In Glacier Northwest, Inc., v. Teamsters, decided today, the Supreme Court showed a good measure of consensus and civility in settling a potentially contentious issue in labor law: whether a company is entitled to sue a union that has so arranged its strike so as to put the company’s equipment, as well as its perishable inventory, at risk of destruction. Eight Justices led by Justice Amy Coney Barrett said the company was entitled to sue, while Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the only dissenter, said the dispute should properly be heard by the National Labor Relations Board. Along the way, the Justices brushed up against two kinds of issues seen in many higher-profile cases: when federal law should pre-empt that of the states, and the degree to which courts should show deference to the expertise of federal agencies.

The National Labor Relations Act establishes a right for workers to strike, which is however subject to some limits. In general workers can walk off the job if they have no contract, and they can time the walkout so as to be disruptive to the employer—during its rush season, for example. A number of decisions suggest that while striking workers are free thereby to put a company’s inventory and supplies at risk—think perishables such as milk and chickens that may become valueless unless processed and brought to market quickly—they may not damage the company’s equipment or premises, and if they do, the employer retains its right under common law to sue them for damages.

The issue in Glacier Northwest was whether the company could sue the Teamsters for an action in which drivers had shown up at work and accepted concrete loads for their mixer trucks—not tipping the managers off to the intended action—and then abandoned the trucks with the loads in them. Concrete left in mixers for too long hardens and becomes valueless; more seriously, if left in the truck for very long the material can, by hardening, destroy the value of the trucks themselves. In this particular case Glacier, by quick action, managed to get the concrete out in time, but the test for the application of the legal exception is whether the strikers put equipment at foreseeable, aggravated, and imminent risk of damage, whether or not that damage is averted.

As I wrote a while back, in a point applicable as well to this case, “despite the various attacks on the Court as result‐​oriented and ideology‐​driven, much of its work consists simply of trying to keep the law on a logically coherent and predictable course.” Members of the “liberal” wing with some frequency vote to uphold property and employer rights, as Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor did in this case, while members of the “conservative” wing often sign on to rulings deeply unwelcome to business, as three did in the recent National Pork Producers case.

Both Justice Jackson in dissent, and Justice Clarence Thomas in concurrence, draw attention to a curious 1959 Court precedent called San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon that has the effect of giving the NLRB a benefit of the doubt that ordinary federal agencies don’t get. While federal law generally preempts state law when the two conflict, in Garmon the Court ruled the NLRA preempts state law if the two even arguably conflict—a sort of super-deference as to the NLRB’s presumed jurisdiction. Jackson makes the most of this as a reason to defer to the Board, and writes at length about how Congress has chosen to entrust broad power to the Board given its specialized expertise—passages that find some echo in other contemporary debates over how much deference courts should accord government agencies (Chevron, Auer, etc.).

For myself, I have to say that the NLRB—a highly polarized panel that swings hard from one side to the other after the White House changes hands—would be one of my very last picks if I were asked to name an impartial federal agency guided by specialized expertise. Justice Thomas uses his concurrence to ask whether the odd Garmon preemption rule really makes sense, or should at some point be reconsidered by the Court. That’s a good question.

George Orwell’s 1984 is one of our society’s most frequently referenced illustrations of what life would be like under an authoritarian government. Actual government policies that are viewed as illiberal in varying degrees are often tied to this novel by opponents, an easy and effective way to call out government overreach and control. In the book 1984, citizens of the fictional nation Oceania are under constant government surveillance, including in their own homes. Devices called telescreens display propaganda and record peoples’ actions, allowing the government to monitor people even in what should be the most private place they know—their homes. This type of behavior is meant to be an extreme example of what can happen when a government gains too much power, and opposition to such surveillance has been assumed to be overwhelming and obvious. But is it?

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Poll: Only 16% of Americans Support the Government Issuing a Central Bank Digital Currency

Countries around the world are exploring the possibility of adopting central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), which are digital national currencies. The Federal Reserve, the United States’ central bank, is also considering whether the United States should follow suit. The Cato Institute 2023 CBDC National Survey finds that few Americans—only 16%—support the adoption of a CBDC.

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In a newly released Cato Institute 2023 Central Bank Digital Currency National Survey of 2,000 Americans, we asked respondents whether they “favor or oppose the government installing surveillance cameras in every household to reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.” Not surprisingly, few Americans—only 14 percent—support this idea. Three-fourths (75 percent) would oppose government surveillance cameras in homes, including 68 percent who “strongly oppose,” while 10% don’t have an opinion either way.

However, Americans under the age of 30 stand out when it comes to 1984-style in-home government surveillance cameras. 3 in 10 (29 percent) Americans under 30 favor “the government installing surveillance cameras in every household” in order to “reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.” Support declines with age, dropping to 20 percent among 30–44 year olds and dropping considerably to 6 percent among those over the age of 45.

We don’t know how much of this preference for security over privacy or freedom is something unique to this generation (a cohort effect) or simply the result of youth (age effect). However, there is reason to think part of this is generational. Americans over age 45 have vastly different attitudes on in-home surveillance cameras than those who are younger. These Americans were born in or before 1978. Thus the very youngest were at least 11 before the Berlin Wall fell. Being raised during the Cold War amidst regular news reports of the Soviet Union surveilling their own people may have demonstrated to Americans the dangers of giving the government too much power to monitor people. Young people today are less exposed to these types of examples and thus less aware of the dangers of expansive government power.

It is also possible that increased support for government surveillance among the young has common roots with what Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt describe in the Coddling of the American Mind: young people seem more willing to prioritize safety (from possible violence or hurtful words) over ensuring robust freedom (from government surveillance or to speak freely).

Other demographics also differ in their tolerance of government surveillance in their homes. African Americans (33 percent) and Hispanic Americans (25 percent) are more likely than White Americans (9 percent) and Asian Americans (11 percent) to support in-home government surveillance. Democrats (17 percent) are also more likely than Republicans (11 percent) to support it but not by a wide margin. This issue divides Democrats between those who identify as “very liberal” in which only 9 percent support and “liberal” who are more than twice as likely to support (19 percent). Notably the issue doesn’t divide men (15 percent) and women (13 percent) who were about equally likely to support.

We asked this question as part of our survey on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) in order to see whether there is a relationship between opinions on the government issuing a central bank digital currency and government installing cameras in homes. It appears that the two opinions are correlated. Interestingly, more than half (53 percent) of those who support the United States adopting a CBDC are also supportive of government surveillance cameras in homes, while only 2 percent of those who oppose a CBDC feel the same. This suggests there may be a common consideration that is prompted by both issues. Likely, it has to do with willingness to give up privacy in hopes of greater security.

It is important to emphasize that the overwhelming majority of Americans across demographic groups oppose the government surveilling people in their homes. Nevertheless, it is relevant to note the higher acceptance among younger generations to trade freedom and privacy for some added security and protection.

If these trends continue, the United States may confront a very different privacy landscape in the future. It is possible that at some point, the American public will be open to extreme government overreach in a world that feels scarier and more dangerous than before, whether or not it is. Thus, it is important to impart the learnings of the past (and present) about what can happen when government amasses too much power. Without explicitly telling younger generations about the risks and dangers of government surveillance they will forget these lessons and may find themselves repeating devastating mistakes of the past.

This April Forbes column describes why central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are a fundamental issue related to Americans’ freedom and much bigger than just politics. It argues that New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, famous for being wrong about the Internet, was wrong for claiming presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis was merely playing politics with CBDCs.

Nonetheless, Krugman has doubled down. As Crowdfund Insider explains, now he’s taken to Twitter to re-promote his original opinion piece and to liken DeSantis’s warnings about CBDCs to former presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s fight against the National Weather Service.

Contrary to Krugman’s framing, DeSantis’s claims about the risks of CBDCs have merit. As the Forbes piece demonstrated, proponents of CBDCs, even some government officials who would be in charge of implementing CBDCs, have openly discussed using CBDCs for exactly the purposes DeSantis claimed. (Nick and I have a longer list here.)

A CBDC is not “just another form of money,” as some of its supporters have claimed. A fully implemented CBDC is a complete government takeover of money and payments. As the experience in China and Nigeria have shown, the introduction of a CBDC comes with the removal of people’s freedom to choose their methods of payment.

CBDCs mark a fundamental threat to both economic and political freedom. But it should surprise no one that Krugman is wrong on this issue.

Last week at Brookings, Ben Bernanke, former Fed chair, and Olivier Blanchard, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, released an empirical study of the inflationary episode that followed the COVID-19 government shutdowns. According to the authors, the supply constraints caused by the pandemic shutdowns were initially a main factor, and the “easy fiscal and monetary policy” that followed made things worse.

While this conclusion shouldn’t surprise anyone, it’s their prediction for the economy’s outlook that generated some buzz.

Specifically, Bernanke and Blanchard conclude that the only way for inflation to come down is for the labor market to “cool off.” Essentially, they’re making a Phillips-curve type argument, suggesting that there will have to be substantial job loss/​wage declines (a so-called “hard landing” of the economy) before inflation comes back down to the Fed’s target.

Strangely, the Bernanke-Blanchard model results don’t really support this kind of prediction.

For instance, Figure 12 shows their “decomposition of the sources of inflation” from 2020 to the first quarter of 2023 “based on the solution of the full model and the implied impulse response functions.” The most obvious conclusion shown in the graphic is that the overwhelming majority of the inflation has been caused by everything other than labor market tightness.

Indeed, the contribution of their labor market variable to inflation is small, and the direction of that contribution is inconsistent throughout the period. From the 4th quarter of 2021 onward, for example, virtually the same size contribution from labor market tightness is associated with both increases and decreases in inflation. Aside from whether Bernanke and Blanchard have the “right” model, these results don’t clearly support their recipe for taming inflation.

To be fair, the authors note multiple times that the relationship between the unemployment rate and job opening rate (the Beveridge curve) has shifted dramatically in the economic chaos of the past few years. So, it is unlikely that their model will be valid in the coming months as the economy returns either to a pre-COVID-19 state or to an entirely different structure. Moreover, Bernanke and Blanchard offer several major caveats to their projections (on page 35), ones that go “beyond the usual statistical uncertainty surrounding the parameter estimates and the specification of the model itself.”

Given their model results, along with their extensive caveats, it would be wise to take their “hard landing” predictions with a grain of salt.

Within mere days of the X‑day deadline for when the federal government would run out of wiggle room to keep borrowing under the statutory debt limit, the President’s and House Speaker McCarthy’s negotiators released the Fiscal Responsibility Act (H.R.3746). Here’s what you need to know to judge its impact on addressing the U.S. debt problem:

Waives the Debt Limit

The bill suspends the debt limit until January 1, 2025. A suspension acts like a waiver. The bill temporarily eliminates the debt limit, allowing for unlimited borrowing for about a year and a half.

It’s curious that Republicans agreed to waive the debt limit leading up to the 2024 election, when President Biden’s executive decision to cancel student loans increased the fiscal year (FY)2023 deficit by more than $400 billion, in another pre-election move. It’s less curious when considering that Republicans don’t like voting for explicit debt limit increases because it’s harder yet to be transparent about inflating the debt by another $3–4 trillion between now and January 2025. It’s politically easier to keep the effect on the debt open-ended and uncertain. Even if doing so means leaving open the possibility for more executive debt increases as well as resorting to more deficit spending should there be some emergency in the next few months, like a recession.

Phantom Savings

In exchange, the bill establishes statutory caps on discretionary funding of up to $1.590 trillion for FY2024 ($886 billion for defense and $704 billion for nondefense) and $1.606 trillion for FY2025 ($895 billion for defense and $711 billion for nondefense). The bill also includes nonbinding spending limits for four more years. You might as well view those as suggestions.

CBO takes the spending limits at face value and scores the bill as saving $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Unfortunately, that math is misleading. In addition to giving lawmakers full credit for six years of spending limits, CBO does not consider side deals that will undermine even the modest savings put forth in this bill. According to off-the-record sources, after repurposing funds and various other budgetary gimmicks agreed to by negotiators outside the legal text, nondefense discretionary savings in FY2024 will amount to no more than $1 billion. CBO assumes $64 billion in savings that year, which is also the basis for future savings estimates. With these backroom spending increases in mind, the CBO scores mostly phantom savings that are unlikely to be realized.

Work Requirements Change to Increase Spending

The bill also modifies work requirements for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) in such a way that spending will increase, because more individuals will become eligible for assistance. On the savings side, the age limit below which able-bodied adults without dependent children are required to perform at least 20 hours of work each week would slowly ratchet up from 50 to 54. On the spending side, more people would be exempt from work requirements, including homeless individuals, veterans, and people ages 18 to 24 who were in foster care when they turned 18.

Fails to Address the Debt Crisis

Congress entered these debt limit negotiations with publicly held debt on the cusp of exceeding the gross domestic product of the country—the amount of all goods and services produced this year—and with debt on track to exceed WWII record-levels over the next five years. To seriously slow the growth in the debt, Congress needed to save at least $8 trillion over 10 years, or 10 percent of total projected spending. Even assuming the phantom savings in the debt limit deal at face value, the Fiscal Responsibility Act falls significantly short of this goal.

Congress should have built on the Budget Control Act of 2011 with a Better Budget Control Act to meaningfully limit discretionary spending at pre-pandemic levels, reduce mandatory spending, and set in motion a process for tackling the biggest drivers of America’s unfunded obligations: a BRAC-like fiscal commission with fast-track authority. Because Congress and the White House fell short, the U.S. budget continues toward the brink of disaster as the stakes in future debt limit negotiations increase.

Congress is considering the Biden-McCarthy debt-reduction deal. The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 would reduce deficits by $1.5 trillion over the coming decade.

The reduction would be a start at righting the federal government’s fiscal ship, but just a small start.

The $1.5 trillion in savings would take a very modest bite out of the $20 trillion in cumulative deficits and $80 trillion in cumulative spending expected over the coming decade.

Once Congress gets this budget battle behind it, it can move on to larger reforms.

In early May, a video showing a physician’s assistant and a group of teenagers arguing over a shared e‑bike in Manhattan went viral. The video gave rise to conflicting narratives about race and gender, but it also has an important transportation policy implication: at least in New York, there is a lot of interest in shared e‑bikes, and we could use more of them.

Micromobility vehicles, usually docked bicycles and undocked electric scooters, are now common in many large cities. According to the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), US total micromobility ridership rose from 2.4 million in 2011 to 112 million in 2021. In New York City, at least, the ridership surge has continued into 2023: in early May, Citi Bike provided a record 867,838 rides in a single week.

The vehicles are typically owned by private companies, such as Lyft, Lime, and Bird. But micromobility is often a public-private partnership, with cities providing public space for docking stations and other infrastructure.

For many intermediate length trips, shared bikes and scooters provide key convenience advantages. Compared to the subway, there is no need to descend into a station and wait for a train, so many trips can be completed faster even though the maximum speed of a bike or scooter is lower. There is also the opportunity to get fresh air and exercise while avoiding the security concerns that come with traveling on mass transit.

For those who don’t want to work up a sweat, electric powered micromobility vehicles are becoming increasingly popular. NACTO found that e‑bike utilization increased thirty-fold between 2018 and 2021. E‑bikes are safer to ride than e‑scooters, which pose balance challenges for some riders.

E‑bikes are still not for everyone. Heavier and more senior riders might prefer the greater stability of e‑trikes (three wheeled, electric powered vehicles). These have become available for purchase and may be a good addition to the options currently available at shared mobility docking stations.

But, given what we now know about the so-called Citi Bike Karen incident near New York City’s Bellevue Hospital, the supply of shared e‑bikes may not be keeping up with the demand. Media accounts suggest that the teenager was trying to economize on rental costs by limiting his rides to no more than 45 minutes, after which the rental rate goes up. He would then dock the bike for five minutes before starting another 45-minute rental.

But when he docked the e‑bike at the Bellevue Hospital Citi Bike facility, it became available for the physician’s assistant to rent on the Citi Bike app. She did so, and then attempted to claim the bike that the teenager was hoping to reuse. Had more e‑bikes been available at the docking area, the conflict would not have been necessary: either party could have rented another bike.

It also may be the case that some e‑bike riders are renting vehicles at below their all-in cost, which includes routine maintenance and expected losses from accidents and vandalism. If policymakers see the need to make mobility more affordable to low income and other disadvantaged riders, it may be better to offer these riders vouchers than providing service to all comers at below market rates.

An unfortunate downside of city life is that it sometimes brings people with varying cultural expectations into conflict, and, in the smartphone era, these conflicts can turn into national issues. While that may be a problem without an easy solution, it should not be difficult to dramatically increase the supply of e‑bikes, introduce e‑trikes, and provide other micromobility alternatives. Such investments would undoubtedly be more cost-effective than the multi-billion-dollar, multi-year transit projects that are all too popular with urban planners today.