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Archive for May, 2022
May 31st, 2022 at 4:43 pm
Image of the Day: Advocates of Internet Regulation Falsely Claim Service Providers Forcing Consumers to “Pay More”
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Advocates of Obama-era internet service regulations that caused broadband investment to decline for the first time ever outside of an economic recession are at it again.  Even though U.S. internet service remarkably flourished amid the Covid pandemic while more heavily regulated Europe suffered, those who want to bring your internet under greater federal bureaucratic control are out with a preposterously defective poll suggesting that service providers are forcing consumers to “pay more” for inferior service.  Well, here’s a comparison of broadband price increases versus inflation among other critical consumer products since 2021, refusing that bizarre claim:

Broadband Prices Remain Moderated

Broadband Prices Versus Other Products

 

 

May 25th, 2022 at 7:32 pm
America Desperately Needs More Skilled STEM Workers, and We Should Steal Them from Russia
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We at CFIF have repeatedly highlighted America’s desperate need for more skilled science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workers.  In an increasingly information-based global economy, legal immigration by people with advanced degrees and valuable expertise to the United States must be encouraged, as even President Donald Trump advocated.

In that vein, we’ve also highlighted how desirable a destination the U.S. is to STEM talent, and how many openly seek to come to our shores, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which was named the top defense and national security think tank in the world.  “Only about 10 percent of international scientists and engineers seemed open to moving to China,” CSIS found, “compared to nearly 60 percent for the United States.”

American Enterprise Institute (AEI) scholars Brent Orrell and Alex Nowrasteh offer yet another excellent idea in a piece entitled “Skilled Workers Are Fleeing Russia.  Let’s Welcome Them”:

According to the Russian Association for Electronic Communications, between 50,000 and 70,000 information technology specialists have already left Russia since the war started.  An additional 100,000 are likely to depart before April 30.  This is not a new trend (since 2020, 20 percent of Belarusian IT workers — about 20,000 — have left the country for Poland), but Western sanctions on Russia and its allies are likely to accelerate the exodus of skilled laborers.

This outflow of highly skilled human capital is coming at a good time for the United States and its economy.  A recent report found that there were nearly 400,000 tech-related job openings in February 2022.  Meanwhile, data show that American universities annually graduate only about 89,000 computer science students — less than a quarter of total openings — leading to a chronic dearth of workers.”

And just like during the Cold War, welcoming more Russian STEM workers would also serve a strategic national security purpose as well, as the authors highlight in their conclusion:

We should welcome Russian skilled workers today as previous generations welcomed German and Soviet defectors during the 20th century with the effect of weakening our adversaries while strengthening the West.  They would fill valuable niches in the U.S. economy and drain geopolitical adversaries of vital skilled technicians while upholding the humanitarian values that we cherish.  In doing so, we can simultaneously do well for our economy while doing good for the world.”

Fortunately, provisions in legislation currently before Congress can help accomplish exactly that.

Despite some other provisions that should be removed during the House/Senate conference process, the America Creating Opportunities for Manufacturing, Pre-Eminence in Technology, and Economic Strength (COMPETES) Act of 2022 contains important provisions to welcome more highly skilled talent to America.  For example, the relevant provisions would eliminate obsolete green card limits for workers with advanced STEM degrees, create a new visa for entrepreneurs in start-up companies and facilitate the path to Legal Permanent Residence (LPR) status for STEM Ph.D. graduates seeking work in the U.S.

Unless we bring more skilled STEM talent to our shores, we’ll lose it to other countries like China, which in turn will be more able to undermine our global leadership position.  We can’t let that happen, and Congress can do something to help.

 

May 19th, 2022 at 12:51 pm
Image of the Day: More Economic Freedom = Higher Standard of Living
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In last week’s Liberty Update, we highlighted the Heritage Foundation’s 2022 Index of Economic Freedom, which shows that Joe Biden has dragged the U.S. down to 22nd, our lowest rank ever (we placed 4th in the first Index in 1995, and climbed back up from 18th to 12th under President Trump).  As we noted, among the Index’s invaluable metrics is how it demonstrates the objective correlation between more economic freedom and higher citizen standards of living, which this graphic illustrates:

 

May 13th, 2022 at 11:48 am
Quote of the Day: U.S. Leads the World in 5G Rollout, Thanks to Pro-Market Approach
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From economist Thomas Hazlett, in an insightful admonition against crony capitalist government intervention into the telecommunications market entitled “The U.S. May Repeat Mexico’s Wireless Spectrum Mistake” in today’s Wall Street Journal,  offers this little gem and tribute to the positive payoff of America’s comparatively pro-market deregulatory approach:

Meanwhile, 5G networks are spreading more rapidly in the U.S. than in any other nation, with 49% coverage in October 2021.  (China was at 20% that month.)  This rollout benefits from recent U.S. auctions for flexible-use spectrum rights, infusing networks with new capacity that lowers costs and spurs rivalry.  Further liberalization should continue.  Regulators haven’t been able to divert frequencies to selected business models to increase competition.  U.S. policy makers should avoid trying.”

 

May 10th, 2022 at 9:46 am
Image of the Day: Taxpayers Really Fuel EV Programs
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We recently sounded the alarm on how the Biden Administration, political left and crony capitalist big business interests are coalescing on an idea almost too bizarre to be real:  heaping new carbon taxes on traditional energy sources in order to “reduce energy costs.”  We subsequently illustrated one of the main reasons for that novel ploy:  so-called “green” energy sources are non-competitive without government intervention to artificially make more efficient fossil fuel sources more costly.  Courtesy of economist Stephen Moore, we have another biting illustration of that dynamic:

Taxpayers Power

Taxpayers Power “Green” EV Initiatives

 

There’s nothing wrong with electric vehicles, and in fact they offer a promising future technology.  But that should occur via market forces and consumer choice, not artificial government costs and subsidies paid by strapped taxpayers.