ITHACA—I have just returned from two global summits, the Bund Summit in Shanghai and the Mumbai LitFest. The Shanghai meeting was a gathering of economists and policymakers from China, the United States, Europe, and elsewhere to discuss some of the most urgent economic concerns of our time. The Mumbai festival brought together writers, poets, artists—and, yes, one or two economists—from different parts of India and several other countries.
The rise of AI is concentrating wealth and political power in fewer and fewer hands, making extreme inequality a threat to democracy itself. A universal basic share that gives ordinary people a portion of global profits could help narrow the growing gap between billionaires and everyone else.