In a June 2021 paper, “A Radically Pragmatic Agenda to Connect Rural America,” we carefully examined the history of federal programs to provide broadband to everyone. We found that:
The federal government spent a stunning $105 billion on broadband- and telephone-related initiatives from 2010 to 2019. This total includes both grants and loans, and is reported in 2019 dollars.
The funding programs for broadband put in place after the financial crisis of 2008-2009 were spread out over far too many unrelated purposes, rather than focused on expanding coverage to unserved areas.
As a result, far too little progress was made in closing the broadband gap, especially given the size of the federal funding.
As we wrote in the 2021 paper, “no matter how many billions of dollars are allocated, history shows that the money can be spent unwisely if policymakers are not careful.”
Unfortunately, the Biden Administration seems determined to repeat history. The Notice of Funding Opportunity issued by NTIA to allocate funds for the “Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program” (BEAD) is filled with requirements that will divert attention and money away from the fundamental task of connecting unserved Americans. In particular, the NOFO requires that:
….each Eligible Entity must include in its Initial and Final Proposals a middle-class affordability plan to ensure that all consumers have access to affordable high-speed internet (emphasis in original).
The first problem, of course, is that “middle-class affordability” is a moving target. The second problem is that the NOFO suggests that applicants fulfill this requirement by a variety of approaches, all of which suck money away from the primary goal of connecting the unserved. For example, the NOFO proposes that:
….some Eligible Entities might require providers receiving BEAD funds to offer low-cost, high-speed plans to all middle-class households using the BEAD-funded network.
Of course, that requirement will either discourage providers from building a BEAD-funded network, or reduce the amount of money available for building new connections to the unserved. In either case, less money for connecting the unserved.
In addition, the NOFO also allows applicants to apply money towards “non-deployment” uses, including but not restricted to user training, computer science education programs, and prisoner education. All of these are worthy uses, but don’t move the ball forward in terms of broadband connections.
As we said in the 2021 report, we have a “once in a lifetime opportunity.” If Democrats want to finally close the broadband gap, especially in rural areas, they need to make sure that the $45 billion is used in a focused way — to connect the unserved.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) – the most successful and enduring mutual security pact in history – is about to start its second act. In Act 1, the United States played the leading role in deterring Russian aggression and keeping the peace in Europe. In Act 2, Europeans will take center stage.
With longtime neutrals Sweden and Finland knocking on its door, NATO likely will grow to 32 members. For the transatlantic allies, however, the wise course isn’t merely to expand NATO, but to reinvent it.
How to seize that opportunity – which goes well beyond hackneyed calls for greater “burden-sharing” – should be the focal point of NATO’s Madrid summit later this month.
NATO should be fundamentally reconfigured to reflect three geopolitical realities. First, since its creation in 1949, the alliance has expanded dramatically as many of Europe’s ancient feuds and rivalries have been subsumed within pan-European values and institutions.
Second, NATO’s 27 European members (excluding Turkey) vastly exceed Russia in economic clout, population and military spending. Third, America inexorably is turning its strategic gaze to China and the balance of power in Asia.
Energy and food inflation concerns loom large for voters heading into the second half of 2022 and the midterm elections. Meanwhile the odds of recession are rising and expected growth is falling, according to economic forecasters surveyed by the National Association of Business Economists.
With these bread-and-butter issues on the table, is this the right time for Senate Democrats to spend time debating and voting on Senator Amy Klobuchar’s tech antitrust bill? Voters are not going to feel inflation relief from the bill. Remember that the tech sector is not the source of surging inflation, no matter how you look at it. For example, e-commerce, like every other industry, has been affected by rising fuel prices and supply chain disruptions. But BLS data shows that ecommerce margins — the difference between the acquisition price of goods and the sale prices — narrowed by 3% over the past year, benefitting consumers. By comparison, margins for the entire retail sector widened by 12%, giving an extra jolt to inflation.
And Senate Democrats won’t be able to point to the tech antitrust bill as a source of new jobs in case of a recession. Indeed, the timing is precisely wrong. The big tech companies showed their willingness to keep investing and hiring during 2020 and 2021, helping keep the U.S. economy afloat. Moreover, real wages are rising in the tech/ecommerce sector. That job and investment performance is unlikely to be repeated even if the Klobuchar legislation works exactly as proponents expect, since the bill is intended to restrain growth by the big tech companies and smaller rivals are not going to expand during a recession.
Whether or not you think that tech antitrust is a good idea in theory, this is the wrong time.
There are no shortages of infant formula in Europe, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand.
THE NUMBERS:
130,000 tons New Zealand infant formula exports to world, 2021
0 tons New Zealand infant formula exports to U.S., 2021
WHAT THEY MEAN:
A cautionary tale this spring, as White House officials and Congress consider hopes and plans for supply-chain “reshoring,” “resilience,” and import management: In the U.S., dairy vies with sugar as the most tightly policed trade product. According to the White House, 98% of formula in the U.S. is locally manufactured from milk from American dairy cows. The remaining 2% is mainly from Mexico, otherwise, about 2,000 tons come from Ireland, 1,300 tons from Chile, and 600 tons from the Netherlands. The result is a plausible claim to be America’s most completely on-shored, “post-neoliberal,” localized supply chain.
New Zealand, meanwhile, is (likely) the world’s most dairy-centered country. It is second only to Uruguay in cows-to-people ratio; first in the world for total dairy exports; and second to the Netherlands as an infant formula exporter, sending 130,000 tons per year to China, Australia, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia and other destinations.
New Zealand has a lot of formula. With American stores suddenly short of it after the recall at the U.S. plant in Sturgis, Mich., we don’t have enough. Here, though, is what grocery store managers hoping to restock with New Zealand formula would need to do:
(1) Fit your purchase, by weight, within an annual global quota limit of “4,105 tons”* “other dairy products.” Most of this is already filled by formula and other non-cheese products from Ireland, Chile and the Netherlands; and in any case, to apply you would need to USDA quota regulations as follows: “A person may annually apply for a nonhistorical license for articles other than cheese or cheese products (Appendix 2) if such person meets the requirements of paragraph (b)(1)(ii) of this section.”
Paragraph (b)(1)(ii) in turn, related to purchases “where the article is not cheese or cheese product,” says you must be:
“(A) The owner of and importer of record for at least three separate commercial entries of dairy products totaling not less than 57,000 kilograms net weight, each of the three entries not less than 2,000 kilograms net weight;
“(B) The owner of and importer of record for at least eight separate commercial entries of dairy products, from at least eight separate shipments, totaling not less than 19,000 kilograms net weight, each of the eight entries not less than 450 kilograms net weight, with a minimum of two entries in each of at least three quarters during that period;
“(C) The owner or operator of a plant listed in the most current issue of “Dairy Plants Surveyed and Approved for USDA Grading Service” and had manufactured, processed or packaged at least 450,000 kilograms of dairy products in its own plant in the United States; or
“(D) The exporter of dairy products in the quantities and number of shipments required under (A) or (B) above.
“(2) Succeeding in this, you must make sure your supplier meets the Food and Drug Administration’s rules for labeling, ingredients, and preparation, which FDA inspectors verify factory-by-factory. Reasonable in itself, though New Zealand’s child health and food-borne illness statistics compare quite well to America’s.
“(3) Pay a 17.5% tariff. (Or a much higher one, “$1.035/kg + 14.9%”, if you’re trying to buy product that exceeds the quota.)”
In practice, at least on short notice, no one seems able to do all this. So the fully on-shored, non-global supply chain turns out to be very brittle. With the Sturgis factory down and import quotas already filled, there’s no alternative, the shelves quickly go bare, and Air Force planes fly around the world trying to scrape up whatever they can find in Europe. A tactful comment from Jan Carey of New Zealand’s Infant Nutrition Council:
“I think it does show weakness in their policy. … We can speculate that [this crisis] might make the Food and Drug Administration consider why they make it so difficult for, other entrants to come into the market. Why can’t they make it a bit easier to get it in? We have such fantastic products in New Zealand, our products are highly regulated under the Food Standards code for Australia and New Zealand and they meet all of the nutritional requirements of an infant.”
What do we draw from this? Probably a lot of lessons for formula policy specifically. Also, a case study in “localized” supply chains with tight controls over sourcing, which may have some general relevance.
* Mexico is outside this limit with essentially unlimited rights under NAFTA and its successor the USMCA, and provided 12,000 of the 16,800 tons of formula entering the U.S. last year. Canada, in theory, gets a bit more under the USMCA than it did under NAFTA, but hasn’t used it.
“If you want to scare a room full of [economists], talk about breastmilk” — UC-Davis’ Kadee Russ on inadequate U.S. support for breastfeeding moms.
ABOUT ED
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
According to the most recent civilian casualty update by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), 406 Ukrainian children (age 0-17) have been killed since the Russian invasion commenced in February.
Since the beginning of 2022, 658 American children (age 0-17) have been killed in gun-related incidents.
While it’s true that the likelihood of your child being killed in the Ukraine versus in the U.S. is about 5 times greater, why are the total numbers even this close? One country (the Ukraine) has been invaded by one of the largest and most advanced militaries in the world. The Russians, whose actions speak louder than words, have committed unimaginable atrocities against the Ukrainian people, and have shown no restraint when it comes to blowing to smithereens any site, strategic or civilian, to achieve their goals.
While America hasn’t been invaded and is not at war, we are suffering from a self-inflicted epidemic of violence on our children that is horrible in its own right. We have permitted military assault weapons to end up in the hands of individuals who never should have been allowed near them. This has resulted in more and more children dying needlessly, and more families suffering a loss so painful it can never be mended.
And while Congress and the President acted quickly and rightly to help Ukraine — weapons, economic sanctions, and humanitarian aid — they have been unable to address the rising gun violence on our children.
Since I served as chief of staff on the White House Domestic Policy Council 1990s, I have watched common sense approaches to reduce gun violence fall by the wayside. Not since the enactment of the Brady Law and the Assault Weapons Ban in 1994 has Congress gotten close to enacting reforms to our gun violence laws. Instead, bipartisan progress on the issue has been frozen in place, while the political rhetoric has heated up to a boiling point.
If we want a different outcome this time, then we must do three things. Both sides must acknowledge that no elected official wants anymore children to die; that we need to work together to achieve this goal; and a final bill is going to have to be a compromise, which means no one is going to be completely happy (except the majority of the American people).
To get the ball rolling, let’s take two ideas from Republicans and Democrats and pass a law. For Republicans, this could include more funding for armed school safety personnel and other physical safety measures, along with the codification of a federal school safety clearinghouse to share best practices. Democrats would get to include comprehensive universal background checks and red/yellow flag laws that would establish court and medical procedures to prevent those with mental health issues from purchasing or possessing firearms or ammunition.
None of these reforms would stop all gun-related school violence. But it could begin to turn the tide. And passing gun violence prevention legislation might just help to create some new lines of communication relationships among Republicans and Democrats, which could lead to more bipartisan progress down the road.
The federal government is running out of resources to procure COVID vaccines, tests, and treatments right as the nation faces yet another wave of infections. A $10 billion emergency appropriation to fund these critical needs has been stalled in Congress since March amid fights about how to pay for it and what amendments on other policy issues might be added to the bill. If federal policymakers can’t resolve these disputes soon, state governments should use the generous financial support Congress has already given them to step in and fill the void.
When the most-recent COVID relief bill was first introduced, Republicans insisted on paying for it by rescinding funds the federal government had previously promised to state and local governments in the American Rescue Plan Act that President Biden signed into law last year. They argued that state governments experiencing unprecedented budget surpluses didn’t need the money and excessive government spending was worsening inflation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi prepared to hold a vote on a bill that met these demands, but a last-minute rebellion within her caucus scuttled the vote and it has been in limbo since while members of both parties continue to demand additional changes.
Continued stalling of this bill threatens to return America to the early days of the pandemic, when a failure of leadership by the Trump administration left individual states to fend for themselves and compete against one another in procuring equipment for health-care providers. States may have to pay higher prices or wait longer to purchase resources that the federal government could get more quickly as the world’s largest bulk buyer. And leaving COVID response to the states would almost certainly result huge inequities, as states with Democratic governors (and what remains of the GOP’s moderate wing in the Northeast) do more to protect their constituents from the virus than Trump acolytes like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has blamed the recent Uvalde shooting on the shooter’s mental health problems. “We as a state, we as a society need to do a better job with mental health,” the governor said last Wednesday in the aftermath of the shooting. “Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge. Period. We as a government need to find a way to target that mental health challenge and to do something about it.”
I don’t think anyone would argue that someone who murders defenseless young children is right in the head. But setting aside the mental state of this particular teenager, if Gov. Abbott believes that mental health is the problem, why hasn’t he done more to improve it?
Gov. Abbott has been governor since 2015, and since then, there have been roughly 13 mass shooting events in his state. Yet he has done nothing to expand access to mental health care. Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the country, with 17.3 percent of its population without health insurance. This is roughly twice the national average. Furthermore, Texas also has the most uninsured children in the country—roughly 1 million. Mental Health America rated the state dead last for overall access to mental health services.
But Gov. Abbott hasn’t just failed to expand access to health coverage; he has actively cut it.
Last week I sat down to write about the 1 million American lives lost to COVID-19 over the past two years. But on that Friday, I happened to be standing outside my home with my dog when a man was gunned down right in front of me. And then in the week after, there were multiple mass shooting events, including a racially motivated grocery store rampage and another incomprehensible elementary school shooting. I realized that I needed to address another plague: gun violence.
Gun violence is a result of many interacting factors — poverty, trauma, a lack of education, discrimination and – of course – American’s effortless access to firearms. And during the COVID pandemic, increased psychological distress, erosion of social networks, high unemployment and record increases in gun sales led to a pandemic of violence. Altogether, the nation tallied roughly 93,000 injuries and deaths (including suicides) from gun-related violence between Jan. 1, 2019, and March 31, 2021.
Americans traditionally have regarded public education as a formative institution integral to the success of democratic self-government. That’s why we’ve made it compulsory: By law, parents must send their children to public or accredited private schools, though exceptions are sometimes made for home schooling.
But if our government is going to require parents to send their kids to school, our elected representatives surely have a basic responsibility to ensure those schools are safe. The ghastly murder of 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas tells us they’re failing in that duty.
According to The Washington Post, there have been 24 acts of gun violence in U.S. schools this year alone, which have claimed 28 lives. America is saturated in guns and an attendant epidemic of mass murder is spilling over into schools.
No one wants our schools to look or feel like fortresses or maximum-security prisons. In an open and free society, there is no such thing as 100 percent security.
“Why are we willing to live with this carnage,” an anguished President Biden asked. “Why do we keep letting this happen?”
They are the right questions, and the answer is obvious: Because of the Republican Party’s dogmatic opposition to common sense gun safety measures. It grows out of the right’s paranoiac and absolutist view that any limits on gun ownership and use will necessarily lead to extinguishing American liberty.
This is patently false, as a quick survey of how Great Britain, New Zealand and other free and democratic countries contain gun violence shows. But then today’s Trumpified GOP — steeped in a miasma of lies, conspiracy theories and tribal hatred — evidently is incapable of rationally discussing gun safety.
Despite mass shootings in Texas in 2019 and 2019, the Republican-controlled legislature has relaxed gun laws in each of its last two sessions, including passage of a law in 2021 allowing people to carry guns without a permit. Predictably, Texas Republicans are again calling for “hardening” schools, hiring more armed guards, and more resources for mental health — anything but making it harder for aspiring killers to get military weapons.
A modest step toward sanity would be to bar sales of assault weapons to anyone under 21. There’s no earthly reason why adolescent males — the suspects in both the Robb Elementary massacre and the recent attack in a Buffalo grocery store that killed ten Black shoppers were just 18 — should have easy access to war weapons.
Just as raising the legal drinking age to 21 did not usher in a return to Prohibition, keeping assault rifles out of the hands of impulsive teenagers won’t abrogate the Second Amendment. Why do Republicans apply a rigid absolutism only to gun rights?
After this week’s horrific display of human depravity in Texas, are Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Republicans willing to take even this small step toward gun safety? Don’t bet the ranch — today’s Republicans can be counted on to put the inviolable rights of gun owners above protecting America’s children every time.
Looking ahead to the midterm elections, Democrats should make sure voters understand that GOP rhetoric about guaranteeing “parental rights” in education doesn’t include the right to safer schools for their kids.
Will Marshall is the President and Founder of the Progressive Policy Institute.
A new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office shows that the amount of money spent by the federal government each year to service our national debt is on track to reach unprecedented highs within the next 10 years. These findings should give Congressional Democrats renewed urgency to pass a reconciliation bill that reduces federal budget deficits before the political window for action closes later this summer.
The good news is that the 2022 edition of the CBO’s annual Budget and Economic Outlook, published Wednesday, showed this year’s federal budget deficit falling dramatically from its $3.1 trillion peak in 2020. The decline was due almost entirely to the expiration of stimulus programs created to shepherd the economy through the COVID pandemic, and the rapid economic growth those programs helped facilitate. But these stimulus measures also came at a cost: They both increased our national debt and contributed to higher rates of inflation, which the Federal Reserve is now rapidly raising interest rates to combat.
1 in 25 of all humans ever have accessed the internet.
THE NUMBERS:
All humans, ever: ~117.0 billion*
All humans, 2022: 7.9 billion
Internet users, 2022: 5.3 billion
* Population Research Bureau estimate, 2021
WHAT THEY MEAN:
Posted three weeks ago, the “Declaration for the Future of the Internet” joins the Biden administration and 60 other governments in an attempt to define the principal challenges to the digital future and set a direction for policies to address them. A few bits of data first:
According to the International Telecommunications Union, 4.9 billion people around the world used the Internet last year. A less official update from WorldInternetStats.com this spring finds 5.3 billion. This is just over two-thirds of the world’s 7.9 billion people, up from 50% at the end of the Obama administration, and about 1% in faraway 2000. Put another way, demographers at the Population Research Bureau calculate the total human population since the origin of the human species about 300,000 years ago at 117 billion. If this is about right, today’s Internet users make up one in 25 of all the men, women, and children who have ever lived. This year they will:
… transfer roughly 100 zettabytes of data around the world via fiber-optic cable and satellite beam. (A zettabyte is 1 sextillion bytes. The European Space Agency believes the universe contains somewhere between 100 sextillion and 1,000 sextillion stars.)
… conduct $26.7 trillion in electronic commerce, by UNCTAD’s 2022 estimate. (The International Monetary Fund believes global GDP this year is $103 trillion.)
… and spend 4.2 trillion hours on social media. (This sums to 479 million years, roughly the time elapsed since the “Cambrian Explosion.” Alternatively, the longest recorded single lifespan, that of Arles resident Jeanne Calment, 1873-1998, was 0.00000000012 trillion years.)
Another way to put these figures in context: at the birth of the Internet somewhere in the 1980s, a statistician might count a few million bytes of data transferred across early computer networks, about $0 in electronic commerce, and a few thousand academics and government officials berating each other on electronic bulletin-boards.
So, quite a remarkable first generation.
After appropriately noting this fact and recognizing the scientific and technical achievement that enabled it, the Declaration for the Future of the Internet focuses on (a) emerging policy challenges for the second generation, and (b) the values and goals that should inform a response to them. Top concerns include: escalating use of digital technologies, in some cases by governments, for disinformation and cybercrime; spread of national firewalling and restriction of information, also by governments; fears among many users of loss of privacy and eroding ability to control personal data, whether to governments, unscrupulous businesses, or criminals; and abuse of online platforms to inflame conflict, undermine respect for human rights, and threaten groups vulnerable to prejudice and hate.
The Declaration offers no specific technical measures or agreements to address these concerns, nor new venues in which governments and/or “multistakeholder” fora should develop them. Instead, it sets out a long-term objective — “an environment that reinforces our democratic systems and promotes active participation of every citizen in democratic processes, secures and protects individuals’ privacy, maintains secure and reliable connectivity, resists efforts to splinter the global Internet, and promotes a free and competitive global economy” — and proposes five general principles to inform the actual policies that might deliver this:
1. “Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms,” including combatting online violence and exploitation, reducing illegal content, and protecting freedom of expression.
2. “A Global Internet,” in which governments are discouraged from restricting access to lawful content, or shutting down access generally or to specific types of information, and encouraged to support free flows of data, cooperate in research and development, and act responsibly themselves.
3.“Inclusive and Affordable Access,” including through closing digital divides, encouraging diverse cultural and multilingual content, and supporting digital literacy and skills for publics.
4.“Trust in the Digital Ecosystem,” involving common responsibilities to combat cybercrime, protect personal data, use trustworthy technologies, avoid attacks on elections, support open trade and fair markets, and minimize digital contributions to climate change emissions.
5. “Multistakeholder governance,” to support technical advance and avoid undermining technical infrastructure.
A signers list from the State Department: 39 governments in Europe, five in the Pacific, three in Africa, one in the Middle East, and nine in the Western Hemisphere. (Some puzzling non-participants — Korea? Switzerland? Norway?)
And looking back: In the 50-million-internet-user world of 1997, the Clinton administration imagines policies for today’s digital global market.
BEA on the American digital economy in 2020 (with quiet side note to BEA, the dots are three places off to the right on page 4).
The Internet Society’s attempt to document the actual “launch of the Internet” date. Authors settle on the January 1, 1983, transition of U.S.-based academic and government networks to an interoperable TCP/IP protocol:
Geneva-based CERN, on the other hand, looks to Berners-Lee’s 1989 WWW software, and the first web-site launch. And some fun with 2022 Internet numbers
100 zettabytes – The European Space Agency calculates stars in the heavens.
1 in 25 humans: The Population Research Bureau counts all the people who have ever lived.
4.2 trillion person-hours of social media: Stephen Jay Gould’s Wonderful Life(1989); Gould’s theses on the Cambrian’s possibly wider variety of phyla are not in favor, but still the best ever user-friendly descriptions of Anomalocaris, Opabinia, and the weird world of the first big animals.
ABOUT ED
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
A new report from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI)’s Innovation Frontier Project warns that the proposed antitrust legislation would have far-reaching negative effects on competitiveness and technology leadership.
“The U.S. technology sector is facing barriers to its ability to advance its position in an increasingly competitive world. The package of antitrust legislation introduced in Congress may adversely affect the tech sector by limiting the ability of platforms to design new products, integrate existing ones and operate in downstream segments,” write report authors Ashish Arora and Sharon Belenzon. “In this report we highlight the potential impact of these limitations on American science and technology leadership. We examine the role that big firms play in advancing U.S. technology, the foreign competition they increasingly face, and the fragile nature of the U.S. innovation ecosystem.”
According to the report, the package of antitrust legislation moving through Congress would limit tech companies’ ability to integrate new products, promote new features, and compete in new market segments. Antitrust regulations that reduce the size and limit the scope of tech firms weaken their incentives to make the large-scale, long-run investments in science and technology vital for national security and economic prosperity.
Additionally, at a time when the United States critically depends on a handful of firms to pursue large scale research projects, such proposals would play into the hands of foreign rivals. U.S. leadership in four of the five emerging technologies identified by the Biden Administration as a national priority would be adversely impacted by proposals to restrict digital platforms.
Read the report and expanded policy recommendations here:
This report was authored by Ashish Arora and Sharon Belenzon of Duke University. Mr. Arora is the Rex D. Adams Professor of Business Administration at the Duke Fuqua School of Business. He received his PhD in Economics from Stanford University in 1992, and was on the faculty at the Heinz School, Carnegie Mellon University, where he held the H. John Heinz Professorship, until 2009. Mr. Belenzon is a professor in the Strategy area at the Fuqua School of Business of Duke University and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). His research investigates the role of business in advancing science and has been featured in top academic journals, such as Management Science, Strategic Management Journal and American Economic Review. Mr. Belenzon received his PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science and completed post-doctorate work at the University of Oxford, Nuffield College.
Based in Washington, D.C., and housed in the Progressive Policy Institute, the Innovation Frontier Project explores the role of public policy in science, technology and innovation. The project is managed by Jack Karsten. Learn more by visiting innovationfrontier.org.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
In the second year of the pandemic, European App Economy jobs continued to grow. Looking at the largest countries where we have the most reliable data, France has an estimated 484,000 App Economy jobs as of December 2021, Germany has 504,000 App Economy jobs, and the United Kingdom has 558,000 App Economy jobs (table below).
We estimate that the 30-country total (the European Union plus United Kingdom, Norway, and Switzerland) is 3.034 million App Economy Jobs. That’s up 28% from a revised 2019 App Economy employment level of 2.378 million. (For more information on the underlying methodology used for these estimates, see the appendix to “The App Economy in Europe: Leading Countries and Cities, 2017.” For details of the latest updated methodology, see section below. Note that the estimates in Table 1 are not directly comparable to previously published European country estimates for 2019 and 2020, which have been revised.)
Focusing on mobile operating systems, we estimate that 2.276 million European App Economy workers belong to the iOS ecosystem as of December 2021, up 28% from 2019’s revised numbers. We estimate that 2.486 million European App Economy workers belong to the Android ecosystem as of December 2021, also up 28% from 2019.
In other words, the App Economy has been a major source of job growth for the broader European economy during the pandemic. These App Economy jobs kept the economy going during the tough early months and then continuing to expand even as the pandemic moved into a new phase.
Some examples: Handelsblatt, Germany’s leading business and financial newspaper, is looking for an IOS developer as of early January 2022. TWT Digital Health in Heidelberg was looking for a mobile developer with iOS skills. In Paris, Withings, a consumer electronics company building an ecosystem of connected devices and apps, was looking for an Android developer to help develop health-related applications. In Bristol, UK, Dyson was hiring an iOS mobile developer. In London, Plum Fintech, a developer of personal savings assistants for consumers, was hiring an Android Engineer. In Barcelona, wefox, one of Europe’s largest insurance startups, was looking for an iOS developer. In Valencia, Happÿdonia, a startup founded in 2018 that provides custom corporate social networks, was looking for an Android developer.
Looking at more recent App Economy job postings, as of May 2022, Albert Heijn, the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands, was looking for an iOS Mobile developer in Zaandam, just north of Amsterdam. ABN AMRO, a large bank, was looking for an Android developer in Amsterdam. In May 2022 the Italian software company Zucchetti posted a job opening for an IOS / Android developer in Perugia, in the Umbria region. MindTek, an app developer firm based in Bergamo, Italy, was looking for an iOS/Android mobile application developer.
In Göteborg, Sweden, the Volvo Group was advertising for an Android developer as of May 2022. Perigee was looking for an iOS developer in Malmö, Sweden, to help build apps that promote healthy habits. Electrolux was looking for an Android developer in Stockholm. London-based WeAre8 was looking for an Android developer in its new R&D center in Thessaloniki, Greece, to help build a socially-minded digital ad platform.
Table 1. The European App Economy, December 2021
December 2021 (preliminary)
Thousands of jobs
Total App Economy
iOS ecosystem
Android ecosystem
Austria
33
23
29
Belgium
43
34
36
Czech Republic
52
38
41
Denmark
54
46
42
Finland
71
54
67
France
484
307
409
Germany
504
401
408
Greece
19
13
15
Hungary
31
21
25
Ireland
31
25
23
Italy
127
88
107
Luxembourg
5
4
4
Netherlands
267
219
197
Norway
53
39
46
Poland
121
81
99
Portugal
57
42
42
Romania
35
28
29
Spain
159
121
135
Sweden
134
96
114
Switzerland
68
56
54
United Kingdom
558
442
457
30 countries*
3034
2276
2486
*Includes estimates for Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Slovakia, and Slovenia.
Data: ILO, Eurostat, Indeed, PPI
Revisions and Updated Methodology
To better track App Economy jobs during the pandemic, we updated the methodology that was described in detail in the appendix to “The App Economy in Europe: Leading Countries and Cities, 2017.” The biggest change was to construct more timely estimates of the number of “information and communications technology (ICT) professionals” by country, which form an essential input into our estimation methodology.
In the past we had used the most recent available government data, which sometimes lagged by a year or more. That’s obviously not sufficient during the pandemic. Instead, now we use a procedure that generate a current estimate of ICT professionals. We start with the most recent number of ICT professional employees, as reported by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). For example, the ILO data gives us the 2020 figure for most European countries. Then we estimated a preliminary 2021 figure based on job growth in the “information and communications” industry sector as reported by Eurostat. The preliminary 2021 figure, in turn, will be revised when better data on ICT professionals is available. (The latest figures for the United Kingdom are drawn from the Annual Population Survey, “Information Technology and Telecommunications Professionals” as reported by Nomis).
Note that the shift from lagged to current data aligns the European estimates with the methodology we use to generate the U.S. App Economy estimates. Assuming the number of ICT professionals is growing, this shift will tend to raise the App Economy estimates. As a result, our revised estimates for 2019 are now typically higher than our previously published estimates.
On the other hand, the growth rate of information and communications sector employment is generally less than the growth rate of ICT professionals, so our updated methodology tends to produce a conservative estimate for App Economy job growth in the latest year. These growth estimates will then get revised up when new data is available. As a result, our revised estimates for 2020 are generally higher than our initial preliminary estimates done last year.
One final point: The new pandemic wave hitting Europe in December 2021 produced noisy job listing data for all but the largest countries. To get more reliable preliminary results, we also drew upon the “App Economy” share of job listings by country that we calculated in 2020. These results will be updated as additional data is available.
The unprecedented challenge of the pandemic stressed crucial business and infrastructure systems in every country. Almost overnight, huge swathes of economic activity that relied on face-to-face interactions were forced into virtual mode. Individuals and businesses were suddenly dependent on the internet, their smartphones, and their mobile applications for critical daily activities like work, shopping, and communication with loved ones. The App Economy, already important, became an increasingly indispensable part of the real economy.
For the most part, the infrastructure of the global “App Economy” performed well under the strain. Existing mobile applications were able to respond to soaring demand without significant outages. App developers were able to quickly create new apps to meet the human and economic needs of the pandemic, and get them onto the Apple App Store, Google Play, and other app stores. Publishers launched 2 million new apps in 2021 alone. At both small and large companies, finding workers with App Economy skills — the ability to develop, maintain, and support mobile applications — became essential. Remote work and sales were critical to keeping businesses going. Even as the pandemic ebbs, many jobs and economic interactions are still remote, placing an increased premium on mobile communications. Health organizations have learned about the usefulness of telehealth apps. Banks and other financial companies are consolidating branches and doing more business remotely. Airlines and other transportation businesses rely on apps to communicate directly with their customers. And many restaurants, while thankful to be open for in-person patrons, still do much of their business by delivery.
In the United States, as in other countries, the increased prominence of the App Economy was reflected in the growing number of jobs that required App Economy skills. We have been estimating the number of U.S. App Economy jobs since 2012, using detailed data on job postings as our major tool for analysis. Our latest estimate, as of January 2022, was 2.564 million App Economy jobs, including a conservative estimate of spillover jobs. That is up 14% from 2.246 million as of April 2019, and up 8% from an estimated 2.417 million as of February 2020. In this updated report, we also estimate App Economy jobs by operating system, and provide estimates of App Economy jobs for leading states. These state estimates are based on a new methodology that takes account of remote work.
METHODOLOGY
For this study, a worker is in the App Economy if he or she is in:
• An IT-related job that uses App Economy skills — the ability to develop, maintain, or support mobile applications. We will call this a “core” app economy job. Core app economy jobs include app developers; software engineers whose work requires knowledge of mobile applications; security engineers who help keep mobile apps safe from being hacked; and help desk workers who support use of mobile apps.
• A non-IT job (such as sales, marketing, finance, human resources, or administrative staff) that supports core app economy jobs in the same enterprise. We will call this an “indirect” app economy job.
• A job in the local economy that is supported either by the goods and services purchased by the enterprise, or by the income flowing to core and indirect app economy workers. These “spillover” jobs include local professional services such as bank tellers, law offices, and building managers; telecom, electric, and cable installers and maintainers; education, recreation, lodging, and restaurant jobs; and all the other necessary services.
We use public job postings from the Indeed realtime database of job postings to estimate the number of core App Economy jobs. We analyze job postings for App Economy jobs based on the national methodology described in our 2017 report, “U.S. App Economy Update.” Then we use a conservative multiplier of indirect and spillover jobs to estimate overall App Economy jobs.
Table 1 shows the full history of our estimates of the App Economy. (The February 2020 prepandemic figure represents an interpolated data point based on the April 2019 and August 2020 figures).
Measured against the size of the whole economy, the roughly 2.6 million workers in the App Economy represent about 1.7% of total nonfarm employment of nearly 150 million. That’s significant, but not overwhelming.
But we get a different perspective by looking at the App Economy’s contribution to job growth since Apple opened the first App Store in July 2008. From July 2008 to early 2022, the economy overall added roughly 13 million jobs, while the App Economy has gone from zero to 2.564 million jobs, including indirect and spillover jobs.
That implies that the App Economy has contributed about 20% of nonfarm job growth since its inception. Perhaps more important, the App Economy has been an “autonomous” source of hiring even while other parts of the economy have faltered.
APP ECONOMY BY OPERATING SYSTEM
We can analyze App Economy job postings to see whether they refer to iOS- and/or Android-related skills. That allows us to assign App Economy jobs to either the iOS or Android “ecosystems” or both. For example, if a job posting is looking for an iOS developer without any mention of Android, then that job and the associated indirect and spillover jobs are part of the iOS ecosystem but not the Android ecosystem.
It needs to be noted that many App Economy job postings, especially in the United States, refer to both iOS and Android skills. A job posting might explicitly be directed at finding an Android software engineer, for example, but part of required or preferred experience might include previous development of either iOS or Android apps. As a result, most App Economy jobs in the U.S. belong to both the iOS and Android ecosystems. That isn’t necessarily true in other countries.
Table 2 below reports on iOS and Android ecosystem jobs as of January 2022. The iOS ecosystem included 2.225 million jobs, including indirect and spillover jobs. The Android ecosystem includes 2.065 million jobs.
This implies that the growth of the iOS ecosystem accounts for about 17% of nonfarm payroll job growth from July 2008 to January 2022. Similarly, the growth of the Android ecosystem accounts for about 16% of nonfarm payroll job growth from July 2008 to January 2022. Note that these figures are not additive.
LOCATION OF JOBS
Previous to the pandemic, our App Economy reports and updates generally included estimates of App Economy jobs by state. This was possible because, pre-pandemic, most job postings specified a location for the job. We were therefore able to distribute App Economy jobs by state and even by metro area.
The likely permanent rise of remote work means that the previous methodology no longer is sufficient. Many App Economy job postings now say “remote from” some city, meaning that the worker can be located anywhere, even if they have an “official” location. Let’s call these “tethered remote” jobs. Some job postings don’t even specify a home base, opting for “United States” or just “remote.” Let’s call these “untethered remote.” In addition, many jobs are now advertised as being based in any one of a number of different locations.
In this section we will describe a new preliminary methodology for estimating the job market impact of the App Economy by state. First, it is important to realize that this new methodology gives state estimates that are noncomparable to previous years. Second, this is a preliminary methodology and will likely change in future updates as we better understand the nature of remote work.
Recall that we divide App Economy jobs into core, indirect, and spillover jobs. Remote work means that the core jobs (such as app developers, mobile app security specialists, mobile app tech support staff) need not be in the same location as the indirect jobs (such as accounting, legal, marketing, and management). Spillover jobs (local service jobs, such as restaurants and retail, conservatively estimated) should be distributed according to the location of the core or indirect jobs.
The first step in our preliminary methodology involves searching for all job postings that contain either the term iOS or Android nationally and by state. We also identify the number of job postings that are “tethered remote.”
• Core App Economy jobs that have a location and are not remote are allocated to that location, along with the resulting indirect and spillover jobs.
• Core App Economy jobs that have a location and are “tethered remote” are allocated according to a two-step process. First, the associated indirect jobs and spillover jobs are allocated to the reported location. Second, the tethered remote core jobs are allocated by state according to the distribution of employment and jobs growth in NAICS 5415 (“computer systems design”), which is the industry where most app developers are found.
• Core App Economy jobs which have no location (“untethered remote”) are allocated by state according to the distribution of employment and jobs growth in NAICS 5415. In addition, the associated indirect and spillover jobs are allocated the same way.
Under the new methodology, California is still first on the list with 408, but the gap between California and other states has narrowed. California is followed by Texas, Washington, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Virginia, and Georgia.
A new paper from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) digs into the radical transformation of both the social and security considerations of digital privacy on a global scale, weighing the three pillars of the issue: the legal rights of the consumer, data security, and innovation.The report is titled “Why Digital Privacy Is So Complicated” and is authored by PPI’s Economic and Data Policy Analyst, Jordan Shapiro.
The paperlays out the privacy models of the United States, Europe, and China, and also examines the models adopted in the United Kingdom, Canada, and India. Report author Jordan Shapiro examines each country’s current social and legal structure, the technical design of security and transparency, and the economic implications of privacy and innovation.
“Ultimately, a holistic approach to digital privacy is what’s missing in the global efforts to strengthen data privacy,” said report author Jordan Shapiro. “Here in the U.S., we have an opportunity to replicate what’s working – and avoid what isn’t – from our international partners’ approaches to digital privacy. To protect consumers, we need to refocus our efforts around privacy to include comprehensive technical security requirements and measures to better protect the individual consumer. At the same time, we need to strengthen privacy rules that support innovation.”
Read and download the full report:
Jordan Shapiro is an Economic and Data Policy Analyst at PPI. Prior to joining PPI, she worked as a data and innovation research consultant supporting businesses and non-profits to understand the interplay between technology and public systems.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visitingprogressivepolicy.org.
The exact definition of digital privacy is complex, imperfectly aligned with typical understandings of privacy in an analog context. Historically, the vast majority of human actions and interactions existed beyond the scope of surveillance. Today, it’s nearly impossible to go about our daily lives without digital tools that facilitate modern life, but also collect data about individuals. When this growing flood of data is linked to an individual it is called “personal identifying information” (PII), the centerpiece of the debate over digital privacy.
The discussion of digital privacy is complicated precisely because it operates on three distinct but interrelated levels. First, privacy’s social and legal dimensions depend on whether individuals, corporations, or governments are assumed to hold primary rights to personal data collected about those individuals. In Europe, for example, the individual holds primary rights over their data, while in China, the state takes precedence.
The second level of the privacy discussion addresses data use and the technical protection and security of personal information to safeguard it from unwanted intrusion or theft while allowing individuals transparent access to their data. These complicated technical issues arise no matter privacy’s social and legal structure.
The third level of the privacy debate deals with the economics of PII. How does the chosen privacy model interact with innovation and growth? And how can it be assured that individuals get the appropriate benefits from their data?
This paper will lay out the privacy models of the United States, Europe, and China, with smaller sections on the United Kingdom, Canada, and India. For each area, we will discuss the social and legal structure, the technical design of security and transparency, and the economic implications of privacy and innovation. This paper sets out a framework for PPI’s ongoing privacy work. It lays the groundwork for future discussions of privacy legislation in the United States.
