Originally published on Substack. 

​I hope you’ve had a great week! I’m ready for a wonderful weekend with family and multiple soccer games for my boys.

Yesterday, I presented at the Amrize leadership conference in Plano, Texas. It was great group. Below are my prepared remarks and you can view my slides here.

Cement is the economy made physical.

When economists debate growth, inflation, or productivity, those debates eventually show up in cement, concrete, and construction materials.

If something is wrong with the economy, your industry costs experience it quickly. If policy is broken, your timelines stretch first. If capital is discouraged, your projects get delayed first.

That’s why the state of the Texas economy—and especially the Dallas–Fort Worth economy—matters so much to this industry.

My calling is simple: to let people prosper in whatever way works best for them.

After decades of studying economics, teaching it, advising lawmakers, serving as Chief Economist at the White House Office of Management and Budget, and now president of Ginn Economic Consulting, working with more than 20 organizations across the country, I’ve learned something clearly.

The system that lets the most people prosper—across industries, income levels, and generations—is free-market capitalism. Not government planning. Not price controls. Not industrial policy.

Free people, free exchange, free enterprise. And few industries could understand this better than the cement industry.

Why Texas Works—and Why DFW Leads

Texas continues to outperform most of the country because capitalism is allowed to work here more than in most states.
Texas has no personal income tax. It continues to gain population while high-tax states lose it. Capital continues flowing here because returns are possible.

Construction alone accounts for roughly 5 percent of Texas’s GDP, compared with about 4.5 percent nationally, meaning Texas is still expanding physical capacity while other states restrict it.

But a major engine inside Texas is DFW.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Texas is experiencing a historic manufacturing building boom, with more than $289 billion in nonresidential construction contracts announced since mid-2022—much of it concentrated in North Texas.

That scale matters. Manufacturing and industrial facilities are not marginal users of cement. They are among the most intensive consumers of concrete, foundations, paving, and structural materials.

The Dallas Regional Chamber documents DFW as one of the nation’s top destinations for corporate relocations and industrial expansion, driven by logistics access, workforce depth, and business-cost advantages.

DFW is a major contributor to Texas’s $2.8 trillion nominal economy or $2.3 trillion real economy (adjusted for inflation), with durable goods manufacturing playing a central role in regional GDP growth.

Cement sits at the center of all of it. You cannot have growth without materials. You cannot have materials without capital. And you cannot have capital without confidence.

DFW as a Cement Demand Engine

DFW’s economy acts as a massive engine for cement consumption—not just because of its size, but because of how it grows.

Industrial Infrastructure Hub

DFW leads the nation in industrial construction. That volume of activity directly fuels demand for regional cement producers, including the Midlothian area—often referred to as the “Cement Capital of Texas.”

Industrial buildings are concrete-intensive by design: slabs, tilt-wall panels, heavy foundations, and extensive paving.

Infrastructure and Transportation

Texas infrastructure projects are among the largest concrete consumers in the country. Projects like the Southeast Connector and the I-35 expansion rely heavily on cement and aggregates.

Infrastructure investment in Texas is projected to consume millions of tons of cement annually, underscoring how infrastructure demand directly affects cement markets.

The Data Center Link

DFW has become a top-tier global hub for data center construction, one of the most concrete-intensive building types.

Massive campuses developed by firms like Compass Datacenters and Meta require:

• Thick foundations
• Precast concrete shells
• Fire-rated concrete walls
• Heavy-load paving and access roads

These projects concentrate demand in suburbs like Red Oak and Midlothian, creating localized but sustained cement demand.

The data center sector is also driving innovation in lower-carbon cement and concrete, as tech firms push for emissions reductions in large-scale construction—creating new market opportunities driven by private demand, not mandates.

Capitalism, Supply, and Affordability

Affordability is not primarily a demand problem, as people tend to have unlimited desires. It is a supply problem.

Prices rise when supply cannot keep up with demand. Supply expands when investment is allowed. Investment happens when returns are predictable.

Cement plants are not startups. They require:

• Hundreds of millions in upfront capital
• Decades-long planning horizons
• Reliable energy
• Predictable permitting
• Confidence that production will not be regulated out of existence

Capital does not chase uncertainty nor respond to slogans. Capital responds to predictability.

When government interferes with supply—through permitting delays, energy restrictions, or regulatory uncertainty—prices rise. Not because companies want them to, but because supply tightens.

You cannot punish supply and expect abundance.

Amrize and Free-Market Capitalism in Practice

This is where Amrize provides an example of capitalism working as intended.

Amrize’s strategy emphasizes American-made cement, long-term capital investment, operational efficiency, and producing close to demand rather than relying on fragile global supply chains.

Cement is heavy, energy-intensive, and logistics-dependent. Importing it at scale increases volatility. Domestic production reduces transportation risk, supply shocks, and long-run cost instability.

You don’t stabilize prices by controlling them. You stabilize prices by expanding reliable supply. That’s not protectionism. That’s not industrial policy. That’s econ 101.

Labor Markets: Capitalism Sending Clear Signals

Historically, construction wages in Texas have risen meaningfully, particularly for skilled trades such as cement finishers, equipment operators, and plant workers. That wage growth is not a failure. It is a signal.

It tells us:

• Demand is strong
• Skills are scarce
• Productivity matters

Labor constraints are not caused by markets. They are caused by policy barriers: occupational licensing that slows entry, training pipelines misaligned with industry needs, housing costs pushing workers farther from job sites, and federal immigration policy disconnected from labor realities.

DFW’s construction sector alone recorded an 8 percent job increase in 2023, the fastest growth in the nation—clear evidence of demand outpacing supply.

Labor supply is elastic over time—if allowed. When people can train quickly, move freely, and work legally, supply rises and output expands. When the government blocks adjustment, wages rise without productivity gains, pushing costs higher without increasing supply.

You cannot regulate your way to productivity.

Energy, Materials, and Capital Formation

Energy policy is economic policy for the cement industry.

Reliable, affordable energy is essential to domestic materials production. When energy becomes less reliable or more expensive, every ton costs more to produce.

Producer price data show sustained upward pressure on concrete and related materials, reflecting energy, transportation, and regulatory costs rather than market power.

Capital formation requires predictability. Cement plants plan decades ahead. They do not ask for subsidies. They ask for certainty.

When policy introduces permitting delays, regulatory ambiguity, or energy instability, investment slows, capacity tightens, and prices rise. That is not greed. That is economics.

Government Spending and the Quiet Squeeze

Texas has benefited from strong revenues, but state and local government spending has recently grown faster than the average taxpayer’s ability to afford it, as measured by population growth plus inflation. That matters.

When government grows faster than this, property taxes rise, fees multiply, compliance expands, and private investment gets crowded out over time.

Cement and concrete producers feel this directly through higher property tax burdens, longer approval timelines, and infrastructure funding diluted by political priorities rather than economic need.

Capital looks at trajectory, not just current conditions.

Federal Policy and the Cost of Interference

Many cost pressures are federal.

Trillion-dollar deficits push interest rates higher. Higher rates raise financing costs for capital-intensive projects. Long-term investment becomes riskier.

Federal housing policy emphasizes subsidies rather than supply. Subsidies increase demand without increasing supply. Subsidies without supply raise prices.

Energy policy, transportation policy, and regulatory layering all feed into construction costs that cement producers feel first. Immigration efforts may be warranted, but it creates labor shortages for many businesses. And protectionist trade policies may try to balance trade imbalances, but at the cost of higher prices and uncertain supply chains.

Capitalism can absorb shocks. It cannot thrive under constant interference. And we need more capitalism, not socialism.

The Pro-Growth Path Forward

If we want people to prosper, we need more free-market capitalism, not less.

That means restraining government spending. Controlling property taxes by controlling local budgets. Streamlining permitting and zoning. Expanding labor mobility and training pathways. Supporting domestic materials production. Reducing federal distortions that raise costs without expanding supply.

These principles are laid out in my guide on Pro-Growth Strategies for Construction Industry Prosperity. This is not ideology. It is evidence.

Let People Prosper

Capitalism is not perfect. But it is unmatched.

It has lifted more people out of poverty than any system in history. It has created more housing, infrastructure, and opportunity than any alternative. Cement proves this every day.

You cannot legislate affordability, regulate productivity, nor control prices into abundance. You can only allow it.

Texas has benefited because it has mostly allowed capitalism to work. DFW has grown because supply has been allowed to expand. The cement industry succeeds when capital is free to invest.
​
The choice ahead is simple. More capitalism—or more interference. If we choose freedom, people prosper.

Originally published on Substack. 

A growing number of lawmakers are convinced they’ve found the culprit behind rising teen anxiety and depression: the smartphone.

Much of that momentum traces back to the work of Jonathan Haidt, especially in his book, The Anxious Generation, which argues that the rapid adoption of smartphones and social media has rewired childhood and driven a mental health crisis.

It’s a compelling narrative. It’s also incomplete.

Correlation is not causation. And building sweeping public policy around a single explanatory variable—“the phone did it”—is a serious mistake.

The Data Question We’re Not Asking

Yes, teen depression has risen over the past decade. But so have other major disruptions:

• Prolonged COVID lockdowns and school closures
• Social isolation during critical developmental years
• Increased academic pressure and social comparison
• Family instability
• Inflation and economic uncertainty
• Cultural fragmentation and declining in-person community

Smartphones were present. So were all of those forces.

Even within academic research, the strength of the link between social media use and mental health varies.

Some studies find modest associations. Others find effects that shrink considerably when controlling for broader factors.

That doesn’t invalidate Haidt’s concerns. It simply means the causal chain is far more complex than a single device.

Public policy that assumes monocausality in a multivariable world usually backfires.

States Racing Ahead Anyway

Despite these open questions, states are moving fast.

In Wisconsin, Assembly Bill 962 would require app stores to verify user ages and obtain parental consent before minors download apps. A Senate companion, SB 937, has also been introduced.

In Colorado, SB26-051 is advancing in the Senate Business, Labor, & Technology Committee.

In Georgia, SB 467 would impose age verification and parental consent requirements statewide.

In South Dakota, HB 1275 introduces strict verification mandates.

In Alabama, HB 161 has already passed the Senate with amendments setting an effective date of January 2027 and is moving toward final action.

Other states are in motion as well. In Florida, SB 1722 advanced out of the Senate Commerce and Tourism Committee. In Virginia, SB 237 was continued to the 2027 session for further study.

The common thread: lawmakers are mandating App Store (think Apple or Google app stores)–level age verification systems as a frontline solution to youth mental health concerns.

That leap—from social science debate to sweeping compliance regime—deserves scrutiny.

What These Bills Actually Do

These proposals don’t simply encourage parental involvement. They require app stores to build age-verification infrastructure that may include digital ID systems, sensitive data collection, and centralized permission frameworks.

That creates several problems.

First, privacy.

Verifying age at scale often means collecting government IDs or other personal data. That information must be stored, secured, and protected. Data breaches are not hypothetical—they are routine.

Second, speech.

Age-verification systems can burden lawful access to information. Courts have historically treated such requirements cautiously when they chill First Amendment–protected activity.

Third, competition.

Compliance costs disproportionately favor the largest tech platforms. Smaller developers and startups will struggle to navigate a patchwork of state mandates. Ironically, policies framed as curbing “Big Tech” may entrench it.

And none of this directly proves the underlying premise—that restricting app downloads will materially improve teen mental health outcomes.

The Better Question

If the goal is to empower families, why not focus directly on parents?

Device-level parental controls already exist and continue to improve. Platforms can increase transparency tools without mandatory ID regimes.

Schools can integrate digital literacy education. Law enforcement can target unlawful exploitation and abuse directly. Florida is already championing this approach.

Those approaches strengthen families without constructing centralized verification systems.

The uncomfortable truth is that no statute replaces engaged parenting. No compliance checklist solves cultural fragmentation or social isolation.

Smartphones are tools. Like any tool, they can be misused. But they are also gateways to education, creativity, entrepreneurship, and connection.

Reducing a complex mental health trend to a single device risks misdiagnosing the problem—and institutionalizing the wrong solution.

Slow Down Before You Regulate

When multiple states rush into digital ID mandates based on contested correlations, litigation is almost inevitable. Policy reversals are messy. Infrastructure, once built, rarely shrinks.

Protecting children is a legitimate public concern. But good intentions do not justify poorly designed mandates.

Lawmakers should ask harder questions:

• Is the causal evidence strong enough to justify statewide ID systems?
• Are we unintentionally entrenching dominant platforms?
• Are we substituting government mandates for parental authority?

The answer to teen mental health challenges will not be found in a single bill number.

Before turning smartphones into the villain, policymakers should remember a simple principle: complex social problems rarely yield to simple regulatory fixes.

Empower parents. Encourage innovation. Protect constitutional boundaries.

That’s a more durable path than central planning disguised as child protection.

Originally published on Substack.

America is in the middle of a quiet but consequential infrastructure race.

Demand for cloud computing, artificial intelligence, digital payments, telehealth, logistics, and cybersecurity is exploding.
The physical backbone of all of it is data centers.

Whether states attract that investment or drive it away will hinge less on technology and more on policy choices.

A new report from the Goldwater Institute makes the case clearly: data centers are not a threat to economic prosperity.

They are essential infrastructure for the modern economy. Yet lawmakers across the country are responding with restrictions, moratoria, and energy rules rooted in scarcity thinking rather than market realities.

This debate is not really about data centers. It is about whether states choose abundance or artificial scarcity.

Data Centers Power Everyday Life

Data centers are often discussed as if they were niche projects for “big tech.” In reality, they support daily economic activity most people take for granted. Navigation apps, cloud storage, online banking, remote work platforms, streaming services, and AI tools all rely on data centers operating continuously behind the scenes.

Artificial intelligence only heightens the stakes. AI systems require immense computing power to train and operate, and that capacity does not live on personal devices. It lives in data centers. States that want the productivity gains AI promises cannot reject the infrastructure that makes those gains possible.

As Goldwater explains, states with predictable permitting, clear land-use rules, and respect for property rights are attracting billions in private investment. States that politicize infrastructure are not stopping growth. They are redirecting it elsewhere.

The Energy Argument Is Backward

The most common objection to data centers is electricity demand.

Critics warn that growth will overwhelm grids and crowd out households and small businesses. That concern sounds reasonable until you examine the assumptions underneath it.

Most demand forecasts assume data centers must draw their full energy load from the grid. That assumption is wrong.
Many data centers already generate power on site or plan to do so. With the freedom to innovate, they can deploy small modular nuclear reactors, clean reliable energy systems, and other private generation technologies to meet their own needs and, in some cases, provide surplus power back to the grid.

This is where insights from a recent Cato Institute briefing paper are critical.

Cato explains how private electricity grids and consumer-regulated power arrangements offer a parallel path to reliability outside monopoly utility systems.

When consumers and firms are allowed to contract for power directly or generate it themselves, energy supply expands, innovation accelerates, and risk is better aligned with decision-makers.

If electricity demand estimates assume 100 percent grid dependence, they exaggerate the problem and ignore the solution.

Policy Is Creating the Scarcity It Claims to Fear

Unfortunately, some states are moving in the opposite direction.

Texas passed legislation last year that reportedly restricted data centers from producing their own electricity while simultaneously offering targeted tax incentives. That approach discourages self-generation while shifting risk onto captive ratepayers.

South Carolina and other states are now debating similar paths. At a recent FITSNews forum, participants asked how states should redefine economic development for the technology age. The wrong answer is to block or micromanage the infrastructure of that economy.

Polling from the South Carolina Policy Council shows voters care about affordability and growth, not symbolic regulation.
That skepticism is rational, especially in states still dealing with the fallout from failed government-run energy projects like V.C. Summer, where ratepayers were forced to subsidize political decisions that collapsed.

Ratepayers Should Not Be the Backstop

There is a legitimate concern buried in this debate: households and small businesses should not be forced to subsidize large private users if utilities expand capacity to serve them. That concern is valid. But bans and restrictions are not the answer.

The answer is competition.

Allow off-grid generation, private power contracts, and parallel electricity systems.

Let large users internalize their energy costs instead of socializing them. When firms pay for their own power, they invest in efficiency, reliability, and innovation.

Markets do that naturally. Monopoly utilities do not.

As I argued previously in Stop Blaming Data Centers. Start Fixing Energy Policy, data centers are not the cause of grid stress. They expose weaknesses created by decades of overregulation and centralized control.

Abundance Beats Regulation Every Time

The central lesson from both the Goldwater Institute and Cato Institute research is the same: competition is the best regulator.

Firms disciplined by markets respond faster, allocate resources more efficiently, and innovate continuously. Heavy-handed regulation freezes technology in place and locks in today’s inefficiencies.

The same logic applies to water use. Modern data centers recycle water extensively and are often more efficient than traditional industrial users. The evidence does not support claims that they pose a significant strain on water resources.

States that choose abundance expand supply, lower costs, and attract investment. States that choose scarcity ration growth and watch opportunity leave.

A Final Note for Lawmakers

Data centers are coming whether policymakers like it or not. The only real question is where they will be built.

States that embrace private energy generation, competitive electricity markets, and regulatory humility will win jobs, capital, and technological leadership. States that respond with fear-driven rules will export those benefits elsewhere.

The choice is not between growth and responsibility. The choice is between markets that adapt and politics that stall.

Let people build. Let energy supply expand. Let competition work.

Recap for Legislators:
​

• Data centers are core economic infrastructure, and restricting them will not stop demand for digital services or AI — it will simply push investment, jobs, and tax base to other states.
• Electricity concerns are policy-driven, not technology-driven. Allowing private, off-grid power generation and competitive electricity supply prevents grid crowd-out and protects ratepayers better than bans or mandates.
• Energy abundance beats regulation. Expanding reliable supply through competition, private generation, and nuclear solves grid stress and supports growth without new bureaucratic control.

Originally published on Substack.

If you work in policy, government, or research, this moment should feel familiar.

A new technology emerges. Headlines turn anxious. Hearings follow. White papers multiply.

And before the technology has fully diffused—or its benefits broadly reached workers and consumers—policymakers begin debating how to slow it down, fence it in, or “protect” people from it.

That’s exactly where we are with artificial intelligence.

And the biggest risk right now isn’t AI moving too fast. It’s policy reacting too quickly—and getting the incentives wrong.

The Economist acknowledges that AI is not the only—or even the main—threat facing large technology firms. Regulation, antitrust pressure, and trade policy loom larger. That should give policymakers pause. When the most powerful firms in the economy fear government more than competitors, something fundamental has gone wrong.

The same analytical error shows up in the labor market.

Concerns that AI will eliminate entry-level jobs are understandable. But as The Economist explains in its assessment of AI’s impact on entry-level work, AI tends to reshape tasks rather than eliminate career ladders—just as past general-purpose technologies did. The difference between disruption and opportunity lies in whether labor markets are flexible enough to adjust.

Here is where policy matters most.

Entry-level workers are often blocked not by automation, but by occupational licensing, credential inflation, rigid labor rules, and wage mandates that raise the cost of hiring inexperienced workers. When legal risk and fixed costs rise, employers substitute capital for labor more quickly. Technology then gets blamed for outcomes regulation helped create. That is not a market failure—it is a policy-induced distortion.

Misplaced blame extends to AI leadership as well.

Another Economist article pushes back on the caricature that AI executives are uniquely dangerous, noting that AI bosses are just regular capitalists—responding to incentives, risk, and expected returns. Capital is not ideological. It flows where rules allow it to flow. When policy rewards scale, compliance, and political access, capital concentrates. When barriers to entry fall, competition expands.

This distinction matters for anyone designing regulation.

Too often, we confuse free-market capitalism with policy-engineered concentration. The former is disruptive and decentralized. The latter is orderly, cartel-friendly, and politically tempting. If policymakers want less concentration, the answer is not layering regulation onto incumbents—it is removing rules that block challengers.

Banking provides a clear example.

As the Wall Street Journal reports on bank branches closing across the country, the trend is often framed as abandonment of communities. But the real drivers are technological change combined with regulatory cost.

Digital banking lowers operating expenses and expands access. Compliance requirements raise fixed costs—costs large institutions can absorb and community banks often cannot. Consolidation follows. Then markets are blamed for outcomes policy accelerated.

Trade policy reinforces the same mistake.

Despite mounting evidence of harm, The Economist asks whether the U.S. has reached “peak tariff”. Tariffs persist because they are politically attractive, even though they function as hidden taxes on consumers and producers. For AI, advanced manufacturing, and modern supply chains, tariffs raise input costs, slow diffusion, and weaken resilience—yet remain a favored tool.

Put together, the lesson is clear:

AI is not the force concentrating power in the economy. Policy is. When entry is restricted, incumbents win. When compliance is expensive, scale is rewarded. When prices are controlled, supply contracts. When subsidies expand, inefficiency hides.

Markets discipline failure quickly. Politics rarely does.

Closing Thoughts

For policymakers and analysts, the choice is straightforward.

We can treat AI as a threat to be contained—or as a tool whose benefits depend on competition, openness, and institutional humility.

Basic economics offers a clear guide: people respond to incentives, and markets aggregate information better than governments ever can.
​
AI will advance regardless. The only open question is whether policy will amplify its benefits—or suffocate them before they spread. Thanks for reading.