Juneteenth, Busting Big Tech, Immigration And The Economy, Racial Bias In Home Approval.
Juneteenth got the official nod. Pieces from me on antitrust, immigration and the economy, a history of legal milestones affecting inequality in the U.S., and racial bias in the home approval process.
In this edition: Juneteenth gets the official nod. Pieces from me on antitrust, immigration’s affect on the economy, the history of legal milestones that fight inequality in the U.S., and a look at racial bias in the home approval process.
Happy Juneteenth, which as of yesterday officially became the newest federal holiday in America. Here’s an article with some brief background on the holiday from the Smithsonian, which describes it, affectingly, as the country’s “second independence day.”
The holiday traces back to the arrival of federal troops in Galveston, Texas, in 1865, to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. Two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, Texan slaves were freed. It started under the name “Jubilee Day,” which carries some Old Testament connotations.
In recognition of the day, I thought I’d skip the usual news roundup (I’ll get back to it next week). Enjoy the holiday.
Some new pieces from me:
Legal Milestones That Fight Inequality. A brief history of legal attempts to address inequality in the U.S. It was a lot of fun to work on, and enlightening for me.
Antitrust coverage, a new area for me. Straight-laced reporting, but Canadian news outlets have called on the prime minister to force revenue sharing negotiations between themselves and Google and Facebook. This would presumably be similar to Australia’s regulations, which the lawyer I spoke with criticizes for lacking the balls necessary to address the concentration of wealth and power that monopolistic practices create. As I discuss in the piece, the updates coincide with a sea-change in how we in the west think about antitrust, with “hipster antitrust,” which has a looser definition of what constitutes harm than the more traditional Borkian antitrust, becoming more prominent. It’s in a similar vein to another legal piece I wrote a couple months back about the need to loosen what qualifies as harm under the standing doctrine.
Bias in the home approval process. “Recent studies have suggested that while the most aggressive forms of home approval discrimination have declined or ceased, racial bias, particularly in the mortgage approval process, continues to entrench racial segregation and influence the racial wealth gap.”
How immigration affects the economy. A deep dive into the data.