In the News
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September 6, 2024
Silvia Pedraza, professor of sociology and American culture, says U.S. citizens are less willing to work in service, construction and agriculture — industries that employ significant populations of immigrants. “We don’t seem to recognize that we have a real need, a real lack of people in these sorts of jobs that are essential to the economy. … (Media coverage of the border) is such a negative portrayal that doesn’t see the value of what immigrants bring to a country,” she said.
Michigan Advance -
September 6, 2024
“If, at the moment, there’s a large line of aircraft waiting to depart, it may be worth waiting a few more minutes at the gate with your engines off than waiting on the taxiway with your engines up and running,” said Max Li, assistant professor of aerospace engineering, on small ways airlines can improve their carbon footprint.
Detroit Free Press -
September 6, 2024
“Deepfake-enabled disinformation has and will continue to spread during the election in ways we could not have imagined even a few years ago,” wrote Hafiz Malik, professor of electrical and computer engineering at UM-Dearborn. “Unfortunately, every entity in the U.S. with responsibility for combating deepfakes — from tech companies to regulators to policymakers — has been taking a band-aid approach to this significant and pernicious threat.”
The Hill -
September 5, 2024
Diverting certification authority to Georgia’s 159 counties, as the State Election Board is trying to do now, was a common tactic under Jim Crow laws, says Robert Mickey, professor of political science: “Decentralization — having to go one county at a time to desegregate schools, register voters — places a huge burden on pro-democratic forces.”
The New York Times -
September 5, 2024
Heightened prices are eroding consumers’ living standards, says Joanne Hsu, director of the Surveys of Consumers: “A lot of consumers, they’ll tell us that things are painful specifically because of continued high prices. I think that is understandable. There are a lot of things that remain quite expensive for consumers and are a higher proportion of their monthly budgets than they were before.”
USA Today -
September 5, 2024
“What I would hope is that it will go back to the good old days and have bipartisan technical corrections,” said Reuven Avi-Yonah, professor of law, about an oversight by Congress that left a hole in the 2017 tax law by writing mismatched effective dates for new tax rules — allowing big companies to save tens or hundreds of millions of dollars that otherwise would have gone to the government.
The Wall Street Journal -
September 4, 2024
“If all the storms were smushed together, averaged together for one season, and we looked at each season as time went on, that’s where we saw our statistically significant increasing trends in temperature and moisture,” said Abby Hutson, a researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, whose study shows that Great Lakes winters are trending warmer and the storm systems are wetter.
Michigan Public -
September 4, 2024
The value of the U.S. dollar has fallen about 5% over the last couple of months. “The main driver is the anticipation that the (Federal Reserve) is likely to cut interest rates in September. Labor markets in the United States seem to be cooling, and growth prospects are … ‘normalizing,'” said Kathryn Dominguez, professor of public policy and economics.
Marketplace -
September 4, 2024
“Cash transfers probably do less to improve people’s lives than the proponents of them thought they would. The flip side is they probably don’t have the harmful effects detractors were concerned about,” said Sarah Miller, associate professor of business economics and public policy, who found that unconditional cash payments to low-income Americans do not transform their net worth or their mental or physical health.
The New York Times -
September 3, 2024
“The same cybertools, spear-phishing emails, hacks of email accounts, dumping of some of the information that’s obtained in the hacks, that’s part of what Russia did in 2016, and it just seems like Iran has followed the same playbook for the most part,” said Javed Ali, associate professor of practice of public policy, on Iran’s recent cyberattacks against the Trump and Harris campaigns.
Marketplace
