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David Inserra

Last month, Instagram users took notice of two features that change how much political content users see on Instagram. However, the rollout wasn’t exactly smooth, with users of various political stripes accusing Meta of trying to suppress content. But rather than attack this change, users and policymakers should recognize it as a significant move to give users greater control over their news feeds and opportunity for a more user‐​first social media experience.

First, let’s understand what changed on Instagram. Within the user controls for Instagram,

users are now able to click a button to either limit or not limit “political content” regarding “governments, elections, or social topics.” The current default option is to limit political content.

users are able to determine how fact‐​checked content is treated. They can choose to heavily reduce how much they see such content, somewhat reduce it, or not reduce it at all, with the default being to somewhat reduce fact‐​checked content.

The discovery of these new features, however, was met with accusations by various parties that Meta was hiding this change to suppress certain viewpoints. But Meta has been announcing these changes for some time now, so these aren’t exactly secret changes. 

A better question might be what gets classified as political and social content. While some types of content are very clearly political, others largely depend on one’s viewpoint. Is it political to merely express horror over the October 7 attack on Israeli civilians? Or to express sadness over the casualties in Gaza? Is support for certain types of energy like solar power or nuclear power a political issue? Are various diversity initiatives covered? What about content supporting or rejecting environmental, social, and governance investing strategies? It would be nice to know more about what is and isn’t considered a political issue.

But perhaps even better than mere transparency, Meta could give users more specific control over various types of content. Some users may want to see even more political content than Instagram’s filters currently allow—others may want to see even less. Some may want to see a lot of specific types of political or social content but not content about other issues. There is a lot of room here to further empower users.

For example, Bluesky—a social media company that became open to the public this year—would allow users to quickly and easily subscribe to different independent moderation services. These services would allow users to truly customize what their social media experiences are, ranging from how potentially hateful content is handled to less serious decisions like whether to block pictures of spiders.

Alternatively, platforms like Reddit give different subcommunities, known as subreddits, the ability to add different rules to fit those communities. Reddit also lets users upvote or downvote comments by other users, which the independent moderators of subreddits can use to limit posts by users whose comments are regularly downvoted.

The other tool users can make use of on Instagram determines how fact‐​checked content is treated. Through its fact‐​checkers, Meta has long suppressed content that it had deemed to be misinformation. The problem, of course, is the ancient question: Who watchers the watchers? The fact‐​checkers have significant authority to declare content false, partly false, or missing context and get content suppressed. But nearly every piece of content is missing some context—after all, good writing requires that only the most essential context is provided. What facts count as the most important context differs from person to person or organization to organization. And how various facts are interpreted or assessed is subject to all sorts of potential bias.

This is not to say that there are no truths or facts—just that much of our discussions around major social issues are not as black‐​and‐​white as many fact‐​checkers would assert. Add to this the fact that it is difficult to meaningfully appeal a fact-checker’s decision, and it is easy to see how some users might be frustrated with such a system. 

Of course, this is Meta’s system, and other platforms provide different fact‐​checking systems. X has invested in Community Notes, which empowers users of X to write notes that add additional context to a post. When enough people from a variety of perspectives believe that a given note is helpful, it can be shown to all users. This crowdsourcing model relies not on the views of a fact‐​checker but instead focuses on only providing widely agreed‐​upon facts.

The reality is that users can have substantively different views on what is political, what is misinformation, and how much of any such content they want to see on certain apps. Allowing users to choose may be a new way to help alleviate the moderator’s dilemma where moderators will tend to err on the side of caution for many types of speech. For example, while I strongly believe that content moderation policies should favor more expression, I recognize that there are other people who vigorously disagree and prefer a feed with more limited views.

Because of this, these new tools that give more control to users may be the easiest way out of the moderation paradox. Some users can choose to heavily suppress fact‐​checked content in their feeds, while others can choose to see more. I can choose to use my Instagram for foodie, travel, gaming, and family content and keep politics on X, Facebook, or LinkedIn. And by giving users even more options for control, users and advertisers across the political spectrum and around the world can truly customize their experience based on what they are comfortable with, rather than a one‐​size‐​fits‐​all approach.

Platforms could even allow civil society organizations to create various one‐​click moderation filters. Want to see social media that is minimally moderated in favor of expression? Use a filter by a free speech group. Want your social media experience to completely avoid certain sensitive topics that trigger or disturb you? Use a filter by an online safety organization. Of course, these would all be optional. If you like the current experience offered by Instagram or any other platform, you can keep it. And none of this requires government mandates or regulations that infringe on freedom of expression.

While a lot of ink has been spilled over whether the changes to Instagram are suppressing one group or another, these changes provide a glimpse of what is possible if social media companies provide users with transparent controls over what they see online.

Ryan Bourne

In a new Policy Analysis out today, I make the case for a substantial spending cut‐​led federal deficit reduction effort. Tomorrow I will outline three economic reasons why deficit reduction is desirable. But today, I just want to take stock of the federal government’s budget realities by outlining five fiscal truths.

1. The United States Today Has a Historically High Budget Deficit

The recorded federal deficit from 2023, at $1.7 trillion (or 6.3 percent of GDP), was 23 percent higher than in 2022, but even that was pushed artificially downward by the CBO recording the Supreme Court’s cancellation of Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan as a one‐​off spending cut. The underlying figure was around $2 trillion, or 7.4 percent of GDP. This is easily the largest deficit recorded outside of wars or acute emergencies since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Figure 1 shows the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) budget deficit projections for the next ten years. It estimates, on current policy, that annual deficits will grow to $2.6 trillion per year by 2034. This likely understates the scale of red ink. It assumes that large portions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will be allowed to simply expire, that no other large spending programs will be introduced after the next presidential election, and that no unexpected shocks or recessions will hit in the interim. The feds are simply borrowing vast amounts, especially given today’s sanguine macroeconomic conditions.

FIGURE 1

2. High Deficits Add to a High Existing Debt Burden

As Figure 2 shows, back in 2007, federal debt was projected to fall to around 20 percent of GDP by 2017. It turned out to be almost four times that, at over 76 percent, mainly due to the financial crisis and then a tardy economic recovery.

Since then, federal debt held by the public has jumped again because of pandemic borrowing and ongoing large structural deficits. By 2022, debt hit 96 percent of GDP—the highest level since the aftermath of World War II. This time there is no prospect of a sharp demilitarization that would slash spending nor a political commitment to balanced budgets, as was seen after 1945. In fact, debt is projected to hit its highest‐​ever level, 106 percent of GDP, by 2028. High borrowing is thus adding to an already historically high level of debt.

FIGURE 2

3. On Unchanged Policies, Debt Is Set to Explode Further

Long‐​term debt is projected to sharply rise further relative to GDP over the coming decades, primarily due to Social Security and Medicare promises interacting with an aging population. The CBO’s forecasts, based on unchanged policies and fairly optimistic assumptions about interest rates and economic growth, suggest a surge in debt to an unprecedented 166 percent of GDP by 2054 (see Figure 3).

Analysts widely agree that continuing current policies without significant adjustments in tax revenues or spending cuts is unsustainable. Indeed, those who try to model the US economy’s growth prospects are usually forced to just assume that politicians will deliver substantive deficit reduction in the medium term to avoid this scenario, or else their models simply crash.

FIGURE 3

4. Borrowing Has Become More Expensive with Higher Interest Rates

Government borrowing has become much more expensive as interest rates have risen. In April 2020, the 10‐​year Treasury yield was just 0.7 percent. Now it is 4.6 percent, after not rising above 3.1 percent in the ten years before 2022 (Figure 4). This trend of higher yields is consistent across various Treasury maturity durations—and these interest rates have risen relative to expected inflation. This increase in real borrowing costs is inconvenient, given how much the federal government intends to borrow.

FIGURE 4

Higher yields have two major effects on federal finances. First, they obviously make it more expensive for the federal government to issue new debt. Second, higher yields make existing debt more expensive, because as Treasuries mature, the debt must be refinanced if it has not been paid off. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has calculated that more than half of the $26.2 trillion outstanding debt held by the public at the end of 2023 was due to be refinanced within the next three years. “Cheap” borrowing undertaken in the 2010s risks becoming increasingly expensive if interest rates remain higher.

5. The Debt Outlook Is Highly Sensitive to Rising Interest Rates

While it’s unclear whether interest rates will remain elevated or fall back again over the coming years, we know the longer‐​term debt outlook is highly sensitive to their level. A 2023 CBO tool revealed that 10‐​year Treasury yields at 4.3 percent (rather than their expected 3.8 percent) would add $1.5 trillion to federal borrowing over the next decade (Figure 5).

Moreover, calculations from budget wonk Brian Riedl suggest that if long‐​term interest rates were to gradually increase by just 1 percentage point higher than previously expected by 2053, net interest costs could skyrocket to 10.4 percent of GDP, significantly higher than the otherwise‐​projected 6.7 percent.

FIGURE 5

Economists can and do disagree on the urgency of federal budget deficit reduction. But we should all agree on these fiscal truths, which themselves give strong grounds for concern. I expound on these facts, the broader economic justification for deficit reduction, and present a menu of policy remedies available in the full analysis here.

Romina Boccia and Ivane Nachkebia

[T]he European nations’ larger welfare states are the product of the transformative effect of the Second World War […] Total war suspended constraints on the expansions of entitlements beyond a needy minority: it hobbled private financing of health insurance and retirement, excused the broad‐​based tax increases necessary to fill the gap with public funds, and weakened the political capacity of those losing out to resist.—Chris Pope, “War and European Welfare Exceptionalism”

The United States is often considered an anomaly when it comes to social welfare provision among industrialized nation‐​states, with critical observers suggesting that US benefit provision is unusually low in size and scope (see Figure 1). As Chris Pope, a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute, argues in his recent paper, “War and European Welfare Exceptionalism,” published by The Independent Review, it is the expansive nature of European welfare states that begs for an explanation.

According to Pope, the modern European welfare state is a byproduct of the disruptive nature of the Second World War and features policies that originated in Nazi Germany.

Drawing inspiration from Robert Higgs’s Crisis and Leviathan, which traces the growth in the size of the US government to expansive policies that emerged during crises, particularly the two world wars, Pope argues that “the Second World War imposed an even more dramatic upheaval on Western Europe, and the continent’s supersize welfare states remain as a legacy of the even greater disruption that they suffered.” What follows is a summary of Pope’s article, which I had the pleasure of reviewing during drafting.

Before the Second World War, European welfare programs were targeted to low‐​income families. Old‐​age pensions and state‐​provided health care were means‐​tested, as wealthier citizens were expected to provide for their own needs. In Great Britain, national health insurance covered low‐​income individuals, with free municipal hospitals designated to exclusively serve the working class. Prewar Germany’s welfare system, established by Otto von Bismarck, was more extensive than Britain’s and operated on a compulsory, earnings‐​related model funded by payroll taxes. Still, participation was limited to industrial workers. In both Britain and Germany, as well as in other European nations, individuals with higher incomes relied on private insurance.

The war provided European governments with the opportunity to expand the role of government in benefit provision across the social classes and raise taxes with minimal resistance. As Pope points out, “the suspension of democratic politics (with all its contestation and controversy) permitted the revolutionization of the welfare state, with lasting effect.”

With more resources and broadened responsibilities, governments switched from targeted to universalized entitlements, expanding social programs to include not just the poor but also the wealthier citizens. This expansion of welfare programs led to subsequent crowding out of market‐​based alternatives.

In Britain, wartime expenses justified massive tax hikes, raising the top marginal income tax rate from 65 percent in 1936 to 97.5 percent by 1941 and tripling the income tax base to include lower‐​income individuals. Initially driven by wartime needs, the broader tax base was maintained after the war ended. Additionally, the war disrupted private markets and the funding structure of the health care system, prompting the government to extend national health insurance coverage to wealthier individuals. Furthermore, from 1938, nonprofit hospitals were repurposed for wartime needs, leading to their heavy reliance on central government funds.

Importantly, William Beveridge, an academic tasked with recommending reforms to British entitlement programs, published a report in 1942 advocating for eliminating means tests from state pensions and switching from a targeted approach to universal flat‐​rate benefits.

Similar developments, influenced by the policies of National Socialist (Nazi) Germany, took place elsewhere in Europe. As Pope argues,

“The Nazis […] saw comprehensive social benefits and principles of national solidarity as distinguishing National Socialism from the practice of liberal capitalist nations of targeting assistance at the poor.”

That is why the Nazis sought to replace the Bismarckian model of earnings‐​related, targeted pensions with a system of universal flat‐​rate benefits. In a 1939 speech, Hitler claimed that Britain opposed his regime due to their aversion to “[T]he Germany which sets a dangerous example to them … the Germany of social welfare, of social equality, of the elimination of class differences—this is what they hate!” However, despite Hitler’s claims, the Beveridge report developed in Britain outlined a system similar in many respects, differing primarily in its funding strategy—where the Nazis favored income taxes, Beveridge opted for uniform premiums.

While the Nazis failed to fully implement their national‐​socialist programs in Germany because of their defeat, Nazi policies contributed to the transformation of entitlement programs in occupied countries. Austria adopted new entitlement policies, such as unemployment benefits and broad child allowances post‐​Anschluss. France, where the collaborationist government, like the Nazis, considered the limitation of benefits to the poor as a liberal concept, expanded health care benefits and universalized child allowances.

Similarly, under the 1941 Nazi decree, the occupied Netherlands saw its top marginal tax rate increase from 4.8 percent to 65 percent, fueling significant growth in the Dutch entitlement programs.

The wartime transformation of European welfare programs provided an ideal foundation for the mostly left‐​leaning postwar governments to maintain or even enhance expanded entitlement programs.

Recognizing the opportunity, the postwar Labour government in Britain passed the 1946 National Health Service Act (NHS), which nationalized municipal and non‐​profit hospitals, establishing free health care for all British citizens. As Pope puts it, “The political hard work required to socialize health care […] was all done by the war.” In addition, inspired by the Beveridge report, the government eliminated income caps for entitlement eligibility and established flat‐​rate old‐​age, unemployment, and sickness benefits.

In Austria, the benefit structure established by the Nazis has remained after the war.

Following the liberation from the Nazi occupation, the French provisional government eliminated eligibility caps entirely and established a universal entitlement program known as “sécurité sociale.”

The 1941 Nazi decree, which made state health care insurance compulsory for the working and the middle class in the Netherlands, remained in force until 2006, continuing to shape the Dutch health care system to this day.

The Nazi attempts to overhaul the Belgian welfare system, similar to their efforts in the Netherlands, faced resistance and were ultimately abandoned. Nevertheless, in 1944, the provisional Belgian government, exploiting the tumultuous circumstances, expanded entitlement programs without consulting other parties and direct stakeholders.

Table 1 below summarizes the impact of the Second World War on welfare programs across Europe.

These examples illustrate how the Second World War shaped modern European welfare systems. As a result, modern European governments generally spend more on welfare programs than the US (see Figure 1 above). This also means that the modern European welfare state is involved in more aspects of individuals’ lives, replacing private alternatives and levying higher taxes that leave its people with fewer resources to design their own lives.

Pope’s article serves as a timely warning for the US where the unchecked growth of the major entitlement programs combines with calls for entitlement expansions, following a massive expansion in social spending during the COVID-19 pandemic. As Cato’s Adam Michel has demonstrated, large European welfare states require high taxation across the income spectrum “[with] countries that have larger governments than the U.S. [using] high taxes on low‐​income and middle‐​class workers to foot the bill.”

Had it not been for the extraordinary devastation brought on by the war, the modern European welfare state might look very different today. The US would be wise not to go down a similar path.

Read “War and European Welfare Exceptionalism,” by Chris Pope., published in The Independent Review, v. 28, n. 3 (Winter 2023/24) here.

Clark Packard, Scott Lincicome, and Alfredo Carrillo Obregon

Earlier today, the White House called on the US Trade Representative to “consider” tripling the existing Section 301 tariffs on Chinese steel. The administration says the tariffs are necessary because China unfairly subsidizes its high‐​emissions steel producers, which undercuts cleaner American steel producers and workers. Yet closer examination reveals the move to be far more about politics than unfair practices (despite the administration’s assertions to the contrary).

It is true that China subsidizes its domestic steel industry, but very little of that steel ends up in the United States due to our aggressive use of tariffs, i.e., more than five dozen trade remedies (antidumping and countervailing duties) measures, the Trump‐​Biden “national security” tariffs on most steel and aluminum imports, and the Section 301 tariffs on a wide range of Chinese imports. As Bloomberg notes, thanks to these measures China “accounted for just 600,000 metric tons of steel imports in 2023, […] out of a total US steel imports of 25.6 million tons”—or a mere 2.3 percent of all steel imported into the United States last year.

As shown in Figure 1, steel imports from China have declined substantially since 2014 as various tariffs proliferated.

Yet even this tiny import share overstates the role of Chinese steel in the US market. Per the Financial Times, they’re only “0.6 percent of total US steel demand.”

In one sense, this is good news: because old US protectionism has effectively rid the market of Chinese steel imports, any new tariffs will have little economic effect. On the other hand, this means that—as the FT’s Alan Beattie notes—new tariffs also won’t benefit the domestic steel industry as Biden claims. It’s just political pandering all the way down.

Furthermore, it’s a reminder that, by restricting Chinese and other metals imports, US tariffs imposed during the Trump and Biden years have and continue to hurt the US economy—harms detailed in a new essay from the Tax Foundation’s Erica York as part of our ongoing Defending Globalization project. As she documents, US metals tariffs not only mean higher prices for American manufacturers and, eventually, American consumers, but also reduced investment, exports, and economic growth—and heightened cronyism and political dysfunction along the way.

At one point, Joe Biden understood all of this.

In 2019, during an early speech in his presidential campaign, then‐​candidate Biden told an audience at the City University of New York, “President Trump may think he’s being tough on China. All that he’s delivered as a consequence of that is American farmers, manufacturers, and consumers losing and paying more. […] His economic decision‐​making is so shortsighted and as shortsighted as the rest of his foreign policy.” He was right of course, as Cato trade analysts have argued repeatedly over the years.

Yet once in office, President Biden maintained (and defended in court) virtually all of the tariffs he inherited from the Trump administration. As York noted on X (formerly Twitter), more trade war duties have been collected under the Biden administration than the Trump administration. As bad if not worse, Biden’s active defense of Trump‐​era tariffs has, as Scott Lincicome explained in a recent column, made it more likely that former President Trump will be able to impose the devastating 10 percent tariff on all imports and 60 percent tariff on all Chinese imports that he’s been promising on the campaign trail. Both are uncomfortable truths for a Biden campaign that intends to attack Trump’s tariff proposals as harming American consumers and the economy.

In its most recent polling of the public’s attitudes toward trade, Gallup found that more than 60 percent of Americans see foreign trade as an opportunity versus just 35 percent who view it as a threat. Despite this, the two candidates are vying to be seen by voters as the more protectionist in the race—regardless of the underlying facts or economics.

Voters can thus expect a heavy dose of protectionist rhetoric in the coming months from the Biden and Trump camps, which is one reason why Cato launched its Defending Globalization project last fall—to combat protectionist myths with fact‐​based, sober analysis.

Patrick G. Eddington

House and Senate members can be notoriously thin‐​skinned when questioned about their policy and legislative choices. That was evident on April 14, when Sean Vitka, policy director for the left‐​leaning advocacy group Demand Progress, took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to ask House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) ranking member Jim Himes (D‑CA) a question.

Vitka asked whether Himes understood that an amendment he co‐​authored and which was included in the just‐​House passed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) reauthorization bill granted federal electronic spies “Stasi‐​like” powers.

The reference, of course, is to the infamous East German secret police, known as the Stasi.

Vitka said he intended to keep asking Himes about it until he got an answer, to which Himes shot back:

“You do that. But life is really too short to engage with people who need to use bombastic absurdities like ‘Stasi‐​like.’ Yes, I know exactly what is in there. Some of it is classified. And none of it is remotely ‘Stasi‐​like.’ Sell your nonsense elsewhere.”

Vitka wasn’t trolling Himes. The amendment in question is radical in its scope and implications. And it wasn’t just Vitka who was raising the alarm. Over at the ZwillGenBlog on April 9, Marc Zwillinger and his law partners Steve Lane and Jacob Sommer provided an extensive and devastating legal analysis of the privacy and constitutional rights implications of Himes’s amendment (co‐​authored by HPSCI Chairman Mike Turner (R‑OH).

Zwillinger holds a Top Secret security clearance and has argued cases before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISCR), one of the few private sector lawyers known to have done so. Lane is a former Justice Department attorney and legal advisor to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). Sommer is a privacy law expert and has also argued cases before the FISC. When it comes to surveillance law and constitutional rights, these three are legal heavy hitters.

And what did Zwillinger, Lane, and Sommer conclude about the Himes‐​Turner amendment?

After noting that the amendment excluded public accommodations, dwellings, restaurants, and community facilities, the trio said,

The new amendment would — notwithstanding these exclusions — still permit the government to compel the assistance of a wide range of additional entities and persons in conducting surveillance under FISA 702. The breadth of the new definition is obvious from the fact that the drafters felt compelled to exclude such ordinary places such as senior centers, hotels, and coffee shops. But for these specific exceptions, the scope of the new definition would cover them—and scores of businesses that did not receive a specific exemption remain within its purview. (emphasis ZwillGenBlog)

Examples cited by the three include “owners and operators of facilities that house equipment used to store or carry data, such as data centers and buildings owned by commercial landlords” and “other persons with access to such facilities and equipment, including delivery personnel, cleaning contractors, and utility providers.”

If a building partly owned by former President Donald Trump also contained a data storage and/​or routing center, could that data storage/​routing center become a legitimate surveillance target if the Himes‐​Turner amendment becomes law? If foreign‐​to‐​US or US‐​to‐​foreign communications transit the facility, yes.

If the communications of former President Trump, his employees, and perhaps even his attorneys passed through that data storage/​routing center, could they also be swept up as “incidental” communications when the actual targets were foreigners? Yes.

This is a hypothetical scenario involving former President Trump, but the same data center scenario appears to be the exact real‐​world episode that prompted Turner and Himes to offer the amendment, according to recent New York Times reporting. Thus, if the Turner‐​Himes amendment were to become law, its digital reach and lack of any kind of FISC review could put at surveillance risk the data of literally millions of Americans—including any current political office holder or candidate, as well as their staff, constituents, or donors.

During House floor debate on their amendment, Himes and Turner went to great lengths to claim that their legislative proposal was merely a “technical correction” to existing law. It’s definitely technical, but it’s not a correction. Instead, it’s a potentially radical expansion of FISA’s reach into the communications of Americans. And Himes’s fellow Democrat, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, definitely thinks the Himes‐​Turner amendment does exactly what Zwillinger, Lane, Sommer, Vitka, and I believe it does.

“It allows the government to force any American who installs, maintains, or repairs anything that transmits or stores communications to spy on the government’s behalf,” Wyden said in a press release. “That means anyone with access to a server, a wire, a cable box, a wifi router, or a phone. It would be secret: the Americans receiving the government directives would be bound to silence, and there would be no court oversight,” Wyden said, vowing to do everything in his power to stop the bill.

If you thought the fight over federal government spying on Americans was drawing to a close, buckle up…there’s much more to come before April ends.

Former CIA analyst and ex‐​House senior policy advisor Patrick Eddington is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

Alex Nowrasteh

Yesterday, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs held a hearing titled “How the Border Crisis Impacts Public Safety.” My colleague David Bier testified. One of the other witnesses was Ken Cuccinelli, former attorney general of Virginia, who also served in various capacities at the Department of Homeland Security. Cuccinelli submitted written testimony about the impact of illegal immigration on crime, stating, “Crime rates do not matter, only the raw number of crimes and the harm caused by those crimes.”

Cuccinelli was trying to refute Cato Institute research that finds illegal immigrants and legal immigrants have a consistently lower criminal conviction rate and incarceration rate than native‐​born Americans by channeling a common refrain I hear on Twitter and from immigration restrictionists: ‘Some immigrants commit crimes, and those crimes would not have occurred in the United States if the immigrants weren’t here.’ In an obtuse way, they have a point. But it’s a trivial point because some individuals in any large population will always commit some crimes. Even small populations of people disinclined to commit crimes contain a few individuals who occasionally do, such as female biology professors.

However, the focus on crime rates matters when discussing the relative criminality of different groups and evaluating whether immigrants bring more crime than they add people to the United States.

Cuccinelli’s statement that crime rates don’t matter, that only the number of crimes matters, says nothing substantive about the potential danger that immigrants pose to Americans. Let me give an example. Under Cuccinelli’s interpretation, a city with 100 murders is twenty times more dangerous than a city with five murders. But if the city with 100 murders has a million residents and the city with five murders has only 100 residents, then the city with fewer murders is far more dangerous to the residents. The city with one million residents and 100 murders has a homicide rate of 10 per 100,000. The city with 100 residents and five murders has a homicide rate of 5,000 per 100,000, which is 500 times as great as the larger city with 20 times the number of murders.

This is an extreme example, but an example necessary to explain why crime rates are more important to understand relative to criminality and danger than the number of crimes. Which city would you want to live in?

Now, in that example, assume that 100,000 immigrants with a homicide rate 20 percent below that of the resident population move to the city with one million residents. Because the immigrants are less likely to commit homicide than the longer‐​settled residents of the city, the homicide rate drops from 10 per 100,000 to 9.8 per 100,000, but there are eight more murders. The city got slightly safer because the increase in the population was greater than the increase in the number of murders.

That example above makes the impact of immigration on crime seem even more dangerous than it likely really is. According to crime data from 2022, 79 percent of murder victims knew their murderers where investigators knew the prior relationship. Almost half of those pre‐​existing relationships were familial or sexual, the other half were neighbors, friends, acquaintances, employer/​employee, or a different relationship. Because families tend to be either mostly immigrants or mostly native‐​born Americans, and they live in different parts of the city near other similar people and tend to have friends and acquaintances who are similar—including more likely to have the same immigration status—it’s reasonable to infer that most of those eight extra homicide victims were probably also immigrants.

That doesn’t make their crimes any less heinous, but it does tell you that the non‐​immigrants in the city probably face even less danger than described in the previous paragraph.

A real‐​world example may help explain why the focus on crime rates is more important than the number of crimes. From 1970 to 2023, the number of homicides in Detroit dropped from 495 to 252, a 49 percent decrease. Whereas somebody who shared Cuccinelli’s opinion would say that this is a significant improvement, the homicide rate rose from 33 per 100,000 in 1970 to 41 per 100,000 in 2023, a 24 percent increase. The murder rate increased even though the number of murders fell because Detroit’s population fell even more from over 1.5 million in 1970 to about 620,000 in 2023—a decrease of 59 percent. If you consider only murder, Detroit is a more dangerous city today than in 1970.

Focusing on crime rates rather than the number of crimes is essential to compare criminality between populations such as immigrants and native‐​born Americans. Otherwise, there is no basis for arguing that one or the other is more criminally inclined, which really matters when discussing public safety. Additionally, we couldn’t judge whether crime differs between geographical regions or over time without looking at crime rates because the number of crimes generally goes up with the population in a cross‐​section and over the long run (with some significant variation). It’s trivially easy to point to crimes committed by a member of any large population no matter how one defines it, but doing so doesn’t reveal much useful information.

What comparative crime rates reveal is that more intensive enforcement of immigration laws aimed at all illegal immigrants, not just those convicted of violent or property crimes, will not make Americans safer on average. The result would be higher crime rates, ceteris paribus.

An increase in the number of crimes does not mean that a society is becoming more dangerous if the population grows even more. Similarly, a decrease in the number of crimes will not signify an improvement in safety if the population falls even more. It would be a better outcome if the number of crimes falls along with the crime rate as the population increases.

Furthermore, nothing above is meant to diminish the harm, pain, and anguish felt by victims of crime no matter who the criminal is. Criminals should be punished and, if they are non‐​citizens, deported from the United States after serving time in prison. However, it’s clear that we have a long and arduous debate ahead of us over immigration and crime if people with strong opinions on one side, like Cuccinelli, think that “[c]rime rates do not matter.”

David J. Bier

Critics of the H‑1B visa for skilled foreign workers often claim that the status amounts to “indentured” servitude. Indentured servitude is a contract to work for a single employer for a predetermined period without pay. H‑1B workers are not only paid—they receive wages in the top 10 percent of wage earners in the United States. As importantly, although they face more obstacles to changing jobs, H‑1B workers are not tied to a single employer and they change jobs regularly.

In fact, H‑1B workers are leaving their initial H‑1B employers more than ever. Figure 1 shows the number of H‑1B workers changing to a new employer by fiscal year. From fiscal year 2005 to 2023, H‑1B workers changed jobs over 1 million times (1,090,890). The number of switches grew from about 24,000 in 2005 to a record 130,576 in 2022—a more than fivefold increase. In fiscal year 2023, H‑1B workers changed jobs 117,153 times, a slight decline from 2022.

On another point, H‑1B job shifting is more common than H‑1B workers starting H‑1B employment for the first time. In 2023, about 61 percent of all H‑1B workers starting with a new employer were existing H‑1B workers hired away from other employers in the United States. This means that US employers are more likely to hire an H‑1B worker already in the United States in H‑1B status as they are to hire a new H‑1B worker not already with H‑1B status.

Several causes for this increase are possible. The labor market has generally been tighter, leading to more job switching in general. In addition, more H‑1B workers are employed in the United States now for other employers to poach, and because the H‑1B cap has been so quickly met every year since 2014, there is more reason to poach. The government also made it somewhat easier to switch H‑1B jobs in 2017 by giving them a sixty‐​day grace period to find a new job after losing a job.

Finally, the jump in switching in 2021 is at least partially attributable to the record number of green card applications filed that year. After 180 days, H‑1B workers who have filed a green card application may change jobs without the employer being forced to restart the green card process, easing the job‐​switching process. However, in 2022, the number of pending employment‐​based green card applications declined from 2021, so this is only part of the story.

Of course, it is true that H‑1B workers are still not treated equally in the labor market. New H‑1B employers have to pay hefty fees to poach them, and the shortage of green cards for Indian workers can wrongly make those workers feel that they have to stick with their existing employer to complete that process. The best solution would be to make the conversion to a green card automatic rather than requiring a renewal after three years. The sixty‐​day grace period to find a new job is still not long enough to give many workers the confidence to simply quit a problematic job without a new one already lined up.

Despite these government‐​imposed obstacles, the existence of widespread H‑1B job shifting further refutes the idea that H‑1B workers are “indentured” servants. The Pew Research Center reports that 2.1 percent of college graduates changed jobs per month in 2022. The population of H‑1B workers is estimated to be about 580,000.[1] The data aren’t directly comparable, but with just over 117,000 H‑1B transfers in 2023, this implies a monthly job change rate of 1.7 percent—lower, but nothing remotely like the hyperbolic claims of “indentured servitude.”

The fact is that the government has wrongly unleveled the playing field for H‑1B workers by erecting artificial barriers to job change, but options exist to find better employment within the H‑1B system. The government should expand those options rather than try to reduce or eliminate these workers who contribute so significantly to the fields of science, technology, engineering, math, and medicine.

Note: This post is an update of a June 2023 post on the same subject using more up‐​to‐​date numbers.

[1] This was estimated pre‐​pandemic, and it’s probably lower now since far more H1B workers received green cards in 2021 and 2022 than normal.

Scott Lincicome

Today we’ve published three essays for Cato’s Defending Globalization project:

Separating Tariff Facts from Tariff Fictions, by Erica York, explains that tariffs are costly taxes, and economists consider them to be poor tools for boosting the economy, reducing the trade deficit, or achieving strategic objectives.

Climate Change and Globalization, by Charles Kenny, makes the case that globalization is an ally, not an enemy, in the fight against climate change.

The Moral Case for Globalization, by Tom G. Palmer, shows that rigorous thinking and empirical research refute, one by one, attacks on globalization in the name of morality. The world is better because of globalization.

This content joins 25 other essays and additional multimedia features on the main Defending Globalization project page.

Make sure to check it all out and stay tuned for future releases.

Travis Fisher

Montana has become an unlikely frontier in the climate movement. Last August, Montana District Court Judge Kathy Seeley ruled in favor of climate activists in Held v. Montana, one of dozens of lawsuits filed across the country by Our Children’s Trust on behalf of youth plaintiffs. The District Court’s opinion is significant because it granted the plaintiffs legal standing—for the first time—on the grounds that they were directly injured by climate change. It also endorsed the concept of using the Social Cost of CO2 (SCC) in environmental reviews.

If the Montana Supreme Court agrees with the District Court in Held v. Montana, it will set the stage for future climate litigation nationwide and support the use of the SCC in regulatory rulemaking. Meanwhile, legal proceedings are moving forward at the Montana Public Service Commission (PSC), which oversees economic decisions made by public utilities, and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), which administers and enforces environmental regulations.

What the District Court Found

The District Court opinion in Held v. Montana rejected a recent change to the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) that removed the consideration of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the DEQ’s environmental reviews. Judge Seeley declared the change unconstitutional given the language in Montana’s constitution that reads, in relevant part, “The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.”

Judge Seeley also granted standing to the plaintiffs—meaning she found the plaintiffs had been injured by GHG emissions—which is likely an even more impactful victory for the plaintiffs. Each state has different rules for standing to file suits like these, so it’s unclear how many of the suits filed by Our Children’s Trust (in all 50 states) will be awarded standing.

Factual Errors in the District Court Opinion

Based on my reading of Judge Seeley’s opinion, it contains too many serious analytical flaws to form the basis for public policy. First, it is unclear how changes in state regulatory processes will meaningfully impact the global climate given that Montana’s CO2 emissions are a small portion of the US total (Montana’s total energy use ranks 43rd among US states), and the US total is, in turn, now a small portion of the global total (below 14 percent and falling). US emissions are also down in absolute terms from a high of about six billion tons per year to now about five billion. In other words, how would regulatory policy in Montana redress a global issue?

The most glaring error in the court’s opinion is the assertion that a forced transition away from fossil fuels will reduce costs. As one prominent example, the opinion drew heavily on expert testimony from Stanford Professor Mark Jacobson, who stated that transitioning to a non‐​fossil fuel‐​based energy system in Montana by 2050 would reduce energy costs by about 15 percent. For a more detailed discussion of Jacobson’s claims and criticisms of them, please see the article I wrote in response to the court opinion last year and this from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Environmentalists’ Petition to the PSC

Following Judge Seeley’s opinion, a large group of petitioners, led by Earthjustice and the Western Environmental Law Center, asked the Public Service Commission for a rulemaking that would incorporate the judge’s ruling in state‐​level regulations. The petition recommended a new proposed rule requiring that the PSC shall:

1. Apply the higher of the social cost of greenhouse gases established by (a) the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or (b) the federal Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases as of the time of the Commission’s determination (except that in no case shall the costs of greenhouse gases be lower than those at a 2‑percent near‐​term Ramsey discount rate from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s November 2023 “Report on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases: Estimates Incorporating Recent Scientific Advances,” adjusted for inflation); and

2. Consider any adverse climate impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on communities that are disproportionately impacted by such emissions and/​or subject to historical inequalities.

At a recent public hearing before the PSC, I argued that the Held v. Montana ruling at the District Court level does not provide a solid foundation for a new regulatory rulemaking because (1) it will be carefully reviewed by the state Supreme Court and likely reversed and (2) Judge Seeley relied upon expert testimony and findings of fact that contain serious flaws.

The SCC is arbitrary and unfit for policymaking because estimates of its magnitude can swing wildly based on small tweaks to underlying assumptions, many of which are arbitrary modeling decisions. Federal estimates of the SCC have ranged from about $50/​ton under President Obama, to less than $10/​ton under President Trump, to now $190/​ton or more under President Biden. These changes reflect differing policy judgments more than improvements in science.

The Petition calls for using the “higher of” the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) estimates or the interagency task force estimate of the SCC. Montana regulators should be careful about adopting federal estimates for at least two reasons: (1) it outsources state‐​level policymaking to Washington, DC, and (2) SCC estimates could change radically every four years based on the political party in charge.

Advocates of a high SCC should likewise be wary of relying on federal estimates. Under a potential second term for President Trump, the interagency task force could be disbanded, and the EPA’s estimate of the SCC could be changed again to rely on a 7 percent discount rate applied to the FUND model of climate costs and benefits, yielding a negative SCC. A negative SCC means fossil‐​fuel projects would be given favorable regulatory treatment relative to non‐​fossil projects. Perhaps that is why petitioners urged the PSC to require the use of a 2 percent discount rate.

Held v Montana at the DEQ

Today, the Montana DEQ is holding a working group meeting regarding the “subtask” of climate analysis under MEPA (agenda is here). As the working group agenda notes, and as I argued before the PSC, such considerations are premature. The agenda states:

Court decisions regarding climate analysis are not final and do not provide a clear roadmap for addressing climate impacts in the MEPA process; the Legislature has not provided statutory direction to DEQ on climate impacts in the MEPA process and will not meet and be able to pass legislation for roughly 8–10 months; the Legislature has not provided funding and FTE to DEQ to analyze climate impacts in the MEPA process and will not be able to do so for 8–10 months.

People outside of Montana are watching to see how the finding of climate injury plays out because it could impact other states or even federal agencies. As one example, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has consistently declined to apply the SCC to judge the “significance” of CO2 emissions associated with natural gas pipeline projects. Any rulemaking that uses the SCC in Montana could become precedent to require FERC or other federal agencies to do the same.

Jeffrey Miron and Jacob Winter

Occupational licensing — for doctors, lawyers, plumbers, barbers, and innumerable other trades — claims to improve service quality. Much evidence contradicts this claim. And even if licenses sometimes improve quality, they reduce the supply of services and therefore raise prices.

Recent research (Cato Research Brief no. 378) identifies another negative of licensing: reducing earnings in other occupations. The analysis “finds that a 10 percentage point increase in the share of licensed workers … is associated with earnings that are 1.6–2.3 percent lower for all occupations [with similar skills]. These negative effects are stronger for female, non‐​Hispanic black, and foreign‐​born Hispanic workers.”

The explanation is that licensing makes it harder for workers to change occupations. “For example, consider a worker who can choose to work as a waiter or a barber. If being a barber requires a license (and being a waiter does not), then restaurants may be able to pay waiters less without concern they will quit to become a barber.”

In addition to these negatives, research (Cato Research Brief no. 356) finds that licenses make it more difficult for consumers to find needed service providers.

What’s the solution? Elimination of licenses. Short of elimination, states should recognize licenses issued by other states. Research (Cato Research Brief no. 357) suggests this would increase “employment of licensed occupations without sacrificing service quality.”