Month: January 2022

How “Workless” Men Are Driving America’s Labor Crisis

How “Workless” Men Are Driving America’s Labor Crisis

While Goldman’s equity analysts chose to lecture their clients about margin compression following a flurry of S&P 500 stalwarts lowering their earnings guidance, the investment bank’s economists also warned Monday that stubborn wage pressures are making them “more concerned about the inflationary outlook.”

Wage growth is still running at an annualized pace of 5-6% months after generous pandemic-inspired unemployment benefits expired, a stubbornness that has surprised many on Wall Street. Partly as a result, they expect their inflation dashboard to continue to highlight lingering supply chain woes, hot wage growth, strong rent growth, very high year-on-very core PCE and especially core CPI inflation, and very high short-term inflation expectations.”

Goldman’s team produced charts showing how COVID case numbers have coincided with a rise in the CPI and PCE, two popular gauges of headline inflation, while also breaking down how the costs of “other services” (the most wage-sensitive category) have been the biggest individual driver of price pressures.

Goldman’s team aren’t the only ones on Wall Street who are growing increasingly worried about wage inflation. Even the WSJ offered some thoughts on the subject this weekend when it published a lengthy “Weekend Interview” by Mene Ukueberuwa purporting to examine the “Underside of the Great Resignation”. As Ukueberuwa quickly points out, the labor-force participation rate in the US has been stuck at 61.9%, 1.5 points below its pre-pandemic level, since August 2020.

Is it perhaps too early to start to question whether the post-COVID “Great Resignation” narrative simply isn’t enough? While some bankers might disagree, a growing number of academics and experts have started to question whether structural factors in the US economy might become major impediments in the recovery of the labor market.

For years now, the growing percentage of women in the workforce (women now outnumber men on college campuses, too), and a confluence of other factors like the opioid pandemic and the advent of video-game slacker culture, and the stigmatization of jobs like construction, which require a strong back, but few academic smarts, have caused more and more men to drop out of the workforce. We have been talking about this phenomenon since as far back as 2017.

Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute, was one of the primary proponents of this structural argument in the WSJ essay, which cited his 2016 book “Men Without Book”. As he explains, overall labor force pariticpation rate has been declining since 2000, when it peaked at about 67%.

As the rate has fallen, many blamed a growing number of retirees as the Baby Boom generation leaves the workforce. But declines have also been persistent in the population of prime-age people – 25 to 54 – in the workplace.

Eberstadt believes that if the US had maintained the ratio of employment-to-population from 2000, we would have 13M more people working today, more than enough to fill the record number of open jobs.

So, if they’re not working, where are all these working-age men and what are they doing? Are they volunteering or channeling their energies into worship or civil society? Not at all. From all we can tell, it looks like they’re mostly sitting at home. “By and large, nonworking men don’t ‘do’ civil society,” Eberstadt says. “Their time spent helping in the home, their time spent in worship—a whole range of activities, they just aren’t doing.” For a source on this, Eberstadt pointed to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey, which compiles respondents’ self-reported habits.

Turns out, working age men were increasingly “staying at home a lot” even before the pandemic. Suddenly, the pandemic has given many who may have been working part-time menial jobs to simply sit home. And inflated asset prices have helped to justify it. Still, there is something “fundamentally degrading” about the workless men of contemporary American society.

“This is not what Marx would have called the ‘higher pursuits’ of leisure,” Eberstadt said. “There’s something fundamentally degrading about this.”

Amazingly, Eberstadt also pointed to the fact that the number of working-age Americans receiving federal disability payments has doubled over the past 50 years, rising from 2.2% in 1977 to 4.3% last year.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/24/2022 – 20:50

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3tVrL2k Tyler Durden

Why the Supreme Court’s Decision in NFIB v. OSHA May Be Even Worse News for Climate Regulation than You Thought

The Supreme Court’s decision rejecting the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s emergency vax-or-test mandate showed that a majority of the Supreme Court is skeptical of broad, unprecedented assertions of agency authority. Although the Court could have chosen to invalidate the OSHA rule on more narrow statutory grounds, the brief per curiam swept more broadly. The Court did not fully eviscerate OSHA’s ability to reduce the workplace risks of Covid-19 (loud claims to the contrary notwithstanding), but it did adopt a relatively narrow view of an agency’s delegated authority, curtailing OSHA’s ability to address Covid-19 on the margin, and suggesting broader shifts within administrative law may be on the way.

Insofar as the Court’s decision rested on a “major questions” rationale — the idea that broad agency authority must be expressly authorized by Congress — it would seem to spell bad news for the EPA in the greenhouse gas regulation case to be heard next month. If a majority of the Court concluded that OSHA could not impose a vax-or-test requirement on all large employers as an emergency occupational health standard, it is unlikely to conclude that the EPA’s authority to control emissions from power plants allows it to mandate broader changes within energy systems. Indeed, the major questions doctrine (as applied by the current Court) seems tailor made for West Virginia v. EPA. But NFIB v. OSHA may have even broader consequences for future regulatory efforts to control greenhouse gases.

Both the oral argument and per curiam opinion in NFIB v. OSHA suggested that at least some justices (and the Chief Justice in particular) were concerned that the Biden Administration was using OSHA”s authority over workplace safety as a means of pursuing the broader (and worthwhile) public health goal of increasing Covid-19 vaccinations. In effect, as Michael Dorf hypothesized, the Court was concerned about “pretext.” As Dorf put it “the OSHA ruling reflects a judgment by the majority of the Court that President Biden and his administration were using their power under [the OSH Act] pretextually.” Lacking any clear statutory authority to impose a nationwide Covid-19 vaccination requirement, the Biden Administration sought to use the OSHA rule as part of (what the President described as) “a new plan to require more Americans to be vaccinated.”

Concern for pretext is common in administrative law, but the rule against is rarely enforced with much vigor. Provided that an agency can offer a reasoned explanation of its actions and justify the choices it made in terms aligned with its statutory authority, that is usually good enough to survive judicial review. In the census case, however, Chief Roberts suggested courts should look more closely when there is reason to suspect an agency’s explanation is “contrived.” What judicial review requires, Roberts explained, is that agencies provide “genuine justifications for important decisions,” and not “distractions” or subterfuge. While the gap between the agency’s action and apparent intent was not nearly as great here as in the census litigation, the Court was clearly concerned that the OSHA ETS was not driven by a concern with occupational safety, as such, but a broader imperative to increase vaccination. Contra Dorf, the “mismatch” between the OSHA rule and the risk posed by Covid-19 in the workplace — which was based upon the number of people on a company’s payroll, and not any relevant attributes of governed workplaces — reinforced that conclusion.

Whereas pretext analysis is often used to ferret truly nefarious motives, such as racial or religious discrimination, here it reinforces the Court’s apparent concern that agencies only exercise that authority they have been delegated. (And while some might think the Court used such analysis in the Census case due to concerns about invidious discrimination, that is not the rationale the Chief Justice gave.)

OSHA’s authority concerns occupational health and safety, the Court noted repeatedly, and not public health more broadly. Thus insofar as the Court had reason to suspect the regulation was not adopted with a focus on occupational health and safety, that was more reason to question whether the agency was exercising power Congress had actually authorized. (Again, one can see the Chief raising such concerns at oral argument.)

What does this have to do with climate change regulation? If the message of NFIB v. OSHA is that courts should be sure that agencies are exercising the powers given by Congress for the purposes Congress gave them, then not only is the Court likely to conclude that the EPA’s authority to use section 111 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector is limited. It is also likely to be suspicious of EPA efforts to repurpose other pre-existing authorities to regulate air pollution to achieve GHG reductions.

Absent new legislation, the most direct way the EPA has to reduce GHG emissions is to tighten existing regulations on coal plants and other substantial sources of GHG emissions. Tightening the national ambient air quality standard for particulate matter, for example, would not only reduce soot and fine particles in the air. It would also put the squeeze on large sources of GHGs, reducing those emissions as a co-benefit. The problem for EPA would be if courts see such efforts as work-arounds, as they did with the OSHA ETS.

I do not see these concerns as necessary fatal to further EPA climate efforts, but it is another obstacle with which the agency will have to contend (as if there were not enough already). All the more reason it would be a good thing for Congress to enact a carbon tax.

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Why the Supreme Court’s Decision in NFIB v. OSHA May Be Even Worse News for Climate Regulation than You Thought

The Supreme Court’s decision rejecting the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s emergency vax-or-test mandate showed that a majority of the Supreme Court is skeptical of broad, unprecedented assertions of agency authority. Although the Court could have chosen to invalidate the OSHA rule on more narrow statutory grounds, the brief per curiam swept more broadly. The Court did not fully eviscerate OSHA’s ability to reduce the workplace risks of Covid-19 (loud claims to the contrary notwithstanding), but it did adopt a relatively narrow view of an agency’s delegated authority, curtailing OSHA’s ability to address Covid-19 on the margin, and suggesting broader shifts within administrative law may be on the way.

Insofar as the Court’s decision rested on a “major questions” rationale — the idea that broad agency authority must be expressly authorized by Congress — it would seem to spell bad news for the EPA in the greenhouse gas regulation case to be heard next month. If a majority of the Court concluded that OSHA could not impose a vax-or-test requirement on all large employers as an emergency occupational health standard, it is unlikely to conclude that the EPA’s authority to control emissions from power plants allows it to mandate broader changes within energy systems. Indeed, the major questions doctrine (as applied by the current Court) seems tailor made for West Virginia v. EPA. But NFIB v. OSHA may have even broader consequences for future regulatory efforts to control greenhouse gases.

Both the oral argument and per curiam opinion in NFIB v. OSHA suggested that at least some justices (and the Chief Justice in particular) were concerned that the Biden Administration was using OSHA”s authority over workplace safety as a means of pursuing the broader (and worthwhile) public health goal of increasing Covid-19 vaccinations. In effect, as Michael Dorf hypothesized, the Court was concerned about “pretext.” As Dorf put it “the OSHA ruling reflects a judgment by the majority of the Court that President Biden and his administration were using their power under [the OSH Act] pretextually.” Lacking any clear statutory authority to impose a nationwide Covid-19 vaccination requirement, the Biden Administration sought to use the OSHA rule as part of (what the President described as) “a new plan to require more Americans to be vaccinated.”

Concern for pretext is common in administrative law, but the rule against is rarely enforced with much vigor. Provided that an agency can offer a reasoned explanation of its actions and justify the choices it made in terms aligned with its statutory authority, that is usually good enough to survive judicial review. In the census case, however, Chief Roberts suggested courts should look more closely when there is reason to suspect an agency’s explanation is “contrived.” What judicial review requires, Roberts explained, is that agencies provide “genuine justifications for important decisions,” and not “distractions” or subterfuge. While the gap between the agency’s action and apparent intent was not nearly as great here as in the census litigation, the Court was clearly concerned that the OSHA ETS was not driven by a concern with occupational safety, as such, but a broader imperative to increase vaccination. Contra Dorf, the “mismatch” between the OSHA rule and the risk posed by Covid-19 in the workplace — which was based upon the number of people on a company’s payroll, and not any relevant attributes of governed workplaces — reinforced that conclusion.

Whereas pretext analysis is often used to ferret truly nefarious motives, such as racial or religious discrimination, here it reinforces the Court’s apparent concern that agencies only exercise that authority they have been delegated. (And while some might think the Court used such analysis in the Census case due to concerns about invidious discrimination, that is not the rationale the Chief Justice gave.)

OSHA’s authority concerns occupational health and safety, the Court noted repeatedly, and not public health more broadly. Thus insofar as the Court had reason to suspect the regulation was not adopted with a focus on occupational health and safety, that was more reason to question whether the agency was exercising power Congress had actually authorized. (Again, one can see the Chief raising such concerns at oral argument.)

What does this have to do with climate change regulation? If the message of NFIB v. OSHA is that courts should be sure that agencies are exercising the powers given by Congress for the purposes Congress gave them, then not only is the Court likely to conclude that the EPA’s authority to use section 111 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector is limited. It is also likely to be suspicious of EPA efforts to repurpose other pre-existing authorities to regulate air pollution to achieve GHG reductions.

Absent new legislation, the most direct way the EPA has to reduce GHG emissions is to tighten existing regulations on coal plants and other substantial sources of GHG emissions. Tightening the national ambient air quality standard for particulate matter, for example, would not only reduce soot and fine particles in the air. It would also put the squeeze on large sources of GHGs, reducing those emissions as a co-benefit. The problem for EPA would be if courts see such efforts as work-arounds, as they did with the OSHA ETS.

I do not see these concerns as necessary fatal to further EPA climate efforts, but it is another obstacle with which the agency will have to contend (as if there were not enough already). All the more reason it would be a good thing for Congress to enact a carbon tax.

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TSA Backtracks On Allowing Illegal Immigrants To Use Arrest Warrants As ID To Fly

TSA Backtracks On Allowing Illegal Immigrants To Use Arrest Warrants As ID To Fly

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) on Friday acknowledged it was allowing illegal immigrants to present arrest warrants as identification to get on airplanes but said it was ending the practice.

“For non-citizens and non-U.S. nationals who do not otherwise have acceptable forms of ID for presentation at security checkpoints, TSA may also accept certain DHS-issued forms, including ICE Form I-200 (Warrant for Arrest of an Alien),” a spokesman for the agency told The Epoch Times in an email.

The TSA is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which also includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Later in the day, though, the same spokesman indicated the policy had been changed.

“To confirm the identity of an individual and ensure they are not on the no-fly list or pose a known threat to public safety or national security, TSA verifies the identity of every traveler before they are permitted to enter the secure area of an airport. Noncitizens without a standard form of identification may instead present certain DHS-issued forms to a TSA officer. These forms are civil immigration violation documents, do not include criminal arrest warrants, and are not indicative of a threat to public safety or national security,” he said.

The TSA says it confirms the identity of each individual by verifying information found on the forms using data from Customs and Border Protection.

The Biden administration letting illegal immigrants present arrest warrants was first reported by the Daily Caller.

The change in policy came after an outcry over the unusual practice.

“President [Joe] Biden is putting millions of Americans at risk by allowing known criminals and potential terrorists to fly on U.S. airlines. A criminal alien shouldn’t be allowed to board a plane after presenting a warrant for their arrest. They should be detained and brought before a judge,” Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas), who said he went to the U.S.-Mexico border and witnessed illegal immigrants boarding planes without proper identification, said on Fox & Friends this week.

Matthew Tragesser, spokesperson at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told The Epoch Times in an email before the change that the guidance was “an affront to American citizens, and greatly jeopardizes our national security.”

“In no way, shape, or form would an American citizen be allowed to board a U.S. flight simply by flashing an arrest warrant. If anything, that would cause immediate concern for law enforcement officials. This unconscionable move by the Biden administration aids and abets criminal behavior. Rather than facilitate illegal immigration deep into the interior, the administration should look to deter it as more than 2 million individuals attempted to enter the country unlawfully during its first year in office–an all-time record,” he added.

Under Biden, the United States set records for the most illegal immigrant apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border for both a fiscal year and a calendar year.

Biden, a Democrat, and top officials in his administration have dramatically altered or ended key Trump-era policies since taking office, including stopping construction of the border wall and curtailing the use of health emergency powers to expel illegal aliens.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/24/2022 – 20:30

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3tSGdrX Tyler Durden

13M Chinese Finally Freed After 1-Month Lockdown In Xi’an As New Outbreak Detected In Shanghai

13M Chinese Finally Freed After 1-Month Lockdown In Xi’an As New Outbreak Detected In Shanghai

Finally, after a month of living with a brutal, Wuhan-style lockdown, the 13M residents of Xi’an, the provincial capital of Shanxxi, are finally free to go about their business. The CCP announced over the weekend that it would end the lockdown after  a month, having officially triumphed over the virus yet again (although other outbreaks are vexing authorities in Beijing and elsewhere).

On Monday, meanwhile, health authorities confirmed the first new confirmed case of COVID in Shanghai since the start of the latest round of outbreaks. While it’s only one case for now (at least, according to what the CCP is willing to tell the public), COVID cases follow the cockroach theory: where there’s one, there are more.

According to official sources, a worker at a cargo terminal in Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport tested positive for COVID. While the case has been categorized as mild, Shanghai authorities have upgraded the risk level on a residential compound in the Fengxian district, leaving its residents to face tighter restrictions and mandatory testing. Authorities in Shanghai are also “encouraging” residents to remain in the city during the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday.

China also reported four cases of COVID among incoming travelers for the Winter Olympics (which starts Feb. 4). One infection involved an individual identified as an “athlete” and three identified as “stakeholders” by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympics, in a statement.

As authorities in Beijing continue to tighten restrictions ahead of the start of the Winter Games, the Chinese government has started to use its panopticon of surveillance to discreetly track people who buy cough medicine or anything else that might be used to alleviate the symptoms of COVID, according to Bloomberg.

Beijing residents who purchase antipyretics, antivirals and drugs that target coughs and sore throats will get an alert on the mobile app China uses for contact tracing and which is frequently checked to allow entry to public venues. The buyer will then need to take a Covid test within 72 hours or face movement restrictions, the Beijing Municipal Health Commission said on Sunday.

With the US and some of its western allies boycotting the Olympics, many diplomats simply don’t need to worry about traveling to Beijing this year. But those who are face some pretty stiff anti-COVID restrictions. Some might be forced to quarantine for a total of 21 days if they are ever deemed to be “close contacts” of anybody found to be positive.

That’s bad news for any diplomat who doesn’t want to risk being detained in a Chinese quarantine facility just so they can attend the Winter Olympics.

Already, Chinese authorities have discovered 78 cases among travelers associated with the Games since Jan. 4. So, in the hopes of avoiding further embarrassment, the CCP has decided to lower the testing threshold for what’s considered a positive case. Perhaps they have seen our reporting on the COVID “casedemic” and how to address it.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/24/2022 – 20:10

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3nUcfA1 Tyler Durden

F-35 Stealth Jet Crashes On US Carrier In South China Sea, 7 Injured

F-35 Stealth Jet Crashes On US Carrier In South China Sea, 7 Injured

An F-35C Stealth fighter jet has crash landed aboard the deck of the USS Carl Vinson in the South China Sea on Monday, the US Navy announced, inuring seven, including the pilot who successfully ejected nad was recovered in the sea by a military helicopter. 

“An F-35C Lightning II, assigned to Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 2, had a landing mishap on deck while USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) was conducting routine flight operations in the South China Sea, Jan. 24, 2022,” a military statement said.

US Navy file: An F-35C takes off from the USS Carl Vinson.

The six others had been injured on the carrier’s deck, and three were airlifted to a hospital in Manila, Philippines, with all said to be in stable condition.

The cause of the crash is under investigation, with the preliminary statement calling it an “inflight mishap”. 

The F-35 stealth manufacturer Lockheed Martin had announced last August, with the USS Vinson departed San Diego, “This deployment marks the first time in U.S. naval aviation history that a stealth strike fighter has been deployed operationally on an aircraft carrier.”

One prominent China state media pundit in the West was quick to weigh in on the accident, saying the United States “should not be there in the first place”…

The pilot is reportedly among those in stable condition, with the Navy statement citing that he “safely ejected”.

Last November, a British F-35 stealth jet has crashed into the Mediterranean Sea during what was described at the time as routine flying operations from the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth. F-35 fighters are an estimated 135 million dollars, with cutting-edge stealth technology and radar.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/24/2022 – 19:58

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/35eGxH3 Tyler Durden

Wisconsin Judge Amazingly Rules 7 Health Care Workers Cannot Switch Jobs

Wisconsin Judge Amazingly Rules 7 Health Care Workers Cannot Switch Jobs

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Telling people they cannot quit for a better opportunity is blatantly unconstitutional. But that just happened in Wisconsin…

The Appleton, Wisconsin Post-Crescent reports Fox Valley Health Care Workers Now Playing Out in Court.

The seven workers quit ThedaCare, applied for positions at Ascension, and received job offers.

The seven did not have contracts or obligations at ThedaCare nor did Ascension recruit those workers. 

Nonetheless, ThedaCare filed a lawsuit seeking to block the move. 

Outagamie County Circuit Court Judge Mark McGinnis granted ThedaCare’s request and until at least Monday. 

In the complaint, lawyers for ThedaCare wrote that Ascension had “shockingly” chosen to “poach” the employees during a stressful time for health care. More COVID-19 patients are hospitalized in the Fox Valley now than at any other time during the pandemic, according to Wisconsin Hospital Association data, and ThedaCare has canceled non-emergency surgeries to make space. 

ThedaCare-Neenah is a Level II Trauma Center, part of which means they have specialists like interventional radiologists available regularly to treat patients. Ascension St. Elizabeth Hospital, a Level III Trauma Center, can provide initial support to trauma patients and is able to transfer them to ThedaCare-Neenah for more care, according to definitions from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.  

Ascension says it did not recruit the workers and that ThedaCare had an opportunity to make counter-offers but didn’t.

Timothy Breister, one of applicants in the dispute said the pay, the benefits, and the life-style options offered by Ascension were better.

Its “not just in pay but also a better work/life balance,” said Breister. 

After approaching ThedaCare with the chance to match the offers they’d been given, Breister wrote that they were told “the long term expense to ThedaCare was not worth the short term cost,” and no counter-offer would be made. 

You Can’t Quit

Effectively the judge ruled the workers cannot quit. Wow. 

This is an open and shut case if the facts are even close to those presented.

If I was Breister, I would consider showing up at Ascension as well as filing a recall petition for Judge Mark McGinnis. 

Wisconsin judges may be removed in one of four ways: By the Wisconsin Supreme Court, by recall, by legislative impeachment and by an obscure mechanism called address, which is similar to impeachment.

Irony

The irony in this ridiculous ruling by judge McGinnis is that the seven workers will not be at work for either ThedaCare or Ascension next week unless the workers ignore the restraining order.

McGinnis wants the parties to work it out. But there is nothing to work out.

Telling people they cannot quit for a better opportunity is blatantly unconstitutional. 

*  *  *

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Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/24/2022 – 19:50

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3rKqQ25 Tyler Durden

How much of the quantum tech boom is just welfare for physicists?

That’s the question I had after reading Law and Policy for the Quantum Age, by Chris Hoofnagle and Simson Garfinkel. It’s a gracefully written and deeply informative look at the commercial and policy prospects of quantum computing and several other (often more promising) quantum technologies, including sensing, communications, and networking. And it left me with the question that heads this post. So, I invited Chris Hoofnagle to an interview and came away thinking the answer may be “close to half – and for sure all the quantum projects grounded in fear and envy of the National Security Agency.” My exchange with Chris makes for a bracing and fast-paced half hour of futurology and policy and is not to be missed. Neither is the book.

Also not to be missed: Conservative Catfight II – Now With More Cats. That’s right, Jamil Jaffer and I reprise our past debate over Big Tech regulation, this time focusing on S.2992, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, just voted out of the Senate Judiciary committee with a bipartisan set of supporters and detractors. In essence, the bill would impose special “no self-preferencing” obligations on really large platforms. Jamil, joined by Gus Hurwitz, thinks this is heavy handed government penalization of a few unpopular companies and completely unmoored from any harm to consumers. Jordan Schneider weighs in to point out that it is almost exactly the solution chosen by the Chinese government in its most recent policy shift. I argue that platforms are usually procompetitive when they start but inherently open to a host of subtle abuses once entrenched, so only a specially crafted regime will keep a handful of companies from amassing enormous economic and political power.

Doubling down on controversy, I ask Nate Jones to explain Glenn Greenwald’s objections to the subpoena practices of Congress’s  Jan. 6 Committee. I think the committee’s legal arguments boil down to “When Congress wrote the rules for government, it clearly didn’t intend for the rules to apply to Congress.” And Greenwald is right in arguing that the Supreme Court in the 1950s treated Communists better than the January 6 committee is treating anyone even tangentially tied to the attack on the Capitol.

Nate and I try to figure out what Forbes was smoking when it tried to gin up a scandal from a standard set of metadata subpoenas sent to WhatsApp. Whatever it was, Forbes will need plenty of liquids and a few hours in a dark quiet room to recover.

In quick hits, Gus explains what it means that the Biden administration is rewriting the DOJ/FTC merger guidelines: essentially, the more the administration tries to make them mean, the less deference they’ll get in court. And Jordan and I puzzle over the emphasis on small and medium business in China’s latest five-year plan for the digital economy.

Download the 391st Episode (mp3)

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My NBC Article on the Affirmative Action Cases Accepted by the Supreme Court.


Harvard

NBC News just posted my article on what the Supreme Court should do in the two affirmative action cases it agreed to hear earlier today. Here is an excerpt:

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, a case challenging the use of race in admissions at the Ivy League institution. It will also hear a similar case against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

This litigation highlights a number of long-standing flaws in the “diversity” rationale for racial preferences embraced by previous court decisions and adopted by colleges around the country. The Harvard case also features extensive evidence indicating the school’s admissions system specifically discriminates against Asian American applicants — not just by comparison with other racial minorities but even relative to whites. In the Harvard case, the Supreme Court will for the first time consider this increasingly troubling aspect of affirmative action policy.

If courts stuck closely to the text of the laws they interpret, the case against Harvard would be an easy one for the school to lose. As a private institution, Harvard is not bound by constitutional constraints against racial discrimination (UNC, by contrast, is a public university). But it is subject to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, since it receives federal funds for student financial aid and other purposes. Title VI bars discrimination “on the ground of race, color, or national origin” in any education program receiving federal funds, and it doesn’t exempt well-intentioned racial discrimination in the form of affirmative action.

But the Supreme Court (wrongly, in my view) has long interpreted Title VI to allow racial preferences in situations where the court’s interpretation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment would permit them. And a series of Supreme Court rulings…. have held that racial preferences in higher education admissions are permissible under the 14th Amendment in some situations in which they are used to promote educationally beneficial “diversity…”

When the court considers the Harvard and UNC cases, it would do well to reject the “diversity” rationale entirely, or at least subject it to much tougher standards of review….

[T]he racial and ethnic categories used by Harvard and many other universities make little sense. As one expert in an amicus brief supporting the plaintiffs pointed out, the “Hispanic” or “Latino” category lumps together such varied groups as Argentinians, Cubans, Mexicans and immigrants from Spain. “Asian Americans” include racial and ethnic groups that cover more than half the world’s population, such as Chinese people, Indians and Filipinos, among others….

Needless to say, these groups have vastly different histories. Lumping them into a few crudely defined categories makes a mockery of the idea that universities are genuinely pursuing diversity as opposed to engaging in gross stereotyping.

Perhaps even worse, the diversity rationale could be used to justify all kinds of racial and ethnic preferences….

[I]f compensatory justice is the true goal, Harvard’s and other institutions’ discrimination against Asian American applicants is even more egregious. Asian groups such as Chinese and Japanese Americans were themselves victims to a long history of discrimination by state and federal governments….

Such anti-Asian discrimination is not limited to Harvard, but has also arisen in admissions policy elsewhere….

Sadly, these policies are often pursued by progressives for the well-intentioned purposes of promoting equality and diversity. But good intentions are not enough….

The political right has its own awful record of anti-Asian bigotry. But the wrongs of one side of the political spectrum cannot justify those of the other.

NOTE: As pointed out in the article, my wife, Alison Somin, has coauthored an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to hear the Harvard case, and is also co-counsel for the plaintiffs in a case challenging anti-Asian discrimination at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, in Fairfax, Virginia.

 

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How much of the quantum tech boom is just welfare for physicists?

That’s the question I had after reading Law and Policy for the Quantum Age, by Chris Hoofnagle and Simson Garfinkel. It’s a gracefully written and deeply informative look at the commercial and policy prospects of quantum computing and several other (often more promising) quantum technologies, including sensing, communications, and networking. And it left me with the question that heads this post. So, I invited Chris Hoofnagle to an interview and came away thinking the answer may be “close to half – and for sure all the quantum projects grounded in fear and envy of the National Security Agency.” My exchange with Chris makes for a bracing and fast-paced half hour of futurology and policy and is not to be missed. Neither is the book.

Also not to be missed: Conservative Catfight II – Now With More Cats. That’s right, Jamil Jaffer and I reprise our past debate over Big Tech regulation, this time focusing on S.2992, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, just voted out of the Senate Judiciary committee with a bipartisan set of supporters and detractors. In essence, the bill would impose special “no self-preferencing” obligations on really large platforms. Jamil, joined by Gus Hurwitz, thinks this is heavy handed government penalization of a few unpopular companies and completely unmoored from any harm to consumers. Jordan Schneider weighs in to point out that it is almost exactly the solution chosen by the Chinese government in its most recent policy shift. I argue that platforms are usually procompetitive when they start but inherently open to a host of subtle abuses once entrenched, so only a specially crafted regime will keep a handful of companies from amassing enormous economic and political power.

Doubling down on controversy, I ask Nate Jones to explain Glenn Greenwald’s objections to the subpoena practices of Congress’s  Jan. 6 Committee. I think the committee’s legal arguments boil down to “When Congress wrote the rules for government, it clearly didn’t intend for the rules to apply to Congress.” And Greenwald is right in arguing that the Supreme Court in the 1950s treated Communists better than the January 6 committee is treating anyone even tangentially tied to the attack on the Capitol.

Nate and I try to figure out what Forbes was smoking when it tried to gin up a scandal from a standard set of metadata subpoenas sent to WhatsApp. Whatever it was, Forbes will need plenty of liquids and a few hours in a dark quiet room to recover.

In quick hits, Gus explains what it means that the Biden administration is rewriting the DOJ/FTC merger guidelines: essentially, the more the administration tries to make them mean, the less deference they’ll get in court. And Jordan and I puzzle over the emphasis on small and medium business in China’s latest five-year plan for the digital economy.

Download the 391st Episode (mp3)

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The post How much of the quantum tech boom is just welfare for physicists? appeared first on Reason.com.

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