Sunday, October 12, 2025

How Technology Shapes How We Move, Speak, And Think – Analysis




LONG READ


October 11, 2025 
By Dr. Vanessa Chang

The influential computer scientist Mark Weiser once wrote that “a good tool is an invisible tool. By invisible, I mean that the tool does not intrude on your consciousness; you focus on the task, not the tool.” By this definition, many of our digital tools seem to have succeeded completely; they liberate our bodies by becoming invisible to users. By closing the gap between our bodies and our virtual selves, touchless technologies such as gesture control, voice recognition, and eye tracking aspire to channel our pure, natural expressions.

Such an interface has long been the holy grail for designers. From the Wii motion console to Leap Motion to the gadgets we all now carry in our pockets, these devices aim to erase the boundary between our bodies and our information. These devices promise a future in which our tools are so intuitive, they vanish. Now, it seems that future has arrived.

Though invisible to our conscious minds, our tools indelibly shape us. Technologies are not simply objects but architectures that organize our bodies in space and time, and give form to what I call the digital body: how we feel, move, and become through and alongside digital technologies. And the digital body is not an abstraction—it is us, becoming, again and again, in the technologies we build and the worlds we inhabit.

Living in the era of smartphones and AI, it’s easy to think that we’re in uncharted waters without a map. Our tools have become so frictionless, so invisible, that we forget their historical origins. Long before algorithms and touchscreens, technologies like writing, musical instruments, and even roads reshaped human life. These transformative tools and systems heralded profound changes in how we interact with one another, how we engage with the world around us, and ultimately, how we live.

As increasingly personalized technologies permeate our lives, such urgent questions arise as: How did we get here? What kinds of bodies do our technologies assume, require, or erase? What’s at stake when flesh becomes interface? And how might we redesign our path?



Our interactions with technology are dramas of skin, bone, information, rhythm, and power. Technologies refine, track, translate, and choreograph our behaviors; in doing so, they introduce new ways and languages of being, feeling, moving, and knowing.
Hands

As organs that extend consciousness into our surroundings, hands might be understood as the original interface—or as cartoonist Lynda Barry calls them, “the original digital device”—between human and world.

Paleoanthropologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers have stressed the evolutionary symbiosis of hand and mind. The hand mediates the most complex interactions of the human brain and the realm of technology. At the same time, our gestures have been shaped by an ongoing dialogue with our tools and our environments. As our earliest principal technology for information storage and retrieval, writing embodies this interplay. Hands are smart. Hands are curious. Hands learn. Hands know things.

Despite the crucial role hands have played in the development of new technologies—and our bodies with them—there have been numerous attempts to automate the human hand out of the equation.

Automata, proto-robots built to act as if working under their own power but actually following a predetermined sequence of operations, have existed for over a millennium. Many of them are dedicated to mimicking the unique human performances of the hand, although they haven’t reproduced its intelligence.

How do bodies become information? In 1804, a French weaver patented a different kind of automaton that mimics and would eventually replace the intelligent hand. Named for its inventor, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, the Jacquard machine is an oft-cited ancestor in the history of modern computing. Fitted to a handloom, it is a mechanical surrogate for the weaver’s hand, a physical addendum to the weaving apparatus that automates the production of elaborately patterned fabric. By transforming the competence and creativity of the weaver’s hand into programmable code—ultimately supplanting that human expertise—the Jacquard loom became the first numerical control machine.

A 1951 advertisement for IBM’s Type 604 Electronic Calculating Punch featured a glowing human hand overlaid with its mechanical surrogate: vacuum tube modules arranged like fingers. The tagline reads, “Fingers You Can Count On.” More than just a sales pitch, the image dramatized a broader shift: the intelligent hand, once a symbol of craftsmanship, reimagined as a modular, electronic appendage—human labor abstracted into interchangeable, replaceable parts.

History, however, reminds us of the hand’s abiding creativity. By designing interfaces that serve human needs, rather than corporate metrics, we can reclaim the hand’s role as a living bridge between mind, body, and world.
Voice

Until the dawn of sound recording, the human voice was tethered to the human body. Speech and song were ephemeral, dissipating in almost the same instant that they sprang into being. At the end of the 19th century, sound recording severed the voice from the body and gave it a new and separate existence, extending what the technology of writing had long begun to do. Human voices could now endure beyond death, transcending the limits of the human body.

Like the hand, the voice is a threshold between body and world. Once only borne aloft in the air, its vibrations now travel wires, waves, and code. If writing extended the hand’s reach, sound recording gave the voice a second existence. Translated by machines, abstracted into data, and refigured into new forms, the voice has lived a thousand new lives—pressed into vinyl, remixed by DJs, morphed by Auto-Tune, parsed by speech recognition, and now reanimated by AI-generated vocal clones. These technologies have not only transformed how the human voice sounds, but how it is made, perceived, and preserved.
Ear

If the voice is how we reach outward, the ear is how we are reached. Our ears, once tuned by acoustic communities, are now calibrated by machines. From choirs to cochlear implants, music boxes to algorithmic playlists, listening has become a mediated act— private, curated, and data-driven.

The music box marked a turning point in the modern objectification of sound. Music boxes began to divorce ears from other speaking and singing bodies, restructuring listening from a communal act into an insular exchange between individual and machine. In so doing, music boxes began to create the channels for a new kind of hearing that would lead to our digital ears.

Since then, numerous mass-produced sound technologies have nourished and evolved the intimacy between ears and listening machines. Phonographs, gramophones, transistor radios, and later, magnetic tape, made it possible for people to listen to music in the absence of a performer. Several sound recording and storage technologies emerged in the wake of the phonograph’s invention. Whereas the music box, as an automated instrument, generated sound on its own, later technologies recorded and reproduced human performances. Each has spawned new auditory cultures, and with them, consonant reimaginations of the ear. As they transformed the voice from its pure alignment with the human soul to a more machinic object, they transformed listening cultures—and the ear itself.
Eye

Contemporary cameras, as we know them, unfix the eye from the body. Though now ubiquitous—embedded in nearly every phone and capable of high-resolution, high-focus capture— this was not always the case. Photography’s chief ancestor, the camera obscura, relies on the proximity of eye and image. Essentially a pinhole device, the camera obscura projects light through a small aperture into a darkened room or box, casting a live, inverted replica of the world outside—a shadow play of reality.

By the 16th century, the camera obscura had become a metaphor for human vision. This analogy defines the relationship between the eye and the seen world by immediacy: just as the outside world is projected onto a darkened room, so too is reality believed to be projected onto the eye through rays of light—an image cast upon the body. Photography descends from the camera obscura, turning projection into permanence. Whereas the camera obscura was ephemeral, the photograph imprints projected reality onto a surface, making it durable, portable, and endlessly reproducible. In so doing, it initiated the detachment of seeing from the physical act of looking. Vision, once anchored in the immediacy of the body, became something that could be captured, stored, and transmitted.

Yet, even as both vision and photography evolved into increasingly complex systems, no longer limited to the eye or lens, the metaphor of the camera as the eye endures. The persistence of this metaphor illustrates a deeper paradox at the heart of digital embodiment: we trust what we see, even though we are aware that sight can be deceiving. When machines inherit the work of the senses, we transfer that trust to them—forgetting, once again, that the eye has always been fallible. And as developments in imaging technologies have evolved, so too has the digital eye. Today’s digital eyes—those of smartphone cameras, Photoshop algorithms, and computer vision systems—do not see as the eye sees, nor do they operate by the same principles of immediacy that the camera obscura once did. They reconstruct, enhance, filter, and infer. As we increasingly outsource seeing to machines, the very nature of sight itself is transformed. Yet, cameras and the images they produce remain important referents for our reality, even as that reality becomes ever more fluid, manipulated, and abstracted. The digital gaze does not simply record the world; it remakes the very relationship between our bodies and the realities they claim to represent, between what is seen and what is believed.
Foot

The human foot is a marvel of evolutionary engineering, distinguishing us from other animals. The first hominins, the earliest members of our lineage, didn’t have large brains like modern humans, didn’t use sophisticated technology, and didn’t talk. They did, however, walk on two legs. Our feet are the very foundation of modern humanity as we know it. Bipedalism is the most ancient human adaptation, setting the stage for many characteristics that distinguish us as humans, including our reliance on tools and technology, language, and dietary flexibility. It freed human hands for tools and communication, and breath for speech. Walking—upright, that is—is as central to our humanity as writing and singing to one another. Our feet embody this extraordinary legacy and history. As Leonardo da Vinci is said to have remarked, “The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.”

As vehicles for our bodies, our feet serve as a primary interface between ourselves and the world. With the advent of self-tracking technologies that turn our footsteps into information, they, too, have become fodder for systems that flatten the nuance of lived experience. The notion that one must walk ten thousand steps daily for health has become almost as much of a maxim as that ancient adage, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” It might be truer to say instead that a journey of ten thousand steps begins with a single pedometer.

While walking may be the most natural thing in the world (for those who are ambulatory), it is increasingly being integrated into technological systems. Impregnated with information-gathering sensors, smart cities are the inexorable conclusion of this logic. Cities are becoming algorithmic labs for human movement.
Body

Technology desires disappearance. When a tool is working as intended, you don’t think about it—until it breaks. This kind of disappearance doesn’t just require a good tool; it demands skill and practice of the human using it. Like a surgeon with a scalpel or a carpenter with a chisel using their intelligent hands, disappearance is a collaboration between well-made tools and disciplined bodies. Digital technologies push this further still: the ideal tool is one that will completely dissolve, making the human body itself the interface.

We’re already living in mixed reality. Our bodies are entangled in a dance with data: computers track our keystrokes, footsteps, and heartbeats; they reproduce and organize our movements; intelligent systems choreograph our journeys, large and small; we socialize through electronic sound and through avatars in virtual spaces. Extended reality technologies don’t simply show us other worlds; they clarify the one we’re already in and reveal how deeply our lives are intertwined with computation.

We burnish our digital images (I’ll admit that mine is lightly airbrushed by the Touch Up My Appearance option in my Zoom preferences). We feed ourselves to the technologies we use, seeking to transcend the limits of our bodies and minds. We are spit out as ghosts of the platforms that puppet us. The term “ghost in the machine” has been used as a crude and derogatory jab at Descartes’s mind-body dualism—the idea that our minds animate our bodies like spirits inhabiting a shell. One version of the body digital inverts this: the mind floats free, divorced from our bodies and assimilated by platforms. But we are not disembodied minds. We are deeply rooted in flesh, blood, and bone. Any future worth building must remember that.
Mind

In their landmark 1998 paper “The Extended Mind,” philosophers of mind Andy Clark and David Chalmers asked, “Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?” Their answer has become one of the most influential articulations of the extended mind thesis, which rejects the conventional view that the mind resides solely within the brain, stopping at the skull and skin. Rather, they proposed that cognition arises from the dynamic interplay of brain, body, and tool. A pencil, a notebook, or a computer screen can become so integrated into our mental processes that they functionally bring about our cognitive abilities as much as our brains. The mind, in this view, is porous: it reaches into the world, and the world reaches back. Cognition, then, is not contained but distributed—emerging from an ecology of brain, body, and environment.

From grocery lists to encyclopedias, writing extends the human mind by offloading the burdens of memory, storing and retrieving information outside the body. Writing is a technology that allows us to outsource individual and collective memory. By sustaining the creation of informational archives that can be referenced, literacy made possible new forms of interaction with language. New techniques of information storage afforded the structured accumulation of knowledge. Once formulated, information can be reformulated with increasing precision. In this way, literacy laid the groundwork for the disciplines of logic, philosophy, and science in general—the knowledge infrastructures that would, centuries later, give rise to AI.

Writing has never been a solo act. Facilitated by AI, our writing should connect us with our past as much as with our future, with one another as much as ourselves. The best human writing challenges us to open our minds, not close them. We owe it to ourselves to tell stories with this new technology that does the same. If we must write with machines, let it not be to replicate, but to reimagine ourselves.

Rather than reflexively embracing or rejecting new technologies, we must ask: Do they expand or contract our horizons? Do they sustain care, curiosity, and complexity—or reduce us to what can be measured and predicted? How do they shape how we see, move, feel, speak, and connect? The history of our digital bodies shows that the ecologies we create are never neutral. They reflect how we choose to know one another, and how we allow ourselves to be known.


Author Bio: Dr. Vanessa Chang is the director of programs at Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology. She has been a lecturer in Visual & Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts, lead curator with CODAME Art & Tech, and a SOMArts curatorial resident from 2019 to 2020. Her essays and reviews have been published in Slate, Noema, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Wired.


Credit Line: This adapted excerpt is from Vanessa Chang’s The Body Digital: A History of Humans and Machines from Cuckoo Clocks to ChatGPT (2025, Melville House). It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) with permission from Melville House. It was adapted and produced for the Observatory by the Independent Media Institute.

Adults 65 Years And Older Not Immune To The Opioid Epidemic



By 

Overdose deaths in adults age 65 and older from fentanyl mixed with stimulants, such as cocaine and methamphetamines, have surged 9,000% in the past eight years, matching rates found among younger adults, according to research presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2025 annual meeting.

The study is among the first to use Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data to show that older adults, a group often overlooked in overdose research, are part of the broader rise in fentanyl-stimulant overdose deaths. Adults 65 years and older are especially vulnerable to overdoses because many live with chronic health conditions, take several medications and process drugs more slowly due to age. 

The opioid epidemic has unfolded in four waves, each characterized by a different type of opioid driving the increase in overdose deaths: prescription opioids in the 1990s; heroin starting in 2010; fentanyl starting in 2013; and a mix of fentanyl and stimulants starting in 2015.

“A common misconception is that opioid overdoses primarily affect younger people,” said Gab Pasia, M.A., lead author of the study and a medical student at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine. “Our analysis shows that older adults are also impacted by fentanyl-related deaths and that stimulant involvement has become much more common in this group. This suggests older adults are affected by the current fourth wave of the opioid crisis, following similar patterns seen in younger populations.”

Researchers analyzed 404,964 death certificates that listed fentanyl as a cause of death from 1999 to 2023, obtained from the CDC Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER) system. Older adults (age 65+) represented 17,040 and younger adults (ages 25–64) represented 387,924 of the death certificates.

Overall, fentanyl-related deaths between 2015 and 2023 increased from 264 to 4,144 in older adults (1,470% increase) and 8,513 to 64,694 in younger adults (660% increase). The analysis revealed a growing number of fentanyl-stimulant related deaths, particularly among adults age 65 or older. Among this group, fentanyl-stimulant deaths rose from 8.7% (23 of 264 fentanyl deaths) in 2015 to 49.9% (2,070 of 4,144 fentanyl deaths) in 2023, a 9,000% increase. For younger adults, fentanyl-stimulant deaths increased from 21.3% (1,812 of 8,513 fentanyl deaths) in 2015 to 59.3% (38,333 of 64,694 fentanyl deaths) in 2023, a 2,115% increase.

The researchers highlighted data from these individual years because 2015 marked the onset of the fourth wave of the opioid epidemic and was also the year fentanyl-stimulant deaths among older adults were at their lowest, and 2023 as it was the most recent year of CDC data available.

The researchers noted that the rise in fentanyl deaths involving stimulants in older adults began to sharply rise in 2020, while deaths linked to other substances stayed the same or declined. Cocaine and methamphetamines were the most common stimulants paired with fentanyl among the older adults studied, surpassing alcohol, heroin and benzodiazepines such as Xanax and Valium.

“National data have shown rising fentanyl-stimulant use among all adults,” said Mr. Pasia. “Because our analysis was a national, cross-sectional study, we were only able to describe patterns over time — not determine the underlying reasons why they are occurring. However, the findings underscore that fentanyl overdoses in older adults are often multi-substance deaths — not due to fentanyl alone — and the importance of sharing drug misuse prevention strategies to older patients.”

The authors noted anesthesiologists and other pain medicine specialists should:

  • Recognize that polysubstance use can occur in all age groups, not only in young adults.
  • Be cautious when prescribing opioids to adults 65 or older by carefully assessing medication history, closely monitoring patients prescribed opioids who may have a history of stimulant use for potential side effects, and considering non-opioid options when possible.
  • Use harm-reduction approaches such as involving caregivers in naloxone education, simplifying medication routines, using clear labeling and safe storage instructions and making sure instructions are easy to understand for those with memory or vision challenges.
  • Screen older patients for a broad range of substance exposures, beyond prescribed opioids, to better anticipate complications and adjust perioperative planning.

“Older adults who are prescribed opioids, or their caregivers, should ask their clinicians about overdose prevention strategies, such as having naloxone available and knowing the signs of an overdose,” said Richard Wang, M.D., an anesthesiology resident at Rush University Medical Center, Chicago and co-author of the study. “With these trends in mind, it is more important than ever to minimize opioid use in this vulnerable group and use other pain control methods when appropriate. Proper patient education and regularly reviewing medication lists could help to flatten this terrible trend.”




william-s-burroughs-junky.epub | Are.na

 

Most people can’t tell the difference between AI and human voices, study finds

Speaking to AI voices, like virtual assistants, has become a common part of life.
Copyright Canva


By Amber Louise Bryce
Published on 


As AI becomes more enmeshed in our lives, most people can’t tell the difference between human voices and their synthetic clones, a new study reveals.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a common part of day-to-day life for many. We see it written in the AI slop on our social media feeds, speak to it using large language models, and hear it every time Amazon’s Alexa perks up at a demand. Yet, as the technology rapidly advances, it’s becoming harder to tell what’s real and what’s not. 

In a new study, published in the PLoS One journal, researchers found that most people can no longer distinguish between AI-generated voices and the human voices they were cloned from. 

Participants were given samples of 80 different voices, half of which were AI, the other human. They were then asked to rate what they heard based on levels of trustworthiness or dominance. 

Within the AI category, there were two different types: Generic voices created from scratch, and voices cloned from recordings of humans speaking. 

While most people recognised the generic AI was fake, the synthetically cloned versions proved less decipherable, with 58 per cent being mistaken for real. In comparison, 62 per cent of the real voices were correctly identified as being human, leaving only a slight difference between respondents’ ability to tell the two apart. 

“The most important aspect of the research is that AI-generated voices, specifically, voice clones, sound as human as recordings of real human voices,” Dr Nadine Lavan, the study's lead author and a senior lecturer in psychology at Queen Mary University of London, told Euronews Next. 

“That is particularly striking since we used commercially available tools, where anyone can create voices that sound realistic without having to pay huge amounts of money, nor do they need any particular programming or technological skills”.

Voicing concerns

AI voice cloning technology works by analysing and extracting key characteristics from voice data. Due to its ability to mimic so precisely, it’s become a popular tool for phone scammers, who sometimes use social media posts as a resource for imitating the voices of people’s loved ones. 

The elderly are most at risk, with at least two-thirds of people over the age of 75 receiving attempted telephone fraud, according to research by the University of Portsmouth. They also found that nearly 60 per cent of the attempted scams are conducted via voice calls.

Although not all of these calls will be made using AI, it’s becoming increasingly prevalent due to the software’s sophistication and accessibility, with popular examples including Hume AI and ElevenLabs. 

58 per cent of people who took part in the study mistook the AI-cloned voices for being real.
58 per cent of people who took part in the study mistook the AI-cloned voices for being real. Canva

AI-cloning has also become a cause for concern in the entertainment industry, where several celebrities' voices have been used without permission. Last year, Scarlett Johansson spoke out about OpenAI using a voice that sounded 'eerily similar' to her own in the film ‘Her’ for its ChatGPT service

Then there's the widespread use of audio deepfakes, which have previously mimicked politicians or journalists in attempts to sway public opinions and spread misinformation.  

As all these troubling misuses continue to permeate society, Lavan believes AI developers have a responsibility to implement stronger safeguards. 

“From our perspective as researchers, we would always recommend that companies creating the technology talk to ethicists and policy makers to consider what the ethical and legal issues are around, for example, ownership of voices, consent (and how far that can stretch in the face of an ever-changing landscape),” she said. 

Improving accessibility

As with all technologies, AI-generated voices also have the potential to be used for good - and could prove particularly beneficial for people who are mute or struggle to speak.    

“This kind of assistive technology has been in use for some time, with Stephen Hawking being one of the most iconic examples. What’s new, however, is the ability to personalise these synthetic voices in ways that were previously impossible,” said Lavan. 

“Today, users can choose to recreate their original voice, if that’s what they prefer, or design a completely new voice that reflects their identity and personal taste”.

She also noted that, if used ethically and responsibly, the technology could improve accessibility and diversity in education, broadcasting and audiobook production. 

For example, a recent study found that AI-assisted audio-learning boosted students' motivation and reading engagement - especially those with a neurodiversity like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

“Another fascinating development is the ability to clone a voice into different languages, allowing people to represent themselves across linguistic boundaries while retaining their vocal identity. This could be transformative for global communication, accessibility, and cultural exchange,” Lavan added. 

As the sound of artificial voices becomes ever more present in our lives, the nuances with which we utilise and engage with them will continue to develop. Lavan hopes to explore this with further research, focusing on how AI-generated voices are perceived. 

“I'd be really keen to explore in more depth how whether someone knows whether a voice is AI-generated or not will change how they engage with that voice,” she said. 

“Similarly, it would be very interesting to see how people would perceive AI-generated voices that sound nice and pleasant but clearly not human: For example, would people be more or less likely to follow instructions from these pleasant, but non-human AI voices? Would people be more or less likely to get angry at them when something goes wrong? 

“All of these questions are really interesting from a research perspective and can tell us a lot about what matters in human (or human-computer) interactions,” she said.

 

Perceptions of tax fairness in Europe: Are the rich paying their way?

Protestors shout slogans as they hold banners reading 'Justice' during a demonstration against austerity measures and the approval of the budget for 2013 by the Spanish govern
Copyright Copyright 2012 AP. All rights reserved.


By Servet Yanatma
Published on 

Perceptions of tax fairness are generally higher in Nordic and Western European countries, while they tend to be lower in Eastern Europe. Experts attribute this gap to the quality of public services and the tax system’s capacity to redistribute wealth.

Taxes are an important way for governments to pay for public services like healthcare and education.

In 2023, the total taxes collected by all EU governments made up about 40% of the total value of goods and services produced, known as the tax-to-GDP ratio.

Yet despite the pivotal role of taxes, around one in four people in the EU believe that citizens in their country do "not at all" pay taxes in proportion to their income or wealth.

But how do views on tax fairness differ across Europe? A 2025 Eurobarometer study, which gathered responses from more than 25,000 people, asked citizens across the EU: "Do people pay taxes in proportion to their income and wealth in your country?”

Taxes are paid ‘to a large extent’ in line with wealth

Across the EU, one in five respondents said that this is the case ‘to a large extent’. The proportion of people who responded in this way ranges from just 8% in Latvia to 38% in Finland.

At least three in ten people in Luxembourg (36%), Denmark (32%), Austria (32%), Malta (31%), Germany (31%), and Greece (30%) also believe that people in their countries pay taxes ‘to a large extent’ in proportion to their income and wealth.

On the other hand, Lithuania, Poland, and Czechia (each 9%) are very close to Latvia, with few people responding to the question in this way.

Among the EU’s larger economies, Italy shows the lowest share for this view, at 12%. The perception is also below the EU average in Spain (17%) and France (19%).

Taxes are paid ‘to some extent’ in line with wealth

About half of respondents in the EU (51%) felt that people pay taxes ‘to some extent’ in proportion to their income and wealth. This share ranges from 33% in Hungary and Croatia to 59% in Cyprus. 

Most countries fall between 45% and 55%, meaning this answer is the most common in 23 out of 27 EU countries. The exceptions are Hungary, Croatia, Estonia, and Bulgaria, where the ‘not at all’ response is higher than ‘to some extent’.

Four countries stand out for strong ‘not at all’ responses

Around one in four people in the EU (24%) believe that citizens in their country do ‘not at all’ pay taxes fairly in proportion to their income and wealth. In four countries, almost half of respondents share this view: Hungary (50%), Croatia (48%), Estonia (47%), and Bulgaria (46%)

The next highest is Slovakia (38%), showing that these four stand out as an outlier group. Beyond them, more than three in ten people in Latvia and Lithuania (both 36%), Poland (33%), Portugal, Slovenia, and Czechia (each 32%) also feel that taxes are not collected fairly, as citizens do ‘not at all’ pay according to their income and wealth. 

Italy and Spain are close to this level as well, both at 39%.

In contrast, the two Nordic countries, Denmark (7%) and Finland (10%), record the lowest ‘not at all’ perception, both below 10%.

These results indicate clear geographical trends in how people perceive tax fairness. In general, Nordic and Western European countries express more positive views, while Southern European nations are more divided. In contrast, Eastern European EU members tend to see their tax systems as less fair. 

In the EU, 5% of respondents said they do not know, while the share of unsure answers reaches 9% in some countries.

What shapes people’s views on tax fairness?

“Where citizens perceive procedures as transparent and rules as applied equally to all, tax morale and voluntary compliance tend to be strong,” said economic psychology professor Erick Kirchler from the University of Vienna.

He noted that in countries such as Denmark and Finland, which consistently rank among the global leaders in governance and integrity, citizens report a particularly high perception of fairness in the tax system.

“In these contexts, taxpayers experience a clear ‘value for money’. High-quality public services — such as childcare, health care, education, and security — make the return on taxes visible,” he added.

Kirchler pointed out that lower institutional trust and weaker administrative capacity, as found in parts of Eastern and Southern Europe, often undermine these perceptions.

Finland vs. Poland

Dr Fabian Kalleitner from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich underlined that people in Northern European countries are generally more satisfied with the distribution of income after redistribution than people in Southern and Eastern European countries. 

“This is not only because income differences between the top and bottom are smaller—although they are also relatively low in many Eastern European countries—but also because the income floor is higher, even after accounting for differences in purchasing power,” he said. 

“In other words, the poor in Finland and Denmark simply have higher incomes than the poor in Poland or Czechia.”

Kalleitner also highlighted the ‘actual redistributive power of taxes,’ referring to a government’s ability to use its tax system to influence the distribution of income and wealth.

 “Countries with low tax redistribution, such as Estonia, Latvia, or Hungary, show lower levels of [fairness] agreement than high-redistribution countries such as Austria, Finland, or Denmark,” he said.

Role of tax complexity

Professor Caren Sureth-Sloane from Paderborn University emphasised the role of tax complexity.

She noted that tax systems in Northern European countries are generally seen as less complex, and this is often linked to higher levels of trust in both the government and the tax system.

“Nordic countries offer their citizens extensive information on tax payments of individuals, they are very transparent in this respect,” she said. 

Dr Sabina KoÅ‚odziej, from Kozminski University, added: “High perceptions of tax fairness in Nordic countries can be attributed to strong institutional quality and high levels of societal trust. These factors foster voluntary compliance and enable effective redistribution, resulting in more equal societies with low levels of poverty and inequality.”

Mercosur, Canada Resume Free Trade Agreement Negotiations

Flags of Mercosur members, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina. 
Photo Credit: ABr, Isac Nobrega/PR

October 11, 2025 
By ABr
By Wellton Maximo

Mercosur and Canada continue free trade agreement talks this Friday (Oct. 10) in Brasília.

Chief negotiators and technical teams from Canada and the four Mercosur member countries (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay) are meeting at the Ministry of Development, Industry, Commerce, and Services (MDIC) headquarters in the country’s capital.

The resumption of dialogue follows Canada’s Minister of International Trade, Maninder Sidhu, visiting Brazil in August 2025, where he met with Vice President and MDIC Minister Geraldo Alckmin. On that occasion, both sides reaffirmed their interest in deepening economic dialogue and reactivating the negotiation agenda.

Topics under discussion include market access, trade facilitation, technical barriers, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, services and investments, intellectual property, and environmental issues.

According to the ministry, the move reflects Mercosur’s commitment to pursuing modern, balanced, and mutually beneficial trade agreements. The negotiations, the Ministry of Development, Industry, Commerce, and Services (MDIC) reported, follow the model of those already concluded with Singapore, the European Union (EU), and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) – a group of non-EU countries comprising Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein.



ABr
Agência Brasil (ABr) is the national public news agency, run by the Brazilian government. It is a part of the public media corporation Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC), created in 2007 to unite two government media enterprises Radiobrás and TVE (Televisão Educativa).


STOP illegal migration! NO to Mercosur' - right-wing protestors take to the streets in Warsaw

President of the Law and Justice Party Jarosław Kaczyński
Copyright EBU

By Katarzyna-Maria Skiba
Published on 

Thousands marched through the Polish capital on Saturday, protesting against illegal migration and opposing the EU-Mercosur agreement. On the same day, Prime Minister Donald Tusk claimed that Poland would be exempted from the EU migration pact.

Carrying Polish flags and marching through the streets of the capital, thousands of demonstrators expressed their opposition to illegal migration and Prime Minister Donald Tusk's ruling coalition.

The event's main organiser and president of Law and Justice, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, spoke at a rally before the protest began, appealing to participants not to trust the prime minister's words, calling them "old games".

"I said there would be no relocation of migrants in Poland and there won't be! It's a done deal. That we will seal the barrier on the border with Belarus - and it is the best-guarded border in Europe today. That we will tighten visa and asylum laws - and Poland has become a model for others. We are doing, not talking!" the Prime Minister wrote on X prior to the rally.

Just hours later, Kaczynski responded at the match.

"Today Donald Tusk, who not so long ago said that Poland would have to be punished for the fact that our government [Law and Justice] was able ensure that this agreement did not enter into force at that time [...] Today, all of a sudden he announces that next year we will not have immigration [in Poland]," Kaczynski said.

"Don't be fooled, these are old games," he added.

Kaczyński called for an end to the Tusk government.

"We must dismiss Tusk, away with Tusk. We must rebuild everything that this government has managed to destroy," Kaczyński said to the crowd of demonstrators.

The gathering was also attended by several other Law and Justice politicians, including former Prime Ministers Beata Szydło and Mateusz Morawiecki and former Defence Ministry chief Mariusz Blaszczak.

In her speech at the rally, Szydło called for the unity of conservative society and challenged the Prime Minister's words.

"We must unite as a white and red team and we must invite those who see what is happening in Poland today and are worried about their future," Szydło said.

"Today is the time when we must be together. You can't believe Tusk, but you also can't believe those who govern in the European Union" - she added.

Asking those gathered whether they believed that Poland would not be bound by the migration pact, she said: "It is as if you believe Angela Merkel, who, when bringing this disaster to Europe, said that everything would be under control."