On July 7, 2023, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Labor, and the Department of the Treasury released a notice of proposed rulemaking to modify the definition of short‐term, limited‐duration insurance. During this policy forum, Michael F. Cannon and Brian Blase will discuss why the proposed rule would adversely impact individuals by eliminating consumer protections, which would throw sick patients out of their health insurance and leave them to face sky‐high medic...
Sep 11, 2023•1 hr 8 min
A prominent narrative claims that global inequality is increasing as improvements in the standard of living accrue mainly to a small elite, leaving much of the world’s population behind and even worse off than before. But is this true? Chelsea Follett and Vincent Geloso will discuss their work on a new, more comprehensive way of measuring global inequality, the Inequality of Human Progress Index, and their recent findings showing that global inequality is in fact shrinking. They will argue that ...
Sep 08, 2023•1 hr
Part three of this year’s Summer with Sphere series is all about preparing for the upcoming school year! As you think about how you will set your students up for success from their classroom environment to their curriculum for the year, consider the benefits of implementing strategies that foster civil discourse into your approach. In this webinar, we will equip you with tools and resources that will help you effectively embed healthy habits of conversation into your classroom experience for stu...
Aug 25, 2023•1 hr 1 min
The United States has been a leader in the innovative technology sector. Its light touch policy approach has been key to allowing innovation to flourish and brought benefits to consumers both domestically and internationally. Increasingly, however, the highly regulatory approach seen in the EU and UK is both formally and informally impacting the approach these leading tech companies must take on issues including speech, privacy, and competition. How should we think about the “Brussels Effect” in...
Aug 24, 2023•53 min
Why has the health sector of the economy uniquely resisted changes in products, productivity, and services that improve consumer satisfaction or reduce prices and spending? One reason, according to the book Seemed Like a Good Idea: Alchemy versus Evidence‐Based Approaches to Healthcare Management Innovation , is that decisionmaking on medical delivery or insurance innovations is often not evidence‐based and sometimes contradictory to evidence. This book explores reasons why the health sector l...
Aug 23, 2023•1 hr 28 min
Recent legislation in Congress has proposed designating Mexican cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations; pushing the administration to designate fentanyl precursor chemicals as chemical weapons; and even authorizing the use of military force in Mexico. As the fentanyl crisis persists in the United States, several Republican presidential candidates have echoed these calls for using the U.S. military to combat fentanyl. What would these bills and proposals do, practically? What are the likely c...
Aug 23, 2023•1 hr 20 min
As fertility rates fall in much of the world, many policymakers are considering expensive policies intended to raise birth rates and support families more broadly. But do those policies work, and should government play a role in trying to reverse this trend? And is the best way to support families an expansion in government programs or it is simply getting government out of parents’ way? Experts on fertility and family policy, Vanessa Brown Calder , Chelsea Follett , Julie Gunlock , and Elizabet...
Aug 18, 2023•1 hr
On July 27, 1953, an armistice took effect, pausing the Korean War. Although much has changed over the last 70 years—North Korea becoming a nuclear state, South Korea becoming a democracy and major economic power, and China becoming Asia’s dominant force—the war remains frozen. Today, escalating tensions, including a shift in the U.S.-South Korea alliance toward competition with China, are creating new challenges to peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. As the Korean War armistice turns 7...
Aug 11, 2023•1 hr 29 min
On July 27, 1953, an armistice took effect, pausing the Korean War. Although much has changed over the last 70 years—North Korea becoming a nuclear state, South Korea becoming a democracy and major economic power, and China becoming Asia’s dominant force—the war remains frozen. Today, escalating tensions, including a shift in the U.S.-South Korea alliance toward competition with China, are creating new challenges to peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. As the Korean War armistice turns 7...
Aug 11, 2023•1 hr 10 min
On July 27, 1953, an armistice took effect, pausing the Korean War. Although much has changed over the last 70 years—North Korea becoming a nuclear state, South Korea becoming a democracy and major economic power, and China becoming Asia’s dominant force—the war remains frozen. Today, escalating tensions, including a shift in the U.S.-South Korea alliance toward competition with China, are creating new challenges to peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. As the Korean War armistice turns 7...
Aug 11, 2023•14 min
The Biden administration recently launched ambitious private sponsorship programs for Ukrainians, Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans, and Nicaraguans, which could be the largest expansion of legal migration in decades. These initiatives create new legal opportunities for Americans to sponsor foreigners from these troubled countries for legal entry and residence in the United States. The new entry categories have already facilitated hundreds of thousands of legal entries and are helping reduce unlawfu...
Aug 09, 2023•1 hr 1 min
This year has seen an explosion of new, big, school choice initiatives. Most important have been education savings account (ESA) programs, which offer the most freedom of any school choice vehicle by allowing parents to apply funds to everything from tutoring, to science equipment, to private school tuition. But with this comes many challenges, and the sudden takeoff of ESAs might leave people who are tasked with implementing them scrambling. In this forum, we will tackle the challenges of imple...
Aug 09, 2023•1 hr 29 min
This year has seen an explosion of new, big, school choice initiatives. Most important have been education savings account (ESA) programs, which offer the most freedom of any school choice vehicle by allowing parents to apply funds to everything from tutoring, to science equipment, to private school tuition. But with this comes many challenges, and the sudden takeoff of ESAs might leave people who are tasked with implementing them scrambling. In this forum, we will tackle the challenges of imple...
Jul 20, 2023•1 hr 29 min
From cases about free speech and religion, to the role of affirmative action in college admissions, this year’s Supreme Court docket covered some of the most important issues in America. Join Sphere Education Initiatives and a panel of Constitutional scholars to explore the major decisions of the court. Covering both the arguments of the majority and the dissents, this conversation will position you to bring these cases to life for your students this fall. This is the first of our four‐part pro...
Jul 06, 2023•1 hr 1 min
The failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank have shed light on the need for a major overhaul of the United States’ banking laws. For a century, the government has increased federal backing, regulation, and micromanagement of the financial sector. The approach has repeatedly failed. Yet, after recent bank failures, Congress immediately began flirting with even more federal backing, regulation, and micromanagement. Is there any way out of this vicious cycle? Join us for a conversation w...
Jun 21, 2023•1 hr 2 min
Al Qaeda’s attacks on the United States plunged America into multiple military campaigns abroad in pursuit of the attackers. It also ushered in new surveillance programs before any investigations into the causes of the 9/11 intelligence failure had even begun. The first new, secret mass electronic surveillance program authorized by then president George W. Bush, Stellar Wind, was initiated just days after the attacks and with no judicial notification, much less review, as required by the Foreign...
Jun 15, 2023•1 hr
On New Year’s Eve 2023, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will expire absent congressional action to renew it. This controversial surveillance power was enacted in 2008 following over two years of debate in Congress after its secret, illegal predecessor—the National Security Agency’s Stellar Wind mass electronic surveillance program—was exposed by the New York Times in December 2005. Since that time, Section 702 has been renewed twice—once under President Obama and again u...
Jun 15, 2023•54 min
Extreme political views and speech have been a feature of American political and social life virtually since the founding of the republic. The Founders intended for the First Amendment to protect governmental infringements on speech, but throughout the republic’s history those protections have been breached on multiple occasions. The Alien and Sedition Acts, the Anarchist Exclusion Act, and the Espionage Act are just some of the examples of federal laws that have criminalized certain kinds of sp...
Jun 15, 2023•1 hr
The explosion in the use of facial recognition and other biometric technologies by government and private‐sector entities has sparked a national debate about such systems. Just over a year ago, a Pew Research Center survey of American attitudes toward artificial intelligence also asked how people felt about law enforcement use of facial recognition. Among those surveyed, 46 percent thought the use of facial recognition by law enforcement is a good idea, even though two‐thirds of respondents sa...
Jun 15, 2023•1 hr 1 min
There are legitimate concerns about the safety and well‐being of children online. This has stimulated the interest of policymakers, and numerous legislative and regulatory proposals are being debated. Like many areas, however, civil society—not government—likely holds the best solutions. Government intervention is a blunt instrument and will itself create additional problems—particularly in the areas of freedom of expression and privacy—as compared with individual solutions undertaken by parent...
Jun 13, 2023•1 hr
This panel explores the impacts and outcomes of critical social justice ideology on black wellbeing in k‑12 and higher ed. Starting in pre‑K and ending in the university, education that claims to empower students within a liberal arts education often seems disempowering and quite illiberal. This toxic tutelage, according to the team at Free Black Thought, does more harm than good. Hear members of Free Black Thought have a conversation on what needs to be done, what can be done, and what is alrea...
Jun 05, 2023•1 hr 4 min
Letters in Black and White is an epistolary correspondence between a white woman and black man who are both concerned with the condition of contemporary race relations. The book is a defense of classical liberalism as a guiding ideology for understanding and improving race in America. The authors object to the use of race as a rigid identity, especially in schools, universities, and the workplace. As Twyman starts his correspondence with Richmond: “There are 40,000,000 black individuals with 40,...
Jun 05, 2023•1 hr 31 min
In May 2018, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) became effective. The immediate impact was seen in the millions of dollars and man hours spent on compliance; the loss of certain websites or services from the European Union, such as the Los Angeles Times ; and changes to user experiences and privacy choices. Advocates of the GDPR have argued that the tradeoffs are worth it for improved cybersecurity and the increased privacy rights of EU citizens, but critics have poin...
May 25, 2023•59 min
Join us for a discussion of Eric Claeys’s forthcoming book, Natural Property Rights (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press). The book introduces and defends a theory of property relying on labor, natural rights, and traditional principles of natural law. Justified on those grounds, property rights protect individual freedom, but they also help government officials resolve the basic resource conflicts that arise in property law. Natural Property Rights illustrates this with examples from real e...
May 24, 2023•1 hr
The Association of American Medical Colleges projects a shortage of as many as 48,000 primary care physicians by 2034. Yet there are not enough residency positions for the number of medical school graduates. Missouri became the first state to address this problem by launching a new licensure category: assistant physician (AP). APs are essentially apprentice physicians. The reform lets graduates without a residency position provide primary care in clinics while enhancing their knowledge and skill...
May 24, 2023•59 min
On Sunday, May 14, NATO’s most controversial ally will hold perhaps its most fateful elections since its founding in 1923. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has been ruling Turkey for 21 years in an increasingly authoritarian and erratic fashion, may win and drag the nation further toward dictatorship. But there is also a chance that the opposition may win, as the race is tight and as Turkey’s elections are still competitive despite dramatic deterioration in the country’s freedoms and rule of ...
May 12, 2023•59 min
Join us online for the launch of an inspiring new book from Anthony Sanders of the Institute for Justice, Baby Ninth Amendments: How Americans Embraced Unenumerated Rights and Why It Matters (University of Michigan Press, 2023). The book tells the unheralded story of how Americans carefully sought to protect liberty from overweening government by including in most state constitutions specific provisions (so‐called Baby Ninths) that expressly protect unenumerated rights. Sanders explains why it ...
May 11, 2023•1 hr 1 min
What is money? What makes money better or worse? And how can the past inform our future? Between the rise of cryptocurrencies and the risks posed by central bank digital currencies, these questions have become more important than ever. The Cato Institute is therefore pleased to welcome both Lawrence White and Dror Goldberg to present their latest books, Better Money: Gold, Fiat, or Bitcoin? and Easy Money: American Puritans and the Invention of Modern Currency , respectively, which seek to answe...
May 11, 2023•1 hr 2 min
Does the future of environmental stewardship depend more on innovation or regulation? In Time to Think Small , Todd Myers argues that protecting the planet requires small, decentralized technologies, like smartphone apps, rather than sweeping top‐down government programs. The book explores how these brand‐new approaches are already helping to win some of the most important environmental struggles humanity faces, including fighting climate change, combating pollution in drinking water, protecti...
May 04, 2023•1 hr
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Apr 26, 2023•54 min
