Voices of Freedom - Interview with Scott Niederjohn

Episode Date: August 9, 2023

Economic freedom unleashes creativity and innovation in a way that no other economic or political system has been able to match. The U.S. is the home of some of the most groundbreaking inventions in history precisely because its citizens have the right to engage freely in enterprise. Thomas Edison’s light bulb, the Wright brothers’ airplane, and Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone are just a few examples of how economic freedom has advanced human progress and generated overall prosperity. Despite the undeniable benefits of economic freedom, movements from within both the left and the right are increasingly inclined to give government more power to intervene in business and displace competition by expanding entitlements. Dr. M. Scott Niederjohn is our guest on this episode of Voices of Freedom. His life’s work has centered around teaching people about the benefits of economic freedom and elevating free enterprise. Topics Discussed: How to incorporate economics into lesson plans, including U.S. history Critical race theory’s impact on economic freedom Economic mobility vs equity Advancing the case for economic freedom and free enterprise States that are the most economically competitive Economic challenges of civic leaders The future of economic freedom in the U.S. Niederjohn is Professor of Economics and Director of the Free Enterprise Center at Concordia University in Mequon, WI. He has worked in academia for nearly two decades, serving as professor, department chair, college dean, and senior vice president. He is a widely known scholar and prolific researcher in the areas of economic education and public policy analysis. In 2013, Niederjohn was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to teach at the University of Luxembourg.

Hello and welcome to Voices of Freedom, a Bradley Foundation podcast. I'm Rick Graber, President and CEO of the Bradley Foundation. On the podcast, we'll explore issues that affect our freedoms with a focus on free enterprise, free speech, and educational freedom. So let's get started. Economic freedom is essential to a prosperous society, but it's a concept that just a lot of people don't seem to understand, and that's a concept that just a lot of people don't seem to understand, and that's a misunderstanding that can damage our way of life. Our guest today has made it his life's work to persuade not only students and teachers,

but the public at large, that free enterprise truly does offer a pathway to prosperity and safeguards freedom. Dr. M. Scott Niederjohn is professor of economics and director of the Free Enterprise Center at Concordia University in Mequon, Wisconsin, right here in the Milwaukee area. He has worked in academia for nearly two decades, during which time he served as a professor, a department chair, a college dean, and a senior vice president. In 2013, he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to teach at the University of Luxembourg, which must have been very fun.

Scott is a widely known scholar and researcher in the areas of economic education and public policy analysis. Scott, welcome. It's great to have you. Thanks, Rick. Thanks for having me. Our pleasure. Let's jump in. Scott, what drew you to a career dedicated to enhancing the public's understanding of free enterprise? Basic question. Yeah, it's a good question. I was actually an engineering major in college. You were? Yeah, but I knew it wasn't for me. I knew the whole time it wasn't for me. So I started an MBA, and that's where I discovered economics.

And I think the math skills from engineering were really helpful, but they were helpful in answering questions and topics that I found more interesting than maybe voltage and current and the kind of stuff you did in engineering. You know, things like what makes countries rich, how can we alleviate poverty, what policies allow countries or states or cities to flourish? Economics has some powerful tools that help provide answers to those questions. So as I learned more about the discipline of economics, I discovered the evidence is really simply overwhelming to answer those questions. that have escaped sort of a grinding, miserable, short lifespan kind of existence have been those that generally embrace a free market, free enterprise, capitalism-related system.

So the economist Murray Rothbard, he famously said, it's no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline. But it's totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economics when you're in that state of ignorance. That was what he was saying. So I think if you care about prosperity and flourishing, I just started thinking, why are we keeping this a secret? Why don't we tell other people about these ideas if they're known?

So I think the cure we came up with was, how about something like economics for opinion leaders? We've been for years, as you know, Rick, trying to help teachers, journalists, clergy, elected officials benefit from a better understanding of free enterprise and free markets. And they tend to have an outsized influence on others, whether it be through their writing, through their sermons and homilies, through their conversations, their teaching. So maybe at a very micro level, we hope we've had a small impact on people better understanding the power of economics and the power of free markets and free enterprise particularly.

I'm sure it's more than just a small impact. But let's talk about some of the challenges that arise in teaching economics and free enterprise. There are some really troubling test scores out there that show that about 13% of eighth graders are proficient in U.S. history and only 20% are proficient in civics. You've written about this. You've written textbooks on these subjects. You wrote an article. Most recently, can students Learn Economics in U.S. History? If students don't know history and they don't know civics,

it would seem that it's difficult to understand the context for economics and economic ideas. Am I right on that? Yeah, I completely agree. Yeah, I think it's important to learn economics. I spent my life trying to help people do that, but it's fundamental that we understand U.S. history and civics. So the books you mentioned that we wrote really aren't intended to sort of sneak economics in. They're designed to try to improve the teaching of civics and history through an economics lens.

They're meant to be supplements. So the chapters that we've written accompany what a teacher would find in their normal history textbook, their normal civics textbook. We're not trying to replace it. And as your question indicated, recent NAEP testing on civics and U.S. history indicates we're doing a really poor job of teaching both those subjects to young people. So I think our idea, and I think I'll give you a quick quote from David McCullough, the historian. He said, quote, one might also say that history is not about the past. If you think about it, no one ever lived in the past.

Washington, Jefferson, Adams, their contemporaries didn't walk around saying, isn't this fascinating living in the past? They lived in the present. The difference, it was their present, not ours. They were caught up living the moment. It was their moment. So I think economics helps young people be more present-minded because we all know who won the revolution. It's sort of like seeing a movie you know the end to.

I think it's hard to teach history that way. But if instead you think about history from the perspective of what were the choices, costs, and incentives of those living then, that makes, I think, history more interesting and helps teachers teach it. We have a chapter called, Why Fight When You're Safe, Prosperous, and Free? It's a pretty good question for the patriots. They were safe, they were prosperous, they were free, yet they chose to take on the world's biggest navy. That sort of seems stupid in U.S. history. We know who ends up winning, but if you understand their choices and costs, maybe that helps really understand that topic better.

In terms of the civics book, you're going to learn about the Constitution. Well, it's also an economic document. It protects property rights. It establishes a free trade zone among all the new colonies in the states. It encourages innovation through patents. So I think we're trying to get across that you can use economics to illuminate history and civics. If we're going to talk about freedoms and our rights, how about economic freedom? I might argue that's the most fundamental one. I own my own labor. I can work and do what I

want with my labor. So yeah, we're trying to advance economics, and we're also trying to correct a few things. In a U.S. history book, they'll often be wrong in terms of what, a high school U.S. history book will often be wrong in terms of what actually caused the Great Depression. They'll mention things like income inequality or the Star Crash or maybe this weird thing called overproduction, which economists aren't even sure what that means. But Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz showed us 50 years ago that the cause of the Great Depression were failed Federal Reserve policy, bank failures, and on Milton Friedman's 90th birthday Ben Bernanke, the Fed chair, acknowledged that. He said we caused it, we did it, we won't do it again because of your

research. Well we just hope students learn the right economics through these sort of curriculum materials so they're not learning about things that have been debunked years ago. And we hope these two books not only teach a little economics, but they also help kids learn more civics and history. That's what we're going for, really, Rick. Are kids just not getting history and civics, or is it two things? Either they're not getting it or what they're getting is wrong. I think it's both those things, right.

I think, and we'll talk about this later maybe, some of the popular curricula that are being used in schools are simply wrong. You know, I think historians, to their credit, are just less willing to say what caused something, where economists generally have data on our side. So we're pretty confident in saying Great Depression was caused by this, this, and this. History books want to talk about 20 possible causes. So kids never really learn what the actual core of the issue was.

So I think economics helps as an overall social science kind of study is we can think about civics, history, and economics together as one. Well, let's drill down on one of the theories that seems to be dominating these days. And you recently co-authored a report titled Critical Theories vs. Human Flourishing. Does so-called critical race theory really undermine the ideals, the concept of economic freedom? I think it absolutely does, yeah. I think you take two very popular history curricula, Howard Zinn's A People's History

of the United States, or the New York Times' The 1619 Project, they're both horribly flawed, and they've been criticized by well-known historians on both and any ideological bent. I mean, just as an example, both of them essentially blame our troubled history of slavery

as an example of why capitalism is a bad system, that it's greedy and exploitive. But even a rudimentary understanding of economics makes clear that capitalism is based on voluntary trade, exchange and cooperation. That's the exact opposite of slavery, which was coercion and oppression. Slavery violated every rule of a capitalist free market system. So in a free enterprise system, you only get wealthy when you serve others, right? Not by exploiting them. So directly related to your question, I think critical theory really undermines the ideas of economic freedom and even suggests that economic freedom is what's responsible for our problems today,

income inequality or race-related issues. But I would say nothing could be further from the truth. Economists have been measuring economic freedom now for many years across countries, across states, across continents. And the evidence is abundantly clear that countries that have high levels of economic freedom are richer, they're healthier, whether that means life expectancy or infant mortality.

They have less poverty. They have less poor. And amazingly, they're more tolerant of others, whether that means people of other races, people of other orientations. Exactly the issues that those who criticize capitalism are worried about, I think you get more of what they want in a free enterprise system. It's more tolerant of the things they're interested in. When you hear talk of critical race theory, often the next words you hear about are DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, and they've become buzzwords over the last couple years.

But it seems to me there's a far more constructive conversation to be had on that topic involving economic mobility, again, something that you've spent a lot of time on. Tell us why you think policies that promote economic mobility do so much more than those that promote so-called equity. Yeah, I often ask groups, whether it be students in my class or business groups I work with or teacher groups, I'll ask them, would you support the following policy? This policy would double the incomes of the poor, so all poor would see their incomes doubled. That would nearly eliminate poverty in the country.

But the same policy would quadruple the income of the top 20%. So would you support that? And most groups would think about it for a few minutes, and in the end, most say no, I think that's a bad idea. And the only reason they can justify that is they say it's going to add to more inequality. But that's really irrational, right? Because this is a policy where everyone is better off. Everyone. And poverty is essentially eliminated with my policy.

So I think we conflated this term, inequality or equity, with poverty, and they're very, very different things. I think everyone should agree we should be fighting poverty. I'm just less concerned about equity if you mean equity of outcome. If you mean equity of opportunity, of course, we should always be working on that. But I think what you mentioned in the question was about income mobility. And in terms of opportunity, America really has a very good record of income mobility. If you track people over long time periods, the group that's in the bottom 20% is rarely there a number of years later. They move up.

And actually, the group in the top 20% often moves down. They retire or something happens. But there's lots of movement between the groups. So it seems to me a better way to think about this is to concentrate on how we encourage more income mobility. I think concentrating on inequality is really a trap, and it sort of obfuscates the real disease, which is poverty. Now, to your question, I do think we should be worried about the group who's stuck in the bottom,

those who find themselves there permanently. But it turns out we know a lot about them, too. I'm sure you've heard about the Birkin Institution success sequence. And really what that says is that if you do three simple things, there's almost no chance you live in poverty, less than 2% chance. And those three things are finish high school, work full time, and delay marriage and kids until 21. So it seems to me that those are the important things that ought to be teaching young people, not these critical race theories that are kind of disturbing, and they teach that every outcome is dependent on one characteristic, race.

Whereas the other data suggests that anybody can be affluent, right? Mobility is impossible for everybody. Yes. For those of us that believe in the merits and the opportunity that comes from free enterprise and free markets, it just seems to me that we can do a better job of making the case, of demonstrating that free enterprise and economic freedom has a more likelihood of success than some of the big government policies that we see rolled out.

And I'd go all the way back to Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. I think pretty clearly that hasn't worked. Maybe made things worse because of bad incentives. Yes, absolutely. And then you pile on things like we see today, President Biden's cancellation of student debt or lending practices that favor those with poor credit. Time and time again, we're showing that government is just not very good at this

and that the markets are way better. But it's so hard to communicate that message. Can we do a better job? Yeah, it's depressing, right? I mean, I've spent, as you said before, a lot of my time doing that. I don't seem to always make a lot of headway here. But, you know, the first thing, and you just said that, is we ought to be able to show it works, right? And there's no other system in human history that's lifted more of people out of poverty than in free markets and free enterprise. Secondly, it's the only system consistent with human dignity and freedom. And those really who benefit the most from free enterprise are those without inherited wealth or without credentials or class advantages.

So I agree. We ought to be telling that story more seriously. And that stands in such sharp contrast to the coercive nature of these socialist systems that are really associated with misery and following living standards and really death. When I was in D.C. recently, I went to the Victim of Communism Museum in Washington, D.C. It was estimated that Joseph Stalin murdered six to nine million people to keep that centrally planned socialist system in place.

That's what you have to do to run these. And look today at places like Cuba and Venezuela. So, you know, I think one issue is that young people are so removed from the Cold War and the East and West Berlin kind of stories we could tell that it is harder. But then again, we do have North and South Korea. We do have Venezuela today. And sadly, I think we're creating new ones. The way Hong Kong is being treated by the Chinese is almost likely, is certainly going to be an erosion of economic freedom.

We're going to see that play out, I think, across rule of law and then prosperity. But in addition to being inconsistent with prosperity, I think that these progressive policies, as you pointed out, are patently just unfair. I think you brought up President Biden's loan forgiveness program. Imagine two borrowers, each borrowing $30,000. One buys a work truck to start a landscaping company, goes to tech school, one for college tuition and expenses. This student loan forgiveness plan basically gives the taxpayer advantage to the college borrower and nothing to the landscape owner. But worse than that, it actually asked the landscape owner to pay higher taxes in the

future, partly to finance the other student's education. How can that possibly be fair if there's any real conception of the word fairness? So yeah, I think there are real issues. And the worst thing about these policies is they don't attack the real problem. There are real problems in higher ed. In terms of its cost, its bloat, its focus on the wrong things, inability to control costs. But we never attack those things if we use these bandied approaches. So like the solutions you talked about earlier, these progressive kind of ideas often come with big secondary effects

that at least politicians don't usually account for until much later. So, yeah, I'm with you on that issue. We need leaders that are really focused on these things and not just pure politics. And so many of these policies are just pure politics designed to buy votes in the next election. Yes. And there's something just fundamentally wrong with that. Yeah, I agree. Well, what are you seeing among younger people? I mean,

I've seen polling data that suggests that younger people are gravitating more towards statism to socialism, notwithstanding all that we've been talking about here today, and that is the opportunity that comes with free enterprise. Are you seeing that in your students, or maybe not at Concordia but other places? Yeah, certainly other places. This is a great question. I just saw a study that was done by the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, and they surveyed young people in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia. And the first thing you got to figure out is what do they mean by socialism?

And what they asked first was, do you mean this traditional sense, that is the government takes control of companies and industry, the state essentially runs the economy? That wasn't what they had in mind. So they said no to that. What they had in mind was a system where we have a much larger government sector, many more services done by the government, and especially a minimum

guaranteed income. That's what they had in mind. So I think what they had in mind is something maybe like you find in Sweden, which is not a socialist country, but it's certainly a much larger welfare state. But to me, the most interesting finding was then they asked, well, would you pay for this? Your socialist plan is this larger government. It's a minimum income for everybody, it's a large welfare state. Would you support like a broad-based tax, increasing income taxes on everybody to pay for that? And the answer overwhelmingly was absolutely not. What they would support would be a targeted tax that may be a new wealth tax or maybe a big tax on the top 1%. So as long as it doesn't apply to them, it's fine. Right.

So this suggests the young people indicated a general willingness not to pay the cost of their favored socialist plan. They seem to want somebody else to do it. That sounds in some ways more like envy to me, right? So, I mean, it seems like Fanner Prize is a more compelling story because it's just everybody can get ahead, right? It's more of everybody can flourish. But it's interesting to me what they really meant by socialism. I think it really isn't

this conception we had, you know, many years ago of sort of the state running everything, but it's a big, big government social net, social safety net, much like you think about in the Scandinavian countries. Do you see students changing their thought process during the course of a semester? Oh, for sure. From day one to the last day? Yeah, for sure. And that's the beauty of economics is we've got data. We've got data, right.

And I often remind them at the end of the semester that there were two words you never heard me say, free or fair, all semester, right? We don't talk about free things. And I'm not really concerned about fairness, right? That's not what we're usually doing in economics. We're trying to be efficient, find a way to use our resources efficiently so we can all be more wealthy. That's the whole plan, right?

Let's all flourish. What barriers do teachers face in incorporating economics into their lesson plans, and how do they overcome those barriers? Yeah, I think the biggest one, and this is over many years of working with teachers, is their own knowledge and comfort starts with it. It's just hard to teach stuff you don't know a lot about yourself. They didn't get it in school. Yeah, they didn't necessarily get it, and I'm not being critical.

A normal high school social studies teacher in Wisconsin goes from economics to U.S. history to sociology to psychology and maybe to civics. They might have five different subjects in one day. So they can't be specialists in all these things. And I always hear from my teachers that are my friends that when they hire somebody new, they give them economics because nobody really wants it. So they give it to the least qualified or the least experienced person. So how do you overcome that?

I mean, we've tried things. You know about what we've done, Rick. We've written lots of lessons and books and curriculum materials. We've run hundreds of workshops around the state. I think we've made a difference at the margins. But I've thought long about what can we really do to make an impact. And I think there's a couple of things we could do. I think one thing would be to just eliminate teacher licensing rules.

They really aren't designed to control teacher quality. They're designed to lock people out of the profession. The only way to become a teacher in Wisconsin is to spend four years in a school of ed, student teach, join a union. If we're being serious about this, neither me nor Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen could teach a high school econ class in Wisconsin. We're not qualified. We didn't go to a school of ed. We don't have a teaching license. But I always meet people, business people, economists, financial advisors, who would actually love to teach a high school econ class, maybe part-time, maybe in retirement.

So, you know, I think having a teacher that's knowledgeable and passionate is really what the discipline needs. And I'm not saying there aren't some school teachers that are that, but it's a small group. And in Wisconsin, they almost all know each other because it's a very tight-knit group. I would love to see us open this up to people who just are subject-matter experts who will figure out how to teach kids a topic they really feel passion for. Then we get much better outcomes if we did that. Totally agree. And it's not just kids that struggle with things like financial literacy. I mean, there are a lot of adults that just don't know how to put themselves on a path to

financial security, whether it's through saving, through investing. I mean, this really gets at a fundamental assumption that our founders had in this country, and that is you have to be self-reliant. How can we do better at preparing, not just students, but the population at large? Yeah, I mean, for those listening to this, and I think I would feel the same way if I wasn't already in this area, is you might conclude this is a role for parents. I mean, financial literacy is just a specialized form of making a good decision, and parents teach their kids about making a good decision in other areas, so why do we seem to struggle so much in the financial world?

I think the answer is because maybe like the teachers in economics, they're just not confident themselves, and it's really hard to teach your kids about something that you yourself aren't proud of, maybe your own activity or have a lot of knowledge there. So, you know, I think the things we could do, I think we should do, is try to teach economics and personal finance across the curriculum. We would never say, hey, let's take one semester class in math and now you know math. That's not the way you treat stuff that's important. So personal finance could be done starting with

young kids all the way through high school, and you infuse it into math, into reading, into other classes. That could be done. In some places, do that. But normally, what we do is say, let's have the kids take one class near the end of high school and assume they're going to know stuff. I don't think that works very well. I also think it might be helpful if our leaders model better prudent financial behavior.

You know, we just went through this massive debt limit increase, right? Or President Biden's student loan debt forgiveness plan. Both those policies sort of suggest that you can just continue to spend money and not worry about the consequences. That's, of course, the opposite of what you teach young people in a personal finance class. I mean, the first rule in economics is that things are scarce, so you have to make choices, and choices have costs, and there's tradeoffs. But our government's behavior seems to suggest the opposite, that you can just always spend and never have to deal with the costs of those behaviors.

So all those things, I think, make it difficult for parents and kids to really understand financial literacy at its core. In the debt limit discussions, I thought it was interesting that Speaker McCarthy, to some extent, was able to move the American people to, it appears from polling, to actually support some limits on government spending. That hasn't happened in a long time. So maybe we are making some progress. Yeah, that's true. Somehow, some way. That's true, although what depresses me about that is neither party seems to have any interest

in controlling some of these entitlement programs that really are the crux of the problem, right? Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. So while, yeah, I am glad that discretionary spending seems to have some limits, some baby steps, but the real problem are these massive programs we've made promises about that clearly aren't sustainable without changes, yet we just sort of want to ignore that. That's exactly what you don't talk about. You know, in a personal finance class you teach kids you can't do that, right? You have to make a budget.

You have to live with it. You can't spend more than you make. That's the opposite of what we're seeing from our leaders. And you're right. The right has been just as reluctant to talk about it as the left. Absolutely. Let's talk about economic policy at the state level. There's been a lot of migration in this country in recent years, and maybe COVID speeded up that process. But people seem to be moving to what they perceive to be better climates. And it's not just weather. It's tax policy. It's opportunity. It's a better economy.

What states have been the very best at doing this, do you think? Yeah, we're just looking at not only do we rank countries by economic freedom, there are some studies that rank states. States in the U.S., Mexico, and even the provinces in Canada, so North America. And interestingly, not a single Mexican state outranks any U.S. state. None crack the top 50. And as a result, you might find this interesting, the Florida economy is about the same size as Mexico's economy.

But Florida has 22 million people. Mexico has 127 million people. So imagine how much wealthier Florida is or more productive it is per person than, say, Mexico. But to your data, to what you talked about, Florida and Texas have had the most net migration in, at least in 2022. And they rank number two and eight in this economic freedom in North America. California, New York, and Illinois have had the most people move out, and they rank 49, 50, and 35. Seems like a strong correlation that when you have more economic freedom and opportunity, you tend to attract people. In addition, I just read about a study from the Bureau of Labor Statistics where they looked at the trends in small business migration.

And New York led the nation in businesses moving out, followed by California and Illinois, and Florida, North Carolina, Texas drew the most businesses from other states. I noticed a quote back when Rick Scott was governor of Florida. He was asked, who's your favorite governor? And the media person who asked that was surprised when he said Andrew Cuomo in New York. And his answer was, well, every time Andy raises taxes in New York City, businesses move down to Florida. So I think the exact same ideas that apply to countries on economic freedom apply to the states and the provinces, right? So it's the same sort of thing that these ideas of property rights,

limited government, the economy, free trade, those things make states more prosperous too. Where's our home state of Wisconsin? Somewhere in the middle. Yeah, like we are in so many things. We moved up a bit in recent years though, especially under the Walker administration, and we moved up a fair amount, especially compared to our peers like Illinois near us. Indiana does well. Such an opportunity to do more with our tax system, to be bold and innovative, and so far haven't been able to take those steps.

Not get it through, yeah. Right. At the same time, I think it's accurate to say that most big cities in this country are facing serious problems, whether it's crime, whether it's homelessness, whether it's terrible public school systems, vacancies, tax policies that are just getting worse. I know you've hosted lots of seminars with public officials to talk to them about basic economic concepts. Tell us about those discussions. What have you learned from them?

Yeah, perhaps one of the most revealing things that comes out every time is this idea that good politics is often bad economics, and good economics is often bad politics. That goes back to Tom Sowell's quote where he said the first lesson of economics is scarcity and never enough of everything. But the first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics because no one wants to hear you have to cut now. Everybody wants to spend now. No one wants to think about sacrifices. So I don't necessarily think it's the politicians' fault.

It's really kind of a feature of democracy that politicians may know what the right policy is economically, but they're maximizing something else, and that something else might be votes or contributions or something. And good economics requires that we make choices in costs, you know, we deal with tradeoffs and things like that. So I think we just need to understand the reality that when we're designing political policies, that's a feature of the way politics works as they often have to maximize something else The only I've learned from civic leaders, and I think maybe I'm sure you know this Rick But I'm not sure everybody listening does just how harmful onerous occupational licensing rules can be I hear that over and over again You know, they're always past the name of safety

But they're really way a way to limit supply whether this means barbershops, daycare facilities, interior designers, even some rules around who can be a lawn care professional, you know, cut your lawn. I think these laws have a big impact in urban areas where people are just shut out from earning a legal living and find themselves having to do black market kind of things or even illegal activities. So, and then lastly, I would keep, I think we have to keep in mind the role of taxes. I mean, while taxes are usually viewed politically, in terms of economics, they're just one more incentive. They're a way to induce people to do things, and a really powerful one. Earlier we talked about the states that have a lot of net migration in

or small business coming in, like Florida or Texas or Nevada. Interestingly, all the states that have a lot of net migration in or small business coming in like Florida or Texas or Nevada. Interestingly, all the states that do really well there tend to have no state income tax. So people seem to respond to incentives in predictable ways. They're moving to or moving their business to places where that incentive has been changed. It's probably also worth thinking about this. We've talked a lot about economic freedom. It matters to countries. It matters to states worth thinking about this. We've talked a lot about economic freedom. It matters to countries. It matters to states.

How about municipalities? Do you want to put a business somewhere where property rights aren't secured, maybe because of crime, or where politics are unstable, or where there's corruption? It's just difficult to get any prosperity going when you don't have the fundamental stuff you need to run a market economy, right, where you don't feel safe in your own business or you're always wondering if somebody's going to take something from you or the government's going to change the rules on you.

None of those things are helpful in terms of prosperity in inner cities. You talked about the occupational licensing, and in some ways that's sort of a mundane topic, licensing. But to your point, the rationale behind it, I guess, has been public safety and that sort of thing. Always. But in many cases, my guess is that a lot of these rules and regulations were enacted to create barriers to entry. Absolutely. That's what they were designed to do. Yeah. To raise wages for those who were in the profession. At one time, Florida required, I think, a four-year degree and then a two-year apprenticeship to be an interior designer. What's the worst thing? Wrong paint color? I mean,

what's the worst possibility here? You can be bad at it. I get that. Then we'll fire you. But does the public need to be protected by the state from poor choices of colors or whatever that would mean? That clearly was, and those laws, it's almost always the insiders arguing for them. It's not like people that have been harmed say, oh, the barbershop needs to have more rules. It's the barber saying, we need more rules

because we would like to make sure that nobody else competes with us. It doesn't seem like a good policy to me, especially in inner cities where, you know, running a daycare or doing that kind of work might be something that could lead to a sound financial position, but not if the state or the city tells you you can't even do it. Those are the people that have trade associations and unions that have the wherewithal to lobby legislators. Right, they can afford to do it. And we're not getting good results.

Scott, last question. I think at your core you're an optimistic person. You've got four kids, and before we know it, they're going to be inheriting this country and will be the leaders of this country. What gives you hope about America, notwithstanding this point in time where we just have tremendous negativity, tremendous polarization? Yeah, you know, I think economics is often referred to as a dismal science, but I actually find it to be incredibly liberating.

You know, economic freedom helps that because it's not ideological, it's not political. It just says simple stuff, property rights, rule of law, normal regulations, free trade. We do that stuff well, we can all be wealthy. Imagine if it was the opposite, which some people think, which is you have to have all these natural resources. That would sort of suggest that if you're born in the wrong spot on earth, you have to be poor. But you don't have freedom.

All the things I just mentioned, those are human conventions. Any country, any city, any state, they can enact those policies. And the evidence is clear over hundreds of years that if you do that, you're going to flourish. The people are going to do really well. So I just find it really sad to watch countries, China's a good example of what they're doing to Hong Kong, or many of the changes in South America, where you're moving away from the policies that we know lead to affluence. I'm a really big fan of the late economist Julian Simon, and he's a wonderful quote that I think makes economics seem a lot less dismal.

He said, the ultimate resource is people, especially skilled, spirited, and hopeful young people endowed with liberty, who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefit and inevitably benefit the rest of us as well. I predict that, for example, third world countries, if we got out of the aid business and instead got into the property rights business, they'd flourish. Nigeria, India, they're full of brilliant people, but we don't let them use their God-given skills through bad economic systems. But these problems are all fixable.

Hernando de Soto wrote about them in a book called Capital many years ago. We just need to follow them. So I think even with our problems today, the U.S. is still a place with tons of economic freedom and lots of really smart, hopeful, talented people. Our economy side of the envy of the world. And I'll leave with this. While we have all these issues at the southern border,

we certainly need a solution there. If you really look at that issue at its crux, it's millions of people risking their lives to come here, right? And almost nobody is leaving. So we're doing something right. And I think what we're doing right well overwhelms the small things where we have problems. And that's what makes me feel good about my own kids and their possibilities for the future. Well said. Scott Niederjohn, thanks so much for all the great work you're doing here at Concordia,

in Wisconsin, and around the country. We really appreciate you taking some time with us today on Voices of Freedom. Thanks, Rick. Thanks for listening to this episode of Voices of Freedom. Join us next month on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts for our next conversation on issues impacting our freedom and America's foundational principles. And make sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. I'm Rick Graber, and this is a Bradley Foundation podcast.