

For debt sustainability, what matters is not just growth, but the relationship between growth and borrowing costs.

If AI-driven productivity pushes economic growth above interest rates for a sustained period, governments can stabilise or even reduce debt ratios more easily. But if faster growth also lifts real interest rates for example, because higher productivity raises returns on capital then debt servicing costs could rise in parallel.

This debate is already unfolding among policymakers at the Federal Reserve, where officials are assessing whether AI could permanently raise the economy’s potential growth rate.

Bond markets will be decisive. Since the pandemic, investors have shown a willingness to punish governments perceived as fiscally profligate. Higher yields can quickly offset any growth dividend from technological gains.

Employment and Wages: The Distribution Question

Much depends on how AI reshapes labour markets.

If AI complements workers and creates new categories of employment, tax revenues may rise meaningfully. But if automation displaces workers faster than new jobs are created, or if profits accrue disproportionately to capital rather than labour, fiscal gains could disappoint.

Capital income is often taxed more lightly than wages. A productivity boom concentrated in corporate profits rather than payrolls may widen inequality without generating proportionate public revenue.

On the spending side, governments might benefit from efficiency gains in public administration. Yet history suggests higher growth can also lead to higher spending demands from infrastructure upgrades to social transfers.

No Substitute for Fiscal Reform

Even in optimistic scenarios where AI lifts U.S. growth closer to 3% annually for an extended period, debt ratios are projected to stabilise at elevated levels rather than return to pre-crisis norms.

In pessimistic scenarios where AI disappoints or a recession strikes before productivity gains materialise debt trajectories could worsen significantly, potentially reaching levels that trigger market instability.

The consensus among economists is clear: AI can ease fiscal pressure, but it cannot substitute for structural reforms. Addressing entitlement sustainability, improving tax efficiency and managing spending priorities remain central.

A Race Against Time

There is also a sequencing risk. If financial markets grow nervous about fiscal trajectories before AI-driven gains are realised, borrowing costs could spike. In that case, the productivity dividend may arrive too late to calm bond investors.

Technological revolutions historically take time to diffuse across economies. Infrastructure, regulation, workforce training and corporate adoption all shape how quickly productivity benefits materialise.

For debt-laden economies, the gamble is that AI’s boost will be large, broad-based and timely. That is possible but far from guaranteed.

AI may help governments breathe easier. It will not absolve them of the harder political choices required to put public finances on a sustainable path.

With information from Reuters.

The most drastic option also appears the least likely.

Buttler, who signed a new two-year central contract last year, has been a mainstay of England’s white-ball teams for more than a decade. Could they really leave him out entirely for a World Cup semi-final?

That encounter may be at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium, where Buttler has made scores of 94 not out, 89 and 116 in the IPL.

Ben Duckett is the spare batter in England’s squad – another man struggling for form.

Duckett is averaging 18.88 across 12 matches this winter across all formats and was out for a first-ball duck in his most recent innings at the start of the month.

Leg-spinning all-rounder Rehan Ahmed would be a left-field replacement. That would be a massive call.

Perhaps Friday’s match against New Zealand, effectively a dead rubber for England given they are already through, is the perfect, pressure-free opportunity for Buttler to help make the hierarchy’s decision an easy one.

“Who is writing Jos Buttler off?,” said former England spinner Alex Hartley.

“If you are, get a grip. He is one of those players where it takes one shot crunched through the covers and he will be back.

“It would be a worry if England were not winning games. I have no doubt when push comes to shove Jos Buttler will be OK.”

On Sunday, Mexican security forces killed 59-year-old Nemesio Ruben Oseguera Cervantes, alias “El Mencho”, the leader of the notorious Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), based in western Mexico’s Jalisco state.

The Mexican defence ministry acknowledged that the lethal operation had been conducted with “complementary information” from the United States, whose “peacemaker” president, Donald Trump, has repeatedly threatened to attack Mexico to combat the drug cartels.

Mind you, these are organisations that owe their very existence to US policy and drug consumption in the first place.

US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau greeted the news of El Mencho’s death with glee, taking to X to proclaim: “This is a great development for Mexico, the US, Latin America, and the world.”

And yet things aren’t looking quite so “great” thus far.

As anyone who has ever paid remote attention to global affairs might have predicted, violence has broken out across several Mexican states in the aftermath of the killing – which is generally what happens when you take out a cartel kingpin.

Gunmen have torched vehicles and blocked highways in various locales while various US media have reported sensationally on the plight of American tourists “stranded” in Mexican resort cities on account of the upheaval.

Shortly after his initial enthusiastic post, Landau returned to X with a “PS, I’m watching the scenes of violence from Mexico with great sadness and concern.” But no matter: “We must never lose our nerve.”

The deputy secretary of state ended his “PS” with some words of encouragement in Spanish for the Mexican nation: “¡Animo Mexico!” (Cheer up, Mexico!)

But again, there is hardly room for cheer given that there is not a single example in pretty much the entire history of the world in which the killing of one cartel boss has resolved the narcotrafficking problem – or anything else, for that matter.

Recall the case of Pablo Escobar of the Medellin Cartel, killed in 1993 by Colombian police with a whole lot of help from the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

Despite Escobar’s absence, the international drug trade proceeded apace, and ensuing decades played host to spectacular levels of violence in Colombia – much of it coincidentally perpetrated by heavily US-backed state security forces.

In one particularly memorable episode, members of the Colombian army slaughtered an estimated 10,000 civilians and passed the cadavers off as left-wing “terrorists”.

To this day, Colombia remains the world’s top producer of cocaine.

In other words, to hail El Mencho’s demise as a “great development” for Mexico or anyone else is at best preposterously delusional.

On Sunday I phoned a Mexican friend in the southern state of Oaxaca, a supporter of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, for our requisite argument over the day’s events. In his view, Mexico’s government had simply been “doing its job” in the “war on drugs” by eliminating El Mencho, and the US had nothing substantial to do with it.

Indeed, much like her predecessor and mentor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Sheinbaum has perfected the art of doing the gringos’ dirty work while purporting to act in a “sovereign” fashion – and even to defy the imperial overlords to the north.

Granted, she does not have a whole lot of room to manoeuvre given the recent kidnapping by the US of Venezuelan head of state Nicolas Maduro – and the fact that Trump has made it known that he is beholden to no law, whether domestic or international.

But while Sheinbaum may have seen no choice but to temporarily placate the Americans and satisfy Trump’s need for blood, Mexicans will pay a heavy price.

A brief review of contemporary Mexican history confirms as much. No sooner did then-Mexican President Felipe Calderon launch his “drug war” under US guidance in 2006 than homicides and enforced disappearances skyrocketed in the country.

Well over half a million people have since been killed and disappeared, many of them victims of militarised agents of the state who often operate in cahoots with organised crime.

Nary a dent has been put in the northward flow of drugs while the southward flow of US-manufactured weapons continues unabated.

The state of Jalisco itself happens to have the highest number of enforced disappearances in all of Mexico and made headlines last year with the discovery of a clandestine crematorium on a ranch outside Guadalajara, one of the host cities of the upcoming World Cup.

The ranch was reportedly used by the CJNG as a recruitment and training centre as well as an extermination site.

And the removal of El Mencho from the equation will do precisely nothing in terms of pacifying the landscape – just as the respective extraditions to the US of Sinaloa cartel leaders Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada merely set off an ongoing violent battle for power.

Contrary to lofty soundbites from US officials, the empire is not at all interested in getting rid of either drug trafficking or violence south of the border as both phenomena provide a perennial excuse for US interference in Mexico and beyond.

Were the gringos actually serious about ridding “Mexico, the US, Latin America, and the world” of the whole cartel problem, a decriminalisation of drugs would do much to nip the business in the bud by rendering the movement of drugs far less fantastically lucrative.

A moratorium on the US’s obsessive manufacture of weapons would also help.

Obviously, nothing so much as resembling those potential solutions is even on the horizon. If it were, that would be one hell of a “great development” indeed.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

The former Top Gear presenter admits he was blindsided by what he now sees as one of the gravest dangers facing young people, confessing “I simply had no idea”

Jeremy Clarkson has confessed he was caught off guard by what he now considers one of the greatest threats to young people today, admitting, “I simply had no idea.” In his column for The Sun, the former Top Gear host revealed that while he previously worried about conventional teenage dangers, he overlooked the fact that the most damaging influences were already accessible through their mobile phones.

Looking back on his time as a father, Clarkson explained: “When my kids were teenagers, I worried about them taking drugs and going on motorbikes, and I simply had no idea that the real danger was lurking in their telephones.”

His remarks follow the Government’s plans to strengthen laws targeting the distribution of non-consensual intimate images online. Earlier this week, Sir Keir Starmer announced intentions to bolster legislation requiring tech firms to delete such content within 48 hours of being flagged.

However, Clarkson maintains that the rapid pace of online sharing renders that timeframe impractical. “This is laughable because if someone uploads a topless picture of you, all your friends will see it within 48 seconds,” he stated. “Forty-eight hours on the internet is about four million years,” reports the Express.

The Prime Minister has positioned the proposed reforms as a key element of a wider effort to tackle online abuse directed at women and girls. Through an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill, social media companies that don’t meet the two-day deadline for removing content could be hit with substantial fines or potentially banned from operating in the UK.

Starmer, who previously held the role of director of public prosecutions, said his past work gave him insight into the “unimaginable, often lifelong pain and trauma violence against women and girls causes.” He added: “As Prime Minister, I will leave no stone unturned in the fight to protect women from violence and abuse.”

Characterising the internet as an emerging frontline, Starmer stated: “The online world is the front line of the 21st century battle against violence against women and girls. That’s why my government is taking urgent action: against chatbots and ‘nudification’ tools. Today we are going further, putting companies on notice so that any non-consensual image is taken down in under 48 hours. Violence against women and girls has no place in our society, and I will not rest until it is rooted out.”

Clarkson, 65, doesn’t question the gravity of the problem. In fact, he believes it goes even deeper than politicians realise. He highlighted the HBO drama Euphoria, featuring Zendaya and Sydney Sweeney, as a stark illustration of the challenges confronting today’s teenagers. “What Starmer needs to do is watch a TV show starring Zendaya and Sydney Sweeney. It’s called Euphoria and God knows what possessed me to tune in — teenage angst and a lot of male nudity is not my thing normally — but Lord, I’m glad I did,” Clarkson remarked. “I know it’s a drama but if only half of the issues are real, society has a serious problem.”

For Clarkson, the programme highlighted how online culture has amplified adolescent experiences. He outlined the troubling aspects he believes have become widespread: “The bullying. The d*ck pics. The revenge porn threats. And a very real sense that if you say or do something that is considered out of line by an ‘unseen woke police force,’ that’s you done.”

While he acknowledges that Starmer is correct to concentrate on social media’s effect on teenage girls, he doubts whether a 48-hour takedown requirement is adequate in reality. “Starmer is right to be thinking about the effect social media has on teenage girls. But suggesting that a platform must take down revenge nudes and deep fake pictures within two days demonstrates he does not understand the scale of the problem.”

I like Seattle. The Seahawks were the NFL’s most complete team this season and can present problems in all three phases.

While Seattle’s defense doesn’t scare New England — the Patriots prevailed against the solid Chargers and elite Houston and Denver defenses — the Seahawks likely will give Drake Maye’s blockers problems.

As good as he was this season, Maye fumbled six times in the playoffs, losing three. New England’s run defense was among the league’s best early in the season, then fell off, but has snapped back with the return of Milton Williams.

Establishing the run is huge for the Seahawks, who need that for their play-action passing game. Seattle needs some stepped-up production from running back Kenneth Walker III, who was so-so in the championship game.

It hurts the Seahawks that they don’t have running back Zach Charbonnet, who was excellent in short yardage and pass protection.

The Patriots have really good defensive backs who will have their hands full with Jaxson Smith-Njigba and the Super Bowl-seasoned Cooper Kupp.

Sam Darnold has proven time and again that he has turned the corner in his career and is legitimately sharp, reliable and poised under pressure. It feels like this game will be close for awhile, and Seattle will pull away just enough in the second half.

Pick: Seahawks 28, Patriots 23

California’s ticketing industry could be undergoing some major changes.

On Thursday, state Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco) introduced a new bill, the California Fans First Act, that would impose price caps on tickets sold in the resale market, limiting prices to no more than 10% above the ticket’s face value.

By making it illegal to sell overly expensive tickets, AB 1720 is aimed at making resale tickets more affordable for fans. If the legislation becomes law, it would apply only to shows in California and exclude tickets to sporting events.

AB 1720 was introduced weeks after a similar bill, AB 1349, reached the California Senate. The latter aims to ban speculative ticket sales (tickets that resellers don’t yet possess) in the state. If enacted, the proposed legislation would require sellers to have event tickets in their possession before listing them for sale and would raise the maximum civil penalty for each violation from $2,500 to $10,000.

Both bills aim to better regulate the state’s resale ticketing market.

Over the last several years, high ticket prices have been a recurring complaint among concertgoers. Rising demand for tickets has spurred a secondary resale marketplace for all kinds of high-profile live events, including music tours and sports games, making it harder to get tickets on the primary market.

Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation have been at the center of this issue for years, as the major ticketing vendor sells around 80% of tickets through its website. The company is currently facing lawsuits from both the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, alleging monopolistic practices and illegal ticket vendor practices.

“We’re trying to convince the federal government and state governments to get on the same page of recognizing where the problem is, which is overwhelmingly in the resale industry, and trying to do something about it,” said Dan Wall, Live Nation’s vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs, in a previous interview with The Times.

In a statement, Live Nation said it supports “efforts to protect concert fans and artists” and that the latest bill “targets a core problem in live music: predatory resale sites.”

Similar legislation has been popping up nationwide and around the world — the U.K. recently announced plans to ban the resale of tickets for prices higher than their face value.

A resale cap was successfully passed in Maine last year, with tickets only allowed to be sold at 110% of the ticket’s original price. Other states like New York, Vermont, Washington and Tennessee are also considering ticketing regulations.

Some critics see this surge of ticketing legislation as a way to distract from Ticketmaster/Live Nation’s legal troubles and single out the resale market.

Diana Moss, the director of competition policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, said that by capping resale ticket prices, AB 1720 “puts consumers last, not first.”

“It buys into the false narrative that the secondary market is to blame for all problems in ticketing, deflecting attention from the Live Nation-Ticketmaster monopoly,” said Moss in a statement to The Times. “Caps will decimate resale, the only market with competition, and hand Live Nation even more power to jack up ticket fees.”

PHOENIX — Kawhi Leonard scored 25 points and the Clippers, playing without James Harden, routed the Phoenix Suns 117-93 on Sunday night.

Leonard, who was left off the Western Conference All-Star reserves announced earlier Sunday, had eight rebounds as well as his 27th consecutive game with 20 or more points. Ivica Zubac had 20 rebounds as the Clippers bounced back from a loss at Denver on Friday and dominated the inside, outrebounding Phoenix 63-35 and outscoring the Suns 64-18 in the paint.

Jordan Miller had 20 points, John Collins scored 16, Zubac had 14 and Kobe Sanders had 12 for the Clippers, who shot 51.8% from the field. Sanders started for Harden, who missed the game for personal reasons.

Since starting the season 6-21, the Clippers have won 17 of 21 and are just two games under .500. The Suns had won three straight before Sunday, and are still 15-7 since Dec. 21.

Grayson Allen led the Suns with 23 points and eight assists, and Dillon Brooks scored 22 points. Phoenix shot just 33.3% from the field and was held under 100 points for just the sixth time in 50 games this season. Collin Gillespie and Jordan Goodwin each finished with 12 points.

The Suns were without Devin Booker (right ankle sprain) and Jalen Green (right hamstring, left hip). Booker was selected as a reserve for his fifth All-Star Game earlier Sunday.

The teams split the season series 2-2.

Up next for the Clippers: vs. Philadelphia at Intuit Dome on Monday night.