The Economics of Employee Ownership

In Israel, Netanyahu has lost ground but still frames every choice as “Bibi or Tibi,” and liberal Israel faces a once-in-a-generation chance to oust him, if it can stomach governing with the Arab parties who took 18% of the Knesset. We talk to Daphna Maor of The Marker (Haaretz) from Tel Aviv, put the odds at 50-50, and ask whether the Arab bloc could become Israel’s Parnell holding the balance of power. Then the US midterms, voting tonight. Inflation, mortgage rates at 7%, flatlining house prices and a K-shaped economy have Trump on the ropes, while the top 1% have gained wealth and immigration has vanished as a worry. The twist: if Trump loses the House and Senate, foreign affairs is all he’s got left, which could make him more dangerous, not less. Plus Serbia’s students topple Vučić and Bolsonaro flees to the US. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For Halloween, we start with Ireland’s first witch trial: Alice Kyteler, the Kilkenny moneylender who buried four husbands and skipped town, leaving her servant to burn at the stake in 1324. For a real scare, we dive into the five numbers that should keep you up at night. The Shiller index at 41 (last seen in 1999, just before the dot-com crash), global government debt at 94% of GDP, The US paying $1 trillion a year just to service its debt, more than its defence budget, the 10-year Treasury yield at 5.36%, a 24-year high and oil at $110, 80% up on last year, thanks to the Strait of Hormuz. If it all goes pear-shaped, the question is simple: who’s the witch? Use code WITCH at kilkenomics.com for 20% off tickets all day October 30th & 31st Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A week of rioting in France, but we argue it’s no blip. Marine Le Pen is polling around 35%, with the next candidate on just 14%, and she could become the first ever to win outright in the first round. French public spending is 57% of GDP (31% in Ireland, and above anything the Soviet Union managed), over-65s have gone from 12% of the population in 1968 to 25% today, and bond yields have jumped from 3.4% to 4.8%. We unpack the poly-crisis behind it: the 68ers versus their grandchildren, diesel prices and the ghost of the Gilets Jaunes, a left captured by the educated elite, AI anxiety, and half of French schools missing a teacher. Plus 68% of French voters say democracy isn’t delivering, Meloni getting outflanked on her right, and whether the European project survives the generation that built it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Canada has appointed the world’s first minister for AI, and Evan Solomon joins us to explain why. Canada invented modern AI through Hinton, Bengio and Sutton, then watched big tech harvest it. Now Ottawa is subsidising up to 80% of compute for home-grown firms and has put €150 million behind Bengio’s “safe by design” AI. How do slow, deliberate democracies regulate a technology teaching itself at lightning speed? Plus Carney’s coalition of middle powers, why Trump is the best thing to happen to Canadian nationalism, and “ancestral intelligence.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Broadcasting from the Aran Islands, where the population has crashed from 48,000 to 3,000, we look at what may be the biggest data point of 2026: for the first time ever, the human race is shrinking. The global fertility rate has dropped to 1.8, below the 2.1 needed to replace ourselves, and of 236 countries studied, 219 are in decline. The twist is that it’s happening fastest among poorer, less-educated women in poorer countries, which wrecks the old rule that you have to get rich before you get old. So is modernity itself the culprit, and could tradition stage a comeback? Plus, why AI scepticism sent investors rushing back into bonds this week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.