J. Scott Applewhite/AP

The Supreme Court is seen at dusk in Washington, Oct. 22, 2021. The justices heard arguments on Nov. 1 over whether to allow a Texas law that bans most abortions, which is currently in effect, to be blocked while legal challenges continue.

In a marathon three hours of oral arguments today, the United States Supreme Court continued its rapid handling of a controversial Texas law that effectively outlaws abortion in the state.

The constitutional right to abortion is not at issue, but two cases brought in front of the court at breakneck speed still raise significant questions about the judicial review process and the constitutional doctrine of federal law’s supremacy over state legislation. More broadly, the cases represent another move from the justices toward increased transparency, on the heels of widespread criticism earlier this fall for their handling of the same Texas law on the court’s so-called “shadow docket.”

Two months ago, the court declined to block the Texas law known as Senate Bill 8 (SB8) from going into effect pending court review in an unsigned, one-and-a-half page order issued late at night. While it was all standard practice for a case on the court’s “shadow docket” – those cases, often emergency requests, the court hears without full briefing or argument – it prompted widespread criticism, including from Justice Elena Kagan in dissent, of the court’s increasing use of the shadow docket to decide significant issues outside of public view.

Today, the court did the opposite. Just 10 days after agreeing to hear the case – the fastest the court has moved from granting a petition to hearing it argued since 2000, court watchers say – the public was able to hear the justices interrogate lawyers over SB8 and some weighty questions related to it.

The justices “didn’t see it as a very urgent question” in September, says Mary Ziegler, a professor at Florida State University College of Law. But over the course of two months, SB8 has moved from the shadow docket to not just the court’s merits docket, but its “rocket docket.”

“It’s hard to read this as not in some ways being responsive to public outcry,” she says. “Taking SB8 seriously is at least an effort to change the narrative and change peoples’ perceptions of the court.”

Tough questions

SB8 bans women in Texas from getting an abortion after six weeks, before most women know they’re pregnant. Over a dozen states have passed similar laws, but all were blocked by federal courts. The Texas law is unique in the sense that it delegates enforcement of the law to the public via a “bounty” scheme, which has served to insulate the law from the kind of preemptive judicial review that has blocked other strict abortion regulations.

The two cases the court heard today address both that question – whether a state can insulate a law from federal court review through a public “bounty” system – and another: whether the federal government can sue to block SB8 from being enforced.

Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Pro-choice and anti-abortion activists rally outside the Supreme Court, Nov. 1, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington.

If the justices allow SB8 to stand, “we can assume that this would be across the board equally applicable ... to all constitutional rights?” asked Justice Brett Kavanaugh. “Second Amendment rights, free exercise religion rights, free speech rights could be targeted by other states?”

Yes, but individual parties could appeal to Congress to pass laws protecting those rights, replied Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone. This prompted Justice Kagan to jump in.

“Isn’t the point of a right that you don’t have to ask Congress?” she asked. “Isn’t the point of a right that it doesn’t really matter what Congress thinks, or what the majority of the American people think as to that right?”

Similarly, allowing the Justice Department to sue Texas could open the door to the federal government aggressively litigating to block state laws it doesn’t like.

“You say this case is very narrow, it’s rare, it’s particularly problematic. But the authority you assert to respond to it is as broad as can be,” Chief Justice John Roberts told Elizabeth Prelogar, the U.S. solicitor general. “What is the limiting principle?” he asked. “What are we going to be able to point to [in the future] that says no you can’t invoke that broad equity power?”

The justices also wrestled with the two cases in harmony, and questions of how a decision in one case could affect another.

If the court allows the SB8 model to stand, said Solicitor General Prelogar, then Texas “can nullify this court’s precedents.”

“Then no constitutional right is safe,” she added. And “the United States has a special interest to intervene to protect the supremacy of federal law.”

In that context, Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, is pleased the court is handling them on its merits docket, in full public view. “There is a downside to speed,” he says. But “it’s good that they’re capable of doing this.”

“It’s preferable to issuing an order at 8 o’clock on a Thursday, without oral argument, and giving us a paragraph” opinion, he adds.

More clarity from the court

The high court has made other changes in recent months that should improve transparency.

After broadcasting live audio of telephonic oral arguments during the pandemic last term, in-person arguments are still being broadcast live.

The court has also changed the format of oral arguments, allowing each justice to ask specific questions in order of seniority after a period of traditional free-for-all questioning. While questions can’t be considered a predictor of how justices will rule, the change is partially intended to make it easier for female justices in particular to make their voices heard, after studies showed they were interrupted more than their male colleagues.

Professor Adler notes that not “every idea that has been proposed under the guise of transparency is a good one.” Publicizing every justice’s vote on every preliminary or emergency order, for example, risks causing them to “lock in” that vote despite what they may hear as a case progresses.

And there can be drawbacks to the court moving at the speed it’s moved with the SB8 cases.

Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

An anti-abortion protestor holds a sign outside the United States Supreme Court in Washington, November 1, 2021.

The 1942 case Ex parte Quirin, decided the day after it was argued in July 1942, saw the court rule that German saboteurs caught in the U.S. were unlawful enemy combatants who could be tried by military commissions. The ruling has since been used to justify trying Guantanamo Bay detainees in the same way.

Bush v. Gore – taken up and decided by the court over a four-day span in December 2000 – resulted in an unsigned ruling based on a controversial equal protection rationale. Justice Antonin Scalia (who joined the majority) later disparaged the equal protection reasoning, according to a 2019 biography of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. And while some federal judges don’t consider it precedent, it has continued to influence election law.

There aren’t signs the court will want to resolve these cases with such speed – both Quirin and Bush v. Gore involved issues of national import that arguably demanded quicker resolution than SB8 does. That said, the expedited review the court has given in the SB8 cases “might be a good model” to follow in select situations, says Lawrence Baum, a political science professor at Ohio State University and author of “Ideology in the Supreme Court.”

“If they feel there’s a need to give a closer look, and a more public look, to the kinds of preliminary [cases] that are highly consequential,” it will be “an option they have to consider,” he adds. “Though I doubt the justices will want to do it all the time.”

Meanwhile, the court continues to load its docket this term with high-profile cases. In two days, it will hear a major gun rights case; next month it will hear cases on abortion and public funding for religious schools; next year it will hear a case on carbon emission regulations. Most experts expect that by the end of the term the law will be further, perhaps much further, to the right than it is right now. With public approval of the court also at historic lows in recent months, the court may feel pressure to be more public with its deliberations.

Today’s arguments can, in the circumstances, be marked as a win for transparency advocates. It remains to be seen, in what will be a blockbuster term, how transparent the court will want to be.

“I’m reading [the SB8 arguments] as a big shore-up of the legitimacy of the court, while still moving [the law] in a conservative direction,” says Professor Ziegler.

“One of the big questions going forward is if it can thread that needle,” she adds. “We might be at a kind of inflection point where the court has to decide how important transparency is to it.”

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin speaks to a crowd at Burke Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department, Oct. 19, 2021. The rally was one of Mr. Youngkin's many aimed directly at parents ahead of the Nov. 2 election.

Lisa Andrews can recite verbatim the now-infamous debate remark made by Democrat and former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe. And it’s why she’s out so late on a school night. 

“‘I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,’” quotes the Fairfax mother, at an event for GOP candidate Glenn Youngkin with her young sons Austin and Aidan. 

She’s not the only mother who was angered by Mr. McAuliffe’s statement, made in response to a question about a bill he vetoed as governor. Known as the “Beloved bill,” it would have allowed parents to opt their children out of sexually explicit reading assignments, such as the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic by Toni Morrison. Despite Mr. McAuliffe’s claim that his remark was taken out of context, it has come to define the final stretch of this campaign – adding gasoline to an already blazing fire in the commonwealth over education.

Education is always an issue in governors’ races. And typically, it favors Democrats. But Virginia, like many states, is coming off a pandemic year marked by contentious, and in some cases even violent, school board meetings, in which parents became increasingly frustrated about school closures that many blamed on teachers unions and their Democratic allies.

While all of Virginia’s 132 school districts are back to full-time, in-person learning, tensions have continued to simmer over issues like vaccine requirements and mask mandates. Additionally, many parents, particularly in the critical Northern Virginia suburbs, have taken issue with what they see as radical curriculum changes around race and identity, and a relaxing of standards in the name of equity.

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Fairfax mother Lisa Andrews, with sons Austin (left) and Aidan, says she typically doesn't pay attention to politics. But after all the problems relating to education over the past year, she's become invested in the Virginia governor's race, attending a rally for GOP candidate Glenn Youngkin in Burke, Oct. 19, 2021.

Mr. Youngkin, a former private equity CEO and first-time politician, has made education a core focus of his campaign. He’s held a series of “Parents Matter” rallies across the state, promising to “restore Virginia’s academic excellence” and ban “critical race theory” in schools. His campaign has been blanketing the airwaves with ads on education, including one in which he promises to increase the education budget and teacher pay. 

It appears to be working. In a state Joe Biden won just one year ago by 10 percentage points, polls now suggest a highly competitive race – with Mr. McAuliffe losing significant ground in recent weeks, including a double-digit drop among women. 

If Mr. Youngkin wins tomorrow, Republicans will almost certainly see this race as a playbook for the 2022 midterm elections: a template for how to win back moderate suburbanites who had shifted away from the party under former President Donald Trump. 

More broadly, the battle over education in Virginia points to a core question emerging in many states and localities: Just how much input should parents have into their children’s government-funded education? After watching school unfold in real time over Zoom last year, many parents found they didn’t always agree with what they were seeing – galvanizing previously non-voting mothers like Ms. Andrews to get more involved. 

“Everything going on with the schools is making me zone in on this race,” says Ms. Andrews. “To moms, your children’s education is the most important thing.” 

School board moms

Like “soccer moms” of the 1990s, or “security moms” of the 2000s, this year’s “school board moms” have already been dubbed a pivotal swing vote. 

“These are independent women who live in the suburbs and are concerned about what’s going on in their kids’ schools,” says Jennifer Lawless, an expert on women and politics at the University of Virginia. “They were the ones responsible for providing homeschooling for a year, they are implementing COVID protocols in their home, and in many places, they believe they know better than the government what their kids should be learning.”

College-educated women, many of them suburban mothers, moved markedly away from the Republican Party over the past five years, largely because of their distaste for former President Trump. The trend was especially pronounced in Virginia, where current Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam won by 9 percentage points in 2017, thanks to strong support in the affluent Northern Virginia suburbs.  

But Mr. Trump is no longer center stage. And those suburban voters who shifted to the Democrats are hardly a sure thing for the party going forward, says Patrick Murray, director of Monmouth University Polling Institute. “Because they haven’t been voting Democratic for all that long, you can still move them.” 

Historically, Virginia’s governor’s race – which occurs every four years between presidential and congressional midterm elections – has often swung against the party that holds the White House. Mr. McAuliffe’s election in 2013, following President Barack Obama’s reelection to a second term, was an aberration in that regard.

To be sure, most voters choose their candidate based purely on party identification. And given President Biden’s easy victory last year, and Virginia’s increasingly blue hue in recent election cycles, Professor Lawless says she remains a “little bit skeptical” about the possibility of a Youngkin victory, despite his apparent momentum in the polls. 

Still, the Republicans’ focus on education has been smart, she adds. The underlying point Mr. Youngkin is making fits with the larger Republican message that parents, not the government, should have the ultimate say in decisions that impact their families’ lives. 

A Washington Post-Schar School poll released late last week found Mr. McAuliffe leading among likely voters by a single point, with education now ranking among voters’ top three concerns. Likewise, a Monmouth University poll from late October not only had Mr. McAuliffe and Mr. Youngkin tied among registered voters, but found education and schools had replaced COVID-19 as voters’ second most important issue behind the economy – with Mr. Youngkin trusted slightly more to handle it. Notably, Mr. McAuliffe’s 14-point lead with female voters in September had shrunk to just four points, with Mr. McAuliffe’s lead on the issue of education specifically shrinking 10 points among women. 

Steve Helber/AP

Democratic gubernatorial candidate and former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe reacts to the crowd at a rally in Richmond, Oct. 31, 2021.

The Trump factor

At a rally for Mr. McAuliffe in Arlington, supporters of the former Democratic National Committee chair and longtime Clinton confidante list a host of other concerns – such as abortion and the pandemic – influencing their decision.

“If Youngkin gets in, I’m fearful that Virginia could go the way of Texas on abortion or Florida on COVID,” says Erica Clayton, who’s waiting to enter the rally with her two children. 

“I have two daughters, so it’s important to me that they have the same choices that my generation was afforded [on abortion], if not more,” says Ryann Morales, a midwife from Alexandria who is also attending the event with her children. 

For many, the possibility of another presidential run by Mr. Trump also remains a singular reason to vote Democratic.

“I just don’t want Trump to gain any traction anywhere,” says Rebecca Henry, a mother from Springfield. “He needs to continue to lose everywhere.” 

Mr. McAuliffe has tried hard to tie Mr. Youngkin to the former president, telling supporters over the weekend: “Trump wants to win here so he can announce for president for 2024.” Mr. Trump himself seemed to echo that point on Monday, issuing a statement refuting reports that he and Mr. Youngkin were “at odds,” and insisting “we get along well together and strongly believe in many of the same policies.”

The McAuliffe campaign has also belatedly tried to turn the education issue back to its advantage. At a rally last week with President Biden, copies of “Beloved” were distributed to some members of the press with warnings about a governor who was willing to ban books. And a slate of Democratic surrogates repeatedly emphasized Mr. McAuliffe’s educational achievements during his term in office.

But it might be too little too late.

Some of Mr. Youngkin’s success thus far may be specific to him. The former Carlyle Group executive has tried to walk a fine line in his efforts to appeal to both pro-Trump conservatives and anti-Trump moderates – a task that has stymied many other GOP candidates. He has accepted the former president’s endorsement, but has also mostly held him at arm’s length, never campaigning in person with him. Last month, after Trump supporters at a “Take Back Virginia” rally pledged allegiance to a flag supposedly carried at the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Mr. Youngkin – who did not attend the event – issued a statement calling it “weird and wrong.” 

Many GOP strategists see Mr. Youngkin as mapping out a path for Republicans to ride the education culture wars all the way back to control of the U.S. House and Senate, and possibly even the White House. If the party can win back a portion of the suburban vote it lost during the Trump years, while retaining or even growing its hold on working-class voters, it would make for a powerful electoral coalition. 

“This is basically the crucible for what is going to come in 2022,” says John Fredericks, chairman of Mr. Trump’s Virginia campaign in 2016 and 2020. “It’s going to drive Republican [turnout] through the roof.”

Waiting for Mr. Youngkin’s event to begin at the Burke Fire and Rescue Department, Heather Metz and Anne Taydus describe Mr. McAuliffe’s debate comment as a Freudian slip: an insight into how Democrats really feel about parents.

“It’s like, ‘Terry, are you their father?’” says Ms. Taydus sarcastically. She gestures to Ms. Metz and the other women around her. “He poked mama bear. That’s a mistake.”

Liu Rui, a university student in Tonghua, a city in Jilin province, felt anxious. A sudden, widespread power outage across northeastern China had left her family without electricity to cook or heat water, and her laptop’s battery was running out before an online class.

“I was always worried the internet would suddenly disconnect during class,” says Ms. Liu by email, using a pseudonym to protect her privacy. She describes her neighborhood’s darkened streets and shops, and feeling like a thief going through a dimmed supermarket looking for frozen steamed buns – only to find no buns and the freezer shut off.

Thousands of miles south in China’s Guangdong province, factory owner Zhang Hong faced a similar dilemma. Her printed circuit-board factory, part of China’s vast ecosystem of electronics manufacturing, had been ordered in late September to shut down for four days a week, hurting output and workers’ income. “Government staff will notify us whether work can start the next day,” she says, speaking on condition her real name be withheld.  

Across China, the worst power shortages in a decade have in recent months led to electricity rationing in most provinces – disrupting daily life and factory output, dampening the economy, and exacerbating supply chain disruptions around the world. The shortages arose when soaring domestic demand for coal ran up against government controls on electricity prices and usage, and on coal imports.

To boost power output, Beijing has responded with a major push to increase coal production and power generation, as well as with a significant easing of controls on electricity prices. But as world leaders meet at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, to try to tackle greenhouse gas emissions that have already raised average global temperatures by over a degree Celsius from preindustrial levels, all eyes are on China, the world’s largest polluter and second-largest economy.  

With 1.4 billion people and a growing economy dominated by energy-intensive heavy industry, China is indispensable to any collective action on global warming. But this summer’s energy crunch has highlighted the scale of the challenge in breaking its reliance on coal and other fossil fuels.

China has pledged that its emissions will peak by about 2030, and it will reach carbon neutrality by 2060. But details of exactly when and at what level emissions will peak are lacking. And a statement by Premier Li Keqiang last month led some analysts to wonder whether the current power crisis was leading Beijing to rethink the timeline.

China must “take into account the recent situation of dealing with the contradiction between the supply and demand of electricity and coal ... and put forward the timetable and road map of the steps to reach the peak of carbon,” Mr. Li said, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

Chinatopix/AP

Steam billows from cooling towers at a coal-fired power station in Nanjing in eastern China's Jiangsu province on Sept. 27, 2021. Much of the world has been facing an energy crunch, and in China that has meant power outages for both citizens and factories, affecting global supply chains.

A dependence on coal power 

So far, energy experts say the power shortages appear to be propelling changes that could both hurt and benefit China’s carbon emission reduction efforts.

“There are ... voices and interests in China that are trying to use this crisis to attack China’s climate targets and ambitions, and to emphasize how important it is to increase supply of fossil fuels,” says Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, an independent research group in Helsinki.

Meanwhile, “some of the measures taken already also benefit clean energy – for example, the measures that create incentives for businesses to produce green electricity,” he says. “It’s too early to say which of these responses will win out.”

China’s power shortages underscore its dependence on coal, which supplies around 60% of its energy needs, even as renewable and nuclear energy capacity grows much faster. The country is home to nearly half of the world’s coal-fired power plants.

The main source of China’s current power crisis, experts say, is a mismatch between demand and supply. Demand for coal has surged, especially in construction and heavy industry, during an economic recovery from the 2020 pandemic slowdown. This in turn pushed up the market price of coal. Meanwhile, because government caps on electricity prices made it unprofitable for power generators to operate, many closed down.

“Coal is now expensive and ... generators are unable to recoup their costs,” says David Fishman, a manager at The Lantau Group, an energy consultancy. “So they stopped generating. They stopped producing power,” he says. “Most everywhere [in China] is affected.”

Some provinces also rationed power supplies in order to meet annual controls set by Beijing on their energy consumption and efficiency – known as the “dual control” mechanism. Adverse weather also caused drops in output of hydropower and wind power in southwest and northeast China, respectively. Finally, China has stopped buying Australian coal after its government last year called for an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

Power rationing continues to hobble many manufacturers. In Guangdong, for example, Ms. Zhang’s circuit board factory has cut production and wages by a third. The factory is allowed to operate at night when power consumption is lower, but her 70-odd workers are reluctant to take night shifts, she says. “My biggest concern is the duration of the power rationing,” she says, adding that she hopes it will be temporary.

Guangdong is China’s biggest manufacturing hub, and stoppages at thousands of factories like Ms. Zhang’s are worsening supply chain bottlenecks for finished goods using electronics – from cars and toys to computers and household appliances.

Dual controls on energy

Beijing’s response to the energy crisis could offer clues to the country’s long-term goal of reducing carbon emissions, experts say.

To boost power generation ahead of winter, China has ordered the reopening of some closed coal mines and power plants, while delaying taxes for the power industry. It has also signaled an easing of the dual controls on energy use and energy efficiency, and warned localities against suspending production or limiting carbon emissions in a “disorderly” way. That is likely to send Chinese emissions spiking in the short term, just as the world grapples with the dilemma of how to cut more quickly by 2030 so as to avert the severest effects of climate change.

But it’s not all downside: Beijing has also ordered price reforms in a market liberalization that could make renewable energy alternatives more attractive compared with coal. Last month, Beijing allowed electricity prices from coal-fired power plants to rise as much as 20% for industrial and commercial users, and removed the price cap completely for energy-intensive industries. More expensive coal-produced electricity could prove a boost for competing sources of clean power.

“Stripping away coal’s protections and forcing it to compete in a market against other types of power – which are at the moment cheaper than coal – is not good for coal,” says Mr. Fishman. “It’s good for your low-carbon generation sources.”

Beijing has also called for the construction of more large-scale wind power and solar power generation projects to raise their capacity to a total of 1,200 gigawatts by 2030. In September, President Xi Jinping told the U.N. General Assembly that China would finance more low-carbon energy projects overseas, while ending its funding for coal power plants.     

Yet ultimately, experts say, only when China announces a more detailed plan for reaching peak carbon emissions before 2030 will the impact of the current power crisis on the country’s willingness to reduce its dependence on coal become clearer.

“There is still quite a lot of wiggle room ... in China’s commitment for the next couple of decades,” says Mr. Myllyvirta. “The specific emissions pathway that China follows ... is incredibly important.”

Stoyan Nenov/Reuters/File

Employees of CCP Games work in Reykjavík in 2013. In Iceland, research begun in 2015 on a shorter workweek at the same pay resulted in more job satisfaction with no loss of productivity.

The 40-hour workweek has long been the standard, but a growing chorus is calling for change.

Scotland announced a trial four-day workweek in September, following Spain this past spring. Experiments in Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand, and Japan have added momentum to the debate. Legislation for a 32-hour week was introduced in the U.S. Congress in August, though the bill has made little headway.

Arguments for a shorter workweek range from a healthier workforce and more time for family, community, and creativity to gender equality and a reduced carbon footprint.

At a time when record-breaking numbers of Americans are quitting jobs – 4.3 million in August alone – the push to shorten hours reflects a mounting desire for a more fulfilling work model. Experts say the idea is neither new nor radical.

What is driving this movement? 

Within the Western tradition, work has rarely been understood as an end unto itself, but rather as a means for human liberation, says historian Benjamin Hunnicutt.

“‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ – the pursuit of happiness has behind it that concept of a life beyond necessity,” says Professor Hunnicutt about what he calls the forgotten American dream of “higher progress.”

“Freedom, not just political, not just economic, but human freedom, where we’re able to do more of those things that are valuable in and of themselves.”

In the West, labor movements and technological progress cut average hours in half between the mid-1800s and World War II. Since then, the expansion of free time has slowed, despite John Maynard Keynes’ idea of a 15-hour week in 1930 and Richard Nixon’s four-day week prediction in 1956.

As religion declined in societal importance, work became for many a source of meaning, identity, and community. But now, the pandemic has opened the door to new conversations about work's role in life. As legions of Americans actively search for new jobs as part of a “Great Reassessment,” expectations seem to be shifting.

“The broader issue is a change in aspirations,” says Professor Hunnicutt. “There may be a change in values that implies a reevaluation of free time, of leisure, and a new understanding of how work-life balance could be maintained, with more and more of life focused outside of work.”

What have we learned so far?

Andrew Barnes tested a four-day workweek at his New Zealand company, Perpetual Guardian, after reading that cognitive productivity is limited to a few hours a day. Productivity increased, sick days fell by half, and employees reported greater balance and satisfaction.

“We are now in the information age ... , where thinking about a problem is part and parcel of the work,” says Mr. Barnes, noting that the five-day week was designed for repetitive manufacturing work. “What we need today is empathy, creativity, time to engage with all of the noise. What we’re actually doing here is we are giving people more time to decompress, and then those creative juices are enhanced and improved.”

He co-founded 4 Day Week Global in 2018 to help other companies – and now countries – reduce hours without cutting pay. New York-based Kickstarter announced it will join the initiative come 2022.

Most companies that have followed the model have seen productivity grow between 20% and 50%, says Mr. Barnes.

It remains to be seen if a shift toward shorter hours will pay for itself in higher productivity across the board; and not all trials have been adopted. In Sweden, a six-hour day experiment among nurses from 2015 to 2016 was deemed too expensive to continue, although it created jobs, lowered sick pay, and relieved stress.

For many, the advantages are worth it. Katie Sung negotiated a three-day week at her company in Boston after her first son was born. She earns 60% of a full salary but would “celebrate” a fully paid shorter week.

“You can give 110% during the hours you’re focused on work and 110% to your family or the other activities that are important to you,” she says. “Even if there is a trade-off, if productivity dips a bit, employees are healthier overall as humans. And that is ultimately good for your business, hopefully.”

Where is the idea going? 

Jumping to four days is trickier in industries where there isn’t as much room for productivity gains, says Anthony Veal from the University of Technology Sydney Business School. And the transition may prove challenging for hourly wage and gig workers.

Nevertheless, some experts say gradually reducing the workweek could contribute to an economy where growth and productivity take a subordinate role to values like balance and sustainability.

“People may become less attached to carbon-intensive consumption and more attached to relationships, pastimes, and places that absorb less money and more time,” write the authors of an oft-cited 2010 New Economics Foundation study recommending a 21-hour workweek.

Ultimately, as Keynes wrote in 1930, the more difficult question may be the shape progress takes once material needs are met.

“For the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem – how to use his freedom.”

“All right Mrs. Conrad, it’s 9 o’clock,” yells Terrence Conrad to his wife as he closes the display cooler, stocked full of fish for the day. He walks to the front door, turns the key in the lock, and the bustle begins. 

The phone rings. The door buzzes again and again as customers wander into the packed emporium, where produce and old-fashioned candy line the shelves, and oil funnels, paintbrushes, and children’s toys hang from ceiling hooks.

One young woman walks through the maze of merchandise to the counter and introduces herself: “I’m the Humphreys’ granddaughter,” she says. 

At another store, introducing yourself to the cashier is likely to generate a blank and confused stare, but the Conrads react like they’ve run into an old friend. “Oh, the firefighter!” Mrs. Conrad exclaims. “You look just like your grandfather,” adds Mr. Conrad. 

They wrap up her fish, and slipping a note with it over the counter, Mrs. Conrad says: “To give to Grandma. Tell her we miss her.”

Bond Avenue Fish and Poultry is a powerful magnet of commerce and community. The store evokes memories of the mid-20th-century golden years when East St. Louis was a thriving transportation and industrial hub. Now gutted by deindustrialization and white and Black flight, the city is a largely empty, boarded-up landscape.

The Conrads’ busy, bright-blue corner store stands out from surrounding vacant lots. It is full of life – yelled greetings, laughter, conversation – and food that residents would have to drive miles to find elsewhere.

The couple have held to their deep roots here, staying for the very reasons others left. They see great need and provide not just essential food and household items, but a place to connect, build trust, and see good. 

“We’re needed here,” says Mr. Conrad, who gave up his full-time job as a regional planner in Pittsburgh in 1977 to help his father run the store his grandfather started. “[Around here] you won’t find any fresh food. You won’t find any fresh seafood. We try to stay in this area to meet the needs of the people that are here.”

Tara Adhikari/The Christian Science Monitor

Longtime customers say Terrence and Robin Conrad’s grocery business holds one East St. Louis neighborhood together.

An oasis in a food desert

Mr. Conrad’s grandfather, Rollie Conrad, left his work in the fields of rural Mississippi in the early 20th-century Great Migration of Black Americans escaping the racial oppression of the South for economic opportunity in the North. Working for an East St. Louis German Jewish grocer, the elder Conrad hatched the idea of going into business for himself and rented a Bond Avenue storefront in 1945. But white vendors wouldn’t sell goods to a Black businessperson, so his former employer suggested Rollie simply say he was still buying for the German man – a workaround he had to continue for several years. In 1954, at the population peak here of 82,000, Rollie built the store that still stands.

But factories closed in the 1960s, says Andrew Theising, a professor of political science at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and “by 1970, East St. Louis has skyrocketing unemployment, it has poverty, and there are even stories of children suffering from starvation.”  

Today, East St. Louis has a population of less than 27,000. In 2019, it had a violent crime rate three times the national average. A third of the population lives below the federal poverty line. And hunger persists. According to the USDA Food Access Research Atlas, East St. Louis is a food desert – a significant share of residents are low income and live more than a mile from a supermarket. A 2017 survey conducted by Make Health Happen and the University of Illinois Extension program found that the average distance to a liquor store from public housing in East St. Louis was less than half a mile; the average distance to a grocery store was 2.96 miles.  

The Conrads are working to change those numbers. In 2015, they expanded their staple offerings beyond fish and deli meat to produce – apples, oranges, bananas, cucumbers, lettuce – sourced from local farmers. 

Most of those who buy produce from the Conrads walk from nearby public housing projects and a senior center. While produce doesn’t always sell out – Mr. Conrad estimates that they only sell 60% to 70% – it’s an option those who rely on it wouldn’t have otherwise. To make up for the loss on produce that goes bad, the Conrads sell at a 15% markup, which allows them to break even. If they can give away the produce for free before it spoils, they do.

“They do what seems like small things, but they really are big things,” says Amy Funk, a University of Illinois Extension Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program educator. “That little store symbolizes a solution that we want to see duplicated throughout East St. Louis and other communities that are experiencing similar issues.”

A different business model

Adding fresh produce to inventory was a natural evolution of the Conrads’ philosophy: See a need and meet it. For them, it’s not just about resolving issues of food access. It’s about a more holistic solution that addresses both material and spiritual needs.

“When our customers come, they come for natural food. [But] we feed them ...
spiritual food,” says Mr. Conrad. “You can just talk to someone. Give them some godly counsel. Anything that’s in the Bible you can say in your own words, but they’re still godly principles.”

And talk they do. Coming into Bond Avenue Fish and Poultry isn’t meant to be an expeditious experience. Even as customers line up, Mr. and Mrs. Conrad focus completely on the person in front of them. They ask about the mother in the hospital, the son who just left for college. 

No one gets annoyed. No one gets impatient.  

“Things are tough for people. They really are. And you never know who you’re entertaining; ... you don’t know what people are going through when they come through the door,” says Mrs. Conrad. “[A] kind word will always do good.”

It’s a different business model. Their son Jabari calls it Christian capitalism: “Even though you have to turn a profit ... there are still ways to contribute to the community.” 

Staying rooted

For many East St. Louisans, the store symbolizes the larger good in the community not often highlighted. 

“I’ve grown up in East St. Louis all my life. I’ve never been robbed. My house has never been broken into. Nothing has ever been taken from me on the street. I feel free to walk the streets anytime I want,” says Gary Gaston, the pastor of the church that sits just across the corner from Bond Avenue Fish and Poultry. 

“We have a lot of good in our city,” he adds. This store “is proof of the type of community within a community that exists within the city of East St. Louis: individuals that are ... trying to ensure that the city maintains vital services.”

It also pulls people raised here back to their roots from surrounding suburbs.  

“[The Conrads] are like family,” says local resident Sandy Johnson, adding to her order from a bank of jars of Big Bol Candy Bubble Gum and Mary Jane bars.  

“It’s a neighborhood store that you can depend on. ... Rain, sleet, or snow, they’re going to be here and always with a smile,” says Douglas Borders, who grew up a quarter mile away.

AP

German Chancellor Angela Merkel listens during the opening ceremony of the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit, in Glasgow, Scotland, Nov. 1.

At what may have been her last appearance on the world stage, Angela Merkel, Germany’s departing leader, spoke Monday at the opening of the United Nations conference on climate change. She knows the topic well. At the first climate conference in 1995, she was a young politician serving as environment minister and head of the meeting in Berlin.

Yet in her final interviews with journalists after 16 years as chancellor, Ms. Merkel isn’t worried most about climate change. Rather she advises people to remember the historical reasons for the multilateral institutions set up in the 20th century, such as the European Union, and not succumb to the “false temptation of acting in a purely national way.”

“We have to remind ourselves that the multilateral world order was created as a lesson from the Second World War” with its roots in supernationalism, she told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

In other words, solving cross-border problems such as global warming, mass migration, and illegal flows of money requires each country to balance domestic politics with a greater view of humanity.

“I have resolutely advocated multilateralism, for well-functioning international organizations, time and again for the search for common solutions instead of national solo efforts,” she told Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Europe’s grand experiment at economic and political union has been her main concern as the Continent’s de facto leader. She has had to work hard to keep the EU intact during Britain’s exit as a member and a resurgence of anti-EU nationalism in Poland and Hungary.

“After the great joy of the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Europe, we have to take care now not to enter a historical phase in which important lessons from history fade away,” she says.

As a club of 27 nations, the EU offered a bold step in July to curb a tendency by many nations to keep emitting carbon. It announced plans for a tax by 2023 on imported goods based on the carbon emissions incurred in their production. It remains to be seen whether the EU, as a large regional economy, has the clout to shape international energy behavior with such a levy.

The bigger point of the plan is that countries must give up some narrow interests for a global cause. Ms. Merkel has fought that battle over nationalism within the EU. At the 197-nation climate meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, she again tried to elevate the discussion. Her parting advice: Recall history’s lessons that nationalism cannot come at a cost to humanity at large.