​What happens when public policy is built on narratives instead of numbers?

​We get bloated budgets, broken housing markets, and education systems that spend more but deliver less. In a world flooded with information, the real scarcity is truth. This episode features guest Jim Agresti, founder and president of Just Facts, to discuss public policy, misinformation, data analysis, housing affordability, AI’s impact on research, education spending, and why transparency matters more than ever. If you care about economic policy grounded in evidence instead of emotion, this episode is for you.

​🎧 Listen to the full episode of the Let People Prosper Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Find out more about my work at Ginn Economic Consulting here: vanceginn.com. Get show notes at vanceginn.substack.com.

​If politics feels angrier, dumber, and more tribal than ever, you’re not imagining it. Smart people are talking past each other. Good intentions collide. Every issue becomes a moral emergency. And somehow, even ideas that once united people—like trade, cooperation, and innovation—now trigger outrage.

This episode gets to the why.

My guest is Arnold Kling—one of the most original thinkers on how economics and politics actually work in the real world. Arnold doesn’t just analyze policy outcomes; he explains why we struggle to communicate, why persuasion fails, and why cooperation breaks down even when everyone claims to want prosperity.

He’s the author of The Three Languages of Politics and Specialization and Trade, two books that help explain why debates feel impossible—and why decentralized cooperation still beats control every time.
This conversation ranges from political psychology to trade, from tribalism to AI, and from economic ignorance to real reasons for optimism. If you want to understand why our politics feels broken—and how prosperity still emerges despite it—this one’s for you.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of the Let People Prosper Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.

​Washington never runs out of ideas for spending money it doesn’t have.

This episode of the Let People Prosper Show takes on one of the latest examples: so-called “Trump Accounts.” Marketed as a pro-family, pro-capitalism idea, they’re actually another case of federal social engineering through the tax code—layered on top of an already broken fiscal foundation.

To unpack it all, I sat down with Veronique de Rugy, one of the sharpest and most honest fiscal minds in America. She’s the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy at the Mercatus Center and a nationally syndicated columnist who has spent her career calling out budget gimmicks, cronyism, and policies that trade long-term prosperity for short-term politics.

She was last on the show in Episode 102, discussing immigration and American values. This time, we dive into deficits, tariffs, inflation, entitlement pressure, and why Washington’s obsession with using the tax code to “fix” social problems often makes things worse.

🎧 Watch or listen to the full episode on ⁠YouTube⁠, ⁠Apple Podcast,⁠ or ⁠Spotify⁠, and visit ⁠my website vanceginn.com⁠ for more information about my work at Ginn Economic Consulting.

​If you listen closely to today’s labor debates, you’ll hear a familiar refrain: workers need more protection from Washington. But scratch the surface, and what many politicians really mean is more power for unions, more mandates for employers, and fewer choices for workers themselves.

That’s backward.

In this episode of the Let People Prosper Show, I talk with Vinnie Vernuccio, one of the sharpest labor-policy minds in the country and a longtime advocate for actual worker freedom. We talk about what it really means to be pro-worker in a 21st-century economy—one defined by flexibility, technology, and individual choice, not 1930s labor law.

This is a timely conversation. Between renewed pushes for the PRO Act, rising use of AI in the workplace, and growing attacks on independent contracting and right-to-work laws, the future of work is being shaped right now. And too often, workers are treated as political props rather than individuals with agency.

This episode pushes back—hard.

🎧 Watch or listen to the full episode on YouTube, Apple Podcast, or Spotify, and visit my website at vanceginn.com for more information about my work at Ginn Economic Consulting.

​We talk a lot about opportunity in America—but far less about where opportunity actually exists and why.

Why do some states consistently help people climb the economic ladder while others trap families in place for generations? Why do well-intended policies often backfire? And why is “doing more” by the government so often the wrong answer when it comes to social mobility?

That’s exactly what we unpack in Episode 186 of the Let People Prosper Show with Dr. Justin Callais, Chief Economist at the Archbridge Institute and lead author of the new Social Mobility in the 50 States (2025) report.
Justin brings data, clarity, and—refreshingly—humility to one of the most politicized topics in economics. The findings challenge both the left’s obsession with redistribution and the right’s tendency to overlook the very real policy barriers that states create.

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