Originally published on Substack.

A discussion is happening over welfare reform. One camp says the answer is stronger work requirements. Another says the system itself must be reworked through reforms like “One Door” to Work.

That debate matters. But it could be framed better. The choice should not be either work requirements or One Door. That is the wrong debate.

If we actually want fewer people trapped in welfare, fewer taxpayer dollars wasted, and more people moving into work and self-sufficiency, then we need to think more seriously about the difference between a policy tool and an institutional reform.

Work requirements are a tool. They matter. But they are not the same thing as fixing the machinery of government that administers these programs in the first place.

Confusing Tools, Systems

The Foundation for Government Accountability’s argument against One Door-style reforms contends that integrated eligibility systems widen the on-ramp to dependency, import errors across programs, and increase the risk of fraud.

The Alliance for Opportunity counters that One Door is about integrating workforce development, job training, and public assistance in ways that reduce waste and help move people from welfare to work.

I have worked with the Alliance for years, though less closely in recent years as my attention shifted to other issues. I also respect the work FGA does to advance a pro-work agenda. This is not a cheap shot at allies. It is a substantive disagreement about what reform really means.

My view is simple: the attack on One Door goes too far, confuses the issue, and risks hurting efforts to get people off welfare.

Work Matters

Let me start where I agree with FGA: work matters.

A healthy society is built on work, family, faith, and civil society—not on permanent dependence on government. Welfare should be limited, temporary, and oriented toward upward mobility.

That is why it matters that the 2025 reconciliation law, OBBB, added new Medicaid work requirements for many adults in the Obamacare expansion beginning January 1, 2027. It also requires states to verify compliance or exemptions at the time of application and renewal.

But that only strengthens my point. Work requirements are now part of the governing reality. So the real question is no longer whether states should care about work. They must. The question is whether they will administer that reality through a fragmented bureaucracy—or a more coherent system aligned around work.

Costly Fragmentation

America’s welfare state is not one system. It is a massive web of different systems.

The Alliance notes that the safety net is broken and fragmented, and the federal government’s own record shows just how costly that fragmentation can be. The Government Accountability Office reports about $162 billion in improper payments in 2024 and estimates annual fraud losses between $233 billion and $521 billion, with $2.8 trillion in improper payments since 2003.

That does not mean all improper payments are fraud. But it does mean the current system is already leaking money at a staggering scale. Fragmentation is not a neutral baseline. It is expensive, duplicative, and hard to oversee.

What One Door Fixes

This is where One Door deserves a fairer hearing. One Door is not “easier enrollment.” It is an institutional redesign intended to align benefits, verification, case management, and workforce services around one objective: helping work-capable people move from dependency to employment to self-sufficiency.

The Alliance’s case is that integrated systems can streamline programs, reduce waste, and improve outcomes. Similar ideas appear in reforms like those discussed by the Pelican Institute and in my work on moving from dependency to empowerment.

That is not about expanding welfare. It is about doing better for people so they can stay off these programs at a lower cost.

Institutional Reform Needed

Here’s the core issue. Work requirements are a tool. One Door is an institutional reform. If the system is broken, adding more rules doesn’t fix it. It often just increases:

• Administrative costs
• Compliance burdens
• Bureaucratic complexity

That’s why this debate matters. You cannot fix a broken system by layering tools on top of it.

From my fiscal hawk perspective, the case for reform is clear. A fragmented system means:

• More staff
• More overhead
• More duplication
• More taxpayer waste

A better-designed system—using modern data, shared verification, advanced computing, and streamlined processes—can reduce those costs and improve accountability. That means more dollars go to those truly in need, fewer are lost to bureaucracy, and more opportunity for lower taxes and greater economic opportunity.

The result can be fewer people needing the welfare system.

Let People Prosper

This ultimately comes back to first principles. The best anti-poverty program is work. Other first responders are family, community, and civil society. Government should be a last resort. But if the government is going to operate these programs, it should:

• Be simple
• Be efficient
• Promote work
• And get out of the way

Right now, it too often does the opposite.

Key Takeaways for Policymakers

For policymakers, three things should be clear.

1. Work requirements are necessary but not sufficient. They are a tool—not a system change.
2. Fragmented bureaucracy is not fiscally conservative. It is costly, inefficient, and often counterproductive.
3. The goal should be fewer people on welfare, not better management of greater dependency. This should include One Door to Work and work requirements, as neither is a panacea.

The Bottom Line

The choice isn’t work requirements or One Door to Work. The choice is whether we keep a broken, expensive system or build one that actually helps people move into work and independence. One Door isn’t a silver bullet. Neither are work requirements. But together—done right—they can help achieve what matters most:
​
Less government. More work. More people are able to prosper.

Originally published at The Daily Economy. 

If you only followed the political feed, you would think the world is splitting into billionaires on yachts and everyone else eating instant noodles forever. Then you see the data, and the narrative gets awkward, fast.
​
A recent Economist graphic, in the article “The world is more equal than you think”, underscores something many people do not want to say out loud: global living standards have been converging, meaning poorer countries have been catching up in ways that matter for real life. 

That is not a victory lap. It is a reality check.

The inequality debate matters because it shapes policy. When lawmakers believe the world is growing less fair by the day, they reach for bigger government as the default response. But if the real goal is upward mobility, opportunity, and a decent life for regular people, the biggest obstacle is not “the rich.” It is the policy machinery that blocks competition, inflates costs, and quietly transfers wealth toward the politically connected.

What The Global Story Actually Says

Researchers at Brookings point to two forces behind global inequality trends: the “between-country” gap (the difference in average living standards across countries) and the “within-country” gap (inequality within each country). They find that the between-country side has been an equalizing force because many developing countries have grown faster than advanced economies. They note that in 2000, cross-country income differences accounted for about 70 percent of global inequality, with that share falling as countries converge. They also highlight that the within-country component has been mixed but roughly constant on average since 2000, and is projected to become more important going forward. The share of global consumption for the world’s poorest half rose from about 7 percent in 2000 to 12 percent in 2025. That is still low, but it is movement in the right direction. (If you are scoring at home, “the poor getting more” is not supposed to happen in the apocalyptic version of this story.)

Now layer in a second data stream that is even easier to understand: are the poor in a given country seeing their incomes rise?

The Our World in Data chart tracks the annualized growth rate of real income or consumption for the bottom 40 percent of a country’s population, based on household surveys and the World Bank’s Poverty and Inequality Platform. It is not perfect, but it is grounded in the question people actually care about: are those nearer the bottom moving up?
This is what a healthy “inequality conversation” should sound like: less sermonizing about billionaires, more focus on whether people are gaining purchasing power and options.

The Alternative View Deserves a Hearing, Then a Cross-Examination

Oxfam’s 2026 report, “Resisting the Rule of the Rich”, argues that billionaire wealth is rising rapidly and that extreme wealth can undermine democracy. It claims billionaire fortunes have grown at a rate “three times faster” than the previous five years and that the number of billionaires has surpassed 3,000, while “one in four” people face hunger.

That is the kind of framing that fuels the “eat the rich” mood. But here is the problem: it often treats “wealth” as if it were a pile of cash stolen from everyone else, rather than a constantly changing market valuation of businesses that create products, jobs, and productivity. It also slides between important concerns (cronyism and corruption) and a very different claim (free enterprise itself is the culprit). That bait-and-switch is common.

If the real concern is political capture, that concern is understandable. The solution, however, is not to hand more power to the same institutions that create capture in the first place. The way to weaken oligarchy is to eliminate the deals, carve-outs, and barriers to entry that make oligarchy profitable.

And yes, big tech and “superstar” companies raise real governance questions. Even The Economist has highlighted the “superstar dilemma” in corporate pay and talent markets, a complex issue that is not always pretty. But the cleanest way to discipline superstar firms is not to freeze the economy into a regulator’s version of fairness. It is to keep markets contestable, meaning new entrants can actually challenge incumbents.

The Uncomfortable US Lesson: Growth Beats Dependency

Here is where the inequality myth really breaks down. If the concern is that markets cannot deliver broad progress, then we should look at periods when broad progress actually happened.

​A new NBER working paper by Richard Burkhauser and Kevin Corinth provides a blunt historical comparison of poverty trends before and after the War on Poverty. They build a consistent post-tax, post-transfer measure and find that from 1939 to 1963, poverty fell by 29 percentage points, and that the pace of poverty reduction after 1963 was no faster when measured consistently. They also emphasize that the pre-1964 reduction in poverty was driven mostly by market income growth, not by expansions in transfers.

That is not a claim that safety net programs have no value. It is a reminder that the most powerful anti-poverty program is still called a job in a growing economy, supported by rising productivity and competition. 

When politics replaces growth with managed redistribution, it can reduce measured poverty in a narrow accounting sense while trapping people in low-mobility systems and higher cost structures.

So what is the real driver of inequality, perceived or real? Policy.

If people feel the game is rigged, it is usually because it is, but not in the simplistic “the rich did it” way. It is rigged through four main channels.

Spending

Government spending is not “new money.” It is a transfer of scarce resources from private activity into political allocation. Once spending becomes the main tool for solving every social problem, the economy becomes a contest for subsidies, grants, and contracts. That is how you get corporate welfare and permanent bureaucracies that grow regardless of results. The cost is what you do not see: businesses not started, wages not earned, inventions not funded.

Taxation

Tax systems loaded with carveouts reward the people who can hire the best experts to navigate them. High rates plus Swiss-cheese loopholes do not produce equality. They produce lobbying. If lawmakers want more fairness, the answer is simpler and more neutral taxation that stops picking winners and losers.

Regulation

This is the quiet cartel-maker. Complex rules do not crush giant firms first. They crush the next competitor. Licensing, zoning restrictions, compliance mandates, and paperwork costs operate like a moat around incumbents. That means less competition, higher prices, and fewer ladders for people trying to move up.

Monetary policy

Central bank discretion can amplify inequality by inflating asset prices and distorting capital allocation. When money is too loose for too long, assets can surge while wages lag, and the gap between owners and non-owners widens. You do not need a conspiracy theory. You just need incentives and a printing press.

Put these together, and you get a simple but unpopular conclusion: if inequality is your headline concern, you should be far more skeptical of the modern policy state.

A Classical Liberal Approach That Actually Helps People Move Up

The goal is not equality of outcome. That is a slogan that turns into control. The goal is mobility, meaning the ability to improve your life through work, saving, entrepreneurship, and choice.

That requires a strict limit on government spending growth so the state stops sucking the economy’s oxygen. A simpler tax system that lowers the penalty on work, saving, and investment. Deregulation that targets barriers to entry, especially in sectors where families feel crushed. Clear fiscal and monetary rules that stop politicians from buying today with tomorrow’s prosperity.

If someone still insists that “inequality proves capitalism failed,” point them to the global convergence evidence in Brookings and the mobility-focused reality behind the Our World in Data bottom-40 growth rates. Then ask the question that separates economics from activism: if government expanded massively and the best eras of poverty reduction were still powered by growth, why are we so confident that more government is the answer?

The punchline is not “stop caring.” The punchline is “stop being fooled.” If you want a world where more people can thrive, the most reliable path is still the boring one: freer markets, real competition, and hard rules that prevent government from rigging the economy while claiming it is saving it.

Originally published on Substack. 

​America has spent more than $25 trillion (inflation-adjusted) fighting poverty since President Lyndon Johnson declared a “War on Poverty” in 1964.

The result?

A poverty rate that has barely budged or was already improving before forced massive divergent spending and redistribution on flawed programs. Families trapped in cycles of government dependence and policymakers still tinkering with the edges. They argue over how much in welfare payments do recipients get rather than asking the more important question: how do we help people thrive?

​The latest poverty data show the cracks: millions remain stuck, even as government spending on welfare programs continues to climb. For too many, assistance has turned into a trap—where the marginal tax on returning to work is so high that staying on welfare seems rational. That’s not compassion. That’s policy failure.

Why the War on Poverty Failed

The central problem is design. Instead of fostering upward mobility, most programs lock people into dependency by phasing out benefits quickly when they return to work. This creates a punishing tradeoff: work more, lose benefits. For a single parent weighing childcare costs, transportation, and reduced benefits, working can actually mean taking home less.

Worse, well-meaning add-ons—from regulating what low-income families can buy with SNAP to new bureaucratic hoops—only pile on frustration without changing incentives. These regulations pretend to “help” but mostly signal distrust of the very people the programs claim to serve.

The unintended consequence?

Generational cycles of dependency. Families learn to navigate welfare systems, not labor markets. Children grow up without seeing parents steadily employed. Communities lose the dignity and prosperity that come with meaningful work.

A Better Way: Empowerment Accounts

There’s a smarter path forward: Empowerment Accounts.

As I’ve written and spoken about with the Alliance for Opportunity and in conversation with the Sutherland Institute, these accounts would consolidate welfare benefits into a single, flexible platform that recipients could use for their specific needs—while facing the right incentives to transition back to work.

Here’s why it works:

• Flexibility: Families choose how to allocate resources—whether for childcare, training, transportation, or basic needs.
• Accountability: Payments are conditional on progress toward self-sufficiency, with work requirements that actually help.
• Simplicity: Dozens of overlapping programs are replaced with a single system, reducing waste, fraud, and bureaucratic overhead.
• Incentives: Benefits taper in a way that encourages work, rather than penalizing it.

This flips the focus from “how much can you get” to “how fast can you succeed.”

Direct and Indirect Costs of Dependency

We often talk about the fiscal price tag—billions in taxpayer dollars funneled into programs that don’t reduce poverty.

But the indirect costs are even higher:

• Lost productivity when millions of work-capable adults are sidelined.
• Higher crime and instability in communities with entrenched dependency.
• Declining family formation and cultural cohesion as government replaces community and church-based support.

Dependency is expensive not just for taxpayers, but for society itself.

​The Case for Reform Now

The case for reform is urgent. Policymakers keep layering on rules—like banning “junk food” purchases with SNAP—as if micromanaging diets will solve poverty. That’s a distraction. The real question is: how do we transition people back into work, restore dignity, and let families prosper?

Empowerment Accounts are not just about saving money—they’re about unleashing potential. They recognize that the goal of welfare should be temporary assistance, not permanent dependency. They return the focus to work, responsibility, and opportunity.

Conclusion

Compassion isn’t measured by how much government spends. It’s measured by whether people actually escape poverty. After decades of stagnant results, it’s time to admit the War on Poverty was lost—and chart a new course.

We need welfare that empowers, not entraps. Programs that encourage work, not avoidance. Policies that trust families to make decisions, not bureaucrats to micromanage them.

If we want families and communities to flourish, welfare reform must move away from dependency and toward prosperity through empowerment.

Listen & Learn More:

• Alliance for Opportunity: Empowerment Accounts
• My Sutherland Institute conversation
• Let People Prosper Show

​True compassion is not handing out more benefits. It’s equipping people to leave welfare behind for good. Empowerment, not dependency, is the way forward.

​What happens when your life changes in an instant, and you have to rebuild it from the ground up?

In this week’s Let People Prosper Show, I talk with Rachel Barkley, a policy advocate, wife, mother, and one of the most resilient individuals I know. After a rare spinal cord tumor left her paralyzed just weeks after giving birth to her first child, Rachel began a long and painful road of recovery—one marked by faith, perseverance, and incremental miracles.

But her story isn’t just one of personal triumph. Rachel now leads state and national efforts to reform the safety net for individuals with disabilities and those facing hardship. She’s championing policies like the One Door Policy to streamline services, shift the conversation from “able-bodied” to work-capable, and ensure the system supports human dignity and independence. Don’t miss this episode!

For more insights, visit vanceginn.com. You can also get even greater value by subscribing to my Substack newsletter at vanceginn.substack.com. Please share with your friends, family, and broader social media network. 

(0:00) – Introduction and Background
(3:05) – Rachel's Journey Through Adversity
(9:00) – The Impact of Health Challenges on Family
(15:00) – The Role of Community and Support
(21:47) – Building New Systems and Habits
(25:18) – Finding Purpose in Adversity
(26:44) – Advancing Freedom and Dignity
(27:53) – Work Capable vs. Able Bodied
(31:44) – The One Door Policy
(40:34) – The Future of Safety Net Reforms

​Why do so many families turn down work opportunities—and how can we fix that?

In this thought-provoking episode of the Let People Prosper Show, I sit down with Nic Dunn, vice president of strategy at the Sutherland Institute, to explore how benefit cliffs, broken welfare incentives, and poorly designed safety nets can trap people in poverty instead of lifting them out of it.

Nick shares his personal journey into public policy, his belief in the dignity of work, and the data-driven case for state-led welfare innovation that removes the fear of losing benefits for earning more. This episode is all about restoring upward mobility and helping families truly prosper.

For more insights, visit vanceginn.com and get even greater value with a subscription to my Substack newsletter at vanceginn.substack.com. 

(0:00) – Introduction to Prosperity and Safety Nets
(2:18) – Why Nick Dunn chose public policy
(5:02) – How life experiences shaped his worldview
(9:46) – Successes and setbacks in fighting poverty
(12:11) – The vital role of work in upward mobility
(16:43) – Dignity, labor force participation, and culture
(23:24) – The reality of benefit cliffs
(29:35) – Innovative state solutions and pilot programs
(36:40) – Federal reforms to restore opportunity