Bonjour! Here’s your PolicySphere morning briefing! If you were forwarded this, here’s more about who we are and what we’re doing and, of course, don’t forget to sign up.
We hope you and your family had a blessed Trans Day of Visibility.
Don’t forget, Infrastructure Week is coming up! (For real)
#Gender – American Institute for Boys and Men: Male college enrollment and completion rates have dropped significantly in the last half century. Men’s share of Bachelor’s degrees dropped from 57% in 1970 to 42% in 2021, with steeper declines at other degree levels. Full study here, with charts. The decline of men and the ensuing gender divide is one of the most important sociopolitical trend of the past and future decades, with countless implications for both policy and politics. Watch this space.
#Gender – Not that the decline of men is good for women. IWF’s Hadley Heath Manning: “When women are encouraged to prioritize careers, material gain, or insta-fame over home and family, there are society-level consequences: low fertility rates, political polarization, and a large-scale mental-health crisis.” (NRO)
#DEI – Over the past several year, McKinsey has released several studies “showing” that DEI improves corporate performance. Surprise surprise, it turns out those studies don’t replicate. (Econ Journal Watch, via Chris Brunet)
#Immigration – US hits new record with 51 million immigrants, or nearly 20% of the workforce. (Washington Examiner)
#PublicOpinion – A corrective, perhaps, to American Compass’s fascinating report on how Republican voters now like big government: “Republicans express greater concern about “federal spending & the budget deficit” than Democrats… It’s the issue with the largest partisan gap in Gallup’s poll.” (Via)
#RentControl – The Daily Mail US reports the Biden Administration is set to announce a cap on rent increases. And it doesn’t look like an April’s Fools.
#RealEstate – Speaking of real estate news, according to a new report it’s cheaper to rent than buy a starter home in top 50 US metros. (The Hill)
#Medicare – The Biden administration’s health-care policies decidedly disadvantage Medicare Advantage (NRO)
#SocialIssues – Michigan governor signs bill decriminalizing paid surrogacy (The Hill)
#SocialIssues – Op-ed in The Hill by EPPC’s Natalie Dodson: Republicans have an opportunity to focus on actual reproductive health.
#Chyna – The House’s Select Committee on the CCP uncovers evidence of a Chinese biotech company, linked to the Chinese military, trying to stealthily operate subsidiaries in the US.
#AmericanManufacturing #DEI – The American Prospect’s Maureen Tkacik has a long article on how Boeing’s financialization and sidelining of old engineers has led to the current debacle. Prospect and Tkacik in particular are socialist firebrands so take it with a grain of salt but it lines up with other reports about the company. There is also a DEI angle with the idea that sidelining engineers/builders in favor of financiers and marketers is bad, since the former tend to be disproportionately older white men; Boeing has certainly trumpeted its DEI initiatives in the past several years; this also lines up with Airbus avoiding Boeing’s pitfalls since DEI is much less prevalent in Europe and particularly in France where Airbus’s engineering and final assembly are based.
#Chyna #Trade – “American companies that manufacture overseas are increasingly dodging import duties by embracing a controversial trade ‘loophole’ that’s been key to the rise of Shein and Temu” (The Information)
#Biotech #Agriculture – “Three Radically Different Examples of How CRISPR Will Transform Agriculture” (SeedWorld)
#HotTakes – RAND describes our current era, in a provocative but striking way, as “neomedievalism.” Here are some of the markers of neomedievalism, according to RAND: “weakening states, fragmenting societies, imbalanced economies, pervasive threats, informalization of warfare.” Some might say this is very unfair to the Medieval era. Also: they forgot pandemics!
#Philosophy – The late, great Angelo Codevilla in the Claremont Review of Books: Why we need nationalism.
Chart of the Day
Via Heritage’s E.J. Antoni, good chart showing how non-discretionary spending is eating the federal budget:
Meme of the Day
