Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey

“In his 6,000-word essay, Gates proposes three direct state interventions. First, he proposes a payroll-style tax on artificial intelligence and robots to penalize companies that automate labor. Second, he proposes legal mandates that reserve specific job categories for humans only. Third, he advocates for global government coordination to slow down artificial intelligence development. As we see so often, government interventions cause more problems than they propose to solve, often having the opposite effect of their stated goals — so government intervention is a terrible idea to solve problems that have not yet happened. After all, adding a tax on automation will negate the increased profits the automation will bring. His ‘solutions’ will bring higher consumer prices; they would protect inefficient monopolies while reducing productivity. Negating the whole point of AI.” (08/27/26)

https://palmbeachexaminer.substack.com/p/bill-gates-wants-to-tax-ai-and-reserve

Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp

“The US Army, Fox Business reports, plans to build nuclear ‘microreactors’ at five of its bases — Fort Bragg, Fort Campbell, Fort Hood, Fort Benning, and Fort Drum — over the next two years, with at least 15 more to follow later. Why? To, the report says, ‘strengthen the military’s energy security and reduce its reliance on potentially vulnerable power grids.’ The idea certainly makes sense for a military base, but it makes sense for everyone, everywhere else, too. The biggest security and reliability worry with electricity isn’t that an enemy missile or bomb will take out a power plant. It’s that an attack or accident somewhere along the 650,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and 6.3 million miles of distribution lines criss-crossing the US will stop that power from getting delivered.” (08/27/26)

https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/20850

Source: Sex and the State
by Cathy Reisenwitz

“In Asia Times, Noah Smith just wrote that standard economic measures can’t really explain why Americans are growing less happy with their lives over time. The problem is that what makes for a happy, meaningful life is much harder to measure than GDP or median income. I agree that standard economic measures alone won’t do the trick. But it’s not because it’s so hard to measure what predicts a happy, meaningful life. That’s actually pretty easy. Connecting economic realities to those measures is also fairly straightforward. What Smith is missing is that relationships predict happiness. And, increasingly, economic conditions predict relationships.” (08/27/26)

https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/p/bottom-half-families-explain-americas

Source: Cato Institute
by Marian L Tupy

“Cooperation helps us survive, while innovation helps us prosper. How ‘interjurisdictional competition’ can foster the latter.” (08/27/26)

https://www.cato.org/commentary/wealth-taxes-competition-long-term-prosperity

Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff

“News about the wars in Iran and Gaza has lately eclipsed that of a more consequential war: the one in Ukraine, now in its fifth year. Yet that conflict could soon take a turn against the aggressor, Russia – less on the battlefront and more on the homefront. By various reports, young Russians are showing more bravery through subtle opposition to the war, while young men have become less brave about joining the military – actively avoiding coercive new ways of recruiting them to replace the vast number of soldiers lost on the front lines. The contrast with Ukraine could not be more stark.” (08/26/26)

https://www.csmonitor.com/Editorials/the-monitors-view/2026/0826/Ukraine-s-edge-in-war-Esprit-de-military-corps