The Cato 2019 Welfare, Work, and Wealth National Survey investigated who finds greater meaning and purpose in their lives. The survey found that Americans’ beliefs about hard work, responsibility, and agency may have something to do with it. Overall, 83% of Americans agree that:“I feel like I have purpose in my life; my life has meaning,” while 16% disagree. A little less than half (46%) “strongly agree” and 37% somewhat agree their lives have meaning.

Full survey results and report found here.

Some types of people are more likely to say they have greater meaning and purpose in their lives.[1]People who:

• strongly believe hard work is its own reward (74%)
• strongly believe they have personal agency (68%)
• strongly believe in personal responsibility (60%)
• are very compassionate (58%)
• are not very envious (70%) or resentful (63%)

The aforementioned individuals are much more likely to find meaning and purpose in their lives compared to people who believe external forces direct their lives (30%), don’t emphasize personal responsibility (39%), aren’t very compassionate (38%), are envious (27%), and are resentful of successful people (33%).

These data paint a picture of the psychology of a person most likely to find meaning and purpose in their lives: those who highly value work and responsibility, emphasize what they can control rather than what they cannot, are compassionate, and resist the temptation to feel envy and resentment of others.

Politically, conservatives (58%) are about 20 points more likely than liberals (39%) to strongly agree their lives have meaning. A slim majority (51%) of libertarians strongly believe their lives have meaning.

Demographically, people who volunteer (54%), who attend church more than once a week (68%), religious people such as Protestants (55%) or Catholics (51%), people 65 and over (59%), and African Americans (57%) are more likely to find purpose and meaning in their lives than those who do not volunteer (37%), never attend religious services (36%), are atheist or agnostic (29%), are under 30 (36%), and are White (45%) or Latino (43%) Americans.

Discussion

These data provide some indication that those who seek greater meaning and purpose in their lives may be more likely to find it through identifying inherent value in their work, taking on more responsibility, emphasizing the things they can control rather than what they cannot, and serving those around them. Furthermore, these data also suggest that those who let go of their envy and resentment of others may have greater ability to find their purpose. Some of the demographic differences indicate that people may also find meaning with age, family, and community.

Read more of the survey report here.

The Cato Institute 2019 Welfare, Work, and Wealth Survey was designed and conducted by the Cato Institute in collaboration with YouGov. YouGov collected responses online March 5 to 8, 2019 from a representative national sample of 1,700 Americans 18 years of age and older. The margin of error for the survey is +/- 2.2 percentage points at the 95% level of confidence.

[1]The author compared how much meaning people feel in their lives among Americans who scored high versus those who scored low on a variety of psychological measures of envy, compassion, responsibility, and personal agency. More methodological information can be found here.

• Less Envious: Americans who scored low on the Dispositional Envy Index were 43 points more likely than those who scored high to strongly feel a sense of purpose (70% vs. 27%). (See Appendix D.)
• Compassionate: Americans who scored high on the Dispositional Compassion Index were 20 points more likely than those who scored low to strongly feel a sense of purpose (58% vs. 38%). (See Appendix C.)
• Believe in Personal Agency: Americans who scored high on the Belief in Personal Agency Index were 38 points more likely than those who scored low to strongly feel a sense of purpose (68% vs. 30%). (See Appendix A.)
• Believe in Personal Responsibility: Americans who scored high on the Just Deserts Index were 21 points more likely than those who scored low to strongly feel a sense of purpose (60% vs. 39%). (See Appendix B.)
• Less Resentful: Americans who scored low on the Resentment of High Achievers Index were 30 points more likely than those who scored high to strongly feel a sense of purpose (63% vs. 33%). (See Appendix E.)

The Cato 2019 Welfare, Work, and Wealth National Survey investigated what Americans believe cause wealth and poverty. Americans believe the top three reasons most important for determining a person’s wealth and success are hard work and grit (50%), ambition (38%), and family connections (31%). Not far behind include a willingness to take risks (29%), education (27%), inheritance (27%), self-discipline (27%), luck (20%), natural intelligence (18%), race and gender (11%), and special favors from government (9%).

Full survey results and report found here.

When asked the top three causes of poverty in this country, Americans agree that poor life choices (42%) and abuse of drugs and alcohol (40%) are key. But the public is divided about what the third factor is: about 3 in 10 think lack of job opportunities (29%), breakdown of families (29%), and a lack of work ethic (29%) are some of the most important reasons. After that, about a quarter say that a lack of educational opportunities (27%), discrimination like racism and sexism (25%), and an unfair economic system (22%) are the primary causes. Fewer say that government programs fostering dependency (14%), inadequate government programs (13%), lack of role models (8%), or a lack of delayed gratification (7%) are the most important causes of poverty in the United States.

Overall, most Americans tend to believe that wealthy people gain their wealth through the choices they make, such as working hard and being ambitious. Fewer people tend to emphasize external forces responsible for people’s wealth, such as immutable traits like race, intelligence, or luck. Americans are more likely to say external factors cause poverty but believe that personal choices matter too.

Ideological Divide

Liberals say wealth and poverty are largely due to chance. Conversely, conservatives believe wealth and poverty are largely due to personal choices.

• Strong liberals say the top reasons for people’s wealth: family connections (48%), inheritance (40%), and getting lucky (31%)

• Strong conservatives say top reasons for people’s wealth: hard work (62%), ambition (47%), self-discipline (45%)

• Strong liberals say the top causes of poverty are discrimination (51%), an unfair economic system (48%), and lack of educational opportunities (48%)
• Strong conservatives say the top causes of poverty are poor life choices (60%), a lack of work ethic (52%), breakdown of families (47%), and drugs and alcohol (47%)

Liberals and Conservatives Disagree about Personal Agency

Part of the reason liberals and conservatives disagree about the causes of poverty and wealth is that they disagree about the extent to which personal choices or external forces directs people’s lives. In other words: they disagree about the role of personal agency.

This idea is related to a concept in psychology called the locus of control. People who tend to believe events in their lives are within the control of the individual are described as having an internal locus of control. Those who tend to believe events in their lives are outside of a person’s control are described as having an external locus of control. While in reality both external forces and personal choices play a role, the question is what individuals emphasize.

Psychologists have developed survey questions intended to measure if one tends to have an internal or external locus of control. The Cato 2019 Welfare, Work, and Wealth Survey included a battery of these survey questions developed by psychologist Hanna Levenson to measure the extent to which Americans feel an internal or external locus of control.[1]

In general, a majority of Americans tend to feel that individuals have personal agency, or an internal locus of control. For instance, 74% of Americans agree that their lives are determined by their actions, and 78% believe that when they get what they want it’s usually because they worked hard to get it.

Ideological Differences in the Locus of Control

The survey finds that liberals emphasize external forces and that conservatives emphasize personal choices in explaining personal outcomes in their own lives. Strong conservatives are about 15–20 points more likely than strong liberals to agree that “whether or not I get to be a leader depends mostly on my ability” (73% vs. 57%), to strongly agree that “my life is determined by my own actions” (52% vs. 33%), and to strongly agree that “when I get what I want, it’s usually because I worked hard for it” (53% vs. 30%).

Discussion

These data demonstrate that liberals and conservatives emphasize the impact of personal agency on outcomes differently. Conservatives are more likely to believe that people are responsible for their situations and use their agency to direct their lives, and liberals are more likely to believe that people’s situations are shaped by their environment and other external factors. These differences in perception and emphasis likely lead liberals and conservatives to reach different conclusions about how public policy should approach poverty, welfare, work, and wealth.

Read more of the survey report here.

The Cato Institute 2019 Welfare, Work, and Wealth Survey was designed and conducted by the Cato Institute in collaboration with YouGov. YouGov collected responses online March 5 to 8, 2019 from a representative national sample of 1,700 Americans 18 years of age and older. The margin of error for the survey is +/- 2.2 percentage points at the 95% level of confidence.

[1]See “Internal Locus of Control” survey question battery from Hanna Levenson,“Differentiated Among Internality, Powerful Others, and Chance,” in Research with the Locus of Control Construct(New York: Academic Press, 1981), ed., Herbert M. Lefcourt, pp. 15–63.

Last week was a significant one for housing finance policy, as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau gathered input on how to reform the underwriting rules that mortgage lenders must follow. With $15 trillion of mortgage debt outstanding, this is a subject of great economic significance for the U.S. economy. Unsurprisingly given the high stakes, it is also a contentious subject on which some of the largest trade and activist groups in Washington — from banks and Realtors to community groups and public-interest lawyers — have weighed. I too submitted a comment letter on behalf of the Cato Institute.

The auspicious news is that the CFPB has announced the expiration of a damaging loophole that has increased risk in mortgage finance. In her decision, CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger enjoyed the support of Mark Calabria, who as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency is responsible for prudential standards at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banks. In this way, Kraninger and Calabria can help both consumer protectionandfinancial stability. The comment letters focused on what, if anything, should replace this loophole.

The regulations the CFPB seeks to update came into effect in 2014. As is well-known, the financial crisis caused a great deal of distress, with up to ten million American families losing their homes to foreclosure. Most of these people had borrowed unprecedented amounts for housing in which they had little equity. High mortgage payments relative to incomes meant that, absent continued price appreciation, these new buyers might soon find themselves unable to keep up. A great deal of blame for their plight belongs with Fannie and Freddie, two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) that, thanks to their dominance of the secondary mortgage market and the prodding of politicians, led a steady decline in underwriting standards that ended in tragedy. Part of the legacy of the crisis was the giant bailout of Fannie and Freddie, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates left U.S. taxpayers $300 billion worse off.

Thus, it was a surprise that, when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau crafted new rules for mortgage underwriting in 2013, it carved out an exemption for Fannie and Freddie from the general conditions applying to qualified mortgages (QMs), so called because they are meant to have features that make them unlikely to default. Whereas non-GSE QMs couldn’t exceed a limit on monthly debt payments of 43 percent of the borrower’s gross income in order to benefit from the QM safe harbor, GSE mortgages could. This debt-to-income (DTI) ratio matters because it predicts default, especially in times of stress like the 2008 crisis. Along with the borrower’s credit history, the loan amount relative to the price of the home, and other factors such as monthly cash flow, DTI ratios form part of a common suite of loan underwriting measures.

Despite the significance of DTI, the CFPB made Fannie and Freddie exempt from its post-crisis DTI limit, creating the loophole known as the “GSE patch” or “QM patch.” Since the patch came into effect five years ago, lenders have dished out high-DTI mortgages at a rising pace, safe in the knowledge that Fannie and Freddie — by now in government “conservatorship” — would buy them. Sure enough, the GSEs obliged, so that — as the chart below listing Fannie and Freddie mortgage acquisitions shows — an increasing share of the loans they buy from lenders have been high-DTI loans.

The problems with the patch are several and grave. First, by the CFPB’s own reckoning, mortgages issued under the patch are more likely to go delinquent than similar loans the GSEs cannot purchase because the loans are larger. This disparity in loan performance did not exist before the patch came into effect. Not for the first time, the opportunity to sell loans to a taxpayer-backed entity seems to have caused poorer underwriting standards. Privileging the GSEs has not only devalued the quality of Fannie and Freddie’s portfolio, but also increased their role in housing finance. As the chart below shows, Fannie and Freddie have grown the share of loans they buy since 2014. That contradicts a key goal of the Trump Administration — namely, to shrink the size of what remain fragile and systemically important institutions. It is also highly imprudent, given the lessons from 2008 about the dangers of a government duopoly.

The patch has also prevented a liquid market for non-QM mortgages from emerging. The CFPB’s intent in creating the QM was to give presumption of compliance to mortgages that, by meeting strict criteria, were unlikely to default early. All other mortgages would be subject to comprehensive underwriting by lenders. But the patch has created a loophole for riskier mortgages to eschew such underwriting. Even at its birth, the patch was a poor remedy to an ailing housing market. Now that the economy is booming, it has become unjustifiable.

Fortunately, the CFPB has announced it will let the patch expire as originally intended on January 20, 2021 or on the GSEs’ exit from conservatorship — whichever comes first.

But Kraninger shouldn’t stop there. The 2013 regulations created potentially unlimited lender liability for mortgages that do not meet the QM safe harbor. Unsurprisingly, such a draconian policy has chilled the market for non-QM loans. While the patch is in place, lenders have little incentive to push for changes to the QM standard, since they can avoid its most onerous burdens by directing their originations toward Fannie and Freddie. Now that the patch will expire, the need for an alternative standard is urgent.

With that in mind, the CFPB should afford QM protection to every mortgage that hasn’t gone delinquent within two years of origination. This will reconcile the Bureau’s objective of minimizing early delinquencies with a reasonable standard for liability that doesn’t chase lenders away from the mortgage market in fear of future litigation. There might be certain exceptions from the safe harbor for mortgages with non-standard terms such as high fees, variable rates, or balloon payments. But, in general, loan defaults that occur long after origination are not the consequence of poor underwriting but changes in the economy or the borrower’s own circumstances. Regulation must acknowledge that.

The CFPB should keep a 43 percent maximum debt-to-income ratio for loans that are QMs from the point of origination. That contradicts the view of some lenders, real estate agents, and think tanks who argue that an interest-rate variable should replace the DTI ratio. In a competitive market, their argument might be sound: interest rates summarize all the information that individual factors such as DTI supply regarding the borrower’s credit risk. The higher the interest rate, the greater the chance of non-repayment (other things equal). But our government-supported, duopolistic housing finance system blunts the predictive power of interest rates because low-risk borrowers subsidize high-risk borrowers. In that context, DTI is superior to interest rates.

Furthermore, the most common proposal for an interest-rate substitute for DTI (the Average Prime Offered Rate, plus 200 basis points) would substantially raise the share of Qualified Mortgages with early delinquencies, according to its proponents’ own data. In a distressed environment, that share will likely only go up.

In their effort to reduce the extent of taxpayer support for the mortgage market, Directors Kraninger and Calabria face formidable opposition from interest groups who benefit from greater lending volumes, looser underwriting, and the continued government management of Fannie and Freddie. Yet they must not waver, because avoiding a repetition of the last housing crash hinges on stopping public policy from promoting risk and unsound lending. The GSE patch’s expiration is a good start.

You can read Diego Zuluaga’s full submission to the CFPB here.

[Cross-posted from Alt‑M.org]

Under our Constitution, the jury trial is supposed to be the cornerstone of criminal adjudication. The independence of citizen jurors has always been understood to be an indispensable structural check on executive, legislative, and even judicial power. And that independence has always entailed a special solicitude for jury acquittals, which are intended to have unassailable finality. Yet prosecutors and judges routinely do end-runs around this intended finality — and thus, around the jury trial itself — through the pernicious practice of “acquitted conduct sentencing.”

“Acquitted conduct sentencing” refers to the scenario in which a judge sentences a defendant not just upon the charge for which they were convicted, but also based upon alleged conduct underlying charges for which they were acquitted. For example, in Jones v. United States, the defendants were charged with both (1) distributing small amounts of crack cocaine, and (2) a conspiracy to distribute large amounts of crack cocaine. The jury convicted on the distribution charge, but acquitted on the conspiracy charge. Common sense and basic constitutional principles would seem to dictate that the defendants be sentenced only on the basis of their distribution.

But bizarrely, the judge in that case effectively disagreed with the jury’s verdict, concluded that the defendants did engage in the charged conspiracy, and sentenced them far more harshly than would otherwise have been warranted. While the Guidelines sentencing range for the distribution charge would have “only” been 27–71 months (still a wildly excessive punishment, but beside the point here), the three defendants in Jones were ultimately sentenced to 180, 194, and 225 months — in essence, punishing them about four times more harshly solely because of alleged conduct for which they were acquitted.

Acquitted conduct sentencing is not only unjust, but flagrantly unconstitutional. Although the Supreme Court has held that this practice does not specifically violate the Double Jeopardy Clause (a conclusion which itself is questionable), it has never addressed whether the practice violates either the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendment, or the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. And as Cato has argued in several amicus briefs on the subject, acquitted conduct sentencing is inherently at odds with the understanding of the jury trial in the Anglo-American legal tradition, and especially contrary to the special sanctity and unassailable finality of jury acquittals. Permitting sentencing based on acquitted conduct not only denies criminal defendants their Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, but also denies the community their proper role in overseeing the administration of criminal justice.

Moreover, it’s especially important to address acquitted conduct sentencing now, given how it reinforces and exacerbates the larger problem of coercive plea bargaining. Today, jury trials have been all but replaced by guilty pleas as the baseline for criminal adjudication, and there is ample reason to doubt whether the bulk of these pleas are truly voluntary. And as Judge Patricia Millett of the D.C. Circuit recently explained, “factoring acquitted conduct into sentencing decisions imposes almost insurmountable pressure on defendants to forgo their constitutional right to a trial by jury. Defendants will face all the risks of conviction, with no practical upside to acquittal unless they run the board and are absolved of all charges.” Precluding sentences based on acquitted conduct would therefore be a small but vital safeguard against the wholesale erosion of the jury trial itself.

Fortunately, both the Supreme Court and Congress will soon have opportunities to clarify that acquitted conduct sentencing is unjust and unconstitutional. First, on the judicial side, the cert petition currently pending before the Court in Asaro v. United States explicitly raises the question of “[w]hether the Fifth and Sixth Amendments prohibit a federal court from basing a criminal defendant’s sentence on conduct underlying a charge for which the defendant was acquitted by a jury.” The Cato Institute, Due Process Institute, National Association of Federal Defenders, and FAMM all filed briefs in support of this petition, and there is good reason to think that many of the Justices will be interested. Both Justice Thomas and Justice Ginsburg joined the dissent from denial of certiorari in the Jones case from 2014, in which Justice Scalia explicitly called upon the Court to clarify that acquitted conduct sentencing violates the Sixth Amendment, and that the Court’s history of evading that question “has gone on long enough.” Justice Kavanaugh, back when he was a judge on the D.C. Circuit, also repeatedly criticized the practice.

But key members of Congress are also moving to eliminate acquitted conduct sentencing. Just today, a bipartisan group of Senators, including Dick Durbin (D‑IL), Chuck Grassley (R‑IA), Patrick Leahy (D‑VT), Thom Tillis (R‑NC), Cory Booker (D‑NJ), and Mike Lee (R‑UT), introduced the “Prohibiting Punishment of Acquitted Conduct Act of 2019.” According to the Senate’s press release, the bill would “preclude a court of the United States from considering, except for purposes of mitigating a sentence, acquitted conduct at sentencing,” and it would define “acquitted conduct” as “acts for which a person was criminally charged and adjudicated not guilty after trial in a Federal, State, Tribal, or Juvenile court, or acts underlying a criminal charge or juvenile information dismissed upon a motion for acquittal.” The bill has also been endorsed by a diverse, cross-ideological array of dozens of different public interest groups, including the ACLU, American Bar Association, American Conservative Union, Due Process Institute, Innocence Project, and Koch Industries (as a general matter, the Cato Institute does not endorse proposed legislation).

Whether through judicial or legislative action, or both, the unconstitutional scourge of acquitted conduct sentencing must be abolished — and it looks like that time may be coming soon.

President Trump campaigned against immigrants in 2016, and it appears that he managed a major victory. The Census Bureau released its American Community Survey (ACS) estimate of the U.S. population for July 2018 today, finding that immigrant share of the population—foreigners born abroad to noncitizens—remained flat from July 2017 to July 2018. As seen in Figure 1, this was the first time since the Great Recession in 2008 that ACS has found no increase in the foreign-born share.

If the immigrant share had remained flat in 2018 because the total U.S. population jumped, it would be less of an issue, but that was not the case. Total population growth also fell in 2018, meaning that if the absolute number of immigrants had grown at the same rate, the immigrant share should have increased faster than it did in 2017. Figure 2 shows the net increase in the foreign-born population by year since 2006. It shows that again, only 2008 saw a smaller increase in the absolute size of the immigrant population. The rate of increase declined more than 70 percent from 2017 and from the prior five-year average.

While the ACS is more reliable for population estimates, the Census Bureau has also released estimates from the March Supplement to the Current Population Survey for each year since 1994. Before that, estimates come exclusively from the decennial censuses. Figure 3 shows those estimates. What is most remarkable about this graph is that the immigrant share of the U.S. population has barely grown at all since 2010.

Figure 4 shows the average percentage point change in immigrant share of the U.S. population by decade. As it shows, the immigrant share is growing the slowest of any decade since the 1960s. The 2000s saw the immigrant share grow twice as fast, and the 1990s saw it grow more than three times as fast.

Certainly, President Trump’s anti-immigrant policies have played a role in discouraging immigration from around the world. But his mere presence may have signaled to many immigrants that now was not the time to come or—more commonly—now was the time to give up on their American dream. Ultimately, with his accession to the White House, it was manifest that Congress would not enact immigration reform that would provide permanent status to the millions hoping for it. That reality may be reflected in these numbers.

In a recent post, I reported on the government’s response brief in American Institute for International Steel v. United States before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. At issue are President Trump’s steel tariffs. In August, the Cato Institute filed a brief in support of the appellants, who are businesses that rely on imported steel and have been harmed by the tariffs. In response to Cato’s arguments, the government’s brief took a Janus-faced approach. On the one hand, the Justice Department claimed that the Federal Circuit shouldn’t pay attention to our brief; on the other, the government addressed our arguments. As I noted in the blog post, “It doesn’t make much sense for the government to say that we should be ignored, but then to respond to us. As always, actions speak louder than words.”

Yesterday, U.S. Steel Corporation—of Gilded Age pedigree—filed an amicus brief in support of the government. Remarkably, more than half of the brief is given to Cato’s arguments. Indeed, U.S. Steel cites “Cato” twice in the brief’s Table of Contents.

On the merits, I’ll briefly note that U.S. Steel is in a tough spot because the company is forced to claim that federal judges didn’t mean what they said. As we observed in our brief, the Court of International Trade believed that the steel tariffs fall into a constitutional “gray area” where the president may act within the statute but outside the Constitution. In its amicus brief, however, U.S. Steel argues that we misread the lower court. According to U.S. Steel, the Court of International Trade’s opinion, when “read in context,” actually “appears to have in mind circumstances” other than what the court plainly said. As a general matter, you’re on shaky legal ground when you base your claim on what a court “appears to have in mind,” notwithstanding the judges’ words to the contrary.

The upshot is that U.S. Steel, a venerable corporation created by turn-of-the-century industry titans like J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie, hired a white-shoe law firm to support President Trump’s steel tariffs, and the company’s contribution to the case focuses on Cato’s claims. It goes without saying that U.S. Steel’s amicus brief hinders the government’s argument that we should be ignored.

Next Tuesday the People’s Republic of China is celebrating the 70th anniversary of its founding on October 1, 1949. Quite an extravaganza is planned, even as protesters in Hong Kong plan a counter-rally. China’s opposition to democracy in Hong Kong and in China itself is not just the recalcitrance of cranky old men. It’s part of the Chinese Communist state’s founding mission.


Take the speech of Mao Zedong on July 1, 1949, as his Communist armies neared victory. The speech was titled, “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship.” Instead of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it spoke of “the extinction of classes, state power and parties,” of “a socialist and communist society,” of the nationalization of private enterprise and the socialization of agriculture, of a “great and splendid socialist state” in Russia,and especially of “a powerful state apparatus” in the hands of a “people’s democratic dictatorship.”


Tragically, unbelievably, this vision appealed not only to many Chinese but even to Americans and Europeans, some of them prominent. But from the beginning it went terribly wrong, as really should have been predicted. Communism created desperate poverty in China. The “Great Leap Forward” led to mass starvation. The Cultural Revolution unleashed “an extended paroxysm of revolutionary madness” in which “tens of millions of innocent victims were persecuted, professionally ruined, mentally deranged, physically maimed and even killed.” Estimates of the number of unnatural deaths during Mao’s tenure range from 15 million to 80 million. This is so monstrous that we can’t really comprehend it. What inspired many American and European leftists was that Mao really seemed to believe in the communist vision. And the attempt to actually implement communism leads to disaster and death.

Fortunately, after Mao died in 1976, China changed rapidly. In far-flung parts of the country, villages and communes had already begun recreating markets and individual plots of land. Mao’s old comrade Deng Xiaoping, a victim of the Cultural Revolution, had learned something from the 30 years of calamity. He began to implement policies he called “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” which looked a lot like freer markets—decollectivization and the “responsibility system” in agriculture, privatization of enterprises, international trade, liberalization of residency requirements.


The changes in China over the past generation are the greatest story in the world—more than a billion people brought from totalitarianism to a largely capitalist economic system that has eroded the continuing authoritarianism of the political system. But on its 70th birthday, the CCP still rules China with an iron fist. There is no open political opposition, and no independent judges or media. President Xi Jinping has become more authoritarian, and has concentrated more power in his own person than any ruler since Mao. Some say China is becoming “the perfect dictatorship.” But there are rumblings of dissent inside the Chinese leadership. Maybe the passion and endurance of the Hong Kong protests, coming on top of the oppression of the Uighurs and the Hui, closures of liberal think tanks, tightening of economic controls, and a general increase in repression, will be a beacon that will help China return to its faltering path toward openness.