Prof. Jonathan Gruber speaks with GBH hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan about why Democrats are pushing to raise the debt ceiling. “This is really about paying off the money that Congress approved to spend for all of the things the government does,” says Gruber.
Profs. Daron Acemoglu and David Autor speak with New York Times correspondent Thomas B. Edsall about the forces driving working-class voters towards the Republican party. “Elites are making choices that are not good news for non-college workers,” said Acemoglu. “In fact, they are bad news for most workers.”
Prof. Christopher Knittel speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Andrew Duehren about how European governments are beginning to experiment with new ways to control energy prices.“Especially with the European energy-market policy interventions, what policy makers do not want to do is exacerbate these problems with their policies, and my fear is that is what these proposals would do,” says Knittel.
At MIT’s AI Policy Forum Summit, which was focused on exploring the challenges facing the implementation of AI technologies across a variety of sectors, SEC Chair Gary Gensler and MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Dean Daniel Huttenlocher discussed the impact of AI on the world of finance. “If someone is relying on open-AI, that's a concentrated risk and a lot of fintech companies can build on top of it,” Gensler said. “Then you have a node that's every bit as systemically relevant as maybe a stock exchange."
Writing for The Hill, Prof. Jonathan Gruber, Representative Ro Khanna (D-California) and Matt Hourihan of the Federation of American Scientists write that there’s “an unfortunate history of Congress authorizing ambitious boosts for science only to fall short in appropriations. Congress deserves credit for getting the CHIPS and Science Act across the finish line, but legislators shouldn’t rest on their haunches. Instead, our leaders should sustain the moment they’ve started and ensure robust support for federal innovation — our future depends on it.”
Prof. Jessika Trancik says that the tax incentive in the Inflation Reduction Act may help encourage the transition to electric vehicles due to the income cap for people to qualify, reports Lily Jamali for Marketplace. “I think it’s really important to structure them in such a way that the benefits are equitably distributed across the population,” says Trancik.
Prof. Thomas Kochan writes for Fortune about how California’s new Fast Food Council can positively impact businesses, investors, employers, and workers. The council is “composed of industry, worker, and government representative to set minimum wage, safety, and employment and training standards for workers in large fast food chains and their franchises,” writes Kochan.
Principal Research Scientist Randolph Kirchain, co-director of the Concrete Sustainability Hub, speaks with Jane Margolies of The New York Times about how the Inflation Reduction Act expands eligibility for tax credits for installing emissions-reduction equipment at manufacturing plants. “These credits are really valuable to keep technology coming down in cost,” says Kirchain.
This summer’s heat waves and droughts have brought forth a series of issues including disruption of crop production, further inflation, and electrical issues, reports Colin Lodewick for Fortune. “I think it’s too early to quantify, but I have no doubt that these extreme events are contributing to high prices,” says Sergey Paltsev, deputy director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. “In the future, if we don’t change the course of action, it’s going to be worse.”
Prof. Daron Acemoglu notes that “the decline in popular support for democracy is greater in the United States than elsewhere, especially among the young,” reports Thomas B. Edsall for The New York Times. Acemoglu explains that “one way to address the discontent with contemporary democracy among so many voters on the right would be to implement traditional center-left economic policies, including many supported by the Biden administration,” writes Edsall.
Writing for The Hill, President L. Rafael Reif and Stephen A. Schwarzman, chairman, CEO & co-founder of Blackstone, praise the new “CHIPS and Science Act” and highlight the need for further action on the ‘Science’ part of the law. “We urge Congress to capitalize on this bipartisan momentum and appropriate the funds that the bill authorizes,” they write. The nation's "future competitiveness, prosperity and security all rely on technological leadership. To sustain its strength in the long term, the U.S. needs to invent and manufacture the next new technologies.”
Lita Nelsen BS ’64, MS ’66, MBA ’79 writes for The Boston Herald about the Bayh-Dole Act, a landmark piece of legislation that allows universities to keep the patents to their own inventions. “As the head of MIT’s Technology Licensing Office for almost three decades, I helped license thousands of technologies to the innovative companies that sprung up around campus,” writes Nelsen. “The Bayh-Dole Act has indisputably helped the U.S. life sciences sector become the envy of the world.”
A new proposed economic bill could provide “game-changing” incentives for the nuclear energy industry, reports Jennifer McDermott and Mary Katherine Wildeman for the Associated Press. The bill “is really substantial,” says Prof. Jacopo Buongiorno. “This should move the needle in terms of making these technologies economically viable right off the bat.”
Researchers at MIT have found that “for every nine adults who gained access to Medicaid in Oregon due to a special due to a special enrollment lottery, one previously eligible child was added to the rolls as well,” reports Dennis Thompson for U.S. News & World Report. The lottery “enabled us to look at the questions of what happens to children of adults who win the lottery, compared to children of adults who don’t win the lottery,” says Prof. Amy Finkelstein.
Los Angeles Times reporter Sammy Roth spotlights Prof. Lawrence Susskind’s study that finds common sources of opposition to delayed or blocked renewable energy projects include concerns over land use and environmental impact. Roth writes that Susskind’s “research has convinced him that speeding up the clean energy transition will be possible only if developers take the time to make a good-faith effort to gather input from communities before dumping solar and wind farms on them.”