The Delta Project
-
The Privacy Concerns of Contact Tracing
•
Social distancing. What about digital distancing? How private are digital handshakes? The spread of coronavirus has prompted government officials across the world to use technology to monitor infected individuals’ contacts. The result: digital contact tracing using a smartphone app. The costs: privacy, identity, and possibly more. Nations throughout the world…
-
Abolish Single-Family Zoning
•
In the United States and abroad, housing crises abound; from San Francisco to Auckland, New Zealand, shortages of affordable housing options are common. One cause of such shortages is zoning laws, which in the United States have been around for decade and, at first glance, are sensible. There should be…
-
The Uncertain Economy
•
These are highly uncertain times. In a matter of weeks, the longest economic expansion in U.S. history has become the sharpest recession on record with the first true pandemic recession. Mass death, record declines in GDP, and job losses are foregrounded against the confusing backdrop of a messy presidential election…
-
Record Unemployment is a Policy Choice
•
Europe and the United States are pursuing vastly different strategies in response to the economic crisis caused by Covid-19. Structural differences between the US and EU member states’ welfare systems have informed the divergence in government intervention. Throughout most of Europe, central governments are propping up companies by covering their…
-
Pandemic Misinformation Spreads Fast. Can Machine Learning Help?
•
As information on the COVID-19 pandemic spreads at a rate rivaling that of the virus itself, separating trustworthy information from sensational and false news is paramount. While the pandemic illuminates the dangers of misleading health stories, researchers have been investigating methods to detect misinformation long before the outbreak. They hope…
-
Minimum Wage in a Pandemic, in 4 Graphs
•
As the economy free falls into a sharp recession [1], many low-income workers have been deemed “essential” during the pandemic [2], which effectively obligates work—notably without any additional federally mandated hazard pay [3]. This basic contrast, along with conversations regarding the presumed distortions of unemployment benefits [4], has dominated much…
-
State Regulatory Mechanisms for Increasing Renewable Energy Usage
•
It is no secret that the United States is a major producer of carbon emissions and that policies to curb the emissions of one of the biggest offenders, electricity generation, have not been successful at significantly reducing carbon emissions. However, the physical and regulatory world of energy generation and distribution…
-
A Call to Simplify and Broaden Expungement Laws
•
Formerly incarcerated individuals are often released only to find social and economic barriers harsher than the penalty itself. The internet age makes this problem even worse given the ease of accessing criminal records. Recognizing these barriers, most jurisdictions have enacted laws that permit individuals who show good behavior to obtain…