It might be a factor. However, the population is growing, and while the demographics are shifting a bit, they are still a lot of kids, reaching drinking age.

However there are milestones that us older folks had while growing up, that no longer seem as important to the younger generation.

Watching a PG13, R Movie, Getting a drivers license, drinking, smoking, Having Sex, Getting Married, Going to College, Getting an Apartment, getting a house... All these are in decline with the younger generation. Some because of increased difficulty with finance, due to increased cost of living rising higher than salaries, and also prevalence of online culture and access to direct media, so people are finding Cliques that are not necessarily tied to doing particular things, and accessing stuff they are more interested in.

They are plusses and minuses to this trend, but I wouldn't spend too much time complaining about it, younger folks will be doing their own thing that is different than the way older people did for generations.

No, but normally as production increases a lot of the carbon offset is mostly better managed at scale.

For example, a Diesel train may burn 4 gallons of fuel per mile. however being that it carrying so much payload that they rate it 500 miles per gallon per ton.
While an Electric Car that says has 100 eMPG will not be as carbon low in energy expenditure if needed to pull so much weight.

That number seems like the cost to make the material, from start, not in sets of hundreds of thousands of drives.

Well Tech companies had been less than strategic around their hiring and firing practices for the past decade or two.

They try to hire as many people as possible, give them some work to keep them busy. Just so these employees will not be working for their competitors who are trying to hire them for the same reason and give them busy work. Then when money gets tight, they dump them, not realizing that that busy work they were one actually became something profitable for the organization.

They leave, some start new businesses or others get hired by a smaller unknown firm with the skills they learned at that company is useful, and allowed to make the next big thing, that undoubtedly hurts the original company.

AI is a useful tool. However it is being over used, often in cases were standard logic based software can do the job just as well, for a fraction of the computing resources.

Not necessarily. As stated in the summary, people on UBI were more willing to change jobs, or continue further education.

While this might lead to higher education prices, but not necessarily additional inflation overall. I expect those who changed jobs, may had chosen careers that may pay less where they have a more fulfilling career without the worry about meeting basic needs. Other options would they may have chosen higher risk and possibly higher reword type of work as well.

Speaking from my own personal experience as an American. There were many opportunities that I have personally rejected, because my family conditions means I need a steady reliable employment, which is often rather dull, and not pay as much as other opportunities. The more exciting jobs available, would often have a smaller salary, as my experience wouldn't transfer over as well. Or work for a company that may have massive layoffs.

What would most likely happen with UBI as a side effect would be lower salaries in general, with perhaps less expectations as a balance. Causing spending demand to mostly stabilize and remain constant.

Lucky for us (at least for this topic) we live in the 21st century. Where Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries, are cheap, have good energy density, and are very safe.
 

The flaw is worse then just trying to evaluate merit.
Every person has strengths and weaknesses that are unique. If you have a worker in the warehouse who may be under performing, he may be under-performing because the worker isn't challenged enough, where promoted to say management he may be much more effective. However, if you do that, the warehouse workers who are busting their balls to get promoted would be pissed, and unmotivated by such an action.

Trade Wars is where everyone looses. But it comes down to which side is willing to suffer for longer.

While the US has more capital. The general citizenship has been mostly use to a level of comfort, that will hurt more if lost. While China will loose a lot, but the people on average have less, so the pain would be less.

China also has a tight hold on public opinion as hey! stated. Which would restrict decent.

However what makes it worse, is the US is not just hitting China, but basically the whole world, this can also be an opportunity for China to continue and step in with Europe, Asia, and Africa as the adults in the room.

Well you can look into the mirror, but you will find out these companies have been telling you that you NEED their products to be part of society for generations.

Can we have public transportation? Are you crazy, do you want to sit next to a smelly stranger every day for your commute. Plus the wait times and may not stop everywhere.
Can we just ride a Bicycle or walk? Are you just stupid, you are going to get hit by a truck.
Can we fix the roads to be Bike walker friendly? No, there isn't enough demand of bike riders or walkers.
OK, What about taking an Electric car? They are too expensive, and here is a case where it caught on fire and the fire department couldn't put it out quickly. (Also where does that electricity come from, and the materials to make the car) that's right from the Oil and Gas companies.
Well we can use Wind or Solar to charge our cars? Think about all those random birds that will blindly fly into the wind turbines, or land that could had been used for farm land to have solar farms, we will just starve the public.

These companies have invested heavy into giving the spin onto competing (and often measurably better) options, that people just think they are solid fact, and will regurgitate the planned response by their own will, thinking it is actually their own opinion.

I have found that an EV is more convenient for me.
I have a rather long commute of 30 miles to work and 30 miles back. I charge up at night and leave every day with a full charge. Where before when I use to have a Gas car, near the end of the week, I am driving home with the E light on my fuel gauge hoping I estimated my range correctly. Then I would often need to take an unscheduled stop to get fuel.

Normally I would need to drive 5 minutes off my route to get to the gas station, there is a often a car fueling up in front of me, that I have to wait for, then I would fill up, pay and drive back to my route. So it is often a 15-30 minute process, that I no longer need to do once or twice a week.

I have an EV. My homes AC and Heat pump uses more power than my EV. But no one is really complaining about home Climate Control as a drain on our power generation. Heck power companies are saying we should switch to heat pumps.

As well normal conditions EVs charge during the night while energy consumption is low, and helps balance the demand of the power grid, to allow more efficient use of the existing grid.

What you really should be concerned about is the AI farms, the AI based server farms chew up a heck a lot more power than EV.

A single leader can often have an Ego get in the way, and be blind of obvious things that need to be corrected, and often such an ego that lends itself running an organization tends to not be retrospective and realize they made a mistake and work on correcting it.

Committee tends to go towards group think. So the simplest to explain idea gets promoted. Which is often the wrong one. As well there is a lot of stuck movement waiting for an idea.

Those contractors also sold arms to the other side as well. America was late getting to both World Wars, mostly because they wanted to burn the candle at both ends and sell to each side. While they were more aligned with the English based powers, they were willing to do business with the Germans.

Sometimes after the research is done, we get an non-intuitive result.
Now we can use these results to make policy and rules better for the students, or we can just double down on our own view and stick our heads in the sand, and just push what we think will help despite the data.

That said while as an old guy, who went to school before everyone had cell phones. Heck in my under grad, I was one of the few students with a cell phone that just made calls (it did text too, but I had no one else to text to, plus it was expensive)

When I was in grad school I was old and mature enough not to use my phone during class.

So I would think having a smartphone in school with kids who are already easily distracted would cause more problems. But with the data results, I think I answered why I was was, kids during school age are easily distracted by anything. Doodling in your note book, checking out the pretty girl in front of you, joking around with your friends without trying to get caught... I think it is the case during school and being school age you are extremely distracted by everything anyways, having a phone in school wouldn't be much different, you would just be replacing say one of your activities to distract yourself with the phone. Perhaps less doodles in the notebook, (as I wouldn't imagine, that my phone would distract me from a pretty girl who I had a crush on).

But the results about social media, which is a big after school activity I feel would be the bigger factor. As I stated I am now an Old Guy, and I have to make sure I don't get too involved in social media myself, as you can go down a Toxic hole of misinformation and annoyingly stupid people and comments, that repeat over and over again... For a kid being exposed to that earlier in life, it would like being stuck in school drama even out of school, where you can normally relax from it and actually feel like a human for a bit.

The S24 does have an extended life span. I upgraded my S20 to the S24 mostly because it went EOL and I didn't want my work to cut me off if it wasn't secure enough.
But the S20 worked fine without any issues. The S24 is fine too. The AI features mostly the search by image and translate is handy, but still I mostly just want to browse the web quickly.