America is once again at a familiar crossroads: innovation is moving fast—and policymakers are rushing to catch up.
The latest example is the growing push for age-verification mandates on app stores and social media platforms. Framed as a way to protect children, these proposals are gaining traction across states.

But beneath the surface, the tradeoffs are significant.

In this episode of This Week’s Economy, we explore how these policies could create serious privacy risks, restrict free speech, and reduce competition—while failing to address the root causes of youth mental health challenges.

Rather than expanding government control, the better path is clear: empower parents with tools, information, and flexibility to guide their children in a digital world.

That approach strengthens families without undermining the principles of a free society.
🎧 Watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/B5SFgE3pxS0
📖 Get more insights: https://vanceginn.substack.com
​
Subscribe, share, and join the conversation about policies that truly let people prosper.

Originally published at Kansas Policy Institute. 

​Kansas does not need a new economic experiment. It needs more of what actually works.

Free-market capitalism remains the best system ever discovered for human flourishing because it respects people as decision-makers, not as subjects of political management. It is built on private property, voluntary exchange, competition, and the rule of law. 

Those may sound like old-fashioned ideas, but they are exactly the foundations of prosperity. When the government stays limited and predictable, families and businesses have room to work, save, invest, innovate, and build. When government expands too far, distorts incentives, or starts picking winners and losers, the costs show up in slower growth, higher taxes, and fewer opportunities. 

That is not just theory. It is the story of human progress.

For most of history, mass poverty was normal. What changed was not smarter central planning. It was the spread of markets, trade, investment, and institutions that rewarded enterprise. 

The World Bank reports that the global extreme-poverty rate fell from 38 percent in 1990 to 8.5 percent in 2024, and that about 1.5 billion fewer people live in extreme poverty than in 1990. 

Our World in Data makes the broader point clearly: the history of economic growth is the history of societies leaving widespread poverty behind. And its work on trade and globalization shows that integration into larger markets has been one of the key drivers of rising incomes and productivity over time. 

Kansas should take that lesson seriously.

The question for Kansas is not whether the government is doing enough. The real question is whether the government is doing too much. 

Kansas has made progress compared with some of its past fiscal mistakes, but it is still not where it should be. 

The 2027 Responsible Kansas Budget warns that both the House and Senate budget plans would keep spending at levels that should concern taxpayers and argues for a more disciplined path tied to what Kansans can actually afford. Another analysis makes the same case: when spending rises too fast, instability follows. 

That matters because growth is not automatic. It has to be earned with the right policy environment.

Kansas ranks 14th among the states in the Economic Freedom of North America 2025 report. That is respectable, but it is hardly a sign that Kansas has arrived. 

States with higher economic freedom tend to have stronger job growth, higher incomes, and better long-run performance. Stability is not enough. Kansas needs acceleration. It needs to become a state where entrepreneurs want to invest, families want to stay, and workers want to build their future. 

Right now, too many signals point the other way.

One is the fact that Kansas ranks 48th in the 5-year survival rate for businesses. The other  is migration. The latest IRS migration data show that Kansas lost $361 million in adjusted gross income from domestic migration in 2023. That means too many people are leaving the state and taking their income, talent, and investment with them. 

People vote with their feet. And they usually move toward places with lower tax burdens, better economic opportunities, and fewer barriers to success. 

This is why the case for capitalism in Kansas is not about slogans. It is about results.

Free-market capitalism does not mean cronyism. It does not mean subsidies for politically connected corporations. It does not mean targeted carveouts or special favors dressed up as development. It means open competition, broad-based tax relief, spending restraint, lighter regulation, strong property rights, and a level playing field where success depends more on serving customers than serving lobbyists.

Kansas should want more of that.

That means keeping spending growth under control. It means avoiding tax policy that punishes work, saving, and investment. It means removing barriers to housing, licensing, entrepreneurship, and labor-force participation. It means trusting prices, profits, and losses to communicate information better than any bureaucracy can. 

And it means rejecting the tired idea that the government must constantly intervene to create prosperity when history shows that prosperity usually comes when the government gets out of the way. 

The broader global lesson and the Kansas lesson are the same. Economic freedom works. Capitalism, for all its imperfections, has done more to lift people out of poverty and create opportunity than any alternative ever tried. The places that lean into freedom tend to rise. The places that lean into control tend to stagnate.

Kansas can choose.

It can keep drifting with higher spending, middling competitiveness, and too many people leaving for better opportunities elsewhere. Or it can recommit to the policies that actually make prosperity possible: lower and flatter taxes, responsible budgeting, lighter regulation, stronger property rights, and more room for entrepreneurship and civil society to do what the government cannot.

Originally published on Substack. 

America should secure the border, reduce the welfare state, and open a market-based legal pathway for workers, builders, and strivers.

That is not some soft-hearted surrender to lawlessness. It is a hard-headed recognition of how a free and prosperous country actually works.

People who come here legally to work, build, raise families, worship freely, and contribute are not a threat to America. They are part of America.

Naturalized citizens are Americans. Lawful immigrants who come here under the rules help strengthen the economy, deepen communities, and keep the American project alive.

What is weak is blaming them for problems government created.

As I argued in my piece on immigration, inflation, and wages, our biggest problems do not come from immigrants. They came from bad policy: overspending, inflation, cronyism, broken healthcare incentives, bad schools, and too much power concentrated in Washington.

The same basic point runs through my essays on barriers to immigration and immigration and trade: when government blocks people from cooperating, trading, and working across borders under the rule of law, it blocks prosperity for everyone.

Law First

A constitutional republic is supposed to follow law, not online rage.

That means there is a real difference between legal immigration and illegal immigration. It means border security matters. It means due process matters. It means lawful immigrants and naturalized citizens should not be rhetorically swept into fantasies about who must be removed next. That is not serious. That is dangerous.

America needs enforcement, yes, but it also needs legal pathways that actually work. In my White House lessons piece, I made the broader point that failed government action often creates the very mess politicians later use to justify more heavy-handed action. Immigration is one more example of that pattern.

Prosperity Needs People

The economics here are much better than the rhetoric.

Immigrants do not “steal jobs.” They change the mix of jobs, increase specialization, expand production, and create demand for other goods and services.

That is exactly the point I made in Immigration and Trade Are Key to Thriving Economies: labor mobility works a lot like trade. It allows people to specialize where they are more productive and creates gains from exchange that make the pie bigger, not smaller.

Barriers to immigration, like barriers to trade, are barriers to human cooperation.

That is not just theory. The Congressional Budget Office found that the recent immigration surge would help expand the economy and collect more tax revenue over the coming decade, with the net effect of reducing cumulative deficits relative to what they otherwise would have been.

More people working and producing tends to be good for growth. That should not surprise anyone who believes in markets. America needs more legal immigrants, not fewer.

We are an aging country with a slowing native-born labor-force growth rate. We need workers, entrepreneurs, caregivers, engineers, tradesmen, nurses, founders, and risk-takers.

A confident country does not close itself off from human talent. It attracts more of it. That is one reason I highlighted in my review of the book Open Borders, Inc. that the economics of immigration are often badly misunderstood by people who see only competition and miss the dynamic gains from innovation, investment, and population growth.

Don’t Pair Immigration With a Bigger Welfare State

Now for the necessary qualifier.

None of this means America should pair wider legal immigration with a bigger entitlement state. That would be foolish.

In my piece on amnesty and Medicare for All and in my Tholos Foundation study on Medicare and immigration, I argued that adding more people into an already failing federal healthcare structure without reform would deepen fiscal stress, not solve it.

So the serious position is not “open borders and more welfare” not “send them bank”. It is border security, rule of law, “entitlement” reform, and more legal immigration through a system that works.

A Market-Based Visa System

That is where the smartest reform comes in.

Instead of relying on a visa system with arbitrary caps, long queues, political discretion, and random lotteries, America should move toward a market-based visa — the kind of approach associated with Gary Becker’s “pay at the gate” idea and later work on visa auctions.

The basic insight is simple: when visas are rationed by politics and bureaucracy, they are badly allocated. Fixed caps and queues make the system less responsive to labor demand, and lotteries assign visas randomly rather than based on where workers can create the most value.

The paper on visa auctions argues that queues and lotteries misallocate human capital and reduce potential output. A visa auction or market-priced visa system would be far better.

It would let employers, workers, and investors signal where labor is actually needed. It would reduce arbitrary discretion. It would generate revenue that could help strengthen border enforcement or offset public costs.

And it would move the system away from today’s mess of backlog, favoritism, and legal bottlenecks. That is the kind of immigration reform a classical liberal should want: not chaos, not closure, but law plus markets.

Three Takeaways for Policymakers

1. America needs more legal immigrants.
Legal immigration supports growth, production, and cooperation under the rule of law. Barriers to immigration are barriers to prosperity.

2. Fix the welfare state instead of blaming immigrants for government failure.
Immigration can help growth, but pairing it with unreformed entitlements is the wrong path. That is why entitlement reform must be part of the conversation.

3. Replace bureaucracy with a market-based visa system.
A Gary Becker-style visa market would be more rational, more transparent, and more pro-growth than caps, queues, and lotteries.

The Bottom Line

God loves everyone. We should, too.

That does not mean no borders. It does not mean no laws. It means building an immigration system that is lawful, humane, pro-growth, and worthy of a free country.

America does not get stronger by shrinking the circle of people allowed to contribute legally. It gets stronger by securing the border, enforcing the law, fixing the welfare state, and welcoming more legal immigrants who want to work, build, and become part of the American story.

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. 

When even Washington starts admitting the math no longer works, you know the problem is serious.

That is why US House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington’s recent remarks matter. He said plainly that the old fiscal playbook is broken. In 2017, he noted, the savings needed to balance the budget in 10 years were about $6 trillion. Now they are closer to $16 trillion.

He is right that the country is in dangerous territory. He is right that deficits and debt relative to GDP matter. And a 3 percent deficit-to-GDP framework is certainly better than the denial and drift we have now.

But let’s be honest about the deeper problem. Washington does not have a tax revenue problem. It has a spending problem. That is the whole ballgame.

Spending Comes First

As I have noted in my work on Responsible State Budgets Across the U.S., government spending is the problem because it comes first. Debt comes after. Inflation comes after. Pressure for higher taxes comes after.

Politicians spend too much, then act surprised when the bill shows up. And the bill is here.
​
Federal spending was $4.8 trillion in 2019. By fiscal year 2025, it had climbed to $7 trillion. That is not normal growth. That is a spending binge.

My broader budget work shows the same pattern over a longer stretch: from 2015 to 2024, federal spending rose 88.0 percent, while population growth plus inflation rose just 27.6 percent. Had Congress simply restrained spending to that sustainable benchmark, Washington would have spent $2.2 trillion less in 2024 alone.

Why the Rule Matters

That is why I recommend a strict spending limit rather than a deficit ratio.

A 3 percent deficit target can tell you something is wrong. It is a useful warning light. But it does not tell you how Washington gets there.

Politicians can chase a lower budget deficit through higher taxes, rosy assumptions, gimmicks, or inflation doing some of the work for them. That may improve a ratio on paper while leaving the federal government too large and the private economy too burdened.

A hard spending limit tied to population growth plus inflation is better because it goes straight at the source of the problem: overspending. It should also be treated as a ceiling, not a target. That distinction matters more than most people realize.

Friedman and Alesina
​
Milton Friedman understood it well. He warned that the true burden of government is what it spends, not merely how it is financed. Higher taxes do not solve the real problem if they simply make room for higher spending later.

That is exactly the danger with making a deficit ratio the main goal. You can lower the deficit and still lose the larger fight for limited government.

The evidence points the same direction. Alberto Alesina’s research found that when countries had to repair their finances, plans built more on spending cuts generally performed better than those built more on tax increases.

Tax-based consolidations tended to be more recessionary. Spending-based restraint was more effective at stabilizing debt and less damaging to growth.

That should not be surprising. If you are trying to restore prosperity, you do not do it by punishing more work, saving, and investment. You cut spending.

The Fiscal Gap

By this framework, federal spending today should be at most $5.5 trillion, not above $7 trillion. Washington is overspending by roughly $1.5 trillion every year relative to a sustainable budget path. That is my estimate based on the official spending totals and the population-plus-inflation benchmark, and the direction is unmistakable.

The federal government has grown far faster than the country’s ability to support it.

Families Pay the Price

Families have been paying for that through inflation. The latest Consumer Price Index shows prices up 2.4 percent over the year in February 2026, with food prices up 3.1 percent and food away from home up 3.9 percent.

The PCE price index, which the Fed prefers, was up 2.8 percent over the year in January, with core PCE up 3.1 percent. Inflation is off its peak, but that is not the same as saying the damage is gone.

Families still feel it every time they buy groceries, go out to eat, or try to stretch a paycheck.

Debt and Distortion

The debt story is uglier still. The latest Congressional Budget Office outlook projects a federal deficit of $1.9 trillion in 2026, rising to $3.1 trillion by 2036. Debt held by the public rises from about 101 percent of GDP to 120 percent over that period. Net interest costs alone rise from $1.0 trillion to $2.1 trillion.

More and more of the federal budget will go simply to financing yesterday’s excesses.
​
And then there is the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. As of March 25, 2026, the Fed’s balance sheet of $6.7 trillion, including $4.4 trillion in Treasury securities and about $2. trillion in mortgage-backed securities.

The Fed’s own research shows that holdings like these put downward pressure on longer-term interest rates. In plain English, the central bank has helped make Washington’s borrowing binge look cheaper than it really is.
​
That error cannot last forever.

I do not know the exact form of the reckoning. It could come through higher long-term rates, weaker growth, renewed inflation pressure, or some ugly combination of all three.

But governments do not outrun arithmetic forever, and central banks do not permanently repeal market discipline.

Three Takeaways for Policymakers

1. A deficit target is better than drift, but it is not enough.
Use a 3 percent deficit-to-GDP goal as a warning light if you want. Use a spending limit as the steering wheel.

2. Spending is the real problem.
A hard cap tied to population growth plus inflation restrains government at its source and avoids the trap of trying to “fix” deficits with higher taxes.

3. Waiting is the dangerous choice.
With debt, inflation, and the Fed’s still-bloated balance sheet all pointing in the same direction, the prudent move is to shrink spending now before markets impose discipline later.

The Bottom Line

The federal government is too big. It spends too much. It borrows too much. And it has been shielded for too long by a central bank that softened the warning signs Washington should have been forced to confront years ago.

That cannot continue forever.

We should prepare now. Shrink government spending. Adopt a hard spending limit. Get our fiscal house in order while we still have a choice.

​America’s economic future depends on energy—and not just more of it, but energy that is reliable, scalable, and affordable.
As demand surges from artificial intelligence, data centers, electrification, and advanced manufacturing, the need for always-on power is becoming more urgent. Intermittent sources alone can’t meet that demand. The next phase of growth will require a serious conversation about energy abundance.

In this episode of the Let People Prosper Show, I sit down with Brian Gitt of Oklo to discuss how advanced nuclear reactors could play a central role in meeting that challenge.

We explore the economics of next-generation nuclear, the rise of AI-driven electricity demand, and how innovative models like build-own-operate could reshape how power is delivered. We also examine the policy landscape and the barriers that continue to slow energy innovation in the United States.

If the goal is stronger economic growth, improved national security, and greater opportunity, then energy policy must focus on expanding supply and enabling innovation—not restricting it.

🎧 Subscribe and share today! Learn more about Brian here: https://briangitt.com/about
📩 Get show notes & more: https://vanceginn.substack.com
com

Originally published on Substack. 

The latest panic over private credit is getting awfully familiar. A few funds hit redemption limits, some software-heavy loans wobble, and suddenly the political class and much of the media reach for the same tired script: shadow banking, hidden risk, time for Washington to step in.

Recent coverage has focused on investor withdrawals, pressure on software-related loans, and worries that private credit is having a “wake-up call.” But a wake-up call is not a funeral. Volatility is not the same thing as systemic collapse.

Markets Filling a Gap

Private credit did not appear out of nowhere. It grew because traditional banks pulled back from parts of the lending market, especially for middle-market firms that still needed capital but did not fit neatly into the old bank model.

A Federal Reserve note estimates U.S. private credit totaled about $1.34 trillion by mid-2024 and had grown roughly fivefold since 2009. That is not evidence of market failure. It is evidence that markets adapt when demand exists and legacy institutions cannot or will not meet it.

That is also why I agree with Steve Moore’s recent commentary. His point is straightforward: private credit can strengthen financial stability by diversifying lending away from government-backed banks and by allowing sophisticated private investors to fund projects directly rather than forcing more activity through taxpayer-exposed institutions.

He argues we need more of this financing, not less, especially if America wants to fund the industries of tomorrow without asking Washington to play venture capitalist. He is right.

Not a Replay of 2008

The 2008 financial crisis centered on a fragile banking system loaded with leverage, maturity mismatch, opaque securitization, and deposit-funded institutions vulnerable to panic.

Private credit is structured differently. In general, investors, not ordinary depositors, are taking the risk, and much of the funding is longer-term than the runnable liabilities that helped turn stress into crisis in 2008.

The Federal Reserve’s analysis says immediate financial-stability risks from private credit vehicles appear limited, in part because leverage is moderate and funding is more long-term. It also found that large U.S. banks appear sufficiently capitalized and liquid to absorb a significant drawdown scenario tied to private credit lines.

That does not mean there are no risks. It means the risks are different.

Liquidity Is Not a Scandal

What we are seeing now looks much more like a liquidity-design and valuation issue in certain semiliquid funds than a systemwide panic.

Reuters reported that Apollo Debt Solutions limited quarterly withdrawals to 5 percent after redemption requests reached 11.2 percent of shares. Reuters also noted that these vehicles typically disclose those redemption limits up front. Investors may not like that when markets sour, but disclosed liquidity terms are not a scandal. They are the contract. Illiquid assets are not supposed to behave like checking accounts with better branding.

That is where too many critics lose the plot. They see redemption caps and assume that government must ride in on a white horse. But if a fund misprices liquidity, let investors punish it. If managers overexpose themselves to a shaky sector, let returns suffer and capital leave. That is not market failure. That is the market doing its job.

Profit and Loss Still Matter

This is the part that defenders of regulation never seem to grasp. A market does not prove its worth by never making mistakes. A market proves its worth by revealing mistakes, pricing them, and reallocating capital away from bad decisions and toward better ones.

Prices move. Assets get marked down. Weak underwriting gets exposed. Managers who made bad bets get punished. Investors who ignored the fine print discover that they should not have. None of that requires a federal rescue squad. It requires adults taking responsibility for risk. That is what free markets demand.

And this is exactly why new taxes and regulations would be the wrong response.

Politicians love to take a contained market correction and convert it into an excuse for broader control. A few funds run into trouble, and suddenly the answer is more red tape for everyone. That would not make the market healthier. It would only reduce options, protect incumbents, and make capital formation harder for businesses that already struggle to find financing through traditional channels.

More Choice, Better Markets

Private credit serves a real economic purpose. It offers speed, flexibility, and customized financing for firms that are often too large or too specialized for community banks yet not natural fits for the broadly syndicated loan market. That broader menu of options matters.

A dynamic economy should not force every borrower into one approved lane any more than it should force every saver into one approved product.
This is not some moral defense of every lender or every loan. Some funds will do dumb things. Some managers will get punished. Some investors will find out the hard way that yield comes with risk. Good. That is how markets learn.

The real danger is not that private credit exists. The real danger is that Washington will use a messy but manageable period in one corner of the market as an excuse to shrink consumer and business choice across the board.

That would be backward.

Better Instinct

The instinct here should be that private credit fuel America’s future, not become the next excuse for bureaucratic mission creep. Diverse private financing can disperse risk more broadly and reduce dependence on the same government-backed banking model that critics claim to distrust.

If America wants to lead in the industries of tomorrow, startups and growth firms need access to capital, and the government should not be the one picking winners and losers.

Capital should come from investors willing to bear risk, not from bureaucrats pretending they can do venture allocation better than markets can.

The Bottom Line

Private credit is not 2008.

It is a market response to real demand. It is one more way businesses can get financed, investors can allocate capital, and markets can adapt when older institutions pull back. It deserves scrutiny, but not caricature. It deserves discipline through profit and loss, not panic-driven regulation or new taxes.

If private credit funds make bad decisions, let the market discipline them. If they make good decisions, let them grow. That is how a free economy works.

And yes, that means letting markets get messy sometimes. I trust that process a lot more than I trust Washington chasing headlines.

Three Takeaways for Policymakers

1. Protect choice in credit markets.

More financing options for businesses and investors make the economy more resilient, not less.

2. Let profit and loss do the disciplining.

Bad underwriting, poor liquidity design, and weak sector bets should be punished by markets, not socialized by government.

3. Do not confuse volatility with systemic collapse.
​
Redemption limits and repricing in semiliquid funds are not the same thing as a 2008-style banking panic.

​The latest economic data tells a concerning story.

From a weakening labor market and rising healthcare costs to slowing growth and increased uncertainty, the warning signs are becoming harder to ignore. These trends are not accidental. They are the result of policy choices that have expanded the government’s role, distorted incentives, and increased complexity across key sectors of the economy.

In this episode of This Week’s Economy, we examine how these forces are playing out across jobs, Medicare, regulation, trade, and tax policy—and why they all point to the same conclusion: policy matters, and bad policy carries real costs.

The critical question is whether leaders will course-correct before these challenges deepen.

👉 Watch or listen to the full episode and explore more analysis with show notes at vanceginn.substack.com.

Originally published on Substack. 

The best policy debates are not really about policy. They are about whether families have the freedom to build a life. Last week—between spring break with my kids and fights over AI, healthcare, lockdowns, and government overreach—that truth was impossible to miss.

The Highlight of the Week

Last week was spring break with my kids, and honestly, it was the highlight of my week.

We played soccer, baseball, and tennis. We watched movies, laughed a lot, and slowed down just enough to remember what actually matters. Those moments go fast if you are not paying attention.

They also remind me why I do this work in the first place.

Policy is not abstract. It is not about another flashy hearing or a “solution” designed by the same people who caused the problem. It is about whether families have the freedom, stability, and opportunity to build a good life.

It is about whether parents can afford groceries. Whether workers can find opportunity. Whether patients can control their care. Whether innovators can build. And whether government knows its limits.

That thread ran through everything I worked on last week. As I wrote in Prosperity Through Pain, the purpose of the work is not the work itself—it is what that work allows: the laughter in the yard, the time with your kids, the life you are building together.

Innovation Needs Room, Not Fear

I spent part of last week writing about how AI could transform banking and the broader economy—expanding competition, lowering costs, and helping smaller institutions compete.

That future is possible.

But only if Washington and the states do not regulate it into the ground before they understand it.

• More than 1,500 AI-related bills have already been filed across state legislatures this year.
• Even in Texas, HB 149 showed how quickly fear can override evidence.

The takeaway: Markets adapt. Entrepreneurs solve problems. Bureaucrats slow both down.

A patchwork of vague rules will not make America safer. It will make America slower.

And in a global race, slower means losing.

Six Years After Lockdowns

This week marked six years since COVID reshaped American life.

I was in the room when those decisions were made. I opposed the lockdowns then, and the data since has only reinforced that view.

The Great Lockdown did not save America.

It devastated small businesses. It disrupted learning. It weakened liberty. It eroded trust.

And the worst part?

The same central-planning instincts that drove those decisions are still with us today.

The takeaway: Central planning fails in crises—and in everyday life.

This was never just about a virus. It was about power.

Healthcare Still Misses the Point

Healthcare debates last week made one thing clear: policymakers are still treating symptoms instead of causes.
The fight over Medicare Advantage and proposals like Tennessee’s SB 2040 to ban PBMs are perfect examples.

As I wrote in Stop Scapegoating Middlemen in Healthcare, targeting one piece of the system does not fix broken incentives. It just rearranges them.

• TennCare alone faces about $66 million in added costs from these kinds of policies.

That is not reform. That is expensive political theater.

The real solution is Empower Patients:

• Put individuals in control
• Expand no-limit HSAs
• Strengthen doctor-patient relationships
• Restore real price signals

​The takeaway: Healthcare improves when patients—not bureaucracies—are in charge.

Affordability Is Not a Mystery

Across healthcare, housing, energy, and taxes, families are feeling squeezed.

That is not random. It is policy.

Government spends too much, regulates too much, distorts too much—and then acts surprised when costs rise.

Whether it is:

• Tariffs raising prices
• Overspending fueling inflation
• Regulations restricting supply

…the result is the same.

As I explain in Correcting America’s Financial Future and across my writings:

You don’t get affordability through control.

You get it through competition, production, and freedom.

That same issue shows up in Texas water and the electric grid.

Texas does not mainly have a scarcity problem.

It has a control problem.

Why This Fight Is Personal

Everything I worked on last week—AI, healthcare, lockdowns, taxes, infrastructure—comes back to one truth:

People do better when they are free.

Spring break reminded me of that in the simplest way.

Playing ball in the yard. Watching movies. Laughing with my kids. Just being present. That is the life worth protecting.

Bad policy erodes that life slowly—through higher costs, fewer opportunities, and more dependence on systems that cannot love your family or build your future.

Only people can do that.

Government’s job is not to run our lives. It is to protect the freedom that makes a good life possible.

Three Takeaways for Policymakers

1. Stop regulating fear—start enabling innovation. Let markets evolve and address real harms with evidence, not speculation.

2. Decentralize power—people outperform planners. Centralized systems fail repeatedly. Push decisions closer to individuals.

3. Fix affordability at its source—government excess. Restrain spending, remove barriers, and let competition work.

The Bottom Line

Freedom works. Central planning does not.

That was true during COVID. It is true in healthcare, banking, energy, and the broader economy. And it will still be true long after today’s policy debates fade.

I am grateful for the work. But I am even more grateful for the reason behind it. Time with family.

A Direct Challenge

If you are a policymaker reading this, here is the question:

Will you keep expanding control—or will you trust people?

Because that choice determines whether families merely get by…
or truly prosper.
​
Stay engaged, stay principled, and keep letting people prosper.

That alone is progress.

For years, the conversation around artificial intelligence has been dominated by fear—fear about jobs, kids, misinformation, and control. And when policymakers operate from fear, they tend to rush into doing something—usually something heavy-handed.

This framework is different. It leans toward innovation, growth, and leadership.

The real question now is whether lawmakers across the country will follow that lead—or regulate this opportunity away before it fully arrives.

Because make no mistake: this is not just another tech trend.This is the early stage of the next economic revolution.

More Than a Buzzword

Let’s clear something up.

AI is not some mysterious force. It’s advanced computing—the continuation of tools we’ve used for decades in search, logistics, fraud detection, finance, and medicine. What’s changing now is the scale and speed.

That matters because it means AI will touch nearly every part of the economy.

We’ve seen this kind of moment before. The agricultural revolution transformed how we produced food. The Industrial Revolution reshaped labor and production. The digital revolution changed how we communicate and exchange information.

Each time, people feared what was coming. Each time, politicians felt pressure to step in and manage the transition. And each time, the real progress came not from top-down control, but from bottom-up experimentation.

Markets didn’t get everything right—but they adapted, learned, and improved far faster than any centralized plan ever could.

That’s still true today. Markets are far better at discovery than governments are at prediction.

A Better Direction from Washington

To its credit, the Trump framework reflects that reality.
​
It focuses on empowering parents, protecting children, supporting creators and intellectual property, defending free speech, and preparing workers for a more dynamic economy. It also makes clear that America should aim to lead—not slow down—the development of AI.

That’s a welcome shift.

It avoids the worst instinct in policymaking: assuming that because something is new, it must be tightly controlled.

And importantly, it does not follow the path of proposals we’ve seen elsewhere—from U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn at the federal level to various state efforts like by Texas Senator Angela Paxton—that push toward app store mandates, platform controls, or restrictions on infrastructure like data centers.

Those ideas are built on a simple but flawed premise: that government knows better than parents, entrepreneurs, and consumers.

It doesn’t.

Where Things Go Wrong: The States

If there’s a real risk to getting AI policy wrong, it’s not coming from this framework. It’s coming from the states.

There have already been more than 1,500 AI-related bills filed across state legislatures this year. That’s not thoughtful policymaking. That’s a stampede driven by headlines and worst-case scenarios.
​
California, New York, and Colorado are leading the charge with some of the most aggressive proposals—vague “harm” standards, licensing regimes, audits, and broad oversight structures that sound reasonable in theory but would slow innovation in practice. Even “conservative” Texas has drifted in this direction. HB 149 (TRAIGA) ended up better than where it started, but it still reflects too much fear and too little evidence.

Here’s the problem: AI doesn’t stop at state lines.

Cloud systems, data flows, software deployment, and digital services operate across borders. A 50-state patchwork of rules doesn’t make the technology safer—it makes the system more fragmented, more expensive, and less competitive.
Who wins in that environment?

Not startups. Not small businesses. Not consumers.

The winners are the largest incumbents that can afford compliance costs—and foreign competitors operating under entirely different rules.

That’s not a free market. That’s regulation protecting the powerful.

Fear Has Always Been the Wrong Guide

Let’s be honest about what’s driving a lot of this.

Fear.

Fear that jobs will disappear. Fear that kids will be harmed. Fear that new tools will be misused.

Some of those concerns are real. But they are not new.

Every major innovation has brought disruption. Workers were displaced during industrialization. The internet created new risks alongside new opportunities. Social media has amplified underlying challenges that were already there.

But here’s what history shows clearly: trying to ban or overregulate innovation doesn’t solve those problems—it often makes them worse.

When government tries to shut things down, activity doesn’t disappear. It moves. It becomes harder to track, harder to manage, and often more concentrated in fewer hands.

Think prohibition. Think black markets. Think organized crime. You don’t eliminate risk. You shift it—and often amplify it.
Heavy-handed AI regulation would follow the same pattern:

• Driving innovation elsewhere
• Reducing transparency
• Concentrating power

That’s not protection. That’s unintended consequences.

What Lawmakers Should Do Now

There is a better path—and it’s simpler than many think.

1. Refuse the worst ideas. No digital ID systems tied to AI access. That’s a dangerous step toward centralized control that has nothing to do with innovation or safety.
2. Use the laws we already have. Fraud, exploitation, coercion, and abuse are already illegal. Enforce those laws instead of creating entirely new regulatory regimes.
3. Address the growing patchwork problem. AI is inherently interstate commerce. As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 42, the Constitution empowers the federal government to prevent state actions that “embarrass the intercourse of the States.”

That’s exactly what a fragmented AI regulatory landscape would do.
​
A temporary federal pause or preemption of state AI regulations isn’t about expanding power—it’s about preserving a functioning national market.

The Stakes

China will push forward through central planning. Europe is already slowing itself with overregulation. America still has a different option. We can trust markets, empower people, and lead the next wave of innovation.

Or we can let fear drive policy—and fall behind.

The Trump AI framework is a strong start. But it will only matter if we resist the urge to overcorrect at every level of government.

Closing Thought

We live in what should be a free society.

That means accepting trial and error. It means trusting people to adapt. It means allowing innovation to move forward even when it’s imperfect.

America should not lose the AI revolution because policymakers were too afraid to let it happen.

Let parents parent.

Let entrepreneurs build.

Let workers adapt.

Let markets work.

Let People Prosper

If we get this right, America leads the next economic revolution.
​
If we get it wrong, we regulate ourselves into decline.