Affordability continues to dominate the concerns of American families, and for good reason. As prices remain elevated, energy costs are squeezing household budgets, housing has become increasingly out of reach, and the value of every dollar continues to erode. But these problems didn’t appear out of nowhere; much of today’s affordability crisis is the result of years of bad policy.

In this episode of This Week’s Economy, we’ll examine why inflation remains a persistent burden, how housing shortages and overregulation continue driving up living costs, why tax and spending reforms matter for long-run affordability, and what the future of the Federal Reserve under Kevin Warsh could mean for restoring sound money and economic discipline.

Watch the full episode on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, and visit my website for more information about my work at Ginn Economic Consulting at vanceginn.com and show notes at vanceginn.substack.com.

This debate matters far beyond one meeting, one speech, or one political label.

The American political right is in the middle of an identity crisis. Many conservatives correctly see that progressive economics has failed. But too many are tempted to respond with a conservative version of the same mistake: more tariffs, more subsidies, more mandates, more industrial policy, more executive power, and more government management of private life.

That is not conservatism. That is centralized control with different branding.

Freedom Conservatism offers a better path because it is more closely aligned with the classical liberal tradition that built American prosperity: individual liberty, private property, free enterprise, limited government, strong families, civil society, and the rule of law.
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I was proud to be one of the original signatories of the Freedom Conservatism Statement of Principles, alongside leaders from across the conservative, libertarian, and classical liberal movement. It was great to hear from U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and many other free market warriors at the conference.

Why This Debate Matters
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Political labels are useful only if they point us back to principles.

The Freedom Conservatism project began as a conversation among conservatives, libertarians, and classical liberals (including me) concerned about rising authoritarianism and debates over the future of the American conservative movement. Its purpose was not to create another faction. It was to restate the foundational ideas that made America exceptional and apply them to today’s problems.

That is exactly what we need now.

Some on the right say we need stronger government to fight the left. I understand the frustration. But that approach makes the same error progressives make: it assumes the problem is who controls power, rather than how much power government has in the first place.

Classical liberalism rejects that premise.

The goal is not to replace progressive central planning with conservative central planning. The goal is to limit central planning itself.

What Freedom Conservatism Gets Right

The Statement of Principles begins with liberty, arguing that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom. It also recognizes that human flourishing depends on loving families, stable communities, meaningful work, and parents free to raise and educate their children according to their values. That matters because freedom is not license. It is ordered liberty supported by responsibility and strong institutions outside the state.

That is why Freedom Conservatism is more consistent than many alternatives.

It understands that free enterprise is not just an efficiency machine. It is the foundation of broad-based prosperity. It allows people to work, build, save, invest, innovate, serve, and improve their lives without waiting for permission from political elites. The statement rightly connects affordability to competitive markets, individual choice, free trade with free people, property rights, freedom of contract, freedom of association, and the rule of law.

That is the agenda families need.

Not more price controls.

Not more tariffs.

Not more corporate welfare.

Not more federal micromanagement.

Not more bureaucrats deciding what kind of economy Americans are allowed to have.

The Cost-of-Living Test

This is where the debate becomes practical.

Americans are being crushed by a man-made affordability crisis. Housing is expensive. Health care is confusing and costly. Energy prices are volatile. Groceries are still painful. Insurance costs are rising. Debt service is eating more of the federal budget and household budgets.

The wrong answer is to let politicians manage prices.

The right answer is to remove the barriers that make supply harder and life more expensive. That means more housing supply, more energy abundance, more health care competition, more school choice, more entrepreneurship, less regulation, lower taxes, and spending restraint.

The Freedom Conservatism “About” page highlights three commitments that fit this moment: reducing the cost of living through competitive markets and greater choice, restoring fiscal sustainability, and expanding opportunity for those harmed by past government restrictions on freedom. That is a serious framework, not a slogan.

Fiscal Sustainability Is Freedom

One of the strongest parts of Freedom Conservatism is its attention to debt and spending.

The statement warns that federal debt is a threat to future prosperity, liberty, and happiness. That is right. A government that spends too much does not merely create an accounting problem. It creates a freedom problem. Debt today means higher taxes, higher inflation risk, higher interest costs, slower growth, and fewer opportunities tomorrow.

This is why I keep saying government spending is the disease.

Taxes, debt, inflation, regulation, and fiscal gimmicks are symptoms. If lawmakers do not control spending, they will keep hunting for new revenue, new mandates, new fees, and new excuses to take more control.

That is true in Washington. It is true in state capitols. It is true locally.

Freedom requires fiscal discipline.

Civil Society, Not State Control

Freedom Conservatism also gets something right that thin libertarianism can sometimes understate: liberty needs strong civil society.

Families, churches, charities, schools, neighborhoods, businesses, and voluntary associations do the work government cannot do well. They form character. They build trust. They help people through difficulty. They create belonging and responsibility.

Freedom Conservatism emphasizes property rights, faith and transcendence, and civil society, including the role of voluntary institutions in sustaining liberty and human flourishing. That is an important clarification because freedom without moral and civic formation does not last.

But here is the key: the state should not replace those institutions.

Government is a poor parent, a poor pastor, a poor entrepreneur, a poor price-setter, and a poor allocator of capital. It is usually best when it protects rights, enforces the rule of law, provides a limited framework for order, and then gets out of the way.

The National Conservative Temptation

This is where Freedom Conservatism differs from National Conservatism and post-liberalism.

National conservatives often diagnose real problems: family breakdown, elite failure, China’s threat, institutional distrust, hollowed-out communities, and corporate cronyism. Those concerns should not be dismissed.

But the policy response too often turns toward government power: tariffs, industrial policy, favoritism, mandates, and federal pressure campaigns. That approach gives politicians and bureaucrats more control over the economy and civil society.
That is the wrong lesson.

If concentrated power helped create many of our problems, then more concentrated power will not solve them. The better answer is decentralization: pushing decisions back toward families, communities, states, markets, and civil society. The Freedom Conservatism statement makes that case clearly by arguing that America is best unified when more public policy choices are transferred to families and communities because too many decisions are now made by centralized authorities.

Why Classical Liberalism Still Works

Classical liberalism is not nostalgia. It is realism.

It recognizes that no politician, agency, or planning board has enough knowledge to direct the economy better than millions of people making decisions with local knowledge, prices, incentives, and accountability.

It recognizes that property rights matter because ownership creates responsibility.

It recognizes that free exchange matters because voluntary cooperation beats coercion.

It recognizes that sound money matters because inflation is a hidden tax.

It recognizes that civil society matters because government cannot manufacture virtue.

And it recognizes that humility matters because elites rarely know as much as they think they know.

That is why Freedom Conservatism is valuable. At its best, it preserves the moral seriousness of conservatism while grounding public policy in the classical liberal principles that produce prosperity.

Three Takeaways for Policymakers

1. Do not fight progressivism with conservative progressivism.

Tariffs, subsidies, mandates, industrial policy, and political management of markets are still government control. Better branding does not make bad economics good.

2. Put freedom back at the center.

Lower the cost of living through competitive markets, energy abundance, school choice, health care competition, housing supply, lower taxes, and fewer regulatory barriers.

3. Control spending first.

Fiscal sustainability is not optional. Excessive government spending threatens liberty, prosperity, families, and future generations.

The Bottom Line

Freedom Conservatism matters because it reminds the right what it should be conserving.

Not state power.

Not political favoritism.

Not managed capitalism.

Not bureaucracy with a flag pin.

We should conserve the American promise: liberty under law, strong families, free enterprise, property rights, personal responsibility, sound money, federalism, and civil society.

Thank you for reading and for sharing my work. Through Ginn Economic Consulting, I’m glad to help policymakers, organizations, and media outlets think through spending restraint, tax reform, health care competition, energy abundance, technology policy, education freedom, and broader pro-growth reforms rooted in liberty. I’m also glad to speak at events, join interviews and podcasts, and meet with policymakers across the country.

Originally published on Substack. 

Americans do not need another speech about affordability. They need policymakers to stop making life more expensive.

Families feel the pressure everywhere: at the gas pump, the grocery store, the doctor’s office, the insurance bill, the rent payment, the mortgage statement, and the credit card balance.

These are not isolated frustrations. They are the result of years of government spending too much, inflating too much, regulating too much, subsidizing too much, and blocking too much of the supply families need.

That is why I call this what it is: a man-made affordability crisis.

Markets did not fail families. Policy failed families!

Families Feel It First

The latest Consumer Price Index report shows prices rose 3.8 percent over the last year in April, with the monthly CPI up 0.6 percent after rising 0.9 percent in March. Energy rose 3.8 percent in April and accounted for more than 40 percent of the monthly increase. Gasoline rose 5.4 percent in April and was up 28.4 percent over the year. Food rose 3.2 percent over the year, shelter rose 3.3 percent, and electricity rose 6.1 percent.

Those numbers are not just data points. They are family budgets breaking under the weight of bad policy.

The national AAA gas price average was $4.515 per gallon on May 18. For families commuting to work, hauling kids to activities, or operating small businesses, that is not a minor annoyance. It is a direct tax on mobility, work, and opportunity.

Inflation Is Policy

Some price spikes come from shocks. The latest energy surge has a clear global component. The Energy Information Administration expects Brent crude oil prices to fall later this year as Middle East production rises, but the May outlook still projects $95 per barrel Brent in 2026 and average U.S. retail gasoline of $3.88 per gallon.

That matters. A geopolitical shock can raise oil prices. A refinery disruption can raise fuel prices. A drought can raise food prices. Those are real.

But persistent inflation is not an act of God. It is the consequence of too much money chasing too few goods and services, driven by loose monetary, fiscal, and regulatory failures.

Supply Still Matters

If policymakers learn only one lesson from the current energy spike, it should be this: supply matters.

Energy prices rise when global supply becomes uncertain. Housing prices rise when zoning, permitting, and land-use rules block construction. Health care prices rise when third-party payment, mandates, and federal distortions separate patients from prices. Food prices rise when energy, labor, transportation, and compliance costs rise.

This is not complicated. It is Econ 101.

If you restrict supply while subsidizing demand, prices go up. If you make production harder while handing out checks, prices go up. If you regulate, delay, mandate, and sue away the ability to build, drill, refine, treat, transport, insure, and compete, prices go up.

Then politicians act surprised when families cannot afford the result.

Government Keeps Adding Costs

Too much of today’s affordability agenda is backwards.

Price controls do not create more supply. They create shortages and distortions.

Gas-tax holidays do not create more gasoline. They are political theater, like sales-tax holidays, temporary payroll-tax cuts, homestead exemptions, and other carveouts that make the tax code more complicated while avoiding the real problem.

Tariffs do not make families richer. They raise prices by taxing imports and reducing competition.

Subsidies do not make goods magically cheaper. They shift costs to taxpayers, hide prices, and often bid up demand in already-constrained markets.

Regulations do not become free just because politicians say they serve a good purpose. Compliance costs flow through to families in higher prices, fewer choices, and lower wages.

That is the unseen cost. Bastiat would recognize it immediately: the store that was never opened, the home that was never built, the doctor who quit, the small business that never hired, and the family that never got ahead.

Debt Is Eating The Future

The federal budget makes this worse.

The Congressional Budget Office projects a $1.9 trillion deficit in fiscal year 2026, rising to $3.1 trillion by 2036. Debt held by the public is projected to reach 120 percent of GDP by 2036, and rising net interest costs drive much of the worsening outlook.

That is not sustainable. It is also not compassionate.

Every dollar government borrows must eventually be paid through taxes, inflation, reduced private investment, or slower growth. Excessive spending today becomes an affordability problem tomorrow. Families may not see “federal deficit” on their grocery receipt, but they feel the consequences through higher prices, higher interest rates, weaker wage growth, and fewer opportunities.

Washington has spent years pretending it can avoid tradeoffs. It cannot. The tradeoffs just show up later, and families usually pay first.

The Wrong Fixes

The wrong response is more government management.

Do not cap prices.

Do not punish profits.

Do not impose windfall taxes.

Do not subsidize demand into constrained supply.

Do not keep narrowing tax bases with carveouts.

Do not claim tariffs are pro-worker when they raise families’ costs.

Do not pretend that more debt is free.

These policies may sound compassionate, patriotic, or populist. Too much government has made life less affordable.

Freedom Fixes Affordability

The better path is not mysterious. It is just politically harder.

Start with spending restraint. Federal, state, and local governments should limit spending growth to no more than population growth plus inflation, and ideally less. If government stops growing faster than taxpayers’ ability to pay, the pressure for higher taxes, more debt, and inflationary finance falls.

Then remove barriers to supply. Let builders build homes. Let energy producers produce. Let doctors and patients contract directly. Let entrepreneurs compete. Let workers keep more of what they earn. Let prices signal scarcity instead of letting politicians pretend scarcity does not exist.

A serious affordability agenda should include:

More energy abundance.

More housing supply.

More health care competition.

Lower and flatter taxes.

Less regulation.

Less spending.

Sound money.

Fewer subsidies and carveouts.

More trust in people.

That is how you lower costs without destroying the market process that creates abundance in the first place.

Three Takeaways for Policymakers

1. Affordability starts with spending restraint.

Government spending is the root disease behind higher taxes, debt, inflation pressure, and fiscal fragility. If lawmakers do not control spending, families will keep paying through higher costs.

2. Supply-side freedom lowers prices.

More energy, housing, health care competition, and entrepreneurship will do more for affordability than price controls, subsidies, tariffs, or temporary tax gimmicks.

3. Stop hiding the cost of government.

Debt, inflation, mandates, regulations, and carveouts let politicians shift costs instead of reducing them. Families need honest prices, lower burdens, and more choices.

The Bottom Line

The affordability crisis is man-made.

That means it can be fixed.

But not by politicians pretending they can manage prices, subsidize scarcity, or borrow without consequences. It will be fixed when the government spends less, regulates less, taxes less, and stops blocking the supply families need.

Affordability will not come from more central planning. It will come from abundance, discipline, and freedom.

Thank you for reading and for sharing my work. If this added value to your week, please pass it along to a policymaker, staffer, journalist, or friend who should read it. Through Ginn Economic Consulting, I’m glad to help policymakers and organizations think through spending restraint, tax reform, energy abundance, health care competition, and pro-growth policies that let people prosper.

Originally published at RealClear Markets. 

Congress is finally moving on housing. President Trump is pushing for the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, the Senate passed its version 89-10, and the House recently released an amended version in May that tries to smooth out some of the bill’s rougher edges.

Housing affordability is a major economic problem facing American families. Mortgage rates are above 6 percent (and rising), existing-home prices remain above $400,000, and America is short more than 4 million homes. Young families feel locked out. Renters feel squeezed. Parents wonder whether their kids will ever own a home.

So, yes, Congress should act. But it should act in ways that increase supply, strengthen property rights, and remove barriers. It should not pretend Washington can fix housing by deciding who is allowed to buy what.

That is the problem with the bill’s treatment of institutional investors. The Senate version included a stricter ban on large institutional investors buying single-family homes, along with provisions that raised concerns for build-to-rent projects. The House version softened the approach by preserving exemptions for build-to-rent and renovate-to-rent models. That is an improvement, because build-to-rent can add supply and provide needed rental options.

But the better question is why Congress is targeting lawful buyers at all.

In a free market, a homeowner should be able to sell to the buyer offering the best combination of price, certainty, timing, and terms. That buyer may be a young family. It may be a local landlord. It may be a builder. It may be an investor willing to renovate a neglected property or finance the construction of new rental homes. 

The government should not interfere with private property rights because politicians want to look tough on Wall Street. That is not how free-market capitalism works. It is not how America’s version of capitalism should work either.

The common concern is understandable. Nobody wants families priced out by politically connected firms with cheap capital. Nobody wants neighborhoods hollowed out by absentee owners who neglect properties or abuse tenants. Fraud, collusion, deceptive fees, and poor management should be addressed directly. But broad restrictions on ownership are a top-down response to a supply problem.

And the facts do not support blaming investors for the national crisis. A GAO report found institutional investors owned only 1 percent to 3 percent of single-family homes in six studied metro areas by 2024. Other research finds institutional investors own less than 1 percent of single-family homes nationally. They may matter in certain local markets, but they did not create a nationwide shortage of millions of homes. The government did.

Zoning restrictions, minimum lot sizes, parking mandates, permitting delays, impact fees, environmental reviews, and local veto points have made housing too hard, too slow, and too expensive to build. Then, politicians blame investors for responding to the scarcity that the government created.

When demand rises and supply is restricted, prices go up. If lawmakers want lower prices, they must let supply respond.

That is why the best parts of the ROAD to Housing Act are the supply-side pieces. The House Financial Services Committee says the amended bill cuts barriers to construction, modernizes HUD programs, and allows banks to deploy more capital into communities. Other highlights include manufactured housing, rural housing, financing, and regulatory streamlining.

The investor restrictions move in the opposite direction. Even softened, they rest on the wrong premise: that Washington should decide which buyers are acceptable. Once the government claims that power, it will not stop with “large institutional investors.” The same logic can easily spread to other disfavored buyers, financing models, or rental arrangements.

That should alarm anyone who cares about property rights.

Housing affordability will not be restored by banning buyers. It will be restored by allowing builders to build, owners to sell, renters to choose, and markets to work.

Congress should fix the ROAD to Housing Act by keeping the supply-side reforms and stripping out the anti-market central planning. The goal should not be to punish ownership. The goal should be housing abundance.

Why does the economy still feel so expensive?

Because policymakers keep treating symptoms instead of fixing causes.

In Episode 163 of This Week’s Economy, I break down:
➡️ why inflation still hurts families
➡️ why small businesses are struggling
➡️ why debt bigger than GDP matters
➡️ why Americans keep moving to lower-tax states
➡️ why healthcare and energy need MORE competition—not more bureaucracy

The economy isn’t just numbers on a screen. It’s incentives, freedom, affordability, and opportunity.

And right now, too many policies are making all four worse.

🎥 Watch Episode 163 on my YouTube channel
📖 Get show notes at vanceginn.substack.com

Originally published on Substack. 

​The latest April jobs report and first-quarter GDP report tell a story that too many in Washington and on Wall Street do not want to admit: the economy is softer than the headlines suggest, inflation is heating back up, and working Americans are not seeing the kind of real progress that justifies all the market celebration. The stock market may be cheering, but the fundamentals look weaker, narrower, and much less durable than the valuations imply.

Growth Is Positive, But It Is Not Prosperity

Real GDP rose at a 2.0 percent annual rate in the first quarter of 2026.

Cutting the bloated federal workforce is one of the few genuine bright spots. But outside that, the economy is not delivering the broad-based, productivity-enhancing growth people were promised.
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Manufacturing was essentially flat in April and remains well below where protectionists claimed it would be. Information employment is down sharply from its 2022 peak. Transportation and warehousing is still down substantially from its February 2025 peak. That is not an industrial revival. It is stagnation.

Paychecks Are Rising, But Hours and Inflation Matter

Average hourly earnings rose 3.6 percent over the year to $37.41 in April, and the average workweek edged up to 34.3 hours. That puts average weekly pay at roughly $1,283 before taxes.

But families do not live on nominal wage growth alone. They live on purchasing power. When quarterly PCE inflation is running at 4.5 percent, wage gains do not go nearly as far as they should. Workers may see higher paychecks, but too many are still losing ground after inflation, especially with goods and energy pressures still hanging around.

Protectionism and Uncertainty Are Hitting the Real Economy

This weakness is not happening in a vacuum. Tariffs and broader policy uncertainty are part of the drag. Manufacturing, information, and finance have all shown signs of weakness, while the promised factory comeback has failed to materialize.

Deregulation and some tax reforms could help at the margin, and full expensing is a major positive for investment. But that gets undercut when policymakers raise distortions elsewhere, including a bigger SALT deduction and carveouts that make the tax code less neutral and less pro-growth.

Trump 45 got more right early on with deregulation and tax reform before protectionism took over. Trump 47 has leaned much harder into the damaging part first.

Bad Policy Is the Through Line

Some blame belongs to Biden-era excess spending and to the Fed under Powell for letting inflation do so much damage after Covid. That is real. But Trump’s flawed Covid-era policies helped start the decline, and the current administration’s mix of protectionism, immigration restrictions, policy volatility, antitrust populism, price-control thinking, and geopolitical escalation is making things worse.

War risk pushes up energy costs. Trade fights push up goods prices. Policy uncertainty freezes hiring and investment. This is not classical liberalism. It is economic self-sabotage dressed up as strength.

Wall Street Is Pricing a Better Economy Than the One We Have

Stocks can keep rising for a while, but valuations eventually have to answer to fundamentals. Right now, the fundamentals are slower real growth, hotter inflation, weaker labor-market internals, and narrow job gains. That is not a foundation for lasting prosperity. It is a warning sign.
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Three Key Takeaways for Policymakers

• A 2.0 percent GDP growth rate with 4.5 percent PCE inflation is not a healthy economy. It is the result of repeated policy failure.
• A 4.3 percent unemployment rate does not tell the full story when participation is falling, underemployment is elevated, and job growth is too concentrated in government-adjacent sectors.
• The answer is a policy reset toward classical liberalism: spend less, stabilize money, expand free trade, keep what works on investment and deregulation, and stop punishing growth with tariffs, carveouts, and political theater.​