July 4th has passed, but the real work of preserving liberty never ends. It is easy to celebrate independence with fireworks, flags, and family gatherings. But it is harder to understand the principles that made independence meaningful in the first place. America was not founded merely as a break from British rule. It was founded on the belief that rights are not gifts from government, power must be limited, and liberty requires institutions strong enough to restrain those who govern.
That is why I enjoyed this conversation with Dr. Daniel L. Dreisbach, a professor at American University specializing in American constitutional law and history, First Amendment law, and church-state relations. Daniel earned a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and a J.D. from the University of Virginia. He has authored or edited ten books, written widely on constitutional principles, and has been recognized as American University’s Scholar/Teacher of the Year.
Our conversation focuses on one of the most important but often overlooked documents in American history: the Virginia Declaration of Rights. It came before the Constitution, influenced the Bill of Rights, and helped define the language of liberty that shaped the American experiment.


🎧 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 on Substack.

​The latest attack on economic growth comes wrapped in moral language. Its advocates promise less poverty, greater equality, and a safer climate. Their policies would deliver less production, less investment, and fewer opportunities. That is managed decline, not prosperity.

The UN-backed Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth proposes 80 policies meant to reduce society’s dependence on growth. A separate Global Justice Report, led by Thomas Piketty and researchers at the World Inequality Lab, puts numbers behind this vision.

The reports differ, but they share the same central mistake. They treat growth as an obstacle to justice rather than the force that has lifted billions of people.

What Degrowth Would Mean

The Piketty-led model would push rich countries toward output of roughly €60,000 per person, or about $69,000, by 2100. It would hold annual per-person growth in wealthy regions near zero. That figure requires context.

US GDP per capita was about $89,962 in 2025. The proposed level is about $21,000 lower, or roughly 23 percent below current American output per person. GDP per capita is not the same as a worker’s salary. It measures the total value produced in the economy divided by the population. For another comparison, personal income per capita was running near $77,800 in early 2026.

Not content to slow some distant, future excess, the plan envisions an America that produces less than we do today. The model would also cut annual work hours by more than half, shifting labor away from construction and manufacturing. As Veronique de Rugy notes, “a comprehensive program for global managed decline…making everyone poorer” isn’t just a likely forecast — it’s the plan’s whole design.

But building fewer homes will not solve a housing shortage. Making fewer goods will not make necessities more affordable. Restricting work will not help families trying to move ahead.

Growth Is Human Progress

Economic growth is not just a line on a government chart. It is the process through which people create more value from limited resources. That process gives us better medicine. It makes food easier to afford. It allows workers to earn more while spending fewer hours producing the same goods.

Productivity is the engine of rising living standards. When a worker produces more value per hour, wages and leisure can rise together. Degrowth reverses this process, reducing production and hoping people will enjoy the loss. 

Emile Phaneuf and Christopher Lingle put the stakes plainly in “Degrowth Kills People—Yes, Literally.” Wealthier societies are healthier, safer, and better able to survive crises. Scarcity carries a human cost.

The Poverty Record Is Clear

The strongest argument against degrowth is what growth has already accomplished. Around 60 percent of the world lived in extreme poverty in 1950. By 1990, the share was about 40 percent. The World Bank now estimates that it fell to 10.4 percent in 2024 and could fall to 10 percent in 2026.

The number of people in extreme poverty also fell sharply, even as the world’s population grew. Under the World Bank’s updated $3-per-day standard, about 847 million people remained in extreme poverty in 2024. That is still far too many. But the direction matters.

Since 1990, roughly 1.5 billion people have escaped extreme poverty. Much of that progress occurred in Asia as countries expanded trade, welcomed investment, and allowed more private enterprise. They did not become wealthier by closing factories.

The World Bank also finds that poverty reduction accelerated after 1990. The average decline doubled from about half a percentage point per year before 1990 to roughly one point annually afterward. That is what economic liberalization made possible.

Poverty Is Not Inequality

Degrowth advocates often move between poverty and inequality as though they mean the same thing. They do not.

A poor family does not gain because a wealthy family loses money. A worker is not better off because a factory closes and makes an inequality chart look more balanced. Making fewer goods will not make necessities more affordable. Equality achieved by destroying wealth is shared deprivation.

As I have argued at AIER, the better question is why government policy blocks people from earning, investing, and moving upward. The goal should be to expand opportunity, not punish success. Growth does not guarantee that every outcome is equal. It does create more room for people to improve their lives. Stagnation makes mobility harder.

The Plan Undermines Itself

The Piketty proposal depends on a global fund financed by taxes on income and wealth. Yet it would weaken the economies expected to finance that fund. It also assumes poorer countries can keep growing while rich countries consume and invest less. That does not add up.

Developing countries need capital. They also need customers. If the United States and Europe stagnate, both become scarcer. A development plan cannot succeed by weakening the world’s largest sources of investment and demand.

Degrowth also creates a political problem. Someone must decide how much people may work. Someone must choose which industries shrink and which goods are no longer produced. Those decisions will not remain inside an academic model.

Markets coordinate millions of choices through prices and voluntary exchange. No global commission has enough knowledge to replace that process. Managed scarcity eventually requires managed lives.

Prosperity Is the Better Path

Rejecting degrowth does not mean ignoring pollution or other real harms. Property rights matter. So does accountability. Innovation can reduce environmental damage without forcing society backward.

As Joakim Book explained in his review of The Capitalist Manifesto, prosperous societies have more resources to adapt and invest in cleaner technology. Poor societies must focus on survival. The world’s poorest people do not need comfortable academics deciding they have reached “enough.” They need the freedom to work, save, invest, and build.

Degrowth is a luxury belief because its advocates already enjoy the abundance they would restrict. Poverty cannot be overcome by rationing scarcity. It is overcome by economic freedom that lets people create abundance.

​Executive Summary
​Media Competition Is an Attention Market, Not a SiloMedia competition is no longer best understood as a contest among separate industries such as cable, broadcast, streaming, social video, gaming, podcasts, music, and news. Consumers do not live inside those regulatory boxes. They allocate scarce time across them. That means modern media is best understood as an attention market. This framing matters because antitrust debates too often begin with the wrong question. They ask whether one firm is “too big” or whether one deal sounds politically uncomfortable. The better question is whether consumers are likely to face higher prices, reduced output, lower quality, or slower innovation. That is the core of the consumer welfare standard, and it remains the best guardrail against turning antitrust into industrial policy.

News competes through search, social feeds, short-form clips, podcasts, newsletters, streaming channels, and direct subscriptions. The competitive field is no longer defined by ownership of a printing press or broadcast tower. Gaming, music, podcasts, and social chat are real attention rivals. They may not look like “television” to regulators, but consumers experience them as substitutes for leisure time. A household deciding between a soccer match, a game, a long podcast, or a documentary is still allocating scarce time. Streaming adoption and traditional pay-TV penetration figures reflect recent subscription data, which show high streaming penetration and declining pay-TV adoption.

Consumer Power Is Stronger Than Policymakers Often Admit
Consumer power in modern media comes from low switching costs, multi-homing, bundling, churn, ad-tier migration, and product iteration. Low switching costs are central. Consumers can add, cancel, downgrade, upgrade, or rotate among services. Even when a platform is popular, it must continue to earn attention. Popularity is not captivity. Multi-homing is normal. Consumers do not choose one media provider. They typically use several platforms across paid subscriptions, free ad-supported services, social video, podcasts, music, gaming, and news. This makes it harder to sustain durable harm because users can reduce engagement without exiting entirely.

The video market is mature and saturated. Recent streaming subscription data found that 91% of U.S. internet households subscribe to at least one streaming video service, while traditional pay TV has fallen to 41%. The same data describe consumers averaging nearly six video subscriptions and spending about $109 per month across video services. Consumer price sensitivity is also strong. The digital media consumer research cited earlier shows that consumers are increasingly adopting ad-supported tiers and remain frustrated by recurring price increases. These facts matter. A market where consumers churn, downgrade, use ad tiers, switch between homes, and substitute across formats is not a captive market. Firms may test prices, bundles, and ad loads, but consumers respond.
​

​Sam Peltzman’s political economy of regulation holds that regulators respond to political incentives rather than to consumer welfare. This matters in the media because the sector is politically salient. Politicians care deeply about speech, news, sports, cultural influence, and platform access. Hayek’s knowledge problem provides the deeper philosophical warning. Central planners lack the dispersed knowledge that market participants reveal through prices, experimentation, and consumer choice. Attempts to design market outcomes from above often fail because they cannot replicate market discovery. Ted Bolema’s recommendation that Congress clarify the role of the consumer welfare standard is useful here. His analysis of FTC policy argues that statutory clarity would reduce agency discretion and help prevent politicized enforcement.

The conclusion is direct: if policymakers want more media competition, they should reduce barriers to entry and expansion.

A Serious Pro-Competition Agenda Starts by Lowering Barriers
A serious pro-competition agenda should focus on two principles: disciplined antitrust and fewer government barriers.

1. Keep antitrust centered on consumer welfare. The standard should remain prices, output, quality, and innovation. If a merger or conduct harms consumers, challenge it. If not, do not use enforcement to preserve legacy firms or satisfy political pressure.
2. Treat the media as an attention market. Use broad evidence like the Communications Marketplace Report, cross-platform viewing measurement, and consumer behavior research. Do not define markets so narrowly that substitution disappears.
3. Apply error-cost humility. Fast-moving markets punish regulatory overconfidence. False positives can reduce investment, chill innovation, and entrench incumbents by raising compliance costs.
4. Prefer narrow remedies tied to demonstrable harms. Where harm exists, remedies should fix the harm, not create a permanent regulatory regime.
5. Reduce barriers to entry. Congress and state legislatures should review laws and rules that raise fixed costs for new distributors, creators, and platforms. More competition comes from easier entry, not more micromanagement.
6. Avoid industrial planning. Policymakers should not use antitrust to engineer the “right” number of media companies, protect favored content, or punish disfavored firms. That path undermines the competitive process.

Originally published on Substack. 

​This week reinforced a lesson that cuts across nearly every policy debate in America:
​
People work better than government.

That may sound obvious, but it’s amazing how often policymakers forget it.

Whether the topic is poverty, jobs, housing, taxes, budgets, or inflation, the instinct in Washington and many state capitals is often the same: create another program, spend more money, or expand government authority. Yet the evidence continues to point in the opposite direction.

Take economic mobility. In my recent article for The Daily Economy⁠, later republished by RealClearMarkets⁠, I challenged the myth that America has a permanent underclass trapped in poverty.

The reality is that most people move through income brackets over their lifetimes as they gain skills, build careers, start businesses, and accumulate wealth. The goal of public policy shouldn’t be managing outcomes—it should be expanding opportunities.
​
The same principle showed up in the latest U.S. jobs report.

​While headlines celebrated job growth, my analysis found much of the increase came from government and government-dependent sectors. A bigger government payroll is not the same thing as a stronger economy. Lasting prosperity comes from productive private-sector growth, entrepreneurship, investment, and innovation. That’s where rising living standards come from, not government expansion.
​
Housing affordability tells a similar story. In my recent RealClearMarkets commentary⁠, I argued that America’s affordability challenges stem largely from supply constraints.

​Too many policymakers focus on restricting growth instead of expanding supply. Whether it’s housing, energy, water, or data centers, abundance—not scarcity—is the path to lower prices and greater opportunity.
​
The question of ownership remains central as well. In my latest property tax work, including Wyoming’s path toward property tax relief⁠, I continued making the case that if government can tax your property forever, ownership is incomplete.

Families should own their homes, not rent them from government through perpetual taxation. The solution starts with spending restraint and using surpluses to reduce and ultimately eliminate property taxes.
​
That same spending restraint is at the heart of the Sustainable Budget Project. Whether examining Alabama’s $18,000 spending problem⁠ or Alaska’s resource trap⁠, the lesson remains remarkably consistent: government spending that grows faster than population growth plus inflation eventually leads to higher taxes, slower growth, and fewer opportunities.

They’re largely the result of inflation, Federal Reserve policy, rising funding costs, and increased lending risks. When policymakers abandon fiscal discipline, families eventually pay the price.
​
One of the highlights of the week was seeing my work published internationally through the Instituto de Liberdade Econômica⁠, where I made the case that free-market capitalism remains the greatest engine of prosperity ever discovered.

No economic system has done more to lift people out of poverty, improve living standards, and expand opportunity.
​
My economic episode this week was on how government failures hurt our ability to prosper in many ways.

Across all these issues, the lesson is the same. Economic mobility requires opportunity. Housing affordability requires abundance. Ownership requires property rights. Growth requires entrepreneurship. Prosperity requires freedom.

Government has an important role, but it cannot replace families, businesses, churches, charities, and communities. Those institutions remain the real engines of human flourishing.

The more we trust people, the more they prosper. And that’s exactly what public policy should be designed to achieve.

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.
​
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
​
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.

​Are free markets really controlled by elites? Or do they actually spread power across millions of people?

In this episode of This Week’s Economy, we break down one of the biggest misconceptions about capitalism and explain why free-market systems decentralize power through voluntary exchange, entrepreneurship, competition, and strong institutions.

We discuss:
• Why institutions matter for prosperity
• How capitalism disperses decision-making
• Why centralized power creates bigger failures
• The dangers of overregulation and monetary manipulation
• School choice, healthcare competition, and spending restraint
• Why ordinary people thrive most in systems built on freedom and responsibility

Free-market capitalism is not about empowering elites. It is about empowering people.
​
WATCH, LIKE, SHARE, & SUBSCRIBE for more economic insights grounded in liberty and prosperity.
​
🔗 Subscribe to the newsletter and get show notes:
https://vanceginn.substack.com

Originally published on Substack. 

Inflation may have cooled from its peak, but prices remain painfully high. Housing affordability is collapsing in many parts of the country. Interest rates are elevated. Government debt is exploding to $40 trillion.

Trust in institutions is eroding. And both political parties increasingly seem more interested in managing the economy than trusting people to build prosperity themselves.

That should concern all of us.
​
Yesterday, I spoke to a stellar conservative group hosted by Tom Giovanetti’s Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas about the history of classical liberalism and why its lessons matter now more than ever.

The conversation centered on a growing reality many Americans feel intuitively:

Government has become too large, too intrusive, and too comfortable controlling more parts of our lives.

Meanwhile, too many policymakers on both the left and right are embracing different versions of the same flawed idea: centralized control.

Some call it industrial policy.

Others call it economic nationalism.

Others call it national conservatism, post-liberalism, or populism.

But too often, they rely on the same progressive tools: more tariffs, more subsidies, more mandates, more favoritism, more political management of the economy, and more government power over private decisions.

That is not the path to prosperity.

The answer is not replacing progressive management with conservative management.

The answer is restoring freedom.

Classical Liberalism Built the Modern World

Classical liberalism is the tradition of Adam Smith, Frederic Bastiat, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Thomas Sowell.
It is built on a few foundational ideas:

• Private property
• Free exchange
• Limited government
• Sound money
• Entrepreneurship
• Rule of law
• Civil society
• Personal responsibility

At its core, classical liberalism starts with a simple but powerful belief: People generally flourish best when they are free.

​Free to work.

Free to build.

Free to exchange.

Free to innovate.

Free to fail.

Free to succeed.

That may sound obvious today, but historically it was revolutionary.

For most of human history, poverty was the normal condition of mankind. Economic mobility barely existed. Your birth largely determined your future.

Then societies increasingly embraced property rights, entrepreneurship, voluntary exchange, and constitutional limits on power.

The result transformed civilization.

According to long-run global data from the World Bank, extreme poverty collapsed from roughly 80 percent of humanity in the early 1800s to below 10 percent today.

That did not happen because governments centrally planned prosperity.

It happened because free people were allowed to solve problems.

Capitalism Is Moral, Not Just Efficient

One of the biggest mistakes defenders of capitalism make is defending it only in technical terms.

GDP.

Growth rates.

Productivity.

Those matter. But capitalism’s strongest case is moral.

Free-market capitalism decentralized power.

Before classical liberalism, economic and political power were concentrated among kings, aristocrats, or political elites. Opportunity was limited. Privilege dominated.

Capitalism changed that.

Not perfectly.

But dramatically.

Ordinary people gained the ability to own property, start businesses, accumulate savings, build wealth, support families, and improve their lives through voluntary exchange instead of political favoritism.

That matters because dignity requires freedom.

As Friedman once said: “Human freedom and human prosperity go hand in hand.”

History overwhelmingly supports that conclusion.

The Economy Is Warning Us

The latest economic data tell us something Washington and Wall Street do not want to admit: The economy is softer underneath the surface than many headlines suggest.

Recent GDP growth has remained sluggish relative to the enormous amount of fiscal and monetary stimulus injected into the system since 2020. Inflation remains above the Federal Reserve’s target. Labor force participation remains weak. Housing affordability continues deteriorating. And interest rates remain elevated because inflationary pressures never fully disappeared.

As I recently wrote in my Substack newsletter, “The Economy Is Telling You Something Wall Street Won’t”, many of today’s economic distortions stem from two core problems:

• Government overspending
• Federal Reserve monetary manipulation

During Covid, Congress spent trillions under both parties while the Federal Reserve massively expanded its balance sheet and held interest rates artificially low.

Too much money chased constrained supply.

Inflation followed.

That was not capitalism failing.

It was policy distortion.

As Friedman famously warned:

“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”

Once again, he was right.

The Dangerous Rise of “Buffering”

One of the defining characteristics of modern policymaking is what can be called “buffering.”

Whenever markets send painful signals, politicians increasingly try to buffer people from economic adjustment instead of fixing the underlying problem.

Housing expensive?

Subsidize demand.

College expensive?

Expand student loans.

Healthcare expensive?

Increase government payment systems.

Energy prices rise?

Blame producers and regulate them more.

Markets weaken?

Inject liquidity.

But buffering worsens the distortions underneath.

Subsidies without available supply raise prices.

Cheap money without productivity creates bubbles.

Persistent deficits crowd out private investment and weaken long-run growth.

You cannot permanently suspend economics.

And yet that is increasingly how both political parties operate.

The Right’s Identity Crisis

Many conservatives correctly recognize that progressive economics has failed.

But instead of returning to constitutional government and classical liberalism, some on the right are embracing mirror-image versions of progressivism.

National conservatives, post-liberals, and economic populists increasingly support:

• Industrial policy
• Protectionism
• Tariffs
• Government-directed investment
• Expanded executive power
• Pressure campaigns against private firms

That should worry everyone who values liberty.

Because once government gains the power to direct economic outcomes, the only remaining question becomes who controls the machinery of power.

Classical liberalism rejects that premise entirely.

It limits power itself.

Not merely who controls it.

Trump, Biden, and the Overspending Problem
​
President Trump’s first term included several important pro-growth victories in this order:

• Deregulation
• Tax reform
• Stronger investment incentives
• Expanded domestic energy production

I saw part of that firsthand while serving at the White House Office of Management and Budget during Trump 45.

But tariffs were still a mistake then and remain a mistake now.

Tariffs are taxes.

They raise prices, distort supply chains, reduce competition, and create uncertainty.

Then the Biden administration expanded government intervention even further through industrial policy subsidies, green-energy favoritism, student loan transfers, and continued deficit spending.

Both parties increasingly seem more comfortable managing capitalism than defending economic freedom.

That is a dangerous trend.

Texas Still Works Better—But Warning Signs Matter

Texas continues outperforming many states because it still allows more room for markets to function.

No personal income tax.

A strong energy sector.

Relatively lighter regulation.

More housing construction than many coastal states.

A more entrepreneurial culture overall.

People and capital continue moving to Texas because opportunity still exists here.

But Texas is not immune from bad policy.

Through my work with Americans for Tax Reform on state budget analysis across the country, one lesson consistently emerges:

Overspending eventually undermines growth.

When government spending grows faster than population growth plus inflation over long periods, taxpayers eventually get squeezed through:

• Higher taxes
• More fees
• More debt
• More government crowding out private investment

Texas Republicans often campaign like fiscal conservatives while growing budgets too quickly.

That disconnect matters.

If Texas wants to remain Texas, it must restrain spending, reduce property taxes through genuine budget discipline, expand housing supply, and preserve energy abundance.

Healthcare and AI Reveal the Same Lesson

Healthcare and artificial intelligence both illustrate the broader principle.

Healthcare is one of the most distorted sectors in the American economy. Third-party payment systems, subsidies, licensing restrictions, mandates, and government intervention dominate incentives. Then politicians blame “markets” for rising costs in a system government already heavily controls.

The answer is not more price controls.

It is more transparency, competition, innovation, and patient choice.

The same principle applies to AI.

America became the global technology leader because we embraced entrepreneurship, venture capital, private investment, and permissionless innovation.

If we regulate AI like Europe, we should expect European results:

slower growth, less innovation, and fewer breakthroughs.

The answer is not centralized planning.

It is preserving the conditions that allow innovation to flourish.

Freedom Still Works
​
Despite all the problems we face, I remain optimistic.

Because freedom still works.

Markets still coordinate better than centralized planners.

Entrepreneurs still create value.

Innovation still improves lives.

People still respond to incentives.

And free societies still outperform centralized systems over time.

America’s strength has never been government management.

America’s strength has always been free people solving problems.

That was true in Adam Smith’s time.

It was true in Milton Friedman’s time.

And despite all the noise today, it remains true now.

Three Key Takeaways for Policymakers

1. Overspending and Monetary Distortion Are the Core Economic Problems

Persistent deficits and Federal Reserve manipulation distorted prices, fueled inflation, weakened affordability, and slowed long-run growth.

2. Government Buffering Often Makes Problems Worse

Subsidizing demand while restricting supply creates higher prices, more distortions, and weaker economic signals.

3. Classical Liberalism Still Offers the Best Path Forward

Economic freedom, sound money, spending restraint, entrepreneurship, property rights, and limited government remain the strongest foundation for prosperity.

The evidence from history is overwhelming:

Freedom works.

And when government gets out of the way, people build things far greater than politicians could ever design.

Originally published on Substack. 

I understand why so many people are uneasy right now.

Politics feels disorienting. The labels keep multiplying. On the right alone, you hear Christian nationalism, national conservatism, freedom conservatism, libertarianism, populism, and a dozen hybrids in between. President Trump can sound like a nationalist one day, a pragmatist the next, and a progressive on tariffs or industrial policy the day after that. Meanwhile, many lawmakers are trying to make sense of a country that feels more divided, more centralized, and less confident than it should.

That confusion is real. But confusion is exactly why first principles matter.

After decades studying economics to get my doctorate and thereafter, teaching students at multiple places of higher education, working at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and other think tanks, serving in the White House Office of Management and Budget, and now leading Ginn Economic Consulting, I keep coming back to the same conclusion: classical liberalism is the most consistent public philosophy available.

Not because it is fashionable. Not because it always wins elections. But because it starts with the right view of the human person, the right limits on government, and the right understanding of how prosperity is created.

As a Christian, husband, father of three, economist, and policy adviser, I care deeply about truth, virtue, family, and human dignity. That is exactly why I reject the idea that government should be our parent, pastor, planner, or permanent manager.

What Classical Liberalism Gets Right

Classical liberalism starts with a simple truth: people flourish best when they are free, responsible, and protected by equal justice under the law.

That means property rights, free exchange, free speech, religious liberty, limited government, and the rule of law. It means government exists to preserve liberty, not to redesign society according to the ambitions of whichever faction happens to hold power. It means parents should raise children, families should form character, churches should disciple believers, businesses should create value, and civil society should do the work government has crowded out for far too long.

That is why classical liberalism is more coherent than the alternatives. It is morally serious without turning the state into a moral tutor. It is economically sound without pretending experts can outthink millions of free people. And it is politically realistic because it recognizes what Friedrich Hayek called the problem of dispersed knowledge — the fact that no planner possesses all the local, changing, “particular circumstances of time and place” needed to direct a society well.

That point matters more than ever in an age of AI, rapid innovation, and entrepreneurial change. The future will not be built by committees in Washington. It will be built by people experimenting, inventing, taking risks, solving problems, and adapting faster than government can write the rules.

If we want more prosperity, we need more entrepreneurs, more innovation, more AI, and more freedom to discover what works — not more elite management from above.

Where Other Views Go Wrong

That does not mean other traditions have nothing valuable to say. Many of them identify real concerns.

Christian nationalism is right to worry about moral decay, family breakdown, and cultural drift. Christians should care about those things. I do. But once the state is asked to enforce a thicker religious or national identity, the line between moral witness and coercive politics gets blurry fast. The government is not and shouldn’t be the church. It is not a good shepherd. It is usually a clumsy, expensive substitute for institutions that actually shape character well. As a Christian, I believe the death of your old life and rebirth of your new life happens in the heart when you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord, not government pushing it on you.

National conservatism is often right to criticize elite detachment, institutional rot, and the failures of global managerialism. But it too often drifts toward tariffs, industrial policy, centralized favoritism, and the idea that national strength requires more state direction. That is where it loses me. A nation does not get stronger by becoming more economically managed. It gets weaker, more politicized, and more dependent on the judgments of people who will always know less than they think they know. Trying to use government to solve problems due to government failures will exacerbate the problems.

Modern conservatism often says good things about family, order, and constitutional government. But too much of it still tolerates big government as long as it is used for supposedly better ends. That is not enough. If the state is still oversized, overcentralized, and overconfident, liberty is still in danger.

Libertarianism often gets the economics and the skepticism of concentrated power right. I respect that. But some forms of libertarianism can sound too thin on culture, family, and the supporting institutions that help freedom endure. Freedom is not just being left alone. It is also having the moral and institutional foundations to use freedom well.

Classical liberalism holds these tensions together better than the alternatives. It respects freedom without denying virtue. It values moral order without conscripting the state into engineering it.

Parents, Not Bureaucrats

This is especially important in family life and education.

Parents should be empowered to teach, educate, and parent their children instead of having government try to do it for them. That does not mean every family will make perfect decisions. It means the people closest to the child should have the most authority, not the least.

A government that keeps crowding out parents in education, health, nutrition, technology, and culture does not make families stronger. It makes them more dependent and less confident in their role.

That is part of the institutional rot we are living with now. Too many elites in politics, media, academia, and bureaucracy think they have the answers. They do not. That mindset has produced dysfunction in Washington and across state and local governments alike.

The institutional framework is getting too many things wrong because it is built on the false assumption that centralized expertise can replace free people, free exchange, and local responsibility.

Spending Is the Disease

This is where public policy gets practical.

The worst thing government does is spend too much.

That is the disease. Taxes, regulations, inflation, debt, and other distortions are often symptoms of that disease.

Government spends too much, and then it has to tax more, borrow more, regulate more, and centralize more to support itself. If lawmakers want to fix what is broken, they should start there. That is why I keep arguing for strong spending restraints at the federal, state, and local levels.

Once government grows beyond what taxpayers can sustainably support, everything else gets harder and more politicized.

Milton Friedman said one of the great mistakes is to judge policies by their intentions rather than their results. That remains one of the best tests in public life.

Good intentions gave us price controls, corporate favoritism, tariff hikes, overbuilt bureaucracies, narrow tax bases, and all kinds of progressive and “post-liberal” experiments that sound compassionate or strategic but fail in practice. Results matter. And the results of too much government are all around us.

Direction Matters

This is one reason Argentina President Javier Milei has drawn so much attention. Argentina is not America, and his reforms have involved real hardship and controversy.

But Reuters reports that Milei has pursued deep spending cuts, achieved Argentina’s first budget surplus in more than a decade, and helped drive inflation sharply lower from the levels seen when he took office. That is much closer to the direction we should be moving than the usual mix of tariffs, industrial policy, subsidies, and paternalism that still dominates too much of American policymaking.

At Ginn Economic Consulting, that is what I provide: a North Star for policy grounded in first principles and serious economics. But it can also an incremental star.

We do not go from today’s dysfunction to a freer society in one step. We get there by moving consistently in the right direction. The key is not to lose sight of the destination while making prudent progress.

The Debate We Need

We do need tension and debate. Different camps challenging one another can be healthy. Good ideas get tested that way.

But the nastiness, the name-calling, the performative outrage — that is not serious persuasion. It makes people look ridiculous, and it weakens the very causes they claim to defend. We need more humility, more substance, and more willingness to reason from first principles and evidence.

That is what classical liberalism encourages: humility about power, humility about knowledge, and confidence that free people, not political elites, are best equipped to shape their own lives.

Three Takeaways for Policymakers

1. Classical liberalism is the most coherent governing philosophy.

It protects liberty, property, faith, speech, and family without turning government into society’s parent or planner.

2. Spending is the disease.

Taxes, regulations, inflation, debt, and dependency are often downstream symptoms of a government that has grown too large.

3. The future belongs to freedom, not elite management.

If we want stronger families, more innovation, more AI, more entrepreneurship, and more prosperity, government must get out of the way and let people prosper.

The labels will keep changing. The trends will keep shifting. But the principles do not.

That is why I still believe classical liberalism is the best North Star we have.

We’re at a moment where support for free-market capitalism is slipping—and it’s not hard to see why. From both political parties, we’re hearing the same kinds of ideas: cap prices, punish profits, and have the government take a more active role in managing markets. 

Politicians are increasingly trying to pick outcomes, override prices, and direct capital. And history is clear: this doesn’t fix capitalism's weaknesses—it replaces markets with politics.

In today’s episode of This Week’s Economy, I break down why prices and profits matter—how they act as the heartbeat of the free market, sending signals, shaping decisions, and fueling the competition that improves our quality of life. 

You can also catch the full episode on YouTube, Apple Podcast, or Spotify, and visit my Substack newsletter for show notes and more information.

Free-market capitalism remains the best system ever discovered for human flourishing. Yet political support for it is wavering — and that should alarm anyone who cares about prosperity and freedom.

A recent Gallup poll on Americans’ views of capitalism and socialism found that just 54% of Americans now view capitalism favorably — the lowest level Gallup has ever recorded.

The partisan breakdown is striking:

• Republicans remain strongly pro-capitalist, though support has softened.
• Independents now only narrowly favor capitalism.
• Among Democrats, fewer than half view capitalism positively, while nearly two-thirds view socialism favorably.

The data reveal a hard truth: those of us who defend free-market capitalism are unlikely to persuade most Democrats anytime soon. Many Democrats appreciate the outcomes of capitalism — jobs, innovation, rising living standards — yet reject the label itself, often associating it with inequality, corporate favoritism, or cronyism.
That means the task before us is bigger than winning a policy argument. It’s about reclaiming the moral case for capitalism.

In today’s episode of This Week’s Economy, I lay out that moral case, explore why criticisms of capitalism are gaining traction, and discuss how we can renew support for the system that has lifted more people out of poverty than any other in history. Tune in to the full episode on YouTube, Apple Podcast, or Spotify, and visit my website for more information about Ginn Economic Consulting and vanceginn.substack.com for show notes.