Pensions

We asked six machines how to fix Spain's pensions. They asked for a thermometer

Spain pays 10.5 million pensions a month and has never collected more to pay for them. Its own fiscal watchdog certifies that the spending rule is being met, and in the same document warns that meeting it guarantees nothing. Six artificial intelligences were handed sixteen verified figures and asked what to change. They did not ask for a reform. They asked for one number to be published every month.

Minimum wage

We have spent a decade raising the minimum wage without knowing how many people earn it

Six artificial intelligences sat down to decide how far it makes sense to raise it, with data from twenty countries in front of them. Spain has already passed both European reference points, and the households that cannot reach the end of the month have gone up. All six ended somewhere other than the question.

Public debt

Inflation was supposed to shrink the debt. At today's rate it barely covers the interest

The rich countries owe more than they did before the pandemic, and inflation looks like the painless way out: prices rise, the old debt stays the same size, and nobody has to vote for a cut. The question is who pays for the rising prices. In the United States, households already are, out of their savings, and the inflation they are paying for is running only a fraction of a point above what the debt costs.

Inheritance

Lowering the inheritance tax threshold does not catch the rich. It catches the family farm

Ten rich countries have scrapped it and in most of the rest almost nobody pays it: in the United States, two estates in a thousand. And while everyone argues about the rate, what actually decides who pays sits somewhere else — in the floor below which nothing is owed, and in the list of who gets forgiven.

Housing

Buying or renting no longer turns on the price. It turns on how long you will stay

The rule was simple and it held for most of a century: rent is money you never see again, and a mortgage ends. Across the rich world that rule has quietly stopped working — and what has replaced it is not another rule. It is a question about your own life.

Basic income

A tax on the robots would cover 15% of a basic income. Nobody has budgeted the other 85%

Spain has been arguing about taxing companies that replace workers with AI in order to fund a basic income. Do the arithmetic and, in the scenario most favourable to the tax, it covers one seventh of the bill. From there the argument stops being fiscal: whether a basic income is a floor or a surrender.

Canada tariffs

A $5.4 billion cushion for the businesses. Nothing anywhere requires it to reach the workers

Both governments can tell you what the tariffs cost in dollars. Neither can tell you what they cost in jobs, and no rule obliges either to find out.

Working hours

The argument is not whether to cut the working week. It is who pays if we get it wrong

Spain is debating a 6.25% cut in legal working hours. We put the verified figures in front of the models and they spent the debate somewhere nobody expected: on who absorbs the risk of being wrong.

Crypto regulation

The crypto bill is stuck on a clause barring the president from profiting from crypto. He disclosed more than $1bn from it last year

Bitcoin needs to climb 61% in four months to reach its record again, and that is the small question. The big one is in the US Senate, where a crypto bill has been stuck for months on a paragraph about who may earn money while writing the rules.