This week: why younger generations skip the savings lecture, why China can’t This week: why younger generations skip the savings lecture, why China can’t build a jet engine, and what AI at work looks like when the goal isn’t cutting jobs.

1. When the Experimenter Fails the Marshmallow Test

John Carter
Published: 05/19/2026

When the Experimenter Fails the Marshmallow Test
The marshmallow experiment measured which kids could wait for a second marshmallow, and found those kids had better life outcomes. But the real variable wasn’t willpower; it was trust. If you never get the second marshmallow what’s the point of waiting. Zoomers watched Gen X and Millennials follow the prescribed path (save, study, work) and get the rug pulled repeatedly: 2008, inflation eating a third of income gains, housing prices that keep moving out of reach.

If the promised payoff keeps getting yanked away, spending today or not putting in the extra effort at work becomes a rational response.

Filed Under: #opinion #socialMobility #generationalEconomics #americanPolitics

2. Why Jet Engines Aren’t “Made In China”

Aakash Japi
Published: 05/11/2026

Analysis – China’s jet engine program reveals limits of industrial policy and inability to replicate tacit knowledge
China’s state-capitalist model excels at scaling established technologies fast: EVs, solar panels, steel. Jet engines expose where that breaks down. The single-crystal turbine blades at the core of a modern engine require decades of embedded procedural knowledge and a global supplier network that capital spending alone can’t replicate. Even leading Western manufacturers only achieve 50-70% yield on these blades. A market with thin margins and strict regulatory barriers offers no foothold for the usual strategy of dominating the low end first.

China keeps investing anyway, driven by sovereignty goals over economic logic. The lesson is that industrial policy works when you can write down the recipe. When the knowledge lives in accumulated human intuition, you can’t just spend your way there.

Filed Under: #analysis #industrialPolicy #aerospace #china

3. A.I. Doesn’t Have to Mean Layoffs

Patricia Cohen, Alexis Pazoumian
Published: 05/29/2026

A.I. Doesn’t Have to Mean Layoffs
Most AI coverage tracks announced layoffs, but some companies are doing the opposite: using the technology to make existing workers more productive. Schneider Electric built AI into its call centers so agents spend less time hunting documentation and more time on complex customer problems. Three-quarters of routine questions now go straight to AI, with faster responses and higher employee satisfaction.

Whether companies go this route often comes down to policy more than anything else. US tax codes that favor capital over labor push toward replacement. For most workers, the near-term outcome is probably something in between: not mass layoffs, but fewer new hires as everyone is expected to do more.

Filed Under: #nyt #laborMarket #productivity #automation #taxPolicy