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Neal McCluskey

The Biden administration has big plans for smaller federal student debt repayment. Arguably the centerpiece of this, now that mass cancellation by executive decree has been shot down, is Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) proposal. As I showed last week, SAVE would significantly decrease what a borrower would have to repay, at least in their first year, in income‐​driven repayment (IDR).

Of course, student debt is not intended to be repaid in one year. With IDR, any remaining federal student debt incurred for undergraduate education will be forgiven after twenty years. To understand the full impact of Biden’s proposed changes on undergrad loans in IDR, we need to look at full life cycles of loans under current and SAVE IDR repayment.

For estimates of both, I start with average first year earnings for a new bachelor’s degree graduate ($58,862) and average debt ($29,719). I use a 3.3 percent earnings increase each year, except in the 6th, 11th, and 16th years, when the borrower receives a 5.3 percent raise. I also increase the federal poverty level for a single person, which determines how much income is walled off from repayment, by 3.3 percent each year. (Basically, 3.3. percent is the inflation rate.) To calculate each year’s debt after the first year, I subtract the previous year’s payment from the debt total and add 5.5 percent interest — the current rate on federal, undergraduate, student loans. Finally, any interest left unpaid would be added to the loan under the current IDR, but not SAVE. With the latter, unpaid interest is essentially forgiven.

The first figure shows the life cycle under current IDR, with the debt repaid in eight years. Payments run between $3,700 and $4,800 per year. I calculate that in total, the borrower will have paid $33,662, or $29,935 in year one dollars – a small, $216 profit for taxpayers that helps to cover risk from the overall federal student loan portfolio.

The second figure is the life of the loan under SAVE. Under this plan, the loan is paid off in 17 years, and payments run between $1,300 and $2,500 per year. I calculate that the borrower will have repaid $23,357 in year one dollars. That is a $6,362 loss for taxpayers.

Of course, different parameters will produce different results. But estimating around average income and debt for undergraduate borrowers, earnings rise significantly over the period relative to debt, but only the current program repays taxpayers. That is both a fiscal and fairness problem for SAVE.

Chris Edwards

The bipartisan debt‐​ceiling deal passed in June reflected a new congressional focus on spending restraint. Congress should extend the restraint when it considers a major farm bill this fall. Cutting farm subsidies is a good way to tackle wasteful spending and reduce budget deficits.

Which farm programs should Congress cut?

The chart shows U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) outlays on farm programs based on fiscal‐​year data from President Biden’s budget. Figures for 2023 are estimates. The spending includes direct cash handouts to farmers and indirect support from programs such as agricultural research.

These are the main activities within each budget category.

Crop insurance. Subsidies for crop insurance premiums and insurance company administrative costs.
Farm Service Agency. Subsidies to boost farm incomes when revenues or prices are low.
Conservation. Payments to farmers to improve working lands or to take lands out of production.
Marketing. Marketing programs for farm products and the bizarre Section 32 that spends about $1 billion a year buying selected commodities.
Research. Salaries and benefits of USDA’s agricultural researchers.
Foreign Agricultural Service. Programs to boost farm exports and more than $1 billion a year in food aid to poor countries, which can undermine farmers in those countries.
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Protecting animals and plants from pests and diseases.
National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Extension activities and grants to outside researchers.
Food Safety and Inspection Service. Ensuring the safe production of meat and eggs.
Other. Support activities such as statistical analyses.

Total spending on these farm activities was $35 billion in 2022 and $48 billion in 2023. The other main items in USDA’s budget are food stamps, school lunches, WIC, rural subsidies, the Forest Service, and some disaster spending.

Some USDA farm spending is aimed at the broad public interest, such as food safety and animal and plant inspections. Research and some conservation activities may also create broad public benefits.

However, most USDA farm spending simply aims to boost the incomes of farmers and landowners, particularly those with large corn, soybean, wheat, rice, and cotton operations. This spending is misguided, and it should be cut to save more than $20 billion a year.

Crop insurance is a high priority cut, as discussed here. Another reform would be imposing much tighter income caps on all farm subsidies, thus ending welfare for the well‐​to‐​do. Other cut ideas are proposed by AEI, Heritage, TCS, and EWG.

Some members of Congress support cuts to the USDA’s food stamp program but defend farm subsidies, while others criticize corporate welfare but support aid to large farm businesses. Such hypocrisy needs to end if we are to get budget deficits under control. The food stamp program is vastly bloated and does not support healthy diets, while farm subsidies enrich high earners for no good reason.

How about a bipartisan compromise? Let’s cut both farm subsidies and food stamps in this year’s farm bill.

More on farm subsidies here. here, and here.

Romina Boccia

Conservative Washington Post columnist George Will wrote about an idea I’ve been pitching for several months: a BRAC‐​like fiscal commission to help Congress stabilize the growth in the debt. In his column, titled “A fiscal crisis awaits. Here’s a provocative idea for heading it off,” Will grapples with the core objection conservatives are prone to raise over empowering an unelected body with vast powers. He writes:

“This nation is slouching into the most predictable fiscal crisis in its history. There is no mystery about what the crisis is; there is clarity about what broadly must be done. There is, however, fatalism about the political system’s inability to do it. The fatalism is refutable, but with a mechanism that should make constitutionalists queasy: Should we protect the nation’s fiscal future by further diminishing Congress, which would exacerbate the braided problems of a rampant executive and an unaccountable administrative state?”

I am grateful for George Will boldly hitting the nail on the head. It won’t be easy to convince Congress to empower an independent, unelected body to propose sweeping changes to major entitlement and revenue programs. Doing the right thing is hardly ever easy. What will be even harder is trying to course‐​correct when this fiscal train goes off the rails. If something cannot go on forever it will stop.

Conservatives feel like they’ve been burned by Congress delegating too much power to the executive and to unelected regulatory bodies. And they’re not wrong. It’s one thing to establish independent bodies to further burden the American people with new regulations and more government spending. It’s quite another to set up an independent commission to help Congress avoid driving us into a catastrophic debt crisis or slow‐​walk us into becoming a nation in decline.

As the old adage goes: desperate times call for desperate measures.

A fiscal crisis is an almost certain outcome of the current unsustainable budget trajectory. Who will be willing to lend more than $100 trillion to the U.S. federal government over the next three decades—a sum that’s more than four times the amount that investors have been willing to lend to this government over its entire history?

The major drivers of this brewing fiscal storm are beloved entitlement programs, Medicare and Social Security, whose constituencies will only grow bigger as time goes on. The nation is aging, and older constituents also happen to have the financial resources and the time to amplify their voices in Washington. The fact that 95 percent of long‐​term U.S. unfunded obligations originate from Medicare and Social Security spending growth be darned, “don’t touch seniors’ benefits”, those running for office are told.

An understanding of how incentives work dictates that asking politicians to self‐​sacrifice for the greater good is a futile attempt. Will suggests:

“Adopting Boccia’s recommendation — “a new mechanism for forcing action” — would be an admirable acknowledgment by Congress of an unadmirable weakness.”

Without reforming underfunded entitlement programs, the best case scenario is a much slower growing U.S. economy that blocks pathways of opportunity for people to rise above the hand they were dealt at birth. This would alter the very fabric of our nation, turning an exceptional country, that churns out entrepreneurs and innovators like no other, into yet another gerontocratic nanny state. The old country has plenty of those.

In the worst case scenario, America may be staring down the barrel of a fiscal crisis that nobody knows when it will trigger. But when it does, the outcome will be catastrophic, likely making the economic repression of the financial crisis of 2008 and the post‐​pandemic inflation look like blips.

The magnitude of America’s fiscal challenge and the political sacrifices it will demand hasn’t escaped the watchful eyes of the world’s major credit agencies. Fitch Ratings followed S&P’s 2011 decision just last week, downgrading U.S. Treasury bonds from AAA to AA+. More downgrades could lie ahead.

A BRAC‐​like fiscal commission has the potential of overcoming the polarization and policy gridlock plaguing this Congress, addressing directly “the expected fiscal deterioration […], a high and growing general government debt burden, and the erosion of governance…” Fitch cites in its rating decision.

The cure in this case cannot be worse than the disease. Delegating broad legislative authority to a fiscal commission may seem like a step too far. Why not just ask the experts for advice and leave it to Congress to enact reforms at will, or at least to take an up‐​or‐​down vote? Congress has tried this approach before, and not just once. It’s failed nearly every time. George captures my views perfectly when he writes:

Boccia has the courage of her conviction that the alternative is even worse than this aspect of her proposal: The commission’s recommendations must be “self‐​executing upon presidential approval, without Congress having to affirmatively vote on their enactment.” With a bracing candor reminiscent of another realistic child of Italy (Machiavelli, in “The Prince”), Boccia says: Making the commission’s recommendations self‐​executing without Congress’s having to endorse them is necessary to give legislators “political cover to vocally object to reforms” vital to the national interest but impossible to enact by normal procedures.

In the words of Machiavelli, in “The Prince”: “Wisdom consists of knowing how to distinguish the nature of trouble, and in choosing the lesser evil.”

Jeffrey Miron

This article appeared on Substack on August 10, 2023.

The Defund the Police (DTP) movement raises an interesting question for libertarians. On the one hand, libertarians abhor excessive police violence, against minorities and generally. On the other hand, libertarians, and others, might worry that slashing police budgets could increase crime.

The way to balance these concerns is to repeal laws against victimless crimes, meaning bans against drugs, sex work, vagrancy, loitering, and the like. These laws serve no role in protecting people from violence or theft, and they generate their own negatives: underground markets, corruption, violence, and excessive overdoses.

In addition, laws against victimless crime exacerbate racism by empowering those police with racist attitudes to impose their views on minorities.

In a homicide investigation, police and prosecutors must prove means, motives, and opportunity; they cannot just say, “This person looks like a murderer, so lock him up.”

Under prohibitions of drugs or sex work, police can and do assert, “This teenager looks like someone who deals drugs, so I can stop and frisk.” Or, they demand sexual favors from alleged prostitutes. If some police are racist, this power gets applied in racially disproportionate ways.

Racism can also arise even when police address real crime (e.g., the Charles Stuart case). For violence and theft, however, procedural checks and balances, and the presence of multiple observers, lowers the scope for racism. Legalizing victimless crimes also helps attract police who want to serve and protect rather than “bust heads.”

DTP shares this perspective, opposing laws against buying or selling drugs, sex work, or nuisance offenses.

Libertarians and DTP do differ on a related issue: how to use the funds freed up by legalizations. DTP would transfer these to treatment and other social services; libertarians would lower taxes instead.

Libertarians and DTP nevertheless agree on a crucial issue: to make policing less racist, society must eliminate laws that criminalize private, consensual behavior.

Jeffrey A. Singer

OnPoint NYC, the harm reduction organization tasked with opening and operating New York City’s two overdose prevention centers (OPCs), announced that since the two centers (one in East Harlem and one in Washington Heights) launched on November 30, 2021, they had averted 1,008 overdoses. As of July 2023, more than 3,700 registered participants have used the centers nearly 84,000 times.

Unfortunately, the New York Times reports that Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for Manhattan, responded to the news by implying he will take steps to close down the OPCs:

“I have repeatedly said that the opioid epidemic is a law enforcement crisis and a public health crisis,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement to The New York Times. “But I am an enforcer, not a policymaker.” Until New York policymakers take action to authorize the supervised consumption sites, he said, they are operating in violation of federal, state and local law.

“That is unacceptable,” he added. “My office is prepared to exercise all options — including enforcement — if this situation does not change in short order.”

This is an ominous development. At a Cato online policy forum last March, Kailin See, the Senior Director of Programs for OnPoint NYC, told participants that the U.S. Department of Justice had sent inspectors to the two OPCs, who seemed pleasantly surprised at how they worked in the community. The Department of Justice has yet to act against the OPCs.

As I wrote in this Cato policy brief, OPCs have been around since the mid‐​1980s. There are now 147 government‐​sanctioned OPCs in 91 locations and 16 countries—including 38 in Canada, 14 in Switzerland (where the first OPC was opened in Bern in 1986), and 25 in Germany—preventing overdose deaths and the spread of HIV, hepatitis, and other diseases. But in this country, 21 U.S.C. Section 856, also known as the “crack house” statute, passed in the mid‐​80s, makes it illegal for entities to permit people to use prohibited drugs on their premises.

New York City’s mayor defied federal law by authorizing OnPoint NYC to open the OPCs amid soaring overdose deaths during the winter of 2021. The National Institutes of Health announced in May that it will fund a study to assess the effect the OPCs have had on drug use, overdoses, and diseases.

And Rhode Island and Minnesota lawmakers have recently authorized OPCs in their states.

But as the saying goes, “No good deed goes unpunished.” All this harm reduction progress can grind to a halt if the Justice Department decides to snuff out the OPCs.

In my policy brief, I called on Congress to repeal the “crack house” statute or “at an absolute minimum amend existing federal law so harm‐​reduction organizations can establish and run OPCs.” Until Congress acts, no harm reduction organization seeking to save lives in its community can ever feel safe from law enforcement’s wrath.

Gene Healy

“The library looms as the next big confrontation in the culture war,” the Atlantic reports, and President Biden, our Culture‐​Warrior‐​in‐​Chief, is itching for the fight. “The president signaled a new approach in his late‐​April announcement video, when he cited book bans as evidence for his accusation that Republicans in the Donald Trump era are targeting Americans’ ‘personal freedom.’”

Not today, Satan—not on Joe Biden’s watch. “We’re taking on these civil rights violations, because that’s what they are,” Biden told the crowd at the White House Pride Celebration in June: “book bans may violate the federal civil rights laws when they target LGBTQ students or students of color and create hostile classroom environments.”

When that happens, local school districts will face the wrath of the new federal Czar of the Middle‐​School Library. “Students have a right to learn free from discrimination,” the president’s top domestic policy advisor, Neera Tanden, explains, but “across the country, our nation faces a dangerous spike in book bans [targeting] LGBTQI+ communities.” Accordingly, the administration is appointing a new “coordinator” in the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights who’ll bring the full force of the federal government to bear in this fight.

I wrote recently that Biden’s new Title IX edicts make him “Commander‐​in‐​Chief of the Girls’ Room”; with this latest move, he can add “Boss of the Bookmobile” to his collection of extraconstitutional titles. It’s an absurd power‐​grab based on the flimsiest of pretexts—and it’s certain to make America’s cultural conflicts worse.

The White House, like much of the press, has been cagey and duplicitious when it comes to what the “book‐​banning” controversy is really about. In Biden’s reelection video, for example, while the president rails against “MAGA extremists… banning books,” the camera shows a stack of titles including Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

Atticus Finch in the dock? Maybe in a few notorious MAGA strongholds like, er, Los Angeles and Seattle, where Lee’s novel has been pulled from the curriculum for its insensitive “white‐​savior” storyline. But the real school‐​library fight centers on a quite different class of books.

In both the PEN America and American Library Association “most banned” lists, number one by a wide margin is Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, a “graphic novel” that’s decidedly Not Safe For Work and—arguably!—inappropriate for a grammar‐​school library.

Others in the ALA’s top 10 include:

All Boys Aren’t Blue (#2), (depictions of underage cousin‐​incest)
Lawn Boy (#7), “which describes 10‐​year‐​old boys performing oral sex on each other”; and
This Book Is Gay (#10), which includes advice on mutual masturbation—“something they don’t teach you in school”(!)—and “instructions on how to use Grindr to find sex partners.”)

The ACLU and former president Barack Obama have recently encouraged public‐​spirited Americans to start Banned Books clubs. I’d love to see the face of any earnest suburban liberal who signs up expecting a refresher course in Vonnegut and Steinbeck. In any event, if you’d like a clearer picture of what some parents are objecting to, in their new study, “The Book Ban Mirage,” AEI’s Max Eden and Heritage’s Jay P. Greene and Madison Marino helpfully screenshot many of the offending passages.

As for the supposed “dangerous spike in book bans,” Eden, Greene, and Marino show that activists are playing fast and loose with the term “banned.” PEN America’s definition is broad enough to include “any action taken against a book” that leads to “restricted” or “diminished” access for any period of time. Temporarily removed then reshelved after review? “Banned.” Moved from the middle‐​school library to the high‐​school shelves? “Banned.” Removed from a recommended reading list but still on the library shelves? “Banned.”

In fact, when Eden et al. decided to check online school library catalogs against the PEN index of “banned” books, they found that:

“74 percent of the books that PEN America lists as banned are listed as available in the same districts from which PEN America says those books were banned.”

Still, the authors managed to find a few localities where kids can no longer check out some of the spicier tomes on PEN’s List. So what? There are over 13,000 school districts in the United States; are we supposed to think Our Democracy is imperiled because a couple dozen of them took Gender Queer off their library shelves?

Reports of a wave of book‐​banning Babbittry have been greatly exaggerated. But to be fair to PEN America, the organization does document some serious cases of legislative overreach by Red‐​state politicians claiming to speak for concerned parents. Last year, for example, Missouri made it a misdemeanor offense, carrying possible jail time, for librarians to provide “explicit sexual material” to students. That’s nutty: decisions about what goes on school‐​library shelves should be made at the local level, not forcibly dictated from the state house.

Still less should those decisions be dictated from Washington, D.C.: if the taxpayers in a local school district don’t want Gender Queer or This Book Is Gay in their kids’ library, it’s none of Joe Biden’s business.

That’s not how Biden sees things, unfortunately; in the president’s view, it’s his right and duty to make a federal case out of how school libraries stock their shelves.

In January, according to the Washington Post, the Biden administration embarked on its “first test of a new legal argument that failing to represent students in school books can constitute discrimination.”

In early 2022, the Granbury Independent School District in North Texas removed multiple LGBTQ‐​focused books from its libraries for review, ultimately deciding to return most of them to the shelves. Only three books, including This Book Is Gay (the one “that teaches kids about anal sex, oral sex, and hookup apps”), were permanently removed. The ACLU hit back with a federal civil rights complaint charging that the district had “actively facilitated discrimination and hateful rhetoric” in violation of Title IX. As the Post noted:

“If the government finds in the ACLU’s favor, the determination could have implications for schools nationwide, experts said, forcing libraries to stock more books about LGBTQ individuals and… ensur[e] student access to books that some Americans, especially right‐​leaning parents, deem unacceptable.

The Granbury investigation is still in progress, but in May, OCR reached a settlement in a similar case involving a suburban Atlanta school system. Here, the Biden administration advanced the novel theory that, even if the school district itself doesn’t discriminate, it can be held accountable for a “hostile environment” created by parents’ comments at a school board meeting.

The Forsyth County School District’s trouble started in January 2022, when it temporarily removed eight books following parent complaints. After review, they returned seven of eight to the library shelves, excluding only one, the aforementioned All Boys Aren’t Blue. FCS soon found itself subject to a federal civil rights investigation into whether the removal of those books created a “racially and sexually hostile environment for students.”

In its May 19 letter announcing the resolution of that case, the Office for Civil Rights admits that Forsyth County wasn’t engaged in an anti‐​gay book purge: it had “limited its book screening process to sexually explicit material.” “Nonetheless,” OCR chides, “communications at board meetings conveyed the impression that books were being screened to exclude diverse authors and characters, including people who are LGBTQI+ and authors who are not white, leading to increased fears and possibly harassment.” OCR found it troubling that during a February 15 board meeting:

“some [parents’] comments focused on removing books for reasons related to gender identity or sexual orientation. Also some parents made negative comments about diversity and inclusion or critical race theory.”

The OCR letter doesn’t specify what those comments were, but according to press coverage of the Board meeting, they included statements like

“Do you think it’s healthy for 8‑year‐​olds to be exposed to books which encourage transgenderism, sexualization and masturbation?”

and

“CRT, DEI, SEL, or any other name you give it is not harmless…. No more lies, such as ‘DEI’s purpose is to teach children that there are different cultures that eat different foods. Really?”

Scandalous wrongthink—and in the presence of children, no less! According to OCR, parents’ statements at the board meeting contributed to a potential “racially and sexually hostile environment,” which the district failed to adequately address with “supportive measures” for afflicted students.

To get the feds off their back, Forsyth County Schools had to agree to a number of humiliating terms. Per the Resolution Agreement, FCS must:

Publicly Pledge Fealty to DEI Thought: “in locations readily available to the District’s middle and high school students,” FCS shall post a statement affirming that “the District strives to provide a global perspective and promote diversity by including in school libraries materials about and by authors and illustrators of all cultures”;
Help Aggrieved Students Sic the Feds on Their School: that statement will also provide “any student who feels impacted by the environment surrounding the removal of books” with “information about how to file a complaint about discrimination or harassment” under Title IX and Title VI;
Take a Long, Hard Look in the Mirror: “The District will administer a school climate survey” on the prevalence of book‐​related and other harassment in its middle and high schools; and “assess whether any additional student or other training is needed to further improve the climate.” Look, this is a wealthy school district with plenty of tax dollars to go around: why shouldn’t the DEI‐​consultant industry get a taste?

…all this because school officials took a book featuring underage cousin‐​incest off their middle‐​school library shelves.

As the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression notes, OCR’s strong‐​arm tactics succeeded here despite the fact that

“there is no legal authority that [says] failure to ‘promote diversity’ violates federal anti‐​discrimination law. If OCR thinks it can require schools to affirmatively ‘promote diversity’— a term left undefined — what else does the agency think it can get away with?”

I suppose we’ll find out as Biden’s new school‐​library czar gets to work.

Emily Ekins

The Supreme Court again attracted much attention in June when it struck down Harvard’s and University of North Carolina’s use of racial preferences in admissions, a practice known as affirmative action. President Biden expressed anger over the decision and said “We cannot let this decision be the last word. The court can render a decision, it cannot change what America stands for.” But what does the American public think of affirmative action?

Polls do not produce a clear picture of where Americans stand on the issue. Question wording strongly influences if people say they support or oppose considering racial background in college admissions. Research has long shown that question wording impacts how people answer survey questions. However, patterns do emerge that give insight into how Americans are thinking about affirmative action. In short, questions that ask if Americans support “affirmative action” but don’t describe the policy find a majority support it. In contrast, surveys that don’t use the phrase but rather describe what affirmative action is find most Americans oppose it.

We examined nearly two dozen recently conducted surveys that asked about affirmative action (See Appendix A). In almost every survey question that uses the words “affirmative action,” a majority of Americans express support for the policy. For example, when NPR asked, “Do you think affirmative action programs in hiring, promoting, and college admissions should be continued or should be abolished,” 57% of Americans said they should be continued, while 38% said they should be abolished.1

However, survey questions that did not use the phrase “affirmative action” but rather described how the policy is implemented consistently found a majority opposed to the practice. For example, the Economist/​YouGov asked, “Do you think colleges should or should not be allowed to consider an applicant’s race, among other factors, when making decisions on admissions?” In response, 64% of Americans said they do not think colleges should be allowed to consider race in admissions decisions, while only 25% said this should be allowed. Every survey that omitted the words “affirmative action” revealed majority opposition. Specifically, phrases such as “racial preferences” and “consider race as a factor” in admissions tended to elicit opposition.

Opposition to affirmative action policies in college admissions declined somewhat when the question mentioned its intent to increase the racial diversity of the school. In contrast, Americans expressed much greater opposition if they were asked if race should be a factor, among other factors, in college admissions decisions without explicitly mentioning its goal.

Survey questions that described affirmative action without mentioning the purpose of the policy found about 7 in 10 Americans oppose it:

Colleges should…

“…be able to use race as a factor in admissions…” 69% opposed (YouGov)

“…consider an applicant’s race as part of their admissions policies” 70% opposed (CBS/​YouGov)

“…be able to use race as a factor in admissions” 74% opposed (YouGov)

“…be allowed to consider an applicant’s race, among other factors…” 65% opposed (Economist/​YouGov)

Survey questions that mentioned the intention behind affirmative action policies as well how they are implemented found about 5 to 6 in 10 Americans oppose it:

Colleges should…

“.…be allowed to use race as one of the factors in admissions to increase diversity…” 58% opposed (Quinnipiac)

“…giv[e] Black and other minority college applicants preference in college admissions to make up for the past and present inequalities” 55% opposed (YouGov)

“…take into account…race and ethnicity…as one of the factors…in order to increase the racial and ethnic diversity of the school…” 50% opposed (Pew Research Center)

These data suggest that Americans may not know what affirmative action actually is. They may have a vague idea that these programs are intended to help increase diversity–a cause worth supporting. However, they disapprove of the way colleges go about doing it. The majority of Americans appear uncomfortable with the idea of using someone’s race as a factor in college admissions decisions. It’s likely that the practice of giving some applicants preference over others because of their race violates a sense of fairness that is important to many people, even if the idea of increased diversity remains important to them.

Black Americans have diverse opinions about affirmative action.

Black Americans tend to express majority support when the words “affirmative action” are used in the question. However, when the words are omitted and the policy is explained as colleges using race as a factor in college admissions, Black Americans tend to express greater opposition to the idea. Across different question wordings, data show that many African Americans oppose affirmative action, many support it, and many have mixed feelings about it.

For instance, when asked in a CBS/​YouGov poll, “In general, do you think affirmative action programs in hiring, promoting, and college admissions should be continued, or do you think these affirmative action programs should be abolished,” 78% of Black Americans said they should be continued and only 22% said they should be abolished.

But in some surveys, a majority of Black Americans opposed affirmative action policies. For example, YouGov asked, “Some people think that public colleges and universities should be able to use race as a factor in admissions. Other people think that they should not be able to. What do you think?” Nearly two‐​thirds (64%) of Black Americans said public colleges should not be able to use race as a factor in admissions, while only 36% said they should be able to.

The Pew Research Center found ambivalent support among Black Americans when the survey question mentioned both the policy and its intention. The survey found that less than half (47%) of Black Americans approved of “selective colleges and universities taking race and ethnicity into account in admissions decisions in order to increase the racial and ethnic diversity at the school.” But 53% either opposed it (29%) or weren’t sure (24%) if they approved or disapproved.

Although African Americans are more supportive of affirmative action compared to Americans overall, there is a great deal of variation and diversity in their views.

Most Americans don’t differentiate between public and private universities when forming opinions about affirmative action

The Court’s decision extends to both public universities and private institutions that accept federal funds. However, some point out that private colleges and universities should be treated differently since they are not run by the government and should thus be allowed to use race as a factor in their admissions policies.

However, the Court did not make this distinction, and it appears that most Americans do not either. A June YouGov poll asked respondents two separate questions about if private and if public universities “should be allowed to use race as a factor in admissions.” In both cases majorities of Americans oppose the use of affirmative action policies: 69% oppose for private universities and 74% oppose for public universities. Nevertheless, Americans were about 5 percentage points more likely to oppose affirmative action in public colleges than private ones. This means that some Americans do make the distinction. (Some of this difference could also be due to measurement error.) But overall, these results show that most Americans do not make a distinction between private and public universities when it comes to employing affirmative action policies.

Implications

Recent polls about affirmative action do not paint a clear picture. When simply asked whether they support “affirmative action,” a majority of Americans stand by the policy. However, when asked whether some racial groups should be given preference in college admissions, the implementation of affirmative action, a majority of Americans are opposed. Likely, Americans support the basic principle that guided the adoption of affirmative action, namely that college campuses should be diverse and that racial minorities should be more fully embraced in these spaces. But also it’s likely that many Americans feel the practice of using race as a factor in college admissions violates the value of fairness. The perception of these two values being in conflict may help explain why Americans’ opinions of affirmative action are highly sensitive to how the policy is framed in survey questions.

1 We found one exception to this pattern in which a question that mentioned affirmative action also found most Americans opposed. However, this question from Reuters/​Ipsos also described the policy as “admitting students based on race or ethnicity” which found 60% opposed.

Appendix

David J. Bier

The Cato Institute is launching a new online game called the Green Card Game. Americans will—for the first time—see firsthand what it’s like to try to get a green card, or permanent residence, in the United States. The game’s goal is to show people the massive difficulties that immigrants can face in finding a path to U.S. citizenship. Few people realize that legal immigration is not just a matter of putting your name down on a list. America’s legal immigration system is nearly impossible, and this game will help people realize why.

You can play it at the​Green​Car​dGame​.com.

Background on the game: The Cato Institute developed the game to educate the public about America’s restrictive immigration system. It relies on the actual rules, regulations, and practices of the legal immigration system as much as possible. The game allows people to understand in a direct and interactive way how closed the U.S. legal immigration process truly is. The time, the costs, and the likelihood of failure are all far higher than most Americans believe. The game also shows how much luck, subjectivity, and other factors outside of someone’s control affect a person’s outcome. A country of birth can matter more than a $200,000 job offer. Adjudicators have massive leeway in deciding cases, and who hears your case can matter more than the strength of your case.

People may wrongly conclude that we altered the odds in some way, but the game is based on my deeply sourced report: Why Legal Immigration Is Nearly Impossible. The game itself cites sources for its information on the law, regulations, and probabilities of denial. In fact, the game is much easier to “win” than in real life. Players will eventually discover which countries to avoid, which occupations to select, and what categories to try for. It’s easier to answer “correctly” than to fit into the correct circumstances in real life. Saying “I am persecuted” is a lot easier than proving it. Saying “I have a job offer” is a lot easier than finding one while fleeing from a war or socialist dictator.

The premise of the game: You are outside of the United States. You’ve never been there. You don’t have any U.S. government connections. You have no U.S. relatives (since nearly every American playing the game could theoretically “qualify” through their U.S. citizen parents, children, or spouse).

How to play: The first thing that players will do is input the rest of their background: country, occupation, religion, education, savings, destination, etc. Players can either play “as themselves” just from a country other than the United States (using their education, job, savings, religion, etc.) or they can use a background and answer the questions based on what you think might make sense for an immigrant or a mix of both. Every decision can matter later in the game.

Check out the game here.

Time and cost outcomes in the game: Here’s an example from the basic eligibility section. Most Americans would have to answer “some” to the above question.

You then have the chance to ask for a waiver of the vaccine requirement, but you’ve already cost yourself time.

If you ask for a waiver, it costs you another year of waiting time, and your costs increase. You’re already in the whole $930. The wheel of bureaucratic luck will decide your fate.

Most players will end up with a screen that looks like this.

The Green Card Game is a game. It’s not legal advice.

Marc Joffe

After rapid growth in 2021 and early 2022, federal and state income tax revenue collections have stalled, and, in some cases, declined. This may be a temporary soft patch arising from Federal Reserve tightening or a longer‐​term phenomenon. For governments with high‐​income tax dependency, the durability of this downturn will be an issue hovering over their next budget cycle.

The latest Monthly Treasury Statement shows personal income tax revenue running well below prior year levels and budgetary forecasts. Together with higher‐​than‐​expected debt service costs, these weak income tax collections are driving the federal deficit well above expected levels.

The effect on states varies. While several states collect minimal or even no personal income tax, Census Bureau figures show that nine states obtained most of their tax revenue from this source in 2021. Among these are the big blue states of California and New York as well as other states with varying political orientations including Georgia and Utah. The state most dependent on income taxation is Oregon, which derived 63 percent of its tax revenue from that single source in 2021.

Thus far, New York State’s challenges have been most apparent. For the first three months of its current fiscal year—April, May, and June—income tax collections were down 32.8 percent from the same three‐​month period in 2022.

Because New York has a highly progressive income tax system, collections depend on a relatively small number of taxpayers. The top state tax rate is 10.9 percent, but for New York City residents marginal tax rates peak at 14.776 percent. Preliminary revenue data for 2021 indicates that 1.5 percent of income tax filers accounted for 43.5 percent of total state personal income tax revenues.

Those in the highest tax brackets tend to have volatile incomes from capital gains (or losses), cash bonuses, and equity‐​based compensation. Stock market weakness in 2022 crimped these income sources. That could also be a cause for optimism because the stock market has been rebounding in recent months.

But New York is vulnerable to another issue with high‐​bracket taxpayers: their propensity to relocate. The State Comptroller reports that 1.9 percent of taxpayers reporting income of over $1 million left New York State in 2021 and that outmigration among this category of taxpayers has continued since, albeit at a slower rate.

The main beneficiary of outmigration from New York is Florida, which has seen rapid in‐​migration often attributed to its business‐​friendly regulatory environment and lack of a state income tax. But recent Census data show that Miami, a city that had been attracting New Yorkers, lost population between 2019 and 2022. This finding led Paul Krugman to conclude that “the buzz around finance moving to Miami seems to have died down.” Krugman goes on to note, however, that it is Miami’s rising home prices that appear to be driving residents out (mostly to other parts of Florida). A higher median home price is unlikely to be much of a deterrent to high‐​income individuals looking to relocate from New York. It is also worth noting that West Palm Beach, which has been attracting New York‐​based hedge fund managers, continues to grow.

Another state that has seen declining income tax receipts is California, where marginal rates top out at 13.3 percent. June 2023 income tax collections of $9.6 billion fell far shy of the $13.5 billion the state received in June 2022. While May collections were relatively flat, April saw a 71 percent drop in collections, although that was mostly due to the postponement of the 2022 tax year filing deadline to October due to floods.

Like New York, California has been suffering outmigration, but a recent Bloomberg article cited by Krugman questions whether it is the rich who are leaving. Bloomberg cites state data that shows a 116,000 increase in the number of taxpayers reporting over $1 million of annual income between 2019 and 2021. But it is likely that most of this increase is due to existing residents reporting higher income due to the stock market boom of 2021. We will need to see data for subsequent years to determine whether California is retaining, let alone attracting, high‐​income taxpayers using this metric.

By contrast, IRS migration data show that California that net outmigration cost California $29 billion of taxable income in 2021, although it is not clear how much of that amount is related to high‐​income taxpayers.

Earlier, I mentioned that Georgia and Utah, two more fiscally conservative states are also highly dependent on income tax revenues. But, unlike New York and California, these states do not have highly progressive income tax rates. Utah has a flat 4.85 percent rate while Georgia has graduated rates of up to 5.75 percent but is now migrating to a flat rate of 5.49 percent.

Unlike New York and California, these states had net inflows of taxable revenue in 2021. But they may not be doing so well in 2023. An analysis of Georgia’ monthly revenue reports suggests a 25.4 percent decline in income tax revenue for 2023’s second calendar quarter versus the prior year, which is only marginally better than New York State’s results. Utah does not provide monthly figures but for the full fiscal year ended June 30, personal income tax collections declined 5.3 percent.

So, it appears that relatively low‐ and flat‐​income tax rates do not fully shield against the revenue volatility that comes with levying a personal income tax. While the best policy is to eliminate state income taxes, those states that retain them should monitor revenues carefully and use reserves to cushion the impact of fluctuations.

Adam N. Michel

In a recent Tax Notes International article, I describe the evolution of controlled foreign corporation rules and international taxpayer information exchange as examples of the United States being a first mover in weakening international tax norms.

You can access the article here, although it is paywalled for the next month.

I’ve written a lot recently on the problems with the Organisation for Economic Co‐​operation and Development’s (OECD) Two Pillar proposal to increase corporate tax rates on multinational businesses.

My Tax Notes piece argues that U.S. policymakers are not without blame for the OECD‐​led international departure from historical tax norms. Beyond U.S. funding for the OECD’s misguided initiatives, its proposals often build on the United States’ worst tax ideas. First, I describe the expansion of controlled foreign corporation rules in the 1960s and, more recently, through Global Intangible Low Tax Income (GILTI). My second example is the U.S. Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) which spawned the OECD’s automatic financial accounts information exchange initiative, which has been called the “treaty to end financial privacy.”

Historically, unilateral U.S. expansions of its tax base have spawned even more aggressive changes from other countries and the OECD. As Congress considers how to respond to the OECD’s proposals and reform our own domestic laws, Congress should lead by example. Moving to a full territorial tax system and increasing financial privacy protections will both make the U.S. a more attractive investment hub and disengage from the escalatory fight for other countries’ tax bases.