Originally published on Substack. 

Texas families just made the case for school choice better than any politician, think tank, or activist ever could.

The first year of Texas Education Freedom Accounts (think ESAs) drew 274,310 applications by the March 31 deadline. That is not a niche movement or a messaging win, that is a market signal.

Families across Texas are telling lawmakers, loudly and clearly, that they want more control over their children’s education. That should be celebrated. Texas finally cracked the government-school monopoly.

But let’s not pretend the work is finished.

Demand Is Real

This application surge proves what some of us have been saying for years: school choice is real, popular, and badly needed. It also proves something else. TEFA was never truly universal school choice.

From the beginning, I have argued that the right standard is all students, all money, all options. Texas has 6.3 million school-age kids. A truly universal model would let funding follow every child to the best-fit education options, whether that is a district school, charter school, private school, microschool, tutoring, therapies, or homeschooling support. That is the real goal.

TEFA does not get us there yet.

The state appropriated $1 billion for the first year. Based on the official award structure, that likely funds only about 90,000 students, and possibly fewer depending on how many students receive larger disability awards.

Private-school students can receive $10,474, homeschool students receive $2,000, and students with disabilities can receive up to $30,000.

So yes, 274,310 applications is huge. But if the state can fund only around 90,000 spots, then the program reaches only about 1.4 percent of Texas’s 6.3 million school-age kids.

That is not universal choice. That is rationed choice.

The Tiers Tell the Story

The new details make the point even more clearly.

Applications are prioritized through a need- and income-based lottery. The first tier is low- and middle-income students with disabilities. The second tier is low-income families. The third tier is middle-income families. The fourth tier is families above 500 percent of the federal poverty line, and they are limited to just 20 percent of total program funding.

According to the Comptroller’s reported breakdown, nearly three-fourths of applicants are from low- or middle-income families. Nearly 30,000 applicants qualify for the first priority tier, and another 79,000 qualify for the second.

In other words, the full $1 billion will likely be exhausted just serving the first two tiers.

That means the state created a program with overwhelming demand and then funded it so narrowly that most applicants will not receive an account in year one.

Again, that does not weaken the case for school choice. It strengthens it.

Hold Your Ground

For months, too many people acted as if Texas had already reached the gold standard just because it finally passed something. It had not. I argued that partial reforms still leave millions of students behind and that universality, not symbolism, is the real test.

That is exactly what we are seeing now.

Families did not just “like” TEFA. They overwhelmed it. They did not treat it like a boutique side program. They treated it like what it should become: a real alternative to a government-school monopoly that has been overfunded and underperforming for too long.

Texas lawmakers should stop reading this as proof they nailed it. They should read it as proof they underbuilt it.

The Better Model

And here is the bigger point.

A truly universal TEFA could still be cheaper than what Texas already spends propping up the monopoly system.

At a simple top-line comparison, a universal TEFA funded at $12,000 per student for all 6.3 million school-age children would cost $75.6 billion per year. Compare that with the $100 billion-plus Texas spends across public education annually for about 5.5 million government-school students, or roughly $19,000 per student on a broad all-in basis.

That means Texas could move toward a truly universal model, fund every child, expand real competition, and still potentially save at least $25 billion per year compared with the current bloated monopoly system.

And those savings should not disappear into more bureaucracy. They must be used to compress school district property tax rates to zero.

That is a much better path than continuing to pour more money into a government-school monopoly while barely increasing school choice at the margins.

Finish The Job

The lesson from this first year is not complicated. Texas started school choice. Good. Now finish it.

Move from capped choice to truly universal choice. Let funding follow the child, not the system. Stop treating educational freedom as a rationed carveout. Allow a real market where families choose, providers compete, and schools have to earn trust instead of relying on geography and politics.

That is how you get innovation, accountability, and customization. And that is how you stop feeding a monopoly that has had decades and billions of dollars to prove itself.

The demand is here. The families are ready. The waitlist proves it. Now lawmakers should catch up.

Three Takeaways for Policymakers

1. Treat TEFA as proof of demand, not proof of completion.

More than 274,000 applications show Texas families want far more educational freedom than lawmakers funded.

2. Move from capped choice to universal choice.

A program that likely funds only about 90,000 students out of 6.3 million school-age kids is a foothold, not a finish line.
3. Use universal choice to improve education and lower taxes.

A broader TEFA model could cost less than the current monopoly system and help create a path toward compressing school district property tax rates to zero.

The real victory is still ahead: a truly universal education market in the largest red state in America.

From a classical liberal perspective, there is good here. There is bad here. And there is some ugly here, too.
​
The Good

Some of the best parts of these charges show lawmakers understand, at least in places, that Texas works best when government protects property rights, improves transparency, and lets markets work.

The Senate’s Business and Commerce Committee was told to evaluate whether ERCOT remains a “robust energy-only market,” review how 765-kv transmission lines affect landowners, and study how data-center growth is affecting the grid, water, and communities.

The House also has useful oversight angles, including government transparency, public information, and accountability through its new Governmental Oversight Committee.

Those are real opportunities to defend property rights and demand better signals from government.

There is also real promise in the Senate’s attention to financial technology, blockchain, cryptocurrency, AI, and autonomous systems. Texas should want to be the place where innovation is built and scaled, not preemptively strangled by fear.

And on health care, both chambers are at least asking better questions than usual. The Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee specifically mentions Health Savings Accounts and more flexible plan offerings, while the House’s Health Care Affordability Committee is looking at cost drivers, financing models, competition, transparency, and barriers facing employers. That points in the direction of my Empower Patients approach: more control for patients, more flexibility, more price visibility, and less bureaucratic command-and-control.

The Bad

The bad is where Texas keeps falling back into the same political trap: targeted relief instead of neutral reform without mention of eliminating property taxes.

The Senate’s Local Government Committee is examining bigger homestead exemptions, lowering the age for the senior tax ceiling, and reducing taxes for new homeowners.

The House’s Ways and Means Committee is likewise studying how to build on prior property-tax relief through more compression and bigger homestead exemptions.

Compression is the right path. Homestead carveouts are not.

Texas should keep compressing school district tax rates with surpluses until those rates go to zero. That is the broad, neutral way to provide relief.

By contrast, homestead exemptions pick winners and losers. They reward one class of property owner, shift burdens onto others, and make the tax code less neutral and less honest. I’ve argued before that these carveouts are distortions, not reforms. The state should not pretend selective relief is the same thing as fixing the system.

A classical liberal tax policy treats people equally. It does not hand out special treatment to politically favored categories and call that fairness.

The same issue shows up in education. The Senate deserves credit for calling school choice a success and for noting the enormous demand, with more than 250,000 applications tied to the rollout of Senate Bill 2.

Good. Expand it. But do not turn around and use declining district enrollment as an excuse to keep feeding the government-school monopoly with more money, more staffing layers, and more “right-sizing” theater while school choice inches forward at the margins.

Texas needs more students funded in the schools or learning models that work for them, not another round of backfilling a monopoly that is already losing families.

The Ugly

The ugly is where the state still wants to allocate capital, absorb federal dependency, and wander into areas it should approach with much more humility.

The House Appropriations Committee is monitoring major spending tied to homestead and business personal property exemptions, cyber command, and nuclear offices.

Elsewhere, House committees are studying how to maximize federal funding for rural health transformation and aviation infrastructure. That may sound pragmatic, but Texas should be moving away from dependence on an increasingly insolvent federal government, not building a budget model that assumes more Washington money will always be there.

If federal funds prop up too much of the state budget, then Texas is importing federal fiscal dysfunction into its own house. That is backward.

Texas should reduce government spending then pass a strong state and local spending limit. The real budget problem is not that taxpayers are undertaxed. It is that government overspends.

My work on Responsible State Budgets Across the U.S. makes the point clearly: spending growth should be capped at population growth plus inflation and treated as a ceiling, not a target. That would discipline the state, pressure local governments to live within a sustainable path, and create the fiscal space to keep compressing property tax rates downward over time.

And Texas should stay out of trying to become a digital parent. The House Public Health Committee is studying social media’s impact on youth well-being.

Fine. Study it. But Texas should be very careful before converting concern into government micromanagement of parenting, online behavior, or speech. Parents need tools, transparency, and authority. They do not need the state acting like the internet’s hall monitor.

One more point: Texas should consider its excessive lawsuit environment. The House is studying governmental immunity and the Texas Tort Claims Act, and that is worth reviewing carefully. But the larger priority should be neutral rules, transparent government, and real accountability, not another round of using legal reform as a substitute for broader structural reform.

What Texas Should Do

Texas should take the good and build on it. Protect property rights. Keep innovation open. Empower patients. Expand school choice substantially. Demand transparency from government. Reduce dependence on federal money. And put a real state and local spending limit in place.

It should reject the bad and the ugly. No more picking winners and losers through homestead exemptions and other carveouts. No more pretending selective favors are neutral policy. No more feeding a school monopoly while choice grows too slowly. No more drifting into federal dependency. And no more state temptation to regulate parenting by proxy.

Texas can lead. But only if it remembers that prosperity comes from neutral rules, strong property rights, patient choice, educational freedom, and disciplined government — not from political favoritism dressed up as reform.

Three Takeaways for Policymakers

1. Overspending is the core state-and-local problem.
Adopt a real spending limit tied to population growth plus inflation and treat it as a ceiling, not a target.

2. Compression beats carveouts.
Use surpluses to keep compressing school district tax rates toward zero, instead of expanding homestead exemptions that pick winners and losers.

3. Freedom beats favoritism.
Expand school choice meaningfully, empower patients, reduce dependence on federal funds, and resist the urge to micromanage families or allocate benefits to favored industries.

Originally published on Substack. 

Texas families paid an average of $173.94 per month for electricity last year, among the highest monthly bills in the region, while ERCOT issued repeated conservation requests and came dangerously close to emergency conditions.

At the same time, more than 98 groundwater conservation districts across the state manage water through political boards, regulatory allocations, and bureaucratic permitting rather than clear market exchange.

That is not a coincidence.

Texas does not mainly have a water problem or a power problem. Texas has a control problem.

Scarcity is real. It always will be. The question is whether it is managed through prices, property rights, and competition, or through bureaucrats, government entities, and political favoritism.

One system creates incentives to conserve, invest, and innovate. The other creates shortages, fragility, and permanent fights over who gets what.

Lawmakers should stop confusing government management with a functioning market.

ERCOT Is Not a Free Market Success Story

Texas likes to talk about being different. On electricity, it is different, but not nearly as free-market as many claim.

ERCOT is the centralized operator that manages the flow of electric power for about 90 percent of Texas load. It is not “the market” in any meaningful sense. It is the central gatekeeper of a system built around rules, mandates, political interventions, and constrained price signals.

When one entity manages the grid under heavy political oversight, that is not decentralized competition. That is centralized administration dressed up in market language.

As ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas recently warned, the system came “incredibly close” to emergency operations that could have ended in rolling blackouts. And the pricing data tells the story.

Texas residential electricity rates reached 16.18 cents per kilowatt-hour in March 2026, nearly 30 percent above neighboring Louisiana’s 12.44 cents, and far above Oklahoma’s 9.09 cents.

Meanwhile, legislation in recent years could undermine the grid’s ability to meet forecasted demand because lawmakers keep steering investment rather than letting competition and price signals do the work. This is when conservation notices have become routine, which is not a weather quirk. It is a structural symptom.

Lawmakers keep trying to subsidize reliability, steer financing, and politically backstop the system instead of letting competition and price signals coordinate supply and demand. That is why Texans keep getting “reforms” without genuine resilience.

If lawmakers truly want a stronger power system, they should move toward more real competition in generation, storage, retail options, transmission incentives, and private investment, not more political planning.

The answer is not to make the centralized framework even more central. It is to reduce the barriers that prevent genuine market discovery and competitive discipline.

Water Systems Are Political Systems First

The same problem exists with water, and in many ways it is worse.

Texas has more than 98 groundwater conservation districts covering all or part of 144 counties, each operating under its own rules with its own political boards.

Decisions about allocation, pricing, infrastructure, and conservation are political long before they are economic. That setup almost guarantees misallocation.

Texas water law also contains the Rule of Capture, a principle that gives landowners broad groundwater claims in theory, but those rights are limited in practice by layers of local regulation and institutional conflict.

As the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality acknowledges, no single state agency regulates groundwater use statewide. Instead, more than 98 politically created districts each set their own rules, creating a patchwork of legal conflict and political rationing rather than a coherent system of exchange.

When the government owns or heavily controls the system, the incentives for long-term stewardship and innovation weaken. Pricing is distorted. Investment decisions become political. And the people making the decisions usually do not bear the full cost of getting them wrong.

That is not resource freedom. That is confusion.

The Price System Is Not Optional

This is where lawmakers need to remember basic economics.

Hayek’s knowledge problem is not an ivory-tower concept. It is a practical warning.

No central authority knows the correct future price of electricity in every hour across Texas. No board knows the right amount of water to conserve, move, or ration across every county and basin. No agency can process the changing information that millions of people and businesses reveal through market choices.

Prices do that.

Prices signal scarcity. Prices tell producers when to invest. Prices tell consumers when to conserve. Prices help entrepreneurs discover better technologies and business models.

When lawmakers suppress those signals through subsidies, political allocation, and government ownership, they should expect misallocation.

As Milton Friedman taught, do not judge policy by its intentions. Judge it by its results. Texas keeps getting the wrong results.

Property Rights and Privatization Fix Incentives

If lawmakers want lasting improvement, they need to think less like players and more like referees.

The answer is stronger property rights and more privatization of these resources.

When something is privately owned, someone has a direct incentive to protect it, improve it, and use it efficiently. When something is managed by government, responsibility is diluted and politics fills the vacuum.

That is true for water infrastructure. It is true for electricity generation, transmission, and storage.

Private owners respond to profit and loss. Government entities respond to politics and pressure.

Private firms that fail lose money and market share. Public entities that fail usually ask for more funding and more control.
As the Mises Institute explains, the state is the one institution that can compel payment, block competition, and preserve failure indefinitely.

In a real market, even a dominant firm faces pressure from innovation and rivals. In politics, failure can survive for decades.
Privatizing these systems, or moving much closer to genuine market competition, would not make scarcity disappear. It would do something better. It would make scarcity manageable through real incentives.

The Unseen Costs Are the Biggest Ones

This is where Bastiat still matters.

The seen is the state-backed loan program, the public utility expansion, the district board meeting, or the ribbon-cutting for a politically favored project.

The unseen is everything Texas never gets because government crowds it out.

You do not see the private water trading platform that was never created because the legal framework discouraged exchange. You do not see the private grid innovations that were never financed because lawmakers decided to steer capital somewhere else. You do not see the smaller competitors who never entered the market because they could not break through the political structure of the system.

Those unseen costs are often far larger than the public costs everyone debates, and no budget line ever captures them.

The Bottom Line

Texas does not need more state management of water and power. It needs less.

A centralized grid gatekeeper and government-dominated water systems do not solve scarcity. They politicize it. They weaken price signals. They discourage competition. They protect bad decisions from market correction.

If lawmakers want abundance, resilience, and affordability, they should trust the institutions that actually coordinate scarce resources well: private property, market prices, competition, and voluntary exchange.

Texas should be leading the country in resource freedom. Too often, it is still acting like scarcity must be managed from the top down. That is backward, and it is costing Texans.

Five Takeaways for Policymakers

1. Move ERCOT toward real competition. Reduce barriers to private generation, storage, and retail entry. Let price signals coordinate supply and demand rather than political steering. Every layer of intervention added since Winter Storm Uri has made the system more rigid, not more resilient.
2. Consolidate or eliminate redundant water districts. More than 98 groundwater conservation districts with conflicting rules and political boards is not a system. It is a patchwork of misaligned incentives. Simplify the framework and move toward tradable water rights with clear ownership and market exchange.
3. Clarify and strengthen the Rule of Capture into a workable property-rights system. Water trading works where ownership is clear and exchange is legal. Reform groundwater law to enable genuine market exchange rather than political rationing.
4. Apply Bastiat’s test to every energy and water bill. Ask not just what the bill claims to do, ask what private innovation it displaces, what competition it forecloses, and who bears the unseen cost. If the answer is taxpayers and future consumers, vote no.
5. Privatize what government does not need to own. Water infrastructure, grid assets, and distribution systems managed by private owners under competitive discipline perform better than politically managed ones.

Closing

I’ve spent decades working across more than 20 states and the federal government on property rights reform, energy market policy, and the economic case for limited government.

What the data consistently show is that markets, when free to operate, coordinate scarce resources better than any government board ever has. The evidence is not close.

Texas has every advantage: energy abundance, economic dynamism, and a constitution that respects property rights. What it lacks is the political will to trust markets to do what politicians cannot. That is the will the 2027 session needs to find.

Stay engaged, stay principled, and keep letting people prosper.

Originally published on Substack. 

How should policy folks read Tuesday’s primaries?

Maybe the way families experience government: not as a scoreboard, but as a preview of what comes next.
Elections choose candidates. Budgets choose outcomes.

If the policy output is higher costs, higher taxes, and more government control, voters will not care who won the primary. They will care that their taxes keep rising.

Across Texas, North Carolina, and Arkansas, the same governing reality shows up in different forms.

Tax relief and economic opportunity depend on one discipline that almost nobody wants to talk about when the cameras are on: spending restraint. Without it, every “conservative” promise becomes temporary and every affordability problem gets worse.

Texas is giving lawmakers a clear direction on taxes and spending

Republicans are headed to a tight May U.S. Senate runoff between Sen. John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Democrats nominated State Rep. James Talarico for Senate after Rep. Jasmine Crockett conceded.

For governor, Gov. Greg Abbott won the Republican nomination and Rep. Gina Hinojosa won the Democratic nomination, setting up November.

These outcomes are also reflected in the official Texas Secretary of State results.

Those races, and others like former State Senator Don Huffines winning the race for Texas Comptroller over Kelly Hancock, State Rep. Brian Harrison winning big over big-government candidates, are important.

But the most important signal did not come from a candidate. It came from the Republican primary ballot propositions, which operate like a “voter memo” to lawmakers.

In plain terms, Texas GOP primary voters endorsed the idea that eliminating school district property taxes should be pursued through spending reductions.

That wording matters because it answers the central fiscal question: Do we want tax relief that is structurally funded, or tax relief that depends on temporary money and political will?

The proposition language and broader ballot context are explained well in KUT’s guide to the propositions and the Texas Standard breakdown.

This dovetails with Gov. Abbott elevating school district property tax elimination as a priority heading into the 2027 legislative session. The policy test for lawmakers is not whether they can announce “relief.” The test is whether they can make relief permanent.

Why is that hard? Because school district maintenance and operations taxes are a major funding stream, roughly 40%+ of total local property taxes in Texas.

Replacing them with state dollars immediately or over time without a binding spending limit on state and local government will turn a popular reform into a long-term fiscal trap.

There is also a second, equally important reality for Texas policymakers. State property tax relief can be offset locally if cities, counties, and other taxing entities continue expanding spending and debt. That is why the propositions focusing on spending reductions and voter checks are so important. The public instinct is correct.

People want government to live within limits and stop backfilling relief with higher local burdens.

This is the framework behind my work on Texas fiscal policy: pair surplus-driven property tax compression or buy-down with a strict spending limit at both the state and local levels.

Relief without limits is temporary. Limits make relief durable. The broader blueprint is in my writings.

North Carolina is a reminder that competitiveness can be lost quickly

North Carolina’s primaries produced a high-profile U.S. Senate matchup between Roy Cooper and Michael Whatley.

That matters nationally because Senate control shapes whether Washington pursues any serious spending restraint or continues drifting toward higher debt and larger federal reach.

But there is also a state-level lesson that policymakers should not miss.

North Carolina has been attracting people and investment because it is relatively more competitive than many alternatives.

That advantage is fragile. If spending grows faster than the private economy, taxes eventually rise, regulations expand, and affordability deteriorates.

Growth becomes a reason for more government instead of an opportunity to lock in pro-growth reform.
For families, the lived experience of this drift is not abstract. It is higher housing costs, higher energy costs, and fewer options.

For policymakers, the fix is still the same. Control spending growth. Reduce barriers to building and production. Keep tax relief tied to fiscal discipline.

Arkansas shows what steady policy looks like

Arkansas had a calmer primary, with Sen. Tom Cotton advancing without drama.

The bigger lesson is not the headline, it is the pattern. States that keep taxes moving down and spending growth under control tend to build momentum that compounds.

Businesses respond to predictability. Families respond to affordability. Voters often reward results when they can feel them.

What policymakers should take away

This is the through-line across all three states.

1. Primaries pick candidates. Budgets pick outcomes.
2. Tax relief is only durable when spending is restrained.
3. Local fiscal growth can erase state relief unless the local spending loophole is closed.
4. When government grows faster than taxpayers can pay, affordability deteriorates and trust collapses.

Closing and call to action

If lawmakers want these primaries to mean something, they should treat them as permission to do the hard part. Put enforceable limits on state and local spending growth. Make tax relief structural, not temporary.

In Texas specifically, the Republican primary propositions provided a clear direction: if you want to eliminate school district property taxes, do it by reducing spending growth and locking in discipline before the next budget cycle resets the baseline.

For policymakers and staff, I welcome the chance to discuss model language for spending limits, surplus-driven tax relief, and closing the local loophole so relief actually sticks.
​
For media, I am available for interviews and background discussions on what these primary results signal for fiscal policy in Texas, North Carolina, and Arkansas.

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.