Among the 250 signatories of the Freedom Conservatism Statement of Principles are experts on key policy issues — from federal budgeting and foreign affairs to school choice, affordable housing, environmental protection, and regulatory reform.
Others are generalists. They write columns, host events, or produce shows and podcasts about a wide variety of subjects.
Whatever their disciplines or leadership roles, FreeCons recognize that America’s toughest policy problems reflect not just one issue but larger patterns or syndromes. Today we feature signatories who explore connections among seemingly distinct policy areas.
Crime and health
McKenzie Richards is a policy associate at the Pacific Research Institute in California. A former budget analyst and paralegal, she is a graduate of Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy and a FreeCon signatory.
In a recent American Spectator piece, Richards wrote about the phenomenon of “pharmacy deserts” — places where once-thriving drug stores have shut down, often after repeated instances of shoplifting, robbery, or vandalism.
She cited the case of a pharmacy in her own community of Riverside, California. Its closure after a series of robberies didn’t prevent Richards from acquiring meds by delivery or driving across town. But for a disabled friend of hers, losing the drug store was a much more significant burden.
“For those without access to a car or efficient public transportation,” she wrote, a pharmacy closure “often means going without needed medication.”
Crime isn’t the only impediment, Richards writes, pointing to a successful lobbying campaign in 2019 to block the creation of new pharmacy schools. “Interference in pharmacist accreditation can be directly tied to the current pharmacist shortage, longer waits for medicine, and even pharmacy closures.”
Marriage and inequality
Jordan McGillis serves as economics editor of the Manhattan Institute’s magazine City Journal. Previously the deputy policy director at the Institute for Energy Research, McGillis writes frequently for media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal and National Review.
In a recent CNN commentary, he pointed to new research by economists Gerald Auten and David Splinter disproving the widely held notion that income inequality has grown substantially larger over the past half-century.
Their study shows that “the share of the nation’s income going to the top 1% of earners after taxes and transfers has increased by just 1.4% since 1979,” wrote McGillis, a FreeCon signatory. “Going back to the early 1960s, Auten and Splinter find that even the top 1%’s share of pre-tax income has increased by just 2.6% and that its after-tax income share hasn’t budged at all.”
While the new study debunks a common attack on free enterprise, it nevertheless points to a source of real inequality: marriage rates. One reason left-wing scholars got the income trends wrong is that they didn’t adjust for changes in family structure.
Divorce and childbirth outside of marriage tend to increase the number of households, especially among lower-income Americans. Since households represent the denominator in the income fraction, failing to adjust for this change distorts income trends over time.
“While income inequality may not have notably escalated,” McGillis concluded, “the differential marriage rates that demand the methodological adjustment are themselves deeply concerning.”
Federal and state
Paul Winfree is president and CEO of the Economic Policy Innovation Center (EPIC). A former White House aide, Senate Budget Committee staffer, and top executive at the Heritage Foundation, Winfree is the author of The History (and Future) of the Budget Process in the United States: Budget by Fire.
In a recent column, Winfree highlighted the extent to which President Biden’s COVID-era “American Rescue Plan” used federal borrowing to support government expenditures at the state and local levels.
“Most state and local governments did not experience the anticipated revenue loss from the pandemic,” wrote Winfree, a FreeCon signatory. “State rainy day funds have doubled since 2020, and state and local revenues have increased by 24 percent. Meanwhile, state budgets increased in 2022 in real terms relative to any other year since 1979.
“This raises the question of what they are doing with their windfall from the federal government.”
After close examination of fiscal data, Winfree concluded that if Biden’s program “saved” jobs in state and local governments, the cost was “$250,000 to $283,000 in federal taxpayer spending for each new job.”