The US Department of Justice files a lawsuit against Google, and a post-election public policy prescription takes shape.

The United States Department of Justice joined 11 states in filing a lawsuit against Google this week. The charges state that the technology giant illegally used its market dominance to protect monopolies with its search engine.

The lawsuit targets Google’s ability to make certain that its Android operating system automatically uses a preloaded search application that is impossible to delete from mobile phones. Prosecutors also claim that Google illegally blocks competitors’ search apps from being loaded on many mobile devices. Google also pays mobile phone makers and carriers billions of dollars to load its search app as the preset default on devices.

The Google lawsuit reads a lot like the DOJ’s 1998 case against Microsoft. Back then, prosecutors alleged Microsoft illegally tied its browser - the Internet Explorer - to its dominant Windows operating system in an effort to shut out rivals like Netscape. The DOJ cites the Microsoft case on page 5 of the lawsuit as an example of the wrongdoing of Google.

Competition from powerful companies such as Amazon and Facebook as well as young companies like TikTok actually pose the biggest risk to Google’s fortunes. This antitrust challenge, while certainly not to be taken lightly, is less of a direct threat.

Two weeks out from a national election, the time has come to actually think beyond the choice of the American people on November 3rd to the actions of the leaders that will be elected or re-elected as the case may be.

Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute has led in the production of a new electronic book detailing several key policy areas that need attention no matter who occupies the White House or which political party controls Congress after the results are tabulated. At some point, Levin writes, something needs to be written that provides a blueprint as “an experiment in shooting straight in crooked times.”

Nicolas Eberstadt’s excellent chapter on the American economy reviews the actions of the US Department of the Treasury during the past year as it worked in coordination with the Federal Reserve. Trillions of dollars were directly injected into a depressed economy caused by the COVID economic shutdown. In his analysis, the America of the post-COVID pandemic must look quite different from the America before the coronavirus. Contrary to public opinion, his research shows the America prior to the pandemic wasn’t healthy and was headed for collapse

Eberstadt puts it bluntly: “America's engines of material advance and personal success are in serious need of repairs. Without those repairs, America's future will be increasingly compromised.”

He details a series of shocking statistics that impact not only the economy of the United States, but the overall culture of our nation that could produce such frightening results. Millions of Americans are dependent on welfare benefits, and those numbers are growing. The family is collapsing at a rate resulting in a growing number of children living without a mother and father. In fact, many school aged children of today are being raised by their grandparents. The 2019 work rate for prime-age American men mirrored the same level in 1940 just as the nation was coming out of the Great Depression. The real net worth for the bottom half of households was lower before the pandemic than when the Berlin Wall fell 30 years earlier.

These issues must be resolved through serious policy proposals that can be advanced through a tough political process, but advance they must or the American economy will slowly collapse – unable to rise again.

The article is destined to become an American classic and is worth your time. Read it at priorities.aei.org.