Having lost the white working class decades ago, Democrats now see erosion in their support among Hispanic and even Black voters without college degrees. It’s a mortifying turn of events for a party that historically has defined its mission as standing up for working families.

It’s also the biggest threat to the party’s ability to enlarge its tenuous governing majority and prevent the Trump-mesmerized Republicans from taking power. If Democrats don’t find a way to do better among the two-thirds of registered voters who don’t graduate from college, even superhuman efforts to “mobilize the base” won’t save them.

Party pollsters spend millions trying to divine the mysteries of working-class alienation. But it’s not that complicated.    

Workers who live paycheck to paycheck don’t think the party establishment listens to them or sympathizes with their travails and aspirations. Instead, Democrats in Washington seem more attentive to the priorities of a rarified class of progressive activists, political operatives and interest groups, supported by like-minded donors, foundations, academics and media organs.

Today’s fixation on cancelling student debt is a classic example. Left-leaning activists are pressing hard for it, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) endorse it and President Biden says he’s looking into it.

Yet there’s no public groundswell for it — the issue doesn’t even register when voters are asked to name their top concerns. Only 13 percent of Americans have federal student debt. For highly educated urban professionals, debt relief may seem like an urgent imperative; from a blue-collar perspective, it looks like more self-dealing among the nation’s political elites.

The discussion of digital privacy is complicated precisely because it operates on three distinct but interrelated levels. First, privacy’s social and legal dimensions depend on whether individuals, corporations, or governments are assumed to hold primary rights to personal data collected about those individuals. In Europe, for example, the individual holds primary rights over their data, while in China, the state takes precedence.

The second level of the privacy discussion addresses data use and the technical protection and security of personal information to safeguard it from unwanted intrusion or theft while allowing individuals transparent access to their data. These complicated technical issues arise no matter privacy’s social and legal structure.

The third level of the privacy debate deals with the economics of PII. How does the chosen privacy model interact with innovation and growth? And how can it be assured that individuals get the appropriate benefits from their data?

This paper will lay out the privacy models of the United States, Europe, and China, with smaller sections on the United Kingdom, Canada, and India. For each area, we will discuss the social and legal structure, the technical design of security and transparency, and the economic implications of privacy and innovation. This paper sets out a framework for PPI’s ongoing privacy work. It lays the groundwork for future discussions of privacy legislation in the United States.