​Free-market capitalism is often portrayed as a system that exploits workers, enriches the powerful, and leaves ordinary people behind. Critics argue it rewards greed over people and creates opportunity only for those already at the top. The message is repeated so often that many simply accept it as fact. But what if the opposite is true? 

In today's episode of This Week's Economy, we're examining one of the most overlooked ideas in economics: how free markets uplift everyday people. We'll explore how free-market capitalism disperses economic power across millions of individuals instead of concentrating it in the hands of government, creating opportunities for workers, entrepreneurs, and consumers alike. Rather than promising equal outcomes, free markets create the conditions for greater opportunity, rising living standards, and the freedom to build a better life.

Listen to the full episode on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, and visit my website for more information about Ginn Economic Consulting.

Inflation is usually discussed as a policy problem, but families experience it as a daily burden that changes how they save, spend, plan, and build their lives. It shows up at the grocery store, in rent and mortgage payments, in childcare costs, in interest rates, and in the growing feeling that even when people work hard, they are still falling behind. But inflation does more than raise prices. It changes behavior.

That is why I enjoyed this conversation with Dr. Jeffrey L. Degner, Research Fellow in Economics and Economic Freedom at the American Institute for Economic Research. Jeff is the author of Inflation and the Family, which challenges the common view that inflation is just a macroeconomic variable. His work shows how inflation reshapes household decision-making, weakens institutions, shortens time horizons, and erodes the foundations families need to plan and thrive. Before joining AIER, Jeff spent years in education, from high school to higher education, and most recently served as Dean of the School of Business at Cornerstone University. 

His research brings together economics, history, and moral philosophy to explain why sound money matters beyond markets. It matters for families.

🎧 Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
🌐 Learn more about my work at vanceginn.com
📩 Subscribe for weekly analysis at vanceginn.substack.com

Originally published at Iowans for Tax Relief.

Dueling Immigration Policy Articles
​
Immigration has become one of the defining debates in American policy circles. While most agree that America needs secure borders and the rule of law, they often disagree about the broader purpose of immigration policy and the role immigration should play in the nation’s future.

After you’ve read Immigration: A Need for Markets, Not More Mandates, be sure to read Immigration: A Need for Greater Limits, where John Hendrickson explains why a more restrictive approach is necessary to preserve America’s culture, sovereignty, and long-term national interests.

​Immigration is one of those issues where Washington seems determined to make everyone angry while solving almost nothing.

Many Americans have real concerns. They worry about too many people coming too quickly, wages being pressured, schools and hospitals being strained, housing becoming less affordable, and cultural trust weakening in communities that already feel stretched.

Those concerns should not be dismissed. A serious country, like a constitutional republic, must have borders, law, order, and accountability. But we should also remember something too often lost in today’s debate: immigration has been one of America’s greatest sources of strength.

Immigrants helped build this country. They worked farms, built railroads, started businesses, filled churches, served in uniform, created inventions, raised families, and brought new energy to communities that needed it. America would not be America without people who came here seeking freedom, opportunity, faith, work, and a better life for their children.

And their lives improved too. That is the beauty of America at its best. People come here with little, work hard, save, build, and rise. Their children often do even better. That is not a problem to fear. That is a blessing to protect.

The problem is not that people want to come to America. The problem is that government has made the process chaotic, expensive, politicized, and unfair.

Washington built a system that is slow for legal applicants, disorderly at the border, costly for taxpayers, confusing for employers, and divisive for citizens. Then the same political class tells us the answer is more mandates, more arbitrary caps, more bureaucracy, and more executive orders.

That is not reform. That is doubling down on failure. Americans should reject the false choice between chaos and closed doors. The better path is order and opportunity through a market-based immigration system.

This matters here because Iowa needs workers. Agriculture, food processing, construction, manufacturing, health care, and small businesses all depend on reliable labor. That does not mean immigration should be unmanaged. It means the system should honestly connect real workforce demand with legal, accountable pathways.

Milton Friedman saw the central tension clearly when he warned that “you cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.” Too many people use that line to attack immigration. But Friedman’s deeper point was about incentives. If the government offers open-ended benefits detached from work and responsibility, immigration becomes politically harder to sustain. The welfare state creates conflict between taxpayers and newcomers.

So fix the welfare state. Protect taxpayers. Restore work requirements. Limit benefits to those who have earned eligibility. Make immigration tied to work, sponsorship, responsibility, and contribution.

Immigrants are people. They are not political props, automatic threats, or future dependents by nature. Many come to work, build, save, worship, start businesses, raise families, and pursue opportunity. That is deeply American. A serious immigration system should welcome contribution while rejecting disorder.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker offered a provocative idea years ago: charge for the right to immigrate instead of relying mostly on political quotas and bureaucratic rationing. Richard Vedder and others have similarly argued for auction-based immigration permits. The idea is simple. If access to the American labor market is valuable, use prices, sponsorship, and competition to allocate that access more honestly.

That does not mean open borders. It does not mean ignoring national security. It does not mean taxpayers should subsidize everyone who wants to come. It means replacing today’s political rationing with clear rules, background checks, fees, employer sponsorship, private sponsorship, and accountability.

If a business needs workers, let it prove that need by sponsoring workers or bidding for permits. If families want to reunite, let them participate under clear rules. If churches or charities want to sponsor immigrants or refugees, let them put real resources behind that commitment. If immigrants value the chance to live and work here, let them pay a transparent fee over time.

That would be more honest than a system where smugglers, lobbyists, bureaucrats, and politicians decide who gets in.

It would also help taxpayers. Permit fees or auction revenues could help offset costs in communities experiencing large inflows, though I would prefer to reduce the deficit instead. Sponsorship could create responsibility instead of leaving local taxpayers to absorb every consequence. Legal pathways would reduce pressure at the border and help employers meet real needs without rewarding lawlessness.

Markets are not perfect, but they are more humane than chaos. Prices communicate scarcity. Sponsorship creates accountability. Competition reveals demand. Clear rules build trust. Voluntary exchange respects human dignity better than political theater.

The current system is often cruel precisely because it is so political. People wait years. Families remain stuck in backlogs. Employers cannot fill jobs legally. Border communities face disorder. Taxpayers fund the consequences. Politicians campaign on the crisis instead of fixing it.

Americans should not accept that.

The classical liberal answer is simple: secure the border, enforce the law, protect taxpayers, reform welfare, and expand legal pathways tied to work and responsibility. Government should set and enforce clear rules. It should not centrally plan labor markets through arbitrary caps, political favoritism, and endless bureaucracy.

Immigration should not be run by fear. It should not be run by slogans. And it should not be run by Washington politicians pretending they know Iowa’s workforce needs better than Iowa employers, families, churches, and communities.

What would America be without immigrants? Less dynamic, less entrepreneurial, less innovative, and less true to its own story.

The right answer is not to close the door. The right answer is to restore order, protect taxpayers, and open better legal paths for people who want to contribute.

Treat immigrants as people. Protect taxpayers. Restore the rule of law. Let markets work..That is how America can be both orderly and welcoming. That is how we reduce conflict, strengthen communities, improve lives, and let people prosper.

Originally published on Substack. 

​Texas has become the latest state to hit pause on data centers.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s new directive⁠ requires the PUC and ERCOT to audit every data center advancing through the grid-connection process before additional projects move forward.

Developers must disclose expected electricity and water use, public incentives, ownership, plans for producing their own power, cooling technology, and efforts to limit noise, traffic, light, and other local effects. Projects that do not comply can be denied access to the grid.

These are reasonable questions. Markets work best with reliable information. But according to ERCOT, the order has effectively paused all pending data-center projects⁠, with no clear timetable for completion.

That uncertainty has costs.

Texans Want Benefits, Not Bans

A new statewide poll⁠ found that only 8% of voters call data centers a top voting issue, while opinions move substantially when people receive more information. Abbott’s proposed guardrails received 82% support, including 94% among Republicans, 81% among independents, and 68% among Democrats.

But voters were not demanding prohibition. Support for nearby projects rose from 46%-45% to 55%-34% when respondents learned about jobs, school revenue, infrastructure improvements, and possible bill relief.
Texans want growth they can understand and see benefiting their communities. That is fair. It is not a mandate for central planning.

The Cloud Will Keep Growing

Data centers are the physical infrastructure behind the cloud⁠. Their servers process and store the information behind GPS, banking, telehealth, logistics, streaming, business software, artificial intelligence, and nearly every digital service Texans use.

Stopping construction does not stop that activity. Texans will keep sharing files, saving photos, navigating roads, streaming shows, and using AI. The servers will simply be built elsewhere.
​
New York has already imposed the nation’s first statewide moratorium on new hyperscale data centers⁠. Texas Senate Democrats now want an immediate Texas moratorium⁠.

Texas should not copy New York. Whether investment is stopped by an explicit ban or an open-ended political approval process, the result can be similar: broken deals, lost jobs, delayed generation, and projects redirected to other states or countries.

Data Centers Are the Convenient Scapegoat

Electric bills and water concerns are real, but data centers did not create every affordability problem.

A recent electricity-rate analysis⁠ found no quantitative evidence that data centers have historically been subsidized by other customers. Rates reflect inflation, fuel volatility, grid investments, plant retirements, market design, and government permitting and interconnection barriers.

Likewise, data centers currently account for less than 1% of Texas water use⁠. Usage varies widely by cooling system, including closed-loop designs that reuse water.

The answer is more supply, not less progress.

Let Texas Build

Texas needs faster permitting, more generation, more transmission, better water pricing, more reuse, stronger property rights, and more private infrastructure. Prices and voluntary contracts already force businesses to weigh land, power, water, labor, and risk better than politicians can.

As I have argued, Texas should choose innovation over intervention⁠, fix government utility failures rather than blame data centers⁠, and compete for this investment instead of regulating it away⁠.

Texas became America’s economic leader by building, not banning what politicians did not understand.
​
Let New York manage decline. Texas should keep building.

Affordability remains the top concern for American families.

This episode explains why. From inflation and housing to tariffs, sound money, and artificial intelligence, we explore how policy shapes prices, opportunity, and economic growth.

The best affordability policy isn't another government program. It's creating an economy where people are free to build, invest, innovate, and compete.

Get show notes at vanceginn.substack.com. 

​Regulation isn't free.

Every new rule changes incentives, raises compliance costs, and affects the choices available to consumers, workers, entrepreneurs, and investors.

In this episode, Richard Morrison and I discuss why better regulation—not simply more regulation—is essential for a thriving economy. From ESG and banking to agency power and corporate governance, we explain why economic freedom remains one of the strongest foundations for innovation, investment, and prosperity.

Subscribe for more conversations on economics, policy, and freedom.
​
Visit vanceginn.com and subscribe to my newsletter at vanceginn.substack.com.

Originally published on Substack. 

Anthony Fauci had another opportunity to answer serious questions about the government’s handling of COVID-19. Instead, he repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment during questioning from Sen. Rand Paul.

Fauci has every constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination, and invoking that right is not proof of guilt. But after helping shape policies that disrupted nearly every part of American life, his silence will not rebuild public trust.
​
Paul is right to keep pressing for answers about federal research funding, COVID’s origins, government records, public statements, and the evidence behind pandemic restrictions.

​Americans were told to trust the experts. Those experts helped produce one of the greatest government failures in modern history.

I Saw the Failure Up Close

As I explained in my reflection on the lessons learned six years after COVID began, I was serving as chief economist at the White House Office of Management and Budget when the crisis escalated in early 2020.

I worked with officials to remove regulatory barriers and help Americans respond without unnecessarily expanding government. I also sat in the White House Situation Room as teams considered how people and markets would react to different policy paths.

I strongly opposed lockdowns. Watch my speech on this in Nov 2020.

I warned that shutting down economic activity would not simply pause the economy. It would break supply chains, destroy small businesses, centralize power, encourage massive deficit spending, and impose lasting harm on children, workers, families, and communities.

Those concerns were too often dismissed while Fauci and other public-health officials pushed a narrow approach that treated virus suppression as the overriding objective.

President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, heads of government agencies, governors, Congress, and other elected officials followed much of this advice. They bear responsibility for doing so. Fauci did not personally close every school, church, or business.

But he was no minor adviser. He became the public face of the response and gave scientific legitimacy to policies politicians used to restrict basic liberties.

That experience helped clarify why I left Washington after just one year and returned to Texas. I had seen powerful people accept the central-planning fantasy that experts could suspend normal life, direct a complex society from the top, and manage the consequences later.

They could not.

The “Science” Was Not Good Enough

The public was repeatedly told that sweeping restrictions were demanded by science. In reality, many policies reflected weak evidence, incomplete models, bureaucratic incentives, and extraordinary overconfidence.

Schools remained closed even as the costs to children became obvious. In my conversation with Jay Bhattacharya about how pandemic policies harmed poor families and children, we discussed how shutdowns imposed the greatest burdens on those with the fewest resources and least flexibility.

Small businesses were forced to close while large, politically connected companies stayed open. Churches faced restrictions. Patients delayed medical care. Addiction, isolation, mental distress, and family instability worsened.

Then Congress borrowed and spent trillions of dollars to compensate Americans for damage government policies had intensified. The economic consequences remain visible in the weak labor market and affordability problems I traced in Here’s Why the Affordability Crisis Remains.

The failure was not that officials faced uncertainty. Everyone did.

The failure was pretending uncertainty did not exist, suppressing reasonable dissent, and imposing one-size-fits-all mandates without seriously considering economic, educational, constitutional, and social tradeoffs.

That is not sound science. It is technocracy.

Fauci Was a Major Cause, but Not the Only One

Fauci was a major contributor to the disaster. His advice, influence, and claims of scientific authority gave political leaders cover for destructive interventions.

But accountability cannot stop with him.

Trump should not have deferred so heavily to federal health officials. Pence and the White House Coronavirus Task Force should have challenged their assumptions more aggressively. Governors should not have closed schools, businesses, and churches with so little regard for liberty or the consequences.

Congress embraced unlimited borrowing. Media organizations abandoned skepticism. Technology platforms suppressed debate. Professional institutions punished dissent. Too many economists remained silent while government deliberately shut down market coordination.

COVID exposed a governing culture that rewards conformity, concentrates authority, and treats liberty as expendable during emergencies.

Fauci became its most visible symbol, but the failure was much larger than one man.

Never Again

The purpose of accountability is not revenge. It is preventing the next catastrophe.

Congress should fully investigate COVID’s origins, federal research funding, government communications, records retention, and the basis for mandates and restrictions.

Emergency powers must also be limited. Public-health agencies should disclose uncertainty rather than presenting assumptions as settled facts. Scientific advice should inform policy, not dictate it.

Future responses should protect vulnerable people while allowing others to work, operate businesses, attend school, worship, and live freely.

Fauci’s silence cannot erase what happened. Neither can the excuses of Trump, Pence, governors, Congress, or the bureaucracies that followed them.
​
Americans deserve the truth. More importantly, they deserve a government that will never do this to them again.​

Originally published at National Review. 

Washington's 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act went into law on July 11 without President Trump’s signature. The benefits of that bill are questionable, and Trump hoped to incentivize Congress to also pass the SAVE America Act, which didn’t happen. This federal housing bill gives governors and state lawmakers an opportunity to think before copying one of Congress’s worst ideas.

The newly passed bill gets some things right. It would ease some federal environmental reviews, improve manufactured-housing rules, and encourage local governments to remove other barriers that discourage building housing in Opportunity Zones and other areas. Those steps could help because America needs more homes, and we need them soon.

But Congress also targeted large institutional investors that own at least 350 single-family homes. That sounds simple. It is bad economics.

Milton Friedman often reminded people to look beyond good intentions and ask what incentives a policy creates. Restricting one group of buyers does not build a single new home. It can mean less investment, fewer rentals, slower repairs, more uncertainty, and higher prices than we would otherwise have.

Housing affordability mostly comes down to supply. When more people want homes than the market can provide, prices rise. Politicians can blame Wall Street, landlords, out-of-state buyers, or anyone else — but the real issue is still scarcity.

Government helped create that scarcity. Zoning rules limit where homes can be built. Minimum lot sizes force families to buy more land than they need. Parking mandates add costs. Permitting delays slow construction and raise financing costs. Impact fees increase home prices. Property taxes push up ownership and rental costs every year.

Blaming investors after blocking supply is like blaming umbrellas for rain. The data do not support the panic. In particular, institutional investors buy a very small share of housing. 

A recent report found that, “Institutions, defined by the proposed legislation as entities with 350+ homes in a portfolio, own ~0.7 percent of the 92 million US single-family homes and institutional investors of this size have been scaling back acquisitions — accounting for just 1 percent of all U.S. home purchases, down from a 4 percent peak in 2022.”

⁠Realtor.com likewise found institutional investors accounted for about 1 percent of national single-family home sales over the past decade, and their purchases have fallen since the 2021 peak. Most investor activity comes from smaller landlords. ⁠Realtor.com reported that investors bought 11.3 percent of homes in 2025, but mom-and-pop investors led the activity. Separately, the ⁠Mercatus Center at George Mason University found that large institutional owners have never accounted for more than 2 percent to 5 percent of purchases in any quarter.

​What’s more, even forcing every institutionally owned single-family rental into owner-occupancy would barely change the market. ⁠Brookings estimates available owner-occupied homes would rise only about 1 percent to 2 percent. That is not an affordability plan; it is a talking point.

Bad landlords exist. So do bad tenants, homeowners, builders, lenders, and politicians. Handle real misconduct with contracts, fraud laws, property standards, and local accountability. Broad ownership restrictions punish investment and reduce options.

Single-family rentals serve real families. Some households want a yard, more space, and neighborhood stability without buying right away. Others cannot qualify for a mortgage or want flexibility. Build-to-rent communities and professionally managed rentals help meet those needs.

A simple question cuts through politics: Compared with what?

If an investor cannot buy and repair a home, who fixes it? If a build-to-rent project is discouraged, where do those families live? If capital leaves because lawmakers threaten ownership limits, how does that create more homes? It does not.

Lawmakers should move the other way: Avoid special taxes on institutional owners, reject purchase caps, protect build-to-rent communities, and skip restrictive reporting rules. Real and effective reforms include legalizing more housing, shortening permitting timelines, limiting excessive fees, restraining government spending, and limiting property taxes before increasing budgets become a response to rising housing costs. States should also protect property rights when Washington tells people whom they may buy from, sell to, or rent from. Model legislation, legal challenges, and market-access protections would do better than anti-investor grandstanding.

None of this is about defending Wall Street. The issue is supply, competition, and choice. Prices send signals. High housing prices tell us homes are too scarce. Punishing buyers will not fix that.

Congress already made the investor mistake. Governors and state legislators should not make it worse. Housing needs more homes, not more scapegoats.