A Quarter Millennium Checkup
250 years have passed since the Declaration of Independence was signed. None of the Founding Fathers could have predicted that this small backwater collection of states would rise to be the global superpower of the 20th and 21st centuries. Or that the innovations created in the U.S.A. would be the single biggest contributor to dramatic increases in global prosperity.
What made America succeed?
More than any other country on Earth, America unleashed the potential of the individual. When we broke away from England, we also broke the concept of nobility. Instead of your status in life being locked to who you were born to, Americans have a strong belief that anyone has the potential to become anything.
This belief in individual freedom and potential is the primary reason that America is successful. Let me explain.
Everyone has different talents and abilities. A society flourishes when people do the job that best uses their particular talents. Through trial and error, people learn what job they can exceed at providing value to others.
In societies that place heavy emphasis on who you are born to, or where the government decides which job each person will do, people do not have the opportunity to do the work they are best suited to do.
No ruler or government can ever do a halfway decent job at determining what work is valuable to others, or the price of that work. The only way to do it, is to let every single person decide, every second of the day, what they choose to spend their money on. With every purchase, each of us is telling the rest of society that we value the work that went into that product.
Because this purchasing information is wildly available to every one on Earth, entrepreneurial citizens will form companies that offer a similar product. As soon as you have more than one company providing a product, they will compete to lower costs or to improve quality. This competition improves the prosperity of each American as companies battle for their dollar.
Likewise, the value of labor is continuously being priced at its actual value. When a job is valuable to the rest of society, and there aren’t enough people to do the job, the price for this work becomes higher. This increases the salary a worker can demand, which leads to more people wanting to do that job. In a system with maximum opportunities for individuals to pursue the work they thrive best at, this encourages more people to do the jobs that are providing the most value. In turn, this will reduce the price for that job to a beautiful equilibrium.
Put simply: The best way to increase prosperity is very simple. Let every person decide what they spend their money on, and what work they do. To do this you have to reduce barriers. Reduce the barriers of entry for people to switch careers. Reduce complex regulations that make it difficult for new companies to compete. And most important: Reduce the ability for the ruler (government) to decide for you where it places your value (money).
Over the last 25 years, only healthcare, college, and childcare have become less affordable as a % of wages. Housing and food have stayed relatively stagnant, while consumer goods have become way more affordable.
Consumer goods have become more affordable, because there aren’t many government imposed barriers, and individuals have freedom to assign value, which reduces prices. Food has actually become more affordable than the chart suggests, with most of the increase coming from people choosing to eat out more. Healthcare, college, childcare, and housing have all gone up primarily because our big brother (the government) has increased barriers and inefficiently assigned value using our money.
I will cover each of these topics in depth in future articles, and will share exactly why each of these categories costs so much, and how we can fix it.
Though we have self inflicted pain due to government interference, America is still a shining example of the potential of unleashing the individual. With less than 5% of the global population, over 60% of the value of the world wide stock market is made up by American companies.
Our attitude towards success plays a big part in this. In a majority of the world, there is a common cultural phenomenon called “Tall Poppy Syndrome.” When a person (poppy) becomes too successful (tall), others want to cut them down so they are all the same height. Though attitudes are changing towards that, by and large, America has not felt the same way about success.
71% of Americans, versus only 40% of Europeans, believe the poor can escape poverty. Americans also are more likely to believe that effort matters. 70% of Americans said income was not determined by luck, vs 46% of Europeans.
The data backs the American view up. 89% of millionaires are first generation. 79% of millionaires received no inheritance. 73% of Americans reach the top 20% of income for the year at least once. The vast majority of wealth is not generational either. 70% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation and 90% by the third.
Europe has deep class barriers and heavy bureaucracy. Other countries have more heavy handed governments under the guise of Socialism or Communism. They fail their people, because success in these countries depends on party loyalty, connections, and ideology. America has succeeded, because the people themselves are choosing what provides value.
Now for the bad news of the checkup.
America is burying the success it found under capitalism under debt, regulation, and bureaucracy. If not fixed soon, this country will not be around for its half millennium checkup.
Federal debt is now $39.4 trillion. This is equivalent to $115,000 per resident. 20% of tax revenue is now spent on servicing this debt, and it is growing dramatically. We have very little time to correct this ship. A fifth of the money you send to the government is not used to benefit anyone’s life. It’s to pay interest on government spending more than they received on past citizens. In 30 years, perhaps 50% of tax revenue will be spent on servicing debt. How will you explain to your children or grandchildren that their future is robbed, so that we could live above our means?
The government is now taking over 25% of GDP a year from us in taxes. Over $7 trillion a year. We will discover together in future articles how poorly they are using it.
23.4 million people are now employed by the government with their paychecks coming directly from the citizens who are actively competing at providing the most value. These 23.4 million are not rewarded for the value they create, and there is no voting with the dollar. You choose which sandwich shop and barber you support, but are forced to support 23.4 million people whose job as a whole is to suck up value from the economy and make the economy harder to compete in. Pay in government roles is not determined by how much money they saved or how efficient they made things. It is determined primarily by college education, years served, and how big they can grow their department.
Individual freedom to work in the job you excel at is being systematically dismantled. Regulations have increased from 20,036 pages in 1970 to 106,109 pages in 2024. The common view is that regulations are good because they are consumer protection, but the vast majority of regulations simply protect large companies and make it much harder for new ones to be formed.
Even worse, required occupational licensing grew from 5% of workers in the 1950s to 25% today. Obviously the result is that prices for services have increased in every one of the 25% of jobs that require a license. People are now locked out of more jobs than ever before, and fewer people are able to switch careers to jobs that they would enjoy more and make more money at. The layman view is that licensing is a good thing as it “protects people,” but it actually is primarily in place to protect industries from competition. I will elaborate on how to actually solve all regulations in a future article.
Even their handling of welfare is abhorrently bad. We could and should get rid of all welfare programs, and give poor people money instead on a sliding scale. This would get rid of all welfare cliffs, and so people would stop being punished for making more money and pursuing their goals in life. We could actually afford to give poor people more money, that they choose to spend on what provides value to their life, and still save trillions of dollars.
The biggest warning of all is that Americans are losing confidence in capitalism. In 2025, only 54% of Americans viewed capitalism positively, down from 60% in 2021. 39% view socialism as positively. Among Democrats, only 42% viewed capitalism positively, while 66% viewed socialism positively.
People feel the pain caused by government intervention, but mistakenly blame capitalism. We are being poisoned, but since people don’t know where it’s coming from, they believe more poison is the antidote.
The government is the cause behind the rising price of healthcare, college, childcare, and housing. They employ 23 million people who are not financially incentivized to provide value. They increase regulations and licensing, making it harder for young people to find the job they can excel at and bring prices down. They put us and all future generations in ever accelerating crippling debt to win political points today.
America did not become great because the government planned greatness. America became great because the government was limited enough that ordinary people could build greatness.
I love America and I want to save it from itself. If you agree then let’s walk the path of truth together. Let’s ask and answer the hard questions that have real answers. Political parties and orthodox thinking are distractions. All that matters is objective reality and real solutions.
So with that I’ll say: Hello Big Brother and Happy Birthday. I see the good in you, and I hope others do too. Enjoy your party, but tomorrow it’s time to hit the gym.
-Jonah