The Merits of an Infrastructure Stimulus Bill, Extensive Learning Losses, and More

August 3, 2020

Infrastructure can act as an economic barrier for many people and places, but it can also function as an economic foundation for America’s COVID-19 recovery. Adie Tomer, Joseph Kane, and Lara Fishbane explain how federal policymakers can use lessons learned from past recessions to design an infrastructure stimulus plan to respond to the economic downturn.

“The students currently in school stand to lose $10 trillion in labor earnings over their work life. To get a sense of the magnitude, this sum is one-tenth of global GDP, or half of the annual economic output of the United States, or twice the global annual public expenditure on primary and secondary education,” write Joao Pedro Azevedo, Amer Hasan, Koen Geven, Diana Goldemberg, and Syedah Aroob Iqbal.

The rise in digital authoritarianism and corresponding decline in human rights are two incredibly pressing issues the world faces today. In testimony for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Chris Meserole argues that nowhere do those issues have greater urgency than in China, where the government has relied on digital technologies to carry out human rights abuses and curtail religious freedom with unprecedented efficiency and scale.

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