The Daily Profit

As the global job market undergoes AI-driven restructuring, technical graduates in engineering, data science, and computing are simultaneously challenged and empowered by automation. While AI threatens to displace clerical, analytical, and entry-level roles, it also functions as an amplifier of professional capability-helping students and young professionals articulate, document, and connect their specialized expertise to real-world markets. Drawing on recent analyses from MRINetwork (2025), Layer8 Packet (2025), and the World Economic Forum (2025), this paper explores how generative and analytical AI systems enhance employability by transforming tacit technical skills into communicable economic assets.

Alcohol consumption remains a leading cause of preventable death and disease worldwide. Despite its significant health and societal harms, alcohol remains relatively inexpensive and easily accessible in many countries. This article reviews evidence from the World Health Organization and other sources demonstrating that raising alcohol taxes is a highly effective public health intervention. Tax increases reduce harmful consumption, generate government revenue, and decrease alcohol-related mortality and morbidity. We advocate for robust, sustained increases in alcohol excise taxes tied to alcohol content and adjusted for inflation as a critical policy tool to reduce alcohol harm globally.

In several European countries - most notably the Netherlands - Christian Democratic parties maintain steadfast opposition to limiting religious education, citing constitutional guarantees of faith-based schooling. Paradoxically, this protection of Christian schooling extends legal cover to conservative Islamic institutions that promote illiberal teachings. This article examines how Christian Democratic defense of "freedom of education" under Article 23 of the Dutch Constitution, coupled with European human rights law on religious freedom, has created a legal stalemate that prevents governments from addressing integration and equality concerns tied to conservative religious schools.

Once central to understanding human society, the social sciences are now experiencing structural collapse. Economic irrelevance, declining enrollment, and rapid AI-driven automation of cognitive tasks have converged to render many social science degrees functionally obsolete. This article integrates data from recent economic and educational reports, including EducationDynamics' 2025 Landscape of Higher Education, OECD's 2025 Skills Report, and Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, to argue that the return on investment of traditional social science study has eroded beyond sustainability. Without radical reform linking these disciplines to practical digital competencies and applied labor-market needs, social science education risks extinction as a meaningful pathway for most students.

In the intricate theatre of global politics, a new protagonist is steadily moving to center stage: the People's Republic of China. Unlike the hegemonic ascensions of past world powers, often forged in the crucible of conflict, China professes a different ambition—a "peaceful rise." This strategy is not predicated on military conquest but on a sophisticated fusion of economic leverage, diplomatic outreach, and the cultivation of soft power. My academic experience at Wageningen University & Research (WUR), a world-renowned hub for the life sciences, served as a microcosm of this grand strategy. Observing the significant Chinese investments, the brilliance and friendliness of Chinese students and staff, and their seamless integration into a leading Western institution convinced me that China is executing a long-term, patient, and remarkably effective plan to assume global leadership. This paper argues that China leverages economic statecraft, scientific prowess, and cultural diplomacy to reshape the international order, presenting a model of influence that challenges traditional Western paradigms.