In the era of Uber and DoorDash, state governments are grappling with how to address the problems stemming from a growing independent or “gig” workforce.

In Utah, there are more than 80,000 self-employed and independent workers who may not have access to traditional work benefits. This arrangement reflects a relic of the past. Many decades ago, tax incentives were created to encourage our benefits to be tied to our jobs, and labor laws were created to restrict companies from providing benefits to nontraditional employees.

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Abstract

In the United States, once people have been convicted of a crime—or, in many cases, even arrested for a crime—those people are marked for life in a way that allows states to deny them the right to earn a living in the profession of their choosing. In this short brief, we discuss the US incarceration rate, the collateral consequences to economic freedom as a result of conviction and arrest, and potential avenues for reform.

Abstract

We propose bolstering the OPT program rather than undermining the United States’ edge in the global race for talent. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), within its statutory authority, should introduce the following reforms to the OPT program:

Increase eligible years of work for non–science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (non-STEM) graduates on OPT from one year to three years. Remove employer sponsorship requirements. Allow foreign graduates to work in industries unrelated to their field of study. Eliminate minimum-working-hour requirements for employment authorization. Streamline the I-765 issuance process to ensure that foreign graduates can obtain Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) within three months or less. Exempt OPT participants from the H-1B lottery process if they have acquired at least one year of work experience.

This brief will summarize extant evidence to support this proposal.

Abstract

The authors have developed an algorithm to quantify the number of statutes within the U.S. Code that create one or more federal crimes. As of 2019, we found 1,510 statutes that create at least one crime. This represents an increase of nearly 36 percent relative to the 1,111 statutes that created at least one crime in 1994. Although the algorithm cannot precisely count discrete crimes within sections, we estimate the number of crimes contained within the Code as of 2019 at 5,199. These findings support the conclusion that the number of federal crimes has increased, while also bolstering concerns that federal crimes are too diffuse, too numerous, and too vague for the average citizen to know what the law requires.