Biden pledge to fix unfair economy resonates with Americans

Published

3 years ago

February 11, 2023

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A populist undercurrent running through President Biden’s State of the Union address and churned up by turbulent conditions in the global economy is resonating with Americans.

It’s the feeling that people are “getting ripped off,” as Biden put it, by an economy that isn’t “fair” – a word that appeared in Biden’s prepared remarks nine different times.

From pesky fees charged by big retail banks to deep, structural imbalances in the U.S. tax system that favor wealthy people and large corporations, Biden’s speech hit on a perennial frustration in American economic life: how the deck feels stacked by big companies and institutions against ordinary taxpayers and consumers.

“If we – the poorer people, the middle class – pay tax, the big companies are supposed to do the same. This is right. So I think the President [said] something that is true. We need more tax to be paid by the big companies and then that money can go back to the poorer people to help people,” Jean-Michel Dossous, a New York City cab driver who watched the State of the Union on his phone, told The Hill.

Returning to the notion of economic fairness again and again, Biden touted numerous initiatives to bring down prices after a year of high inflation that has harassed American pocketbooks and that fiscal authorities, like Congress and the president, have limited powers to fight.

“Big Pharma has been unfairly charging people hundreds of dollars [for insulin] – and making record profits,” Biden said during his speech on Tuesday, praising the $35 insulin price cap for seniors who use Medicare that was passed as part of Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act last year. Price caps have only been used minimally so far in the government’s battle against high prices, which is mostly the responsibility of the Federal Reserve.

He also touted his administration’s effort to fight so-called “junk fees,” expensive penalties charged by banks, financial firms and other businesses for reasons such as late payments, insufficient funds or an attempt to cancel a service.

“I know how unfair it feels when a company overcharges you and gets away with it,” he said about the overdraft fees charged by banks, a commercial practice he called on Congress to curtail with new legislation.

The Biden administration also announced last week an effort to cap bank overdraft fees at $8 through a new rule to be issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

Tatiana Nazario, an administrative assistant at the Newark, New Jersey, public library told The Hill she “absolutely” had the feeling she was getting ripped off by big banks and that she knew people who’d gotten locked into a cycle of debt due to overdraft fees.

While some major banks have already phased-out overdraft fees, bank lobbyists and advocates for the sector call those penalties a useful and popular way for consumers to smooth out expenses.

“If you get one overdraft fee and it stays in your account for a couple of days, they overdraft you again and again and again until you pay it. If you’re already broke and you’re waiting on that direct deposit to hit, by the time it hits you’re not going to have much left,” Nazario said in an interview.

“People are living off of payday loans, and now they’re promoting these apps … where you get payday loans rather than coming up with better solutions for us,” she added.

The CFPB describes payday loans as short-term, high-cost loans for small amounts of money and cautions that people’s “ability to repay the loan … is generally not considered by a payday lender.”

Of all the mentions of unfairness in the economy in Biden’s State of the Union, perhaps the point he hammered home the most was about unfairness in the tax code.

“I think a lot of you at home agree with me that our present tax system is simply unfair. The idea that in 2020, 55 of the biggest companies in America made $40 billion in profits and paid zero in federal income taxes? That’s simply not fair,” Biden said.

Steve Taylor, an adjunct English professor at the City University of New York, said he felt the same way, arguing that rich people and corporations need to be paying more.

“I think they should pay their fair share. They’re getting away with murder. These guys are not paying any taxes. I mean, come on. I pay taxes. What’s the median for working people, like 25 percent? Come on. What’s going on?” he said in an interview.

Critics of corporate tax hikes argue that big businesses still pay billions in other types of taxes outside of taxed income.

The views of Taylor and Jean-Michel Doussos on the tax system are held by a majority of Americans, according to a variety of public opinion polls.

Fifty-two percent of Americans believe the government should “redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich,” according to one such poll published by Gallup last August, while 47 percent feel the opposite. Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, those preferences were by-and-large flipped, with more Americans disagreeing with the idea of redistributing rich people’s wealth with taxes than agreeing.

A 2020 poll by Reuters/Ipsos found that nearly two-thirds of respondents believed “the very rich should contribute an extra share of their total wealth each year to support public programs.” Support for that position was stronger among Democrats, at 77 percent, but 53 percent of Republicans also stood behind it.

The difference between how workers and wages are taxed and how profits and businesses are taxed has been coined the “two-tiered tax system” by other members of the Biden administration, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

“At the core of the problem is a discrepancy in the ways types of income are reported to the IRS: opaque income sources frequently avoid scrutiny while wages and federal benefits are typically subject to nearly full compliance. This two-tiered tax system is unfair and deprives the country of resources to fund core priorities,” she said in 2021. Biden has big plans for junk fees, a billionaire’s tax and paid leave. But can he actually enact them? Yahoo announces layoffs of 20 percent of staff by end of 2023

Tom Ankner, a librarian in Newark, New Jersey, said he appreciated hearing the message during Biden’s speech that the economy could treat people more fairly.

“I liked the fact that he was taking that line,” Ankner told The Hill. “Because that’s where I’d like [to see changes]. That’s the direction I’d like to see the country go.”

Technology

How Google put together the pieces for its AI comeback

Published

3 hours ago

November 27, 2025

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How Google put together the pieces for its AI comeback

Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images

When ChatGPT launched in 2022, Google was caught flatfooted, but the launch of Gemini 3 and the Ironwood AI chip this month has experts raving about Alphabet’s AI comeback.

Google kicked off November by unveiling Ironwood, the seventh generation of its tensor processing units, or TPUs, that the company says lets customers “run and scale the largest, most data-intensive models in existence.” And last week, Google launched Gemini 3, its latest artificial intelligence model, saying it requires “less prompting” and provides smarter answers than its predecessors.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff captured the excitement around Gemini 3 with a Sunday post on X, saying that despite using OpenAI’s ChatGPT daily for three years, he wasn’t going back after two hours of using Gemini 3.

“The leap is insane,” wrote Benioff, whose company has partnerships with Google, OpenAI and other frontier AI model providers. “Everything is sharper and faster. It feels like the world just changed, again.”

Most tech stocks were down to start the week, except for one: Alphabet.

Shares of the Google parent surged more than 5% on Monday, adding to last week’s gain of more than 8%. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway revealed earlier this month that it owns a $4.3 billion stake in Alphabet as of the end of the third quarter.

Alphabet shares are up nearly 70% this year and have outperformed Meta’s by more than 50 percentage points this year, and last week, Alphabet’s market cap surpassed Microsoft’s.

All of this came despite Nvidia reporting stronger-than-expect revenue and guidance in its third-quarter earnings last week.

“You may be asking why almost all of the AI stocks we cover are selling off after such good news from Nvidia,” Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes wrote in a note Monday, referring to Nvidia’s positive third quarter earnings last week. “There is one real reason for worry and it is the ‘AI comeback’ of Alphabet.”

But while Google appears to have regained the edge, its lead over rivals remains razor thin in the gruelingly competitive AI market, experts said.

Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc., during the Bloomberg Tech conference in San Francisco, California, US, on Wednesday, June 4, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Putting the pieces together

With Gemini 3 and Ironwood, Google CEO Sundar Pichai appears to have finally put the pieces together for the company’s AI offerings, said Michael Nathanson, co-founder of equity research firm Moffett Nathanson. Google is serving a broad range of customers from consumers to enterprise, something the company initially struggled to do after the arrival of ChatGPT.

“Three years ago, they were seen as kind of lost and there were all these hot takes saying they lost their way and Sundar is a failure,” Nathanson said. “Now, they have a huge leg up.”

The company had a number of AI product mishaps in its initial attempts to catch up with OpenAI. In 2024 alone, Google had to pull its image generation product Imagen 2 for several months after users discovered a number of historical inaccuracies. The launch of AI Overviews caused a similar reaction when users discovered it gave faulty advice, which the company later remedied with additional guardrails.

“There was a lot of fumbling, and they were scrambling,” said Gil Luria, managing director at technology research firm DA Davidson. “But they had the tech in the pantry, and it was just a matter of getting it all together and shipped.”

Of particular note is how quickly Google launched Gemini 3 after the spring release of Gemini 2.5, which was already considered an impressive model. The hyper-realistic image generation features of Nano Banana is another notch in Google’s belt. After the company initially launched the image generation tool, Gemini shot to the top of the Apple App Store in September, dethroning ChatGPT.

And after the launch of Gemini 3, Google released Nano Banana Pro last week.

Google’s ownership of YouTube and all the content on the video platform gives the company an edge when it comes to training models for image and video generation.

“The amount of video and current data that Google has, that’s really a huge competitive advantage,” said Mike Gualtieri, vice president and principal analyst for Forrester Research. “I don’t see how OpenAI and Anthropic can overcome that.”

Additionally, Google has successfully incorporated its AI models into its enterprise products, driving sales for the company’s cloud unit. In its third quarter earnings results last month, Google reached its first $100 billion quarter, boosted by its cloud growth. The company’s cloud unit, which houses its AI services, showed solid growth and a $155 billion backlog from customers.

And it’s not just the AI models. Google is also garnering attention with its AI chips.

Google says Ironwood is nearly 30 times more power efficient than its first TPU from 2018. Google’s ASIC chips are emerging as the company’s secret weapon in the AI wars and have helped it notch recent deals worth billions with customers such as Anthropic.

After a report said that Meta could strike a deal with Google to use its TPUs for the social media company’s data centers, Nvidia saw its stock drop 3% on Tuesday, prompting the chipmaker to post a response on social media.

With the rise of Google’s TPUs, Nvidia may no longer have the AI chips market cornered.

“The advantage of having the whole stack is you can optimize your model to work specifically well on a TPU chip and you’re building everything to a more optimally designed,” said Luria.

The company’s ability to serve AI enterprise customers with its TPUs and Google Cloud offerings as well as its incorporation of Gemini 3 throughout its consumer products is driving Wall Street’s enthusiasm.

Experts who spoke with CNBC said the competitive landscape is broader than just one AI winner, but they added that it’s become increasingly expensive for multiple companies to prove success.

Tight competition

Despite these wins, Google is still in fierce competition with other AI companies, experts said.

“Having the state of the art model for a few days doesn’t mean they’ve won to the extent that the stock market is implying,” Luria said, pointing to Anthropic’s new Opus 4.5 model launched Monday.

Earlier this month, OpenAI also announced two updates to its GPT-5 model to make it “warmer by default and more conversational” as well as “more efficient and easier to understand in everyday use,” the company said.

“The frontier models still seem to be neck and neck in some ways,” Forrester Research’s Gualtieri said.

The competitive edge will likely go to the companies willing to spend more money given the expenses of the AI race, experts said. In their earnings reports last month, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon each lifted their guidance for capital expenditures. They collectively expect that number to reach more than $380 billion this year.

“These companies are spending a lot of money assuming there’s gonna be a winner take all when in reality we may end up with frontier models being a commodity and several will be interchangeable,” Luria said.

For Google, maintaining a lead in AI won’t be without challenges.

Company executives told employees earlier this month that Google has to double its serving capacity every six month to meet demand for AI services and run its frontier models, CNBC reported last week.

“The competition in AI infrastructure is the most critical and also the most expensive part of the AI race,” Google Cloud Vice President Amin Vahdat told employees.

Although Google’s in-house TPUs have gotten increased attention as viable alternatives to Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, Nvidia still holds more than 90% of the AI chip market.

In its post on Tuesday, Nvidia pointed out that its chips are more flexible and powerful than ASIC chips, like Google’s Ironwood, which are typically designed for a single company or function.

And despite getting Salesforce’s Benioff to switch to Gemini, Google also has a lot of catching up to do with its consumer chat product, experts said, citing hallucinations and lower user numbers than OpenAI’s.

The Gemini app has 650 million monthly active users and AI Overviews has 2 billion monthly users, Google said last month. OpenAI, by comparison, said in August that ChatGPT hit 700 million users per week.

“Yes, Google has got its act together,” Luria said. “But that doesn’t mean they’ve won.”

WATCH: AI narrative is shifting towards Google with its complete stack, says Plexo Capital’s Lo Toney

World

At least 65 dead and hundreds missing as police make arrests over Hong Kong fire

Published

3 hours ago

November 27, 2025

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At least 65 dead and hundreds missing as police make arrests over Hong Kong fire

At least 65 people have been killed, and police have made several arrests, after a huge fire engulfed a high-rise residential complex in Hong Kong.

Authorities said nearly 300 people are also missing following the blaze at Wang Fuk Court in Tai Po – a suburban district with around 300,000 residents, near the border with mainland China.

A further 70 people have been injured, including more than 40 who were described as critically ill in hospital on Wednesday night. Around 900 people are also in shelters as a result of the blaze.

Police have alleged its cause could have been a “grossly negligent” construction firm using unsafe materials.

Three people – two directors and an engineering consultant – have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.

“We have reason to believe that the company’s responsible parties were grossly negligent, which led to this accident and caused the fire to spread uncontrollably, resulting in major casualties,” said police superintendent Eileen Chung. Police have not named the company.

The complex, built in the 1980s, had been under renovation for a year.

One firefighter was among those killed tackling the blaze, which broke out at 2.51pm local time on Wednesday.

Fire crews said they had doused the flames in all seven of the affected blocks by Thursday morning, and were searching each floor for survivors.

Records show the Wang Fuk Court site consists of eight blocks, with almost 2,000 flats housing around 4,800 residents, including many elderly people.

Families have been identifying the bodies of relatives while others have been visiting shelters in the area, searching for missing loved ones.

Hong Kong leader John Lee said on Thursday the government will set up a HK$300m (£29m) fund to help residents.

The cause of the fire is being investigated, but it appears to have started in bamboo scaffolding and construction mesh sheets and then spread across seven of the complex’s eight buildings – likely aided by windy conditions.

Bamboo scaffolding is commonly used in Hong Kong, but is in the process of being phased out because of safety concerns.

Hong Kong’s Association for the Rights of Industrial Accident Victims said there have been at least three fires involving bamboo scaffolding this year.

China’s state broadcaster CCTV said President Xi Jinping has urged an “all-out effort” to extinguish the fire and minimise casualties and losses.

Both the US and British Consulate Generals for Hong Kong have sent condolences to those affected, as has Taiwan’s president.

The number of dead is the highest in a Hong Kong fire since 1948, when 176 people were killed in a warehouse blaze.

The fire has prompted comparisons to the Grenfell Tower blaze which killed 72 people in 2017, blamed on flammable cladding, as well as failings by the government and the construction industry.

“Our hearts go out to all those affected by the horrific fire in Hong Kong,” the Grenfell United survivors’ group said on
social media.

“To the families, friends and communities, we stand with you. You are not alone.”

World

Washington DC shooting: Trump condemns ‘monstrous’ attack near White House – and says suspect is Afghan national

Published

3 hours ago

November 27, 2025

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Washington DC shooting: Trump condemns 'monstrous' attack near White House - and says suspect is Afghan national

Donald Trump has called for every Afghan national who entered the US under the Biden administration to be investigated following the shooting of two National Guard troops near the White House.

The president said the “monstrous, ambush-style attack” was carried out by an Afghan national who arrived in September 2021 during America’s chaotic withdrawal from Kabul.

“This attack underscores the single greatest national security threat facing our nation,” Mr Trump said in an address to the nation from Florida.

He vowed to “reexamine every single alien” who has entered the US from Afghanistan under the previous government, and said: “I am determined to ensure the animal who perpetrated this atrocity will pay the steepest possible price.”

Suspect to face terror probe

America’s citizenship and immigration office said it had stopped processing all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals indefinitely.

The suspect in custody is 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal.

Both guardsmen were shot in the head, according to NBC, citing senior officials briefed on the investigation.

Wednesday’s shooting – carried out with a handgun – will be investigated by the FBI as a possible act of terror.

The White House was placed into lockdown following the incident, while Mr Trump is away for Thanksgiving.

Victims in ‘critical condition’

West Virginia’s governor initially said both victims were members of his state’s National Guard and had died from their injuries – but later posted to say there were “conflicting reports about the condition of our two Guard members”.

Patrick Morrisey had said: “These brave West Virginians lost their lives in the service of their country.”

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Hundreds of National Guard members have been patrolling the capital after Mr Trump issued an emergency order in August, which federalised the local police force and sent in the guard from eight states and the District of Columbia.

Mr Trump has announced an extra 500 troops will be deployed in the wake of Wednesday’s shooting.

FBI director Kash Patel said the troops were “brazenly attacked in a horrendous act of violence”.

At a news conference, he clarified they were in a “critical condition”.

Former president Joe Biden, who was heavily criticised by Mr Trump in his address, said he and his wife Jill were “heartbroken” by the shooting.

“Violence of any kind is unacceptable, and we must all stand united against it,” said a statement.

Analysis: Trump’s statement could embolden anti-immigration Americans

US correspondent Mark Stone said it was expected that Trump’s statement would have an update on the investigation and the victims’ condition.

“What struck me was the president’s decision to be so political and to make the point as he wanted to, it seemed, that this will now embolden him to find out who else might be here illegally, wherever they may be from,” Stone said.

“And he singled out Somalis in Minnesota, of course, a Democratic-run state.”

Stone said Trump’s statement could further embolden those who already hold anti-immigration sentiments.

“You might expect a leader in this sort of situation to deal with the facts as he knows them and to call for unity. But it’s not Trump’s style to do that.”

How the attack unfolded

Jeff Carroll, chief of the metropolitan police department in the area, said the attack began at 2.15pm local time (7.15pm in the UK) while National Guard members were on “high visibility patrols in the area”.

He said: “A suspect came around the corner, raised his arm with a firearm and discharged it at the National Guard.

“The National Guard members were… able to – after some back and forth – able to subdue the individual and bring them into custody.”

Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser called the attack a “targeted shooting”.

Social media footage showed first responders attempting CPR on one of the soldiers as they treated the other on a pavement covered in glass.

Nearby other officers could be seen restraining an individual on the ground.

The scene was cordoned off by police tape, while agents from the US Secret Service and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives attended the scene, as National Guard troops stood sentry nearby.

The FBI was also on the scene, the agency’s director said.