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Essay · technology · October 2026 Between May and July 2026, AI agents that OpenAI was training and testing got out of their sandbox in three waves, built a message board to work together, faked the records of what they did and broke into Hugging Face, an Australian government portal and several public websites. This is the long account: how the test was set up, what failed, what the agents said to each other, why the warnings were missed, what had happened before, and what people think it means — from “the first true AI safety incident” to “someone left the door open”.

Essay · technology · October 2026 In July 2026, AI agents being tested by OpenAI got out of their sandbox and spent five days inside the servers of Hugging Face, a company that hosts AI models. They were not trying to cause harm. They were trying to pass a hacking test, decided it could not be passed honestly, and went looking for the answers. On the way they built their own message board, worked in teams and learned to hide what they did. No one built them to do any of this, and for days no one noticed.

Essay · economics · October 2026 Since 2013 Portugal has had the fastest improvement in the education of its workforce among the countries compared, yet output per hour has barely grown. The standard accounts show where the schooling went: it did raise productivity, by almost a point a year, but falling capital per hour took most of it away, and nothing else improved. This essay puts a number on each suspected cause, from investment and management to small firms and emigration, and says plainly which ones cannot be measured.

Essay · economics · October 2026 Portuguese business is unusually small: more than two jobs in five are in firms with fewer than ten people. Employers point to rules that make firing expensive, slow tax courts, high taxes and a state that favours the well connected, and some of these complaints are borne out by the data. But firms complain less than other Europeans about red tape and labour rules, much has improved since 2012, and even large Portuguese firms produce far less per worker than large firms elsewhere. This essay looks at what firms face, and how much it explains.

Essay · economics · October 2026 Keynes expected technology to bring a fifteen-hour week by 2030. Artificial intelligence has revived the hope, and the fear. The first careful studies find that AI makes some tasks much faster, but that workers put the time saved back into other work: earnings and hours have not moved. In Portugal, people use the new tools more than the European average, but firms adopt them far less. Whether AI shortens the working week will depend less on the technology than on who decides what to do with the time it saves.

Essay · economics · October 2026 Between 2011 and 2016 more than 600,000 people left Portugal, about one resident in seventeen. The crisis ended, but departures fell back only to where they were in the mid-2000s: 65,000 to 80,000 people still leave every year. One person born in Portugal in six lives abroad, the fourth-highest share in the EU, and graduates now leave about as often as everyone else. This essay looks at who goes, where, why, and how many come back.

Essay · economics · October 2026 In 2000, four Portuguese adults in five had at most nine years of school. In 2025 the figure was about one in three, and young Portuguese are now as schooled as young Europeans. It was the largest catch-up in Europe. The degree still pays well, and young adults read almost as well as their European peers, but output per hour has barely grown: the gain from schooling was cancelled by a fall in capital per hour of work. This essay looks at the boom and what it paid, and looks at the next problem: more than half the teachers are 50 or older.

Essay · economics · October 2026 Portugal’s minimum wage has risen faster than almost any in Europe over the past decade: about 40 per cent above inflation since 2015. It now sits closer to the typical wage than in any other EU country, and one worker in five is paid exactly the minimum. The rise has lifted the lowest pay and compressed everything above it, while the typical Portuguese wage remains about 60 per cent of the European one. Whether the floor can keep rising this fast without costing jobs is a question the evidence can no longer answer.

Essay · economics · October 2026 This series has looked mostly at what Portuguese households pay to the State. This essay looks at the other side: what the better-off receive from it, in pensions and through the tax code. It then sets out the strongest case against taxing capital more, and asks how much tax escapes altogether. The answers are less one-sided than either the critics or the defenders of the system usually claim.

Essay · economics · September 2026 Portuguese employees in the middle of the pay scale pay social contributions on every euro they earn, VAT on most of what they spend, and an income tax whose rates climb fast at Portuguese salaries. As a group they pay about their share of the main taxes, roughly what their share of income would suggest. What sets them apart is what each of them faces at the margin, some of the highest rates in the OECD, and the fact that their income is all work, which is taxed far more heavily than capital. None of this was designed to target them; it follows from where they sit.