Nearly 1.2 Billion People Live With Mental Disorders Globally: Study

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

There were an estimated 1.17 billion people suffering from mental disorders worldwide in 2023, up by 95.5 percent from 1990, according to a May 23 peer-reviewed study published in The Lancet journal.

The study assessed the prevalence of 12 types of mental disorders across 204 nations and territories between 1990 and 2023. Types of disorders assessed in the study included bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, major depressive disorder, and anxiety disorders. All mental disorders saw case numbers rise during the study period.

Researchers estimated there were 171 million disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) due to mental disorders in 2023. DALY is used to calculate how medical conditions and diseases affect the length and quality of life of a population. One DALY equals one year of healthy life lost due to sickness, disabilities, and death. As such, the study estimates that 171 million years of healthy life were lost in 2023 alone due to mental disorders.

Mental disorders made up 6.1 percent of all-cause DALYs in 2023 globally due to all sickness, disabilities, and deaths, making it the fifth leading cause of DALYs, up from 12th spot in 1990. Leading causes of mental disorder DALYs were anxiety disorders, major depressive disorder, and schizophrenia.

“A significant health burden was imposed by mental disorders in all countries and territories in 2023, irrespective of the health resources available. In some instances, this burden has increased over time and is unevenly distributed across populations,” the study said.

“Stronger surveillance systems, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries, are required. Additionally, we need more coordinated and inclusive policies to reduce the burden through early treatment and prevention, tailored to sex and age differences across locations.”

In a May 21 statement, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), whose researchers led the study, said that high-income regions such as Western Europe and Australasia recorded some of the highest mental disorder burden rates globally, which included countries such as Portugal, Australia, and the Netherlands. Large increases in burden rates were also identified in parts of South Asia and Western sub-Saharan Africa.

Women were more affected by mental disorders, with 620 million females estimated to be living with such a condition, compared to 552 million men.

In terms of age, mental disorders were found to disproportionately affect individuals between 15 and 19 years of age, which is a “critical developmental period that can shape trajectories for education, employment, and relationships,” said Dr. Alize Ferrari, one of the authors of the study who is an affiliate assistant professor at IHME.

The study was funded by the Gates Foundation, the University of Queensland in Australia, and Queensland Health.

US Mental Health

According to a May 19 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mental health is closely linked to physical health.

For instance, having depression raises the risk for various types of physical conditions such as heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.

Risk factors of mental health include lack of access to housing or education, experiencing institutional or interpersonal discrimination, social isolation, lack of economic and employment opportunities, use of drugs or alcohol, adverse childhood experiences, and ongoing or chronic medical conditions such as cancer and traumatic brain injury.

In the United States, 23 percent of adults are estimated to live with a mental health condition. Almost 6 percent of adults have a serious mental health condition that “significantly interferes” with their daily activities, the CDC said.

Among adolescents aged 12 to 17, about 20 percent are estimated to have a diagnosed mental or behavioral health condition.

A 2025 study found that committing acts of kindness is beneficial for mental health.

Volunteers insert flags at the National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona in Phoenix on May 23, 2026. Allan Stein/The Epoch Times

In the study, Trinity Western University psychology professor Yeeun Archer Lee randomly assigned more than 200 participants to either take daily wellness breaks involving self-care for two weeks or perform acts of kindness every day during this period.

Lee said the study found acts of kindness to be “more effective in reducing loneliness and increasing social contact,” which is especially true for people who are highly lonely or socially anxious.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/26/2026 - 05:00

Brussels Eyes Wealth Taxes As Europe’s Fiscal Crisis Spirals

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

A fatal fiscal dynamic has become entrenched across the European Union. In nearly every member state, public spending is accelerating at all levels — from municipalities and social insurance systems all the way up to the European Commission — while the private economy at best stagnates and its industrial core sectors visibly erode.

This dangerous economic imbalance, in which a shrinking private sector is forced to finance a continuously expanding state apparatus, is already producing fiscal consequences visible in the bond markets. Interest rates have been rising steadily for years, making debt servicing increasingly expensive, while the financing needs of public budgets continue to grow under the ruling ideology of an all-encompassing state. This widening fiscal gap is fueling political appetites for higher taxation — a destructive race among parties to squeeze taxpayers at every level has begun.

And naturally, when it comes to fleecing European taxpayers, the European Commission cannot be absent. Brussels is currently preparing its seven-year budget framework, set to exceed €2 trillion beginning in 2028.

Apollo News recently reported that the European Parliament is even demanding a further 10 percent increase in this budget ceiling. Excess, wastefulness, and a complete detachment from economic reality are driving the EU’s relentless search for new independent tax revenues.

To this end, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen commissioned the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE) last year to produce a study examining the potential of wealth taxation in the EU — another brick laid in the rapidly expanding tax debate.

//-->

Bluntly put, this reflects the incestuous culture of Brussels, where academic satellites traditionally align themselves with the ideological winds of their political sponsors in order to secure taxpayer-funded grants.

The study focused primarily on the collection methods and revenue shares associated with wealth taxes, capital gains taxation, and the so-called exit tax. In other words, Europe’s tax policy is now moving toward the heart of private property itself. Brussels is unpacking the toolkit of preparatory state propaganda. Terms such as “justice gap,” “redistribution,” and “social justice” appear throughout the report, alongside the usual resentment-driven rhetorical formulas designed for one purpose only: preparing the public for a future in which the fiscal arms of European governments reach ever deeper into family wealth and long-term financial planning.

The central thesis of the CASE study is that private wealth in Europe has grown disproportionately and become increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small number of households. Right from the outset, however, the state itself — with its swelling bureaucracy and expensive interventionism in climate policy, the Ukraine conflict, and welfare systems — is carefully removed from scrutiny.

Not a single critical word appears in the study about the darker side of taxing citizens’ accumulated assets. Taxation today is carried out in the spirit of subservience: the taxpayer no longer possesses any meaningful voice. Instead, a debate framed around “fairness” is intended to soften the final pockets of resistance. In the end, everything is reduced to fiscal design and public relations.

One particularly revealing sign of the EU’s fiscal direction can be found in the debate surrounding the so-called exit tax. Combined with the introduction of a digital euro and the possible integration of Switzerland into the EU’s fiscal regime, escape routes for capital would effectively be sealed off. Wealthy citizens would likely flee beforehand, pulling their capital out of the EU while they still can.

What is remarkable is that politicians, institutes, and media organizations appear incapable of drawing conclusions from real-world experience. Norway’s introduction of a wealth tax triggered an exodus of the super-rich, ultimately leading to a noticeable decline in tax revenues. Understandably, Brussels now seems eager to close the gates — and has even helped ignite a wealth-tax debate in Switzerland, though this effort will likely fail. Its climate-policy framing alone makes it highly suspect to Swiss voters.

Switzerland does, of course, already levy wealth taxes at the cantonal level. But the current debate within the EU reaches much further into the direct taxation of citizens’ existing wealth than anything Switzerland has implemented thus far.

Europe’s treatment of its productive classes reveals the deeply statist spirit that now dominates the political and media establishment. The fact that the top 10 percent of income earners in Germany already contribute roughly 55 percent of all income tax revenues is no longer politically relevant. Desperate states will pull every lever available to fill the fiscal holes left behind by the green transformation.

The CASE study also aligns strikingly — both in timing and substance — with the current German debate over abolishing income splitting for married couples, increasing inheritance taxes on business assets, and reintroducing the wealth tax.

Germany already imposes a form of exit tax under certain circumstances when companies relocate abroad. What may be missing is only the Dutch approach: the comprehensive fictitious taxation of unrealized capital gains. The Netherlands is serving as the testing ground. Such taxation would likely become the next maneuver of a bloated state apparatus that has lost control of its spending.

What we are witnessing is a political class that continues to believe in building an eco-socialist surveillance state despite economic reality, visible deindustrialization, and social decay. And like every socialist project before it, environmental statism will eventually damage its host economy so severely that the laws of economics, logic, and resource scarcity will ultimately bring it down.

* * *

About the author:  Thomas Kolbe, a German graduate economist, has worked for over 25 years as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/26/2026 - 03:30

Finland Flourishes As Freedom Flounders In The 'Land Of The Free'

Global freedom declined for the 20th consecutive year in 2025, according to Freedom House. More than 50 countries saw political rights and civil liberties deteriorate, including the United States.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Gabriel Cohen, ranks the world’s most and least free countries using Freedom House’s 2026 Freedom in the World report, which evaluates political rights and civil liberties across 195 countries and territories.

Finland topped the rankings with a perfect score of 100, followed by New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden at 99. Meanwhile, South Sudan scored 0, the lowest possible rating, highlighting the widening divide between the world’s strongest democracies and most repressive regimes.

Why Europe Dominates the Freedom Rankings

Europe accounts for most of the world’s highest-scoring countries, led by the Nordics and Western Europe. Strong electoral systems, independent courts, press freedom, and protections for civil liberties helped countries like Finland, Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands rank near the top globally.

There are two European outliers with low scores out of 100: Belarus (7) and Russia (12). Both are run by repressive autocratic regimes that have been in power for over two decades. The two Eastern European countries feature neither press independence nor free and fair elections, and rank among the least free countries worldwide.

The below data table shows the countries with the highest freedom scores in 2025:

Outside of Europe, the world’s freest countries include New Zealand (99), Canada and Uruguay (97), and Japan (96).

Within each of these countries, robust civil society and independent journalism help keep elected officials accountable, while political transitions are handled without fear of violence.

The Decline of the U.S.

Alongside Bulgaria and Italy, the United States had one of the steepest declines in its score in 2025 among countries classified as Free. The world’s leading superpower fell to a score of 81, its lowest on record, tying South Africa and falling behind Panama (82).

Over the past two decades, the U.S. score has slipped by 12 points, driven by rising polarization and political violence. The 2025 decline was caused in part by government efforts to crack down on nonviolent expression by citizens and noncitizens alike.

The weakening of anticorruption safeguards and enforcement practices by the new U.S. presidential administration was also cited as contributing to the lower score compared to previous years.

The World’s Least Free Countries

While the U.S. remains firmly classified as “Free,” the gap between democratic and authoritarian countries remains stark. The lowest-ranked countries were concentrated across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, where elections are restricted, opposition movements are suppressed, and civil liberties remain severely limited.

South Sudan, one of the world’s youngest countries, obtained the worst possible score of 0, followed by a tie between Sudan and Turkmenistan (both 1). In each of these countries, minority rights are under assault and political freedoms are nonexistent.

Larger countries across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East also rank poorly. Vietnam scored 20, while Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates tied at 18.

Three regimes in the Americas also appear within this bottom tier of Not Free countries: Cuba (9), Nicaragua (14), and Venezuela (13).

Curious to see how other countries have changed their fortunes since last year? Check out The State of Freedom Around the World on Voronoi.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/26/2026 - 02:45

The Digital Euro As Europe's Backdoor Capital Control System

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

The digital euro ranks among the most ambitious projects within the political architecture of the European Union. As the Eurosystem and the EU increasingly merge into identical and integrated political spaces, it can no longer be denied that this CBDC project is primarily a geopolitical power play by Brussels. Yet the euro-CBDC — shorthand for “central bank digital currency” — remains stuck in a loop. Originally envisioned years ago as already being in the project phase, the first digital wallets are now not expected before the end of 2029. Bundesbank President Nagel pointed this out in his interview with Handelsblatt.

During the interview, Nagel emerged as an articulate advocate of a euro-CBDC, despite the fact that its introduction would inevitably hand enormous power to the European Central Bank as issuer and administrator of digital wallets. This would coincide with the dismantling of core business areas currently controlled by commercial banks. Nagel downplayed the danger of large-scale capital flight from accounts held at savings banks, Deutsche Bank, and others, arguing that planned digital wallets would be capped at €3,000. With this argument, Nagel attempts to minimize the undeniable risk that the technology could later be expanded far beyond its initial limits.

Unfortunately, the interview fails to clarify the substantive difference between the CBDC envisioned for the eurozone and the already existing stablecoins, most of which are denominated in U.S. dollars. There is a fundamental distinction between programmable digital money issued by a centralized state authority and digital currency services provided by multiple competing private-sector issuers.

A full-scale battle between systems is increasingly taking shape in the realm of digital money. On one side stand European institutions pushing for systematic centralization of power. On the other side of the Atlantic lies a model that, compared with the EU approach, resembles a return to Wild West capitalism: more deregulation, a shrinking state apparatus, and in monetary policy, a gradual return to private-sector money creation through privately issued stablecoins.

Fiat-linked digital currencies, so-called stablecoins, are currently one of the hottest trends in American finance. The largest private issuer of a dollar stablecoin is Tether, whose digital dollar has now reached a market volume of roughly $190 billion. These privately issued digital dollars represent a major innovation within blockchain technology. In particular, they enable real-time transfers, operate without banking holidays, and provide access outside the traditional SWIFT system for anyone with an internet connection.

Users essentially need nothing more than a smartphone and an installed wallet app — no traditional bank account required. Another advantage lies in potentially lower fees and, in some cases, higher yields, since providers avoid the bloated administrative structures of traditional banks. Stablecoins undoubtedly represent a major increase in individual sovereignty - at least until issuers, possibly under government pressure, decide to freeze access to users’ holdings.

The fact that the eurozone has so far neither agreed on a digital CBDC control standard nor trapped citizens inside such a digital financial prison stems from several factors. One is technological. The threat posed by quantum computing dramatically intensifies the risks involved. A centralized digital financial system such as the euro-CBDC would face massive hacking attempts and manipulation from the moment of its launch. This is the classic weakness of centralized systems: they provide attackers with one clearly defined point of attack. Moreover, the European Union and the Eurosystem together form an over-bureaucratized and fully centralized power structure that inevitably lags behind current technological standards.

For precisely this reason, decentralized financial ecosystems such as the Bitcoin network are technologically superior. Bitcoin is secured by a decentralized network of independent miners and node operators. Every participant defends the structure out of direct self-interest. With well over 100 million Bitcoin holders worldwide and tens of thousands of miners, an almost impenetrable protective wall emerges. Contrary to Nagel’s remarks in the interview, the commercial banking sector is obviously also resisting the centralization of the financial system in the hands of the ECB. The reason is simple: a full rollout of the digital euro would make the traditional banking business model — accounts, savings products, and transfer services — largely obsolete.

But the real reason there has so far been relative calm on the CBDC front inside the Eurosystem becomes obvious once one observes the speed at which global capital flees crisis zones. The introduction of a CBDC would signal that the ECB intends to build in a mechanism for capital controls, possibly in anticipation of a full-scale financial or sovereign debt crisis in the euro area. A dramatic surge in interest rates triggered by a selloff in European bonds would once again force the ECB to intervene as lender of last resort, on a scale potentially far greater than anything seen during the financial and sovereign debt crises of the past decade and a half. Such intervention would inevitably raise fundamental questions about the long-term stability of the euro itself.

That the eurozone will eventually face another debt crisis is hardly in doubt. The only uncertainty is timing — namely, when bond markets, confronted with Europe’s relentless debt binge, in which even Germany is now enthusiastically participating, will finally give the thumbs down.

* * *

About the author:  Thomas Kolbe, a German graduate economist, has worked for over 25 years as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/26/2026 - 02:00

Globalism Seeks To Kill The Nation-State

Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker,

International government threatens the whole planet.

People are beginning to understand that those who rule in their name have long been working to eliminate the nation-state.

The United Nations is not neutral ground for national governments to discuss their differences; it is a governmental construct meant to replace national governments.  The World Health Organization is not an international body meant to coordinate complex responses to global health emergencies; it is an institution vested with vast power and authority to track and regulate every human on the planet.  The Bank for International Settlements, the World Bank Group, and the International Monetary Fund don’t exist to expand free trade, open markets, and assist developing nations; they exist to centralize control over all economic transactions in the world.

The onslaught of “green new deal” laws in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Australia, and New Zealand have nothing to do with preserving the environment or “saving the planet”; they are part of a broader U.N. initiative to track every person’s so-called “carbon footprint” in order to monitor, tax, and regulate all human activity.  The U.N.’s “climate reparations” policy has nothing to do with “justice” or “science”; it exists to justify the redistribution of wealth from Western nations to non-Western nations under the guise of “international law.”

The message we have heard all our lives is loud and clear: Nations do bad things.  International organizations do good things.

The rhetorical war on “nationalism” didn’t begin because people who are proud of their nations magically became Nazis; people who are proud of their nations are called “Nazis” so that those who rule over us can demonize the nation-state.  If you go back through newspapers and scholarly essays before WWII, “nationalism” and “patriotism” are used interchangeably.  After WWII, there is an obvious linguistic break.  “Patriotism,” for the most part, survives as an acceptable civic virtue (How else can governments send men into battle if there are no patriots?).  “Nationalism,” however, becomes increasingly used through the decades as a derogatory term linked to fascism — as if the very organizing concept of a nation-state is inherently authoritarian and anti-democratic.

Thinking about this anti-nationalism campaign for more than a second reveals its silliness.  Why would a constitutional republic with representative democracy be “fascist” at the national level but “democratic” when organized internationally?  Why would the Executive leader of a nation such as Germany, France, or the United States be more “authoritarian” than the secretary-general of the U.N. or the president of the European Commission?  Why would an international governing body be considered more “democratic” than a town, region, or nation of people governing themselves?  Why should the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, be considered Europe’s “representative leader” when the European people never voted for her to “represent” them?

The U.N. has 193 member state ambassadors representing roughly 8.3 billion people.  Why should such a minuscule parliamentary assembly be considered “democratic” or “representative” at all?  At best, it uses the veneer of “democracy” to justify imposing its authoritarian will upon all of humanity.  Whether one dictator or 193 dictators working in concert — when humanity is forced to obey the edicts of rulers, it doesn’t matter if those edicts come from a national or international body.

Natural rights and freedoms do not become more natural because 193 people in New York City say so.  God-given liberties exist despite the existence of government, not because of government.  The more people over whom a government claims jurisdiction, the less likely that any one person’s natural rights will be respected and protected.  When a citizen cannot look his “representative” in the face, his “representative” is much less concerned about infringing that citizen’s natural liberties.

International governments are no less likely to become totalitarian than national governments.  Just as Hitler’s national socialism and Mussolini’s fascism did last century, international tyranny prefers to disguise itself as something peaceful, benevolent, and for the common good.  Had Hitler successfully conquered Europe, perhaps the German Empire would have been called the European Union.  Had Hitler conquered the world, perhaps the U.N.’s headquarters would be in Berlin.  National totalitarianism becomes international totalitarianism just as easily as national mask and vaccine mandates transform into “vaccine passports” and World Health Organization mandates.

The same people who hyperventilate about President Trump’s supposed “authoritarianism” roundly applaud the authoritarianism of global institutions such as the World Health Organization.  In fact, when the president withdrew the United States from WHO on his first day back in office last year due to the international body’s mishandling of the COVID pandemic and efforts to cover up the pandemic’s origin in Wuhan, China, critics in the press accused Trump of being “scientifically reckless” and called “global cooperation” a “biological necessity.”

That’s another part of internationalism’s linguistic magic trick: The same global corporate news machine that has spent the last eighty-plus years conditioning people to understand the word “nationalism” as something evil, militant, and barbaric has simultaneously conditioned the world to see anything “international” as inherently good, peaceful, and progressive.  The “national / international” dichotomy didn’t happen by accident; it’s been shoved down our throats all our lives.  But once again, if a rational person takes a moment to consider the semantic manipulation, it is quite absurd.

If the International Monetary Fund, headquartered in Washington, D.C., were more accurately renamed the “American Monetary Fund,” would the financial institution become more suspect?  If so, then how should we view the word “international” as anything other than a verbal ruse meant to project a false message that the IMF acts on behalf of all people on the planet?  American taxpayers have principally funded the World Health Organization since its formation in 1948.  If it had been called the American Health Organization, would the press have been as upset when “authoritarian” Trump decided to stop funding it?  If not, does this not suggest that words such as “world” and “global” distort the identity and purpose of these intrusive organizations?

“Internationalism” is a Trojan Horse or at least the camel’s nose under the tent for Big Government authoritarians who wish to impose their will on the whole planet.

When “international” agents or soldiers come knocking, their mission sounds downright “humanitarian,” doesn’t it?  The United Nations has a whole Department of Peace Operations.  That department sends out military and law enforcement personnel known as “peacekeepers.”  And for decades the “peacekeepers” from the Department of Peace Operations have raped women and girls all over the world.  The “internationals” have been abusing the “nationals,” and the international United Nations and the multinational corporate news organizations have spent decades covering up all of the “internationals’” prolific raping.  International organizations dedicated to “peace” can’t be seen doing things that only “fascist” nationals do.

Big lies expose internationalism’s true intent: Internationalists are building a global empire.  This empire is authoritarian (because it demands global compliance at the expense of personal freedom) and totalitarian (because it requires complete subservience to a centralized and dictatorial global government).  There is nothing “democratic” or “representative” about this international system of governance.  It has no interest in protecting an individual’s rights and freedoms.  It has no interest in respecting a nation’s sovereignty.  It will permit both individuals and nations to be raped in the name of “global peace.”

Therefore, it makes perfect sense why the United Nations encourages mass illegal immigration into the United States and Europe.  When you are in the business of destroying nations, you do not care if murderers and rapists destroy local families.  You do not care if Islamic terrorists burn down Christian churches.  You do not care if the “newcomers” to Europe and America have pledged to conquer the West.

For globalism to win, it must first kill the nation-state.

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/25/2026 - 23:25

Healthcare Workers Dominate America's Highest-Paid Jobs

Want to earn more than $300,000 a year in America? The clearest path is still a highly specialized medical career.

This ranking of America’s highest-paying occupations uses Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data to compare mean annual wages and total U.S. employment across the country’s top-paid roles.

As Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld details below, the results show how concentrated high pay is in healthcare. They also reveal another important pattern: many of America’s best-paid jobs are held by relatively small workforces, making them some of the rarest careers in the economy.

America’s Highest-Paying Jobs

The rankings below show the 30 highest-paying occupations in the U.S. based on mean annual wages, alongside total nationwide employment levels.

Why Doctors Dominate America’s Highest-Paying Jobs

Healthcare’s dominance reflects a powerful mix of high barriers to entry, limited specialist supply, and steady demand for complex medical care.

Most of the highest-paying medical specialties require more than a decade of education and residency training, limiting the pipeline of qualified professionals. At the same time, America’s aging population is increasing demand for specialists in cardiology, radiology, oncology, and surgery.

As a result, highly specialized physicians command some of the largest salaries in the economy. Adding to this, the U.S. is projected to face a shortage of more than 141,000 physicians by 2038.

America’s Highest-Paying Jobs Are Also Among Its Rarest

Many of America’s top-paying professions employ surprisingly small numbers of workers nationwide.

For example, there are only about 1,000 pediatric surgeons across the U.S., despite the profession ranking first overall in pay. Several other elite medical specialties, including prosthodontists (760) and oral surgeons (5,000), also have relatively small workforces.

This scarcity helps explain why wages remain exceptionally high. Limited supply continues to collide with growing healthcare demand and an aging population with rising rates of chronic illness.

The Highest-Paying Jobs Outside Healthcare

Outside of healthcare, only a handful of roles break into the upper tier of U.S. pay, led by aviation and executive management.

Airline pilots, copilots, and flight engineers ($280.6K) rank among the country’s highest-paid workers as aviation faces persistent pilot shortages. Meanwhile, chief executives ($262.9K), financial managers ($180.5K), and architectural and engineering managers ($175.7K) command high salaries due to their leadership responsibilities and oversight of complex operations.

Will America’s Highest-Paying Jobs Change?

Despite rapid advances in AI and automation, many of America’s highest-paying jobs remain difficult to replace.

Specialized surgeons, anesthesiologists, and pilots operate in highly regulated environments that require years of hands-on training and real-time decision-making. These barriers continue to shield many elite professions from automation pressures reshaping other parts of the workforce.

At the same time, healthcare spending is forecast to grow faster than the broader economy through 2033, helping sustain strong demand and high salaries for specialized physicians.

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on the best places to work in America in 2026.

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/25/2026 - 22:50

Musk: SpaceX Is Actively Seeking More AI Compute Customers, After Anthropic Deal

By Sebatsian Moss of Data Center Dynamics

SpaceX's xAI subsidiary is looking to score more data center compute lease deals, after it sold all of the capacity of Colossus I to Anthropic.

That deal will see Grok's competitor pay $1.25 billion a month over the next three years for the 300MW facility. The deal can be terminated by either party, with 90 days' notice.

"As the recently expanded partnership with Anthropic demonstrates, SpaceX is offering AI compute as a service at significant scale," CEO Elon Musk said.

"We are in discussions with other companies to do the same. "Over time, especially with orbital data centers, we expect to serve AI at extremely high scale."

In April, AI code editing startup Cursor announced that it would also be using space at xAI data centers - although SpaceX is set to acquire the business within 30 days of its IPO.

SpaceX is expected to go public on June 12, with the company looking to raise upwards of $75 billion. IPO documents reveal that xAI spent $12.7bn on AI infrastructure in 2025, and has already invested $7.7bn in the first quarter of 2026.

Alongside the first Colossus data center, xAI is developing Colossus 2. It acquired the land last March, and the data center came online in January. Despite Musk claiming it offered 1GW of capacity at launch, satellite imagery taken in January reportedly showed it had cooling equipment installed capable of managing 350MW.

The IPO document makes multiple mentions of the 1GW of data center capacity at SpaceX’s disposal, but describes it as “nameplate compute draw.” It explains this is calculated by taking “the number of GPUs installed in our data centers at the end of the period multiplied by their respective all-in power draw.

According to a chart in the IPO filing, the company’s nameplate compute draw was 1GW in March 2026, up from 300MW a year before. However, it also notes that this figure “reflects installed capacity and does not represent actual power consumption or utilization.” So while the GPUs are installed, they may not yet be powered up, suggesting the company’s actual useful compute power could be significantly less than 1GW.

How much capacity at the xAI data centers is actually reserved for Grok, the company's own generative AI effort, is unclear. The platform has seen dwindling usage, while increasing numbers of staff have left the company - including all non-Musk co-founders.

SpaceX, meanwhile, plans to launch up to one million space data center satellites in the years to come.

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/25/2026 - 22:15

First Andreessen, Now Goldman CEO Shuts Down AI Job-Apocalypse Doomerism Narrative

Amid the flood of AI doomerism, from Pope Leo XIV's Monday warning that AI and the digital transformation of the economy could unleash "new forms of slavery" and mass job losses, to Bernie Sanders and unhinged socialists calling for a halt to data centers buildouts, a move that would conveniently cede compute power to communists in Beijing, a growing and emerging chorus of dystopian futurists is now trying to frame the AI boom as an existential labor-market crisis rather than the next productivity supercycle that arrives just in time as a demographic winter unfolds.

Adding to recent comments from Netscape co-founder and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) co-founder Marc Andreessen, who argued that AI-related job-loss fears are merely hysteria and that AI is actually arriving at the moment the nation needs it most:

"We're going to have AI and robots precisely when we actually need them [with populations shrinking] to keep the economy from actually shrinking."

...none other than Goldman Sachs CEO and occasional weekend DJ in the Hamptons, David Solomon, penned a recent opinion piece in The New York Times asserting that the AI-related "job apocalypse and mass unemployment ahead" hysteria is "overblown."

"I'm the C.E.O. of Goldman Sachs. The A.I. Job Apocalypse Is Overblown," Solomon titled the NYTimes op-ed, likely aiming for maximum media exposure with such an eye-catching headline.

Solomon's framing of the headline appears to be a direct response to growing resistance not only to AI chatbots but also to data centers nationwide, a backlash wave we pointed out many months ago as alarm bells ring loudly from the tech bro community. As AI infrastructure becomes the backbone of the next economic cycle, the anti-data-center movement is quickly gaining steam and becoming a political weapon by the doomerism community.

Solomon argues that AI will not eliminate jobs at an apocalyptic scale. Instead, he says it will allow workers to become more productive, shift to higher-value tasks, and create new roles focused on managing, implementing, validating, and regulating AI systems.

However, Solomon does acknowledge that there will be labor market disruptions:

Absolutely. This transition, like other significant moments in our history, will entail new challenges, especially as A.I. separates labor from productivity in magnitudes we haven't seen before.

He pointed out that the U.S. economy has seen this story before: it has repeatedly absorbed technological shocks, from electrification to automobiles to computers, while overall employment and living standards continued to rise.

Solomon said AI will likely follow the same pattern as previous technological shifts, eliminating some jobs while expanding others, such as the explosion in construction jobs tied to the $700 billion in capex that hyperscalers are set to deploy this year alone.

Solomon cites his economists, who recently forecast that AI could automate 25% of current work hours over the next decade, with white-collar sectors such as banking, law, accounting, software, and customer service most exposed.

Solomon said that if AI destroys jobs at an unprecedented scale, there should be a "joint effort" between the corporate world and government to help workers and institutions adapt to the new labor market.

"The U.S. economy can and will adapt to major advances in technology," he emphasized.

Solomon's comments were similar to those made earlier this year by venture capital guru Andreessen, who argued that fears of an AI-driven jobs apocalypse are overstated.

In his view, automation and robots are entering the picture at exactly the moment economies need them to offset labor shortages and prevent stagnation.

Read:

• Marc Andreessen Calls AI Job-Loss Fears 'Fake', Expects Employment Gains

• If You're Freaking Out About A Future Jobless AI Dystopia...

Elon Musk has been among the loudest and most vocal voices warning about the demographic winter consuming not only the Western world but many other countries as well. He has framed his Optimus robot as "great for Japan" because it could help offset a shrinking workforce.

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/25/2026 - 21:40