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Something remarkable has happened here in Mississippi. The state that for most of the last century sat at the bottom of nearly every American economic table has, quietly, pulled ahead of the United Kingdom in GDP per capita. Last week, Governor Tate Reeves highlighted the fact on X/Twitter in his characteristically Southern style - and the tweet went viral.

It is a moment worth pausing over — and worth understanding because what Mississippi has achieved over the past five years is not an accident or down to luck. It is the product of a deliberate, sustained program of free-market reform that few governments successfully deliver.

I first noticed that Mississippi was overtaking Britain in terms of output per person back in 2023, and wrote about it for both The Atlantic and The Sunday Times. The reaction from British commentators at the time was a familiar scramble for excuses — purchasing power parity adjustments, Ukraine, Covid — anything, in fact, other than the policy choices Britain itself had been making for thirty years.

Now the claim that Mississippi has overtaken the UK is no longer disputed. A new report from the Institute of Economic Affairs last week asked British voters to guess where the UK would rank among America’s fifty states on GDP per capita. On average, they placed their country seventh. In reality, as the report showed, the UK ranks fifty-first — dead last, below every single U.S. state, including Mississippi. More than a quarter of respondents said they felt “shocked” when shown the truth. Alas, facts do not care about British feelings.

I am glad Governor Reeves has now put the spotlight on this again. But to me the more interesting question is not how far Britain has fallen. It is how far Mississippi has climbed.

For most of the last hundred years, the Magnolia State always seemed to be last. Our per capita income was the lowest in the Union. Serious investment passed us by. But recent years have seen a decisive shift.

In 2021, Mississippi passed meaningful labor market reform, making it easier for people to work, train, and switch careers. In 2022, we replaced an old tax code with flat tax reform - a clear signal that Mississippi had stopped apologizing for letting people keep more of what they earn.

Year after year, we have kept our energy among the most affordable in the country — a quiet advantage that every family and every employer benefits from. As other parts of the world that embraced aggressive renewable energy policies grapple with rising costs, Mississippi’s more measured energy approach is looking increasingly wise. 

In 2024, we passed education funding reform that finally lets the money follow the child, putting more of it into the classroom. In 2025, we took the historic step of passing legislation to eliminate the state income tax altogether — a policy that only a few years earlier had been dismissed as impossible. And in 2026, we have begun cutting through the thicket of red tape that has held back our healthcare sector for too long.

No single one of these reforms was enough by itself to turn the state around, but together this package of free-market reforms is enough to lift the trajectory of an entire state. And these reforms compound. Labor market liberalization makes tax reform more potent. Lower taxes make affordable energy more valuable. Better schools raise the human capital on which all of it depends. This is what a real politics of growth looks like — not a single heroic leap, but a steady accumulation of practical wins, year after year.

This is why our numbers have moved. It is why they will keep moving.

If you want to know why Britain is floundering, imagine what Mississippi might be like if we had had Bernie Sanders in charge for the past twenty years. Taxes there are too high. Regulation is intrusive. Immigration is out of control. Energy costs are sky-high. Britain has been run by a succession of Bernies, and it’s been a disaster.

Mississippi shows the alternative. The policies that lifted this state from the bottom of the American table are not secret. They are practical, proven, and available to any government willing to pursue them with the courage and patience they require.

The world is starting to notice Mississippi’s success. So should we.

Amazon has just announced another multi-billion-dollar data center project in Mississippi — the latest in a flood of inward investment now pouring into our state.

But here’s the thing worth reflecting on: even AI-related investments on this scale are only a fraction of what is flowing into data centers and AI infrastructure across the country. What is happening in AI is not just another tech cycle. It is going to be absolutely massive — and genuinely transformative in ways that will touch every kind of institution.

You would not know that from much of the media coverage. I’ve lost count of the number of articles warning about catastrophic job losses, mass unemployment, and whole industries being wiped out. The narrative has been relentlessly negative. But I think it is wrong — and I am not alone in thinking so.

Speaking at a recent event in Jackson, the author Matt Ridley explained something called the Jevons paradox. Named after the nineteenth-century economist William Stanley Jevons, the idea is counterintuitive but well-established: when something becomes cheaper or more efficient to use, people do not simply consume less of it — they consume more. Efficiency generates demand rather than redundancy.

So, too, with AI. Yes, it may make legal advice or specialist expertise far more affordable and widely available. But that does not mean lawyers and professionals will be put out of work. It means people will seek legal advice far more often than they did when access was expensive and limited. Making intelligence radically cheaper will not make smart people redundant. It will unleash more of it.

We are already beginning to see the first signs of an AI productivity boom. I am convinced that the people and organizations that embrace AI and use it effectively will not simply do the same things faster. They will become hyper-productive — able to produce, communicate, research, and act at a level that was simply not possible before. That is not a recipe for fewer jobs. It is a recipe for more output, more value, and more opportunity.

Running a think tank, I find myself thinking a great deal about what AI means for organizations like MCPP. Over the past forty years, the liberty movement in America has built an impressive infrastructure — dozens of policy institutes in Washington and one in virtually every state. That network has done enormous good. But there is a challenge that comes with maturity and growth.

As organizations get larger, productivity per person can fall. What begins as a lean, mission-driven operation can gradually become more corporate. The original focus blurs. 

Without constant effort to guard against it, there is a real danger that — rather like a rain dancer claiming credit for precipitation — organizations end up claiming agency for things that would have happened anyway.  My hunch is that some of the established donor groups are aware of all this.  

AI, I believe, is a way to reinvigorate the liberty movement in all sorts of wonderful ways. It might even, whisper it softly, be a little disruptive — in the best possible sense.

Small organizations that use AI well can now be more effective than much larger ones that do not. The capacity of a campaign group should never be measured by the size of its payroll — and AI is only going to make that point blindingly obvious. Again, I suspect donors in search of better bang for their buck will grasp this.  

Here at MCPP, we have started to use AI in lots of new and creative ways. We are working on our first animated children’s cartoon, based on our children’s book What Makes America Special. We have enormous amounts of data, and AI now allows us to use it in smarter ways to identify and reach exactly the people we need to be talking to. MCPP already has perhaps the largest owned audience of any conservative organization in this state — and AI means we are experimenting with new ways to extend our communication reach even further.

AI will never replace the personal relationships that sit at the heart of public policy work. But what it can do is free us up to spend more time on exactly those human connections — the conversations, the trust-building, and the relationships with legislators and opinion-formers that no algorithm will ever replicate. The multi-billion dollar data centers now dotted across states like Mississippi are only one of the ways in which the AI revolution is making itself felt here. The deeper transformation — the one that will reshape how organizations like ours think, communicate, and campaign — is only just beginning. We intend to be at the front of it.

Something significant is happening in America's South, and it deserves more attention.
 
While New York and California are losing residents, states like South Carolina and Alabama are gaining population at a record pace - and alongside that growth, it is southern states like ours that are generating some of the most impressive economic numbers in the country.
 
A recent JL Partners poll found that 36 percent of Americans now expect the South to lead economic growth over the next decade. That puts it well ahead of the West Coast (23 percent), the Northeast (21 percent), and the Midwest (19 percent). Young graduates are even more bullish: nearly four in ten name the South as the region most likely to grow fastest in the coming decade.
 
The data backs up the optimism.
 
Real GDP growth in 2024 tells the story clearly.  Mississippi and South Carolina grew at 4.2 percent. Alabama and Arkansas at 3.8 percent.  Tennessee at 3.0 percent. All surpassed the national rate of 2.8 percent. Between 2020 and 2024, 78 percent of all U.S. jobs added to the economy were located in the South. The region's population has grown by seven million since 2020 — and the pace appears to be accelerating.
 
Manufacturing is a key part of the picture. U.S. industrial output has roughly doubled since the Reagan era, and much of that expansion went South rather than overseas. Alabama alone has added over 50,000 auto jobs since 2000. Combined, Alabama and Mississippi now produce more vehicles annually than Italy or the United Kingdom.
 
Finance is following manufacturing. Charlotte, Dallas, Miami, and Nashville have become major financial hubs. JPMorgan Chase now employs more people in Texas - around 31,000 -  than in New York.
 
Even higher education is shifting. SEC universities have seen a 91 percent surge in out-of-state undergraduate applications between 2014 and 2023, with many of those students coming from the Northeast.
 
What explains it?
 
The answer is policy.  Southern states like Mississippi have built environments that are straightforwardly more attractive for businesses and workers alike.
 
Taxes are lower. Several southern states have no income tax — Texas, Florida, and Tennessee among them - while Mississippi and South Carolina are on a path to eliminating theirs entirely.
 
Regulatory burdens are lighter: South Carolina recently repealed a range of Certificate of Need rules that had constrained its healthcare economy, a stark contrast to California's expanding compliance requirements.
 
Labor markets are more flexible, with most southern states operating as right-to-work states. Occupational licensing restrictions are being reduced, making it easier for people to enter the workforce. And electricity costs are significantly lower, in part because the South never adopted the rigid renewable mandates that have driven up prices in the Northeast and California.
 
This is, in many ways, a natural experiment in governance. Fifty states, trying different approaches side by side - and some are producing markedly better results than others. The South appears to have found a formula that works.
 
None of these policy wins happened by accident.  They were the result of years of sustained advocacy - and you have been a vital part of that. Your support has helped make the case for lower taxes, lighter regulation, and greater economic freedom. The results speak for themselves.

Governor Tate Reeves announced that he is open to calling a special legislative session on education. He should.

Two and a half months into the session, Mississippi’s state legislature has so far accomplished remarkably little.

Senator Jeremy England’s well thought out efforts to restore the ballot initiative (SCR 518) failed. Speaker Jason White and Representative Jansen Owen’s flagship school choice bill (HB 2), a product of months of work and careful deliberation, died. So too did the House proposal on teacher pay (HB 1126). Ditto for plans to reform PERS, the Public Employee Retirement System, into which a lot of first responders and others had put enormous thought.

Having convened for more than 40 days, it is hard to think of a single significant legislative achievement this session.

That the legislature has so little to show for all those hours (and per diem payments) is not due to a lack of effort on the part of many lawmakers. There was no shortage of good proposals. The problem is that they all died in the Senate.

Governor Tate Reeves now has the power to break the logjam with a special session.

He should make it clear that he will call a special session for April, with a single education bill on the agenda, one that both raises teacher pay (modeled on HB 1126) and gives parents more power (modeled on HB 2). Any lawmaker who votes against what is put before the special session will be voting against teacher pay increases.

At the same time, our Governor should make it clear that if there is no agreement, he will call a second special session in May, then in June, July, and into the summer if that is what it takes.

In Texas, where families now control their child’s education tax dollars, that is what Governor Greg Abbott ended up having to do. Governor Reeves would be in good company.

Lawmakers are up for reelection next year. This time next year, some might face primary elections. It would be a bold move to go into a long summer, months before a potential primary election, repeatedly voting to kill teacher pay increases and parent power.

In his comments earlier this week, Governor Reeves remarked, “I do not have much time left”. With the end of his eight year term in sight, and term limited, he appears to be reflecting on his legacy. What an impressive legacy it already is.

Mississippi is on a roll economically. In 2024, we ranked second nationally in real GDP growth. Household incomes have surged. Outside investment is pouring in. After decades of decline, more people moved to Mississippi last year than left.

But for a Southern state now surrounded by neighbors that have embraced school choice, one key policy remains conspicuously absent: effective, meaningful school choice here at home.

Governor Reeves has a historic opportunity to change that by calling a special session. In doing so, he could deliver this long sought reform, cement a lasting achievement for Mississippi families, and virtually guarantee that his successor is pro parent power too. 

Too many young people still leave Mississippi to chase opportunities elsewhere.  MCPP is on a mission to help change that - by creating the conditions for real, sustained growth so our children and grandchildren choose to stay, build lives, and thrive right here in our state.
 
The good news?  Mississippi is no longer a laggard, but leading.

Thanks to free-market reforms, we're now one of the fastest-growing states in the nation. Over the past five years, we've seen more economic growth than in the previous 15 combined. In 2024, Mississippi ranked #2 nationally in real GDP growth. Historic tax cuts have put more money back in families' pockets, flexible labor laws and affordable energy have attracted over $40 billion in investments since 2020, and fiscal discipline has kept us on solid ground.
 
Building on this remarkable momentum, the Mississippi Center for Public Policy recently launched our latest paper at an event in Jackson: Mississippi Momentum: A Blueprint for Lasting Prosperity.

This blueprint outlines targeted, practical reforms to accelerate our progress and secure long-term prosperity. Key proposals include:
 

  1. Universal school choice through a phased-in Education Savings Account (ESA) program - starting with thousands of students and expanding to make every family empowered to choose the best education path for their child.
  2. Healthcare freedom by partially repealing Certificate-of-Need (CON) laws and granting full practice authority to Advanced Practice Registered Nurses - reducing costs by up to 15% and improving access, especially in rural areas.
  3. Conservative spending to limit government growth to inflation plus population increases, protecting our tax cuts and generating surpluses for future relief or priorities.
  4. Welfare-to-work requirements for able-bodied adults on TANF and SNAP, promoting self-reliance and drawing on successful models from other states.
  5. Merit-based procurement reforms to ensure transparent, competitive public contracts focused on price, quality, and expertise - ending favoritism and waste.


These ideas are already shaping the policy conversation in Mississippi. Many of the reforms outlined in this blueprint are now central to debates at the Capitol. While important work remains, the direction is clear: Mississippi can continue to grow faster, compete harder, and lead the nation in pro-growth reform.

Readers can access the full “Mississippi Momentum: A Blueprint for Lasting Prosperity” at mspolicy.org/publications/msmomentum/
 
I hope you find our latest paper inspiring and useful.
 
As someone who moved 4,000 miles with my family to make our home in the Magnolia State, I am more certain than ever that Mississippi can lead the way for other states in America to follow.

A small win for freedom in Mississippi!  Governor Tate Reeves recently signed HB3, a law that reforms the state’s Certificate of Need (CON) rules. 

CON is basically a government approval process healthcare providers (like hospitals) must go through before they can add certain services, build new facilities, buy expensive equipment, or make big expansions.

HB3 makes some modest changes, allowing more flexibility for some specific providers.  It also raises the dollar threshold for capital spending requiring approval. 

Perhaps the most significant part of the bill is that it mandates the Mississippi Department of Health to do a study over the course of this year into the feasibility of letting smaller hospitals skip CON when providing kidney dialysis treatment and adult psychiatric services. 

While HB3 does not give us the reforms Mississippi needs, it is a step in the right direction.  In a legislative session that has seen most significant reforms killed in the Senate, this is one rare example of a free market reform in the 2026 session.

Over the past few years, Mississippi lawmakers have passed some critical conservative reforms. Last year, Mississippi became the first state in America to legislate to eliminate the income tax in 40 years.  In 2022, we implemented flat tax reform.  A few years before that, we passed important labor market reforms.  In 2024, we reformed school funding to get more money into the classroom. 
 
It is thanks to these flagship conservative reforms that Mississippi has enjoyed more economic growth in the past five years than over the previous fifteen combined.  
 
Yet every single time one of these flagship conservative reform was being considered, I noticed a similar pattern. Those opposed to flagship conservative policy are too wily to come straight out and say they don’t want conservative policy in a conservative state.  What they do instead is offer less substantial alternatives, which might be perfectly good policy, but don’t really change much at all. 
 
On school funding, for example, those opposed to the new funding formula offered a few tweaks to the old system.  Those that did not want income tax to be eliminated proposed a handful of performative tax reductions here and there. Now that Mississippi has a real chance to achieve universal school choice, we are seeing the same distraction strategy. 
 
Speaker Jason White’s Mississippi Education Freedom Bill (HB 2) is the most consequential education legislation seen in a generation.  
 
It establishes Magnolia Student Accounts as education savings accounts to enable universal school choice in Mississippi. Families would receive roughly $7,000 per child deposited into a dedicated account. Parents could use these funds for tuition, curriculum materials, or other approved education expenses at the school of their choice—public, private, charter, or homeschool.
 
The program is due to begin in the 2027-28 school year with 12,500 accounts. Half of those (6,250) are reserved for students currently enrolled in public schools, while the remaining half are awarded via a first-come, first-served lottery to any eligible student.
 
Speaker White’s bill goes further by dismantling outdated, self-serving bureaucratic restrictions.  It eliminates school districts' ability to block student transfers: If a receiving district is willing and has capacity, students can freely switch.  The bill also removes barriers to charter school growth. HB 2 allows charters to open wherever operators see demand and viability, enabling statewide expansion.
 
You would have to be a socialist to oppose this – which is why it was so disappointing to see some Republicans listed at the bottom of this message vote against parent power. 

Having failed to kill HB2 in the House, the socialists are now trying another tactic.  They are offering up far less significant reforms that appeal to conservative ears, but fall far short of giving parents power.
 
This week the Senate approved a cluster of such education bills.  There’s a bill that will require financial literacy lessons, another that will insist on civics.  One of the bills approved by the Senate will try to improve math outcomes, another that will require 8th graders to reach a certain reading standard before advancing.
 
All of these things may be desirable, but they fall far short of parent power. 
 
The danger is that some misguided voices big up these bills as something more substantial than they really are – and in doing make it easier for those opposed to flagship conservative reform to quietly kill off the important bits in HB2.
 
HB2 has now passed out of the Mississippi House and is on its way for consideration by the State Senate. If enacted, this would represent the pinnacle of conservative education reform in the United States.  Most importantly, it shows a deep understanding that truly successful education reform requires parental involvement.
 
The Magnolia State has made great progress in recent years on the education front. Mississippi’s fourth graders now read better than those in New York, California, or Minnesota, according to National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores.   You read that correctly: A state that barely a decade ago ranked near the bottom for fourth grade reading now sits near the top of the NAEP tables.
 
But despite Mississippi’s stellar progress, almost half of fourth graders still are not proficient in reading and math, and roughly one in four elementary students continues to be chronically absent.
 
The solution to that is not to micromanage how teachers teach in every classroom in our state, but to give families the power to choose the education for their child. Mississippi needs to give parents - not politicians - the ultimate oversight of what happens in the classroom.
 
You cannot credibly claim to be a conservative in the legislature if you oppose HB2.  Here, incidentally, is a list of the Republican members of the House that sided with the socialists against parent power. 
 
Who sided with progressives to try to block school choice?

Last week, House Speaker Jason White unveiled HB2, the Mississippi Education Freedom Act - the most exciting and ambitious advancement for school choice in our state in years, perhaps ever!
 
This comprehensive bill delivers everything supporters of parental power have long hoped for, and it aligns perfectly with President Trump’s strong commitment to education freedom.
 
This isn’t some minor adjustment or performative law – it’s the real thing for anyone who believes in putting parents in charge of their children’s education.

Here’s what the bill does and why we at MCPP are so enthusiastic:
 


In the initial phase, up to 12,500 accounts will be available, with priority for low- and middle-income families, and a balanced split between current public school students and others. The program will expand each year until every family that wants one can have access. Homeschool families participating can also receive $1,000 annually to help cover costs.
 

 
HB2 is Speaker Jason White’s flagship reform for the 2026 session, fulfilling his promise that “all Mississippi families, regardless of income or zip code, have real choices and the freedom to pursue what works best for their children.”  He deserves strong support for the most significant conservative education reform our state has seen in a generation. 
 
Dozens of Mississippi business leaders, along with former Governors Haley Barbour and Phil Bryant, have already voiced strong support. Team Trump is behind it too.
 
In short: If you oppose this bill, it’s hard to credibly claim to be a conservative.  That’s exactly why the progressive left is already fighting it tooth and nail – they fear real parent power and will twist the facts to stop these reforms.
 
HB2 is now moving through the legislature, with real momentum in the House.  Having had a massive conservative majority in Mississippi for years, here at last is the opportunity to implement a conservative reform in our state that will change our state for the better.
 
Real change is happening – and Mississippi is leading the way!

As we kick off 2026, the Mississippi Center for Public Policy is more energized than ever.  We are excited about the successes our state has seen – and we have a plan to build on that momentum with further free market reform!
 
For decades, our state lagged behind.  Growth was slow and too many young people left our state to seek opportunities elsewhere.  That is starting to change.
 
Over the past five years, Mississippi has seen more economic growth than in the previous 15 combined. 
 
Mississippi’s progress is real, but it did not happen by chance.  It is happening thanks to free market reform - including major tax cuts, flexible labor laws, affordable energy, and fiscal discipline.
 
MCPP aims to help build on this in the 2026 legislative session.  We have a clear, targeted plan for further free market reforms. Here is our focus for the 2026 legislative session which starts this coming week:
 

  1. School Choice
     

Mississippi has already taken a strong step by assigning every public-school student a personalized education budget. Now is the time to let families truly control it. We are working to see a universal Education Savings Account (ESA) program, modeled on successful reforms like Arkansas’s LEARNS Act.  
 
Other education reforms, such as making it easier for families to move from one public school to another are important, but the key goal must be an ESA system, just like they now have in Arkansas, Tennessee and Alabama. 
 

  1. Repeal of Certificate-of-Need (CON) Laws

 
Mississippi’s outdated health regulation regime stifles competition, blocks investment in healthcare and drives up costs - especially in rural areas. We are pushing for a partial repeal of these restrictions across regulated services.
 
It is also essential that we grant Advanced Practice Registered Nurses full practice authority. These changes could lower healthcare costs significantly, expand rural access, and save millions annually - freeing the market to deliver better, more affordable care.
 

  1. Conservative Spending 

 
To enable future tax cuts, and to prevent the public sector crowding out local businesses, we need to see fiscal discipline in this state. The fiscal climate is changing, and the days of large federal subsidies is coming to an end.  It is essential that our lawmakers live within our means.  That means keeping spending under control and not squandering any surpluses.
 
These are MCPP’s big three priorities for the coming session – and we will be working closely with key lawmakers and our coalition allies to advance them.  
 
MCPP is also supportive of a number of other reforms up for discussion.  For example, we would love to see a restoration of the ballot initiative.  With labor-force participation in Mississippi still too low, we would love to see reform in welfare administration to ensure more stringent requirements on able-bodied welfare recipients, and more meaningful sanctions for non-compliance.  We would support such changes, but they are not our primary focus for this session.  
 
We are super excited at the start of the 2026 legislative session. Our team will be working hard to ensure real reform – and I will be sure to keep you personally updated on the progress we make as the session advances!

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