What creates prosperity? Why are some states rich and others poor? Why does Mississippi consistently rank as one of the poorest states in the nation? Can anything be done to move Mississippi 'out of last place?'

Join Brandon Cline and Claudia Williamson, editors of Promoting Prosperity in Mississippi and the Co-Directors of the Institute for Market Studies at Mississippi State University, for MCPP's July 26 Liberty Luncheon as we discuss these questions and how we can truly promote, encourage and experience prosperity in Mississippi.

Here are the details:

WHAT: Liberty Luncheon: Promoting Prosperity in Mississippi
WHO: Featuring Brandon Cline and Claudia Williamson, Co-Directors of the Institute for Market Studies
WHEN: Thursday, July 26, 2018 at 11:30 a.m.
WHERE: River Hills Club, 3600 Ridgewood Rd., Jackson, Mississippi

Space is limited so sign up today.

Conservatism is a word I’ve heard a lot since moving here to take the position as CEO of Mississippi’s conservative think tank, the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. It seems almost everyone considers himself a conservative. I’m discovering the word has lost some of its meaning, though. It has become interchangeable with the GOP or with one’s views on the Second Amendment or on being pro-life. But those definitions of conservative are not wholly accurate. More importantly, they’re not enough. A conservative is also willing to stand up to encroaching power of all forms of government, to the growing corporatism that seeks to govern us from the boardroom, and to the menace to our society that is a progressive culture.

To make Mississippi a leader in economic growth, entrepreneurship, job creation, and prosperity, we have to make progress on the issue of our long-standing dependence on government. We have to change our public policy. We need to value work, remove barriers to risk-taking, free parents to choose the education path that works for their own children, and leverage the power of the private enterprises of faith, family, non-profits, and private organizations. The faith-based and philanthropic generosity of Mississippians is amazing. It can create so much good, but we have to prevent government from competing with this philanthropy. The best solutions in civil society come from local, efficient, effective, temporary actions where a personal relationship ensures mutual accountability. This is how we used to solve the problems in our civil society.

There are far too many Mississippians who seek to petition government to do this work. Worse, too many individuals and companies are looking to the government for a contract, a job, a partner, or protection from competition. When we allow government to become the Holy Grail in this way, we weaken the free market. We create a disincentive to the formation and deployment of capital. We thwart the opportunity for all Mississippians to prosper. What’s more, such reliance on government ensures only those with power have significant influence on Mississippi, including determining who represents us in the legislative and executive branches of our government.

What makes a “conservative” is not a party or allegiance to a particular leader or political campaign, but the power of ideas. As conservatives, our ideas are based on bedrock values and fundamental truths. Freedom is a policy that works. A limited and restrained government is the essence of our system. And the principle of ordered liberty holds it all together. Our goal at the Mississippi Center for Public Policy is to play a leadership role in building a Mississippi where individual liberty, opportunity, and responsibility reign because government is limited. We believe this is the only way nations, states, and cities have ever enjoyed durable prosperity.

If we remain committed to these ideas and work hard to convince others of their value, we can all experience a Magnolia renaissance. And we can say conservatism made it possible. Real conservatism. The kind of which Bill Buckley, Ronald Reagan, and Milton Friedman spoke. The kind where we are free to pursue our individual liberty and speak our minds. The kind where we encourage people to take action and take risks in pursuit of their happiness. The kind where we take personal responsibility for our futures and stop looking for government to solve all of our problems.

There is an important role for government but it must be limited. Government functions best when it is closest to the people and when it is open and transparent. And the states are the best avenue for getting things done. Although our national government continues to grow into an unwieldy and bureaucratic swamp, our country is still federalist. We are a collection of semi-sovereign states. Federalism is a conservative idea. As Reagan stated in his first inaugural address, “The federal government did not create the states; the states created the federal government.” Thanks to our founding fathers, the real political and policy power is supposed to belong to the states.

Though I’ve lived in Mississippi for only a few months now, I’ve come to learn that y’all are not very fond of people telling you what to do, especially not people in Washington, D.C. I admire that. That’s a conservative thing, too. That independence goes to the heart of the conservative movement. It was present at our founding. It was what compelled Bill Buckley to start National Review. It was what gave us Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. And if we harness it, conservatism will lead us to a prosperous Mississippi—a Mississippi where individual liberty, opportunity, and responsibility reign because government is limited.

Since the inception of the Balance Agriculture with Industry (BAWI) plan, the State of Mississippi has provided private business enterprises with billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded subsidies. The argument advanced by the proponents of selective or targeted incentives is that the benefits of subsidies (i.e., more employment, higher wages, more tax revenue to state and local governments) in luring companies to locate in Mississippi are substantially greater than their costs. As discussed earlier, forecasts of the total economic benefits anticipated from business subsidies are based on projections of employment gains and promises of higher wages paid by the targeted businesses. Through a Keynesian multiplier effect, these employment and wage gains will spill over to other areas of the economy and create even more employment opportunities and higher wages.

However, the employment projections rarely become reality because the models used commonly to estimate the multiplier do not account for the job displacement effect, instead assuming contrary to fact that every person employed at the subsidized plant is a new addition to the workforce and that every dollar paid to those employees (the plant’s total payroll) adds to the income earned by residents of the state. Our simple graphical analyses in the previous section show clearly that the promised job gains from the Nissan’s Canton, Mississippi, plant fell far short of those projected ex ante. However, even if the benefits of a taxpayer-funded subsidy did outweigh the costs using standard measures of economic impacts, such an outcome would be a necessary, but not sufficient condition for concluding that the incentive package passes a benefit-cost test, thereby delivering net economic benefit (benefits > costs) because the analysis fails to consider the subsidy’s opportunity cost. One opportunity cost of a taxpayer-funded subsidy is the private-sector economic activity that would have been generated (but is lost) had the subsidy not occurred and the dollars allocated to it remained in the hands of private individuals and commercial businesses. As just explained, an additional dollar injected into the private sector is exchanged repeatedly in series of market transactions and thus creates economic value greater than the initial dollar. The converse also is true: Every additional dollar of tax revenue taken from the private sector reduces economic activity by more than one dollar.

The true cost of a taxpayer-funded subsidy to business therefore is not just the actual dollar amount of the subsidy, but rather the actual dollar amount of the subsidy plus lost private-sector consumption if the subsidy resources were to remain in the private sector. This observation suggests that the true economic cost of a taxpayer funded subsidy is much larger than the subsidy’s accounting. So, for example, in the case of Nissan’s Canton plant, the true economic cost per worker actually exceeds the $203,125 accounting cost presented earlier because in order to finance the $1.3 billion subsidy, economic activity in the private sector will fall by more than $1.3 billion (the multiplier effect working in reverse). The economic criterion for a subsidy to generate a positive net benefit is that those benefits must be greater than the dollar value of the subsidy plus the opportunity cost of the lost private sector consumption.

A business subsidy inherently assumes that every dollar of a taxpayer-funded subsidy is worth more to the economy than if the dollar remained in private sector hands. While this may be true in some cases, the academic research and evidence presented herein suggest that possibility is more the exception than the rule. So, as was discussed in Chapter 3, public officials who advocate for taxpayer-funded subsidies to business are implicitly claiming that they know better than do private individuals and firms interacting in free and open markets how to most effectively allocate resources to their highest valued uses. If that actually were true, then we should allow legislators and public officials to decide all business activity within a state. But, we have seen throughout history (the former Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea immediately come to mind) how poorly planned economies perform. Of course, the argument is not being made here that taxpayer-funded subsidies to lure businesses to Mississippi and other states is equivalent to having a planned economy like the aforementioned countries, but the difference is only a matter of degree. Even though less economic planning occurs in the United States than in other nations, planning fails wherever politicians and public officials displace market processes because they lack the information (price and profit signals) and incentives necessary to decide which economic activities merit encouragement and which do not.

Legislators and other public officials who support taxpayer-funded subsidies likely do so with the best intentions — to create greater economic opportunity and a better future for the citizens of their respective cities, counties and states. However, despite these best intentions, it is likely that, in most cases, taxpayer-funded subsidies will do more economic harm than good, in part owing to ignoring the opportunity cost of lost private-sector consumption. That harm is amplified because officials everywhere compete with one another to assemble incentive packages that will entice businesses to their respective jurisdictions. Such competition for business creates ever larger taxpayer-funded subsidy packages that likely will cause even more substantial net economic losses for society as a whole. The only way to stop this race-to-the-bottom is for public officials to stop offering selective incentives to businesses and instead foster a more favorable economic environment for all business activity, which includes companies already doing business in a state, whether large or small (e.g., lower taxes on citizens and businesses across the board, control over-excessive and wasteful government spending, promoting a skilled workforce, and minimal regulation). The free market, rather than politicians and bureaucrats, will then decide where business activity will locate.

We think that, in order to promote prosperity, all states and localities should abolish their economic development agencies, thereby saving the budgetary costs of official salaries, benefits and travel expenses to visit and cut deals with companies looking to move or to build new plants. Unilateral disarmament in the vigorous incentives arms’ race triggered by Mississippi during the Great Depression may, of course, cause the state to lose opportunities to lure big-name employers in the short or medium term. If an announcement that the Mississippi Development Authority has been shut down is paired with a dramatic cut in state business income taxes, however, the negative impact on revenue will be at most short-lived.

Here’s a chance for Mississippi to lead the nation forward with much better effect than its adoption long ago of the Balance Agriculture with Industry program. State officials may then realize that they all are made better off by disarming because selective incentives only shift economic activity around geographically and do not foster prosperity. On the surface, interstate competition for business location is a zero-sum game: one state’s gain is another’s loss. But, looked at more deeply as we have done in this chapter, the arms’ race is a negative-sum game because the ostensible benefits of the competition in terms of job gains, whether direct, indirect or induced, are less than the costs imposed on the private sector, thus hindering economic growth and prosperity in all states, including Mississippi.

This is an excerpt from “Selective Incentives,” Crony Capitalism and Economic Development by Thomas A. Garrett and William F. Shughart III. It was published in Promoting Prosperity in Mississippi.

After Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, families, churches, private businesses, and nonprofit organizations from across the country and around the world immediately provided true compassion to the devastated communities on the Gulf Coast. These vital components of civil society worked tirelessly to minister not only to the physical needs of the people in these devastated communities but also to their unique emotional and spiritual needs, in a way that an impersonal, one-size-fits-all government could not.

There is no question that government has a legitimate role to play in addressing some problems. There are some things only government can do. For example, when the lives or property of citizens are in danger, or when individual rights are violated, government has the right and obligation to address the situation through a well-ordered legal system that treats all citizens with equal justice under the law. Reasonable steps toward public order (stop signs and traffic signals, for example) are appropriate, as are other functions, especially at the local level where the people have a more direct voice in governing. But the more it takes on, the less it is able to focus on its most important tasks. Even when there is a legitimate role for government, there is often a way to fulfill that role through contracts with private companies who compete with each other to offer the best service and value to the taxpayers.

Frequently when government is called upon to solve a problem, there is another entity that could address the problem more appropriately and effectively. “We need to do something!” Perhaps. But “we” doesn’t necessarily mean “the government.”  Government programs crowd out innovative non-governmental solutions from the public imagination because people think, “it’s the government’s job,” or, “the government is taking care of that; I don’t have to.”  Now, not only does the government voluntarily step up to try to solve all problems, the people expect and demand it, leaving the recipients under served and the potential givers unfulfilled.

In 1887, President Grover Cleveland vetoed a bill that would have provided financial aid to Texas farmers struggling through a drought, saying, “I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution; and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering, . . . The friendliness and charity of our fellow countrymen can always be relied on to relieve their fellow citizens in misfortune.”  Following that statement, people of all ages from every state sent their pennies, dimes, and quarters to Texas, providing ten times the amount that would have been provided in the bill he vetoed. Perhaps the greatest disservice of the welfare state is that it discourages the individual generosity seen in those days, or in the days after Hurricane Katrina—generosity that touches the heart as well as the pocketbook.

Our culture is moving rapidly toward the belief that the only source of help and hope in times of trouble is the government. Ryan Messmore, of the Heritage Foundation, contends that we are not asking the right question. He says, “Rather than asking who should take responsibility for an issue (whether family, neighborhood, government, religious congregation, etc.), the public debate too often blithely assumes that the answer is government and instead focuses on how it should address the problem.”

But government is not our savior.

The late Joe Overton put it this way: “When governing institutions establish programs that attempt to improve upon private intermediary institutions [churches, families, communities], three damaging things occur. First, there is a prevailing sense that the problem is being solved by government. Second, resources are taken from private individuals and organizations through taxes, which reduce their ability to provide assistance independent of the government. And third, government programs often generate numerous rules and regulations that prevent or hinder private organizations from dealing effectively with the problem.”

Sometimes, it is better for the government to do absolutely nothing. When government tries to solve problems, when the demand to "do something!" prevails, the "law of unintended consequences" becomes an unwritten amendment to every piece of legislation or bureaucratic plan. The result is often a permanent solution to a temporary problem, perhaps helping a little, but simultaneously creating new problems that will have to be dealt with by creating another new program or adding more regulations.

Private solutions, whether provided by for-profit or non-profit organizations, are more effective for a number of reasons. They can be implemented with lightening speed (within days of the hurricane, Southern Baptist relief teams were serving a half-million meals per day to victims and relief workers—at no cost to the recipients or the government), they are more likely to address the problem at its source, and they stay in place until the goal is accomplished. By the time the government gets around to doing something, it is massive, it misses the point, it discourages private innovation and initiative, and it stays past whatever usefulness it may have served. As Ronald Reagan said, “The closest thing to eternal life we’ll see on this earth is a government program.”

Johnny Ervin, who volunteered hundreds of hours coordinating relief efforts on the Gulf Coast through a Gulfport church, said, “When government is involved in solving a problem, it must use bureaucratic methods to deliver the solutions in order to meet all the demands that are placed on government functions. This always results in longer waiting times, more forms and red tape, less satisfied participants, and greater costs than other solutions provided by non-profits and free enterprise. Another way to say it is this: Government solutions to any problem should only be considered as a last resort, because by their nature they will always be the most bureaucratic, confusing, and expensive.”

This is an excerpt from Governing By Principle, MCPP’s ten principles to guide public policy. 

The remaining Toys-R-Us stores closed last week ending an era of retail shopping in America. Many were saddened to see the large retailer collapse, but as long as we have had stores in this country, we have had stores that go out of business.

Before Toys-R-Us entered our malls and shopping centers, we had independent toy stores. They couldn’t compete with the large chain and today you see very few independent toy stores, outside of specialized stores in specific locations.

But the reaction to Toys-R-Us closing was a little different than we usually see for these types of announcements. Driven by nostalgia, we saw people shed tears- either real or virtual- about the news. We even saw someone set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise $1 billion.

GoFundMe and nostalgia simply weren’t enough to save the giraffe.

If people were that concerned about Toys-R-Us, there is one very important thing they should have been doing for a long time: shopping there. As happens in a free market economy, the markets change. Toys-R-Us did not adapt and they failed. No different than any other number of businesses.

But we always have to blame someone. That use to be Wal Mart. Today it is Amazon. They are the reason small towns are dying. Why shops downtown are boarded up. Why local governments aren’t receiving enough tax revenue to pave their roads or fund schools. The list could go on for days.

Blaming someone else is the easy thing to do. But the market always chooses the winners. American consumers are, and should be, free to shop for the best options available. In the end, Toys-R-Us missed on a number of key business trends in consumer shopping behavior.

They weren’t competitive with competitors, brick and mortar or online

A very basic rule to retail: you need to be competitive to survive. Toys-R-Us simply did not match their brick-and-mortar competitors like Wal Mart or Target on pricing. Add in the fact that you can also get groceries or household items at those stores and there was no real reason to visit multiple stores when you could complete your shopping in one location. Something that is especially appealing to mom’s with young children.

But Toys-R-Us, as well as Babies-R-Us, had a larger selection than their competitors in the store some might say. That was a bonus if you needed an item at that very moment. However, you can find those same items online either from Wal Mart and Target, or an online retailer like Amazon. And you can receive them in a day or two, with free shipping. Toys-R-Us didn’t seem to grasp the digital trend until it was too late. Again, they just weren’t competitive.

To truly understand how uncompetitive they were on pricing, you needed only to visit a Toys-R-Us or Babies-R-Us during their liquidation sales before closing. At 30 or 40 percent off, they were about on par with their competition.

They didn’t set themselves apart from their competition

The brick-and-mortar advantage is that people can touch and feel items before they buy. We certainly purchase tablets and computers online, but we also like to be able to go to a Best Buy and put our hands on a keyboard or our fingers on a screen- and maybe seek a sales adviser for some expert guidance.

Save for the joy of riding bikes down the aisles, there was nothing that set Toys-R-Us apart. The stores were often cluttered, the experience wasn’t enjoyable, and they certainly were not known for their customer service.

You need to be competitive in pricing, but you also need a niche. Simply selling toys is no longer a niche. Toys-R-Us didn’t do anything to set themselves apart. A joyful customer experience was not part a customer’s average visit to Toys-R-Us.

Kids are seeking digital options, rather than traditional toys

The other part of this story is that the market for toys has changed. As much as we may or may not like to hear it, kids today prefer digital options such as tablets or video games. If you are in the business of selling products for children, you need to adapt. Especially in an environment that is becoming more and more competitive each day.

Some might feel sad that Toys-R-Us closed. Some of us might think back to our childhood. But consumers voted with their feet. They chose convenience. They chose lower prices. They chose independent, niche toy stores. Unfortunately for Toys-R-Us, that means the market chose someone else.

When all is said and done, nostalgia or a catch phrase will only get you so far. The market always determines the winner…and the loser.

This year’s U.S. Supreme Court term is drawing to a close this week, and one thing is plain: this is the best Supreme Court—thanks to Justice Gorsuch and the general trend of the judiciary in the Trump Administration—that our country has had in my lifetime.

For proof, look no further than two cases handed down this week, NIFLA v. Becerra and Trump v. Hawaii.

The first case, NIFLA, was about whether California could require pro-life crisis pregnancy centers to post information about where patients could receive abortions. Forcing the centers to put up that information is forcing them to speak and therefore violating their First Amendment rights. California wanted to require people making pro-life statements to post abortion messages in up to 13 different languages. Even if you just wanted to put up a billboard saying “Choose Life,” you would also have to put up a poster with abortion-related messaging.

The Court found California had overstepped its authority.

Policies like California’s show how extreme the pro-choice movement has become. Thankfully, we have a Court that will protect our right to not be forced to say something we disagree with. You could see the same penchant for respecting speech in the Mansky case earlier this term, where the Court said Minnesota could not ban ideological statements, like “Don’t Tread on Me,” on clothes worn to the polling place.

In the second case, Trump v. Hawaii, the State of Hawaii challenged the Trump Administration's travel ban, which blocks some people from eight countries from coming into the U.S. The reason these eight countries were chosen is they refused to share information with our government to ensure that their travelers are not a threat. The countries are North Korea, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Chad, Iran, Yemen, and Venezuela.

Despite handwringing from the Left, the Court found that this policy was squarely within the powers of the President. The President has the power to ensure our country is safe, and even if some want to try to spin this policy as bigoted, the truth is that it mirrored policies from past administrations, like the Carter Administration, and was obviously constitutional.

The most encouraging takeaway from this term of the Court is that the Court clearly does not seem to mind making the hard decisions that would be unpopular in the media. Ruling for someone who opposes same-sex marriage, as the Court did in the Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling, is an example doing the right thing even though a swath of big corporations and media coverage will be against you. Defending the Trump Administration’s right to have a reasonable immigration policy is another example. This Court cares about following the law and staying within its designated powers, regardless of what names they get called (or what restaurants they get kicked out of). That’s good for our country and good for the judiciary.

Which brings us to the definition of a “good” Supreme Court. A good court is one that does not bend to what is politically popular or even what the justices think the best policy outcome should be. A good court understands its role, follows the plain text of the law, and doesn’t bend the words of the constitution to fit some desired result.  Trump v. Hawaii provided an example of this approach. The Court knows that the law and constitution provide the President with broad authority in the areas of national security and immigration. It’s not for them to question decisions like the travel ban.

NIFLA and Trump v. Hawaii were close votes—both 5 to 4—so if we want more rulings like this, we need more backup for the five justices who stood for the rule of law. But while we wait for more appointment opportunities for this White House, let’s hope for more Supreme Court terms like this one in the meantime.

The latest development from Washington, D.C. includes a northern Virginia restaurant named the Red Hen and White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders.

Shortly after Sanders arrived at the restaurant last week, co-owner Stephanie Wilkinson told her that they would not serve her and her party because they disagreed with her politics. Specifically, the owner was unhappy with the Trump administration’s refusal to have taxpayers pay for elective surgery and hormones for transgendered soldiers.

So Sanders and company left and only made note of it in a Tweet:

Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left. Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so

— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) June 23, 2018

The owner would then go on to defend her actions saying, “People have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.”

After the incident we then learned that the owner followed Sanders and her party to another restaurant to continue harassing her.

The difference between Red Hen and Masterpiece

The refusal by a business owner to serve a member of the Trump cabinet, and the celebration of this decision from the left, is oh-so ironic considering the reaction to a Supreme Court decision just a few weeks ago concerning a cake baker and who he would or wouldn’t make wedding cakes for.

The state of Colorado said Jack Phillips would have to make wedding cakes for anyone, regardless of his religious beliefs. Or face punishment for refusing. But in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Phillips in determining that “religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views.”

But there are two main differences between Masterpiece Cakeshop and The Red Hen.

Masterpiece served customers who were gay. Phillips would make a cake for any reason other than for their wedding. The equivalent would be if Sanders asked the restaurant to cook for a Trump campaign event. The restaurant should have the right to refuse to do that, because they disagree with the President’s political message. But the restaurant won’t serve Sanders simply because of who she is and her job. That’s the exact opposite of what Masterpiece did. Red Hen said we won’t serve Sanders under any circumstance. Phillips just said he wouldn’t serve someone under a certain condition.

And the Masterpiece decision also centered around the deeply held religious views of Phillips. The Supreme Court has time and again protected the religious freedoms of Americans, which are guaranteed in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. In the case of Red Hen, the refusal of service wasn’t related to anyone’s religious beliefs; rather purely to political differences.

The market always works

And Red Hen has plenty of encouragement, even from elected members of Congress. For example, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) recently said this: “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

But the truth is when it comes to Red Hen or Masterpiece, the market will sort itself out. Kicking someone out of a restaurant, particularly for no reason other than political differences, may be reprehensible. But for someone just outside of Washington D.C. surrounded by a sea of anti-Trump vitriol, it might not be a terrible business decision.

The same is true in the case of Jack Phillips. If his refusal to make a wedding cake for a gay wedding bothers you that much, and you don’t understand how someone could have religious beliefs that run counter to the endorsement of gay marriage, then don’t frequent his business. My guess is there are plenty of other options in Colorado.

Just like there are other options for restaurants in northern Virginia.

As Mississippi was passing legislation to protect individuals like Phillips from discrimination for their religious beliefs, restaurants and businesses in the Fondren and Belhaven areas of Jackson began putting up stickers on their front door or window that said something to the extent of “if you’re buying, we’re selling.”

Which, of course, any business is allowed to do, whether a state passes religious freedom laws or not. In fact, if a restaurant refused to serve someone simply because they were gay, odds are the media firestorm that that would create would cause real harm to the business.

Businesses should never be forced to promote a message that stands in opposition to their beliefs. Masterpiece shouldn’t be forced to make a cake for a gay wedding if they disagree with same-sex marriage, and Red Hen shouldn’t be forced to make a party tray for a pro-Trump rally if they disagree with Trump.

Mississippi has a recidivism problem that’s jeopardizing public safety and burdening taxpayers. As of 2013, the Magnolia State had the nation’s third-highest incarceration rate per capita. What’s more, research suggests that around 95 percent of Mississippi’s enormous prison population will eventually be freed. And, unfortunately, around three quarters of those released will likely reoffend within five years.

There are policies, however, that can be implemented to help reverse this trend. Researchers have demonstrated that the formerly incarcerated are more likely to return to crime if they cannot find stable employment upon release. But many employers will not hire or even interview someone with a criminal record regardless of their crime, which often leads to long-term unemployment for these individuals. In fact, surveys suggest that 60-75 percent of the formerly incarcerated are jobless up to a year after their release.

Consequently, several states have enacted “second chance” legislation to better these individuals’ odds of landing decent jobs. “Second chance” measures aim to address the unemployment issue by enabling the formerly incarcerated to expunge their records of petty, first-time offenses. Mississippi should similarly strive to remove barriers to employment for these individuals.

Mississippi already has a program that allows certain first-time offenders to petition the court to seal their criminal records. However, these individuals aren’t permitted to have their records expunged under this program if they have been convicted of a misdemeanor traffic offense, such as a DUI. Considering that at least 1 percent of drivers are arrested for DUIs each year, an inordinate number of people are struggling to find gainful employment due to a one-time DUI offense.

DUIs and similar low-level traffic offenses ought to be treated the same as other misdemeanors for the purposes of the first-offender program. Mississippi could follow Texas’ lead in this regard by allowing first-time DUI offenders who registered a 0.14 blood alcohol content or lower to petition for expungement.

Individuals are also ineligible for first-time offender-status — and therefore cannot have their criminal records sealed — if they have been convicted of specific, nonviolent felonies, including many drug crimes. Nationally, 16 percent of inmates are imprisoned due to drug-related crimes. While it isn’t entirely clear how many of these are first-time-offenders, this statistic shows that a large number of individuals could benefit from a fresh start. Mississippi should therefore append more non-violent drug crimes to the list of expungement-eligible offenses.

Also, in many cases, Mississippians who were over 21 years old at the time of their offense are precluded from having their records sealed. Like juveniles, adults over the age of 21 make mistakes and deserve a second chance after their first violation. As a result, Mississippi ought to include more of those who were over 21 years old at the time of their crime into its first-time-offender program.

Even when offenders actually qualify to have their records sealed, they can’t request an expungement until five years after they have completed their sentence. By that point, many of the formerly incarcerated have already been dealing with criminal background-related joblessness. Like Texas, Mississippi ought to avail the first-time-offender program to individuals immediately upon their completion of court requirements to enable them to quickly obtain work.

Mississippi’s occupational licensing system also impacts formerly-incarcerated individuals’ ability to find employment. Like most states, Mississippi requires state licenses for myriad jobs. While most licenses don’t have strict criminal background requirements, many boards can reject applications based on prior convictions, thereby preventing people from working. Rather than allowing this, the state ought to permit boards to only consider convictions directly related to their industry and allow prospective employers to decide whether they wish to hire someone with a record.

Finally, each of these reforms should be applied retroactively in order to provide past offenders the same second chance as present ones.

Mississippi’s current law is clearly fraught with limitations and desperately needs updating. These proposed measures should not be misinterpreted as being soft on crime. Rather, they are about giving first-time offenders an opportunity to become productive citizens after they’ve been prosecuted and punished for their crimes. These reforms are simply smart public policies. They can decrease the number of formerly-incarcerated people whom Mississippians financially support through various entitlement programs. Further, these reforms would reduce recidivism rates, benefiting the general public with a safer society and reduced tax burden.

Work gives people purpose and contributes to a stronger economy and civil society.

A prospering Mississippi requires putting as many individuals to work as possible. Let’s give the formerly incarcerated the chance to become employed, productive members of society.

This column appeared in the Clarion Ledger on June 24, 2018.

Much has been written lately about how sports gambling is going to lead to the downfall of man, the decay of society, and the loss of the integrity of sports. As the late Lewis Grizzard would say, “That’s a bunch of hogwash.”

What the Supreme Court did in voting 6-3 to overturn the federal ban on sports gambling was to give back to the states their constitutional powers.

In affirming federalism, they also gave people back their rights to choose how they want to live and whether they want to spend their own after-tax money on a sports bet, a municipal bond, or a ham sandwich. No matter how you personally feel about gambling on sports, it’s a mistake to take away a person’s individual liberty just because some people will be irresponsible.

Now that power to regulate gambling has been returned to all the states, there are more than a few organizations making spurious arguments about the need for all sorts of remedies to potential harms. The sports leagues have started to campaign for a “content fee” from each state. The argument is that their team and league intellectual property will be used by various sports gambling sites, apps, media, and other related entities. Ironically, such increased use of the “content” of the leagues’ and teams’ logos and trademarks is actually going to make the the leagues and teams more valuable, along with the rights to distribute their live programming. The states shouldn’t agree to pay a penny to a sports league.

The other specious claim is that sports gambling will seriously threaten the integrity of the games. You’ll hear this especially from the NFL and the NCAA. But rather than seeing legal sports betting as the enemy of sports competition, we should see it as an ally to protect sports. Using powerful algorithms, sports leagues (the NCAA included) can use sports wagering technology as an “early warning system” to uncover potential signs of corruption. Major data companies, including Google and Microsoft, have been developing technologies to aid in the operation of legal sports betting for years. Thanks to the free market, sophisticated software and innovative competitors will harness technology to improve the integrity of all the games.

The repeal of the federal prohibition on sports wagering is bringing a massive industry out of the shadows and into the sunlight. Despite the ban, which began with the passing Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 1992, annual sports betting activity in the U.S. is estimated to be as high as $400 billion. Since the enactment of PASPA, which was largely driven by the NCAA as a way to prevent gambling on sports, the industry has grown by a factor of 10. Like most federal intrusions into state matters or consumer protection, the results of PAPSA were far different from the original intent.

Most of that betting was happening offshore or through the dark net — without transparency or consumer protection. According to the estimates from the American Gaming Association, 80 percent of the $10 billion bet on the NCAA tournament this past March and April was done illegally, essentially making anyone who participated in the bracket office pool a criminal.

For 26 years, we’ve been living under a dubious set of claims about sports wagering while Nevada and a few other states enjoyed a federal monopoly. In Mississippi, where I now live and work, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians is planning to have the first casino in the Magnolia State to offer sports betting. What’s more, they expect to be the first Native American tribe in the U.S. to offer sports wagering. Because the Choctaw tribe is not subject to state regulation, they are free to offer sports betting to customers immediately.

In Mississippi, and in other states in need of new revenue streams, the regulated casinos will not be far behind. That’s because Mississippi lawmakers had the foresight to approve new rules from the state’s Gaming Commission in anticipation of a repeal of PAPSA.

Why should Nevada and a few other states have all the fun (and all the tax revenue) associated with letting people legally pursue their interests and hobbies? The games will be fine, and individuals will have the personal liberty (and responsibility) that comes along with it.

This column appeared in the Washington Examiner on June 22, 2018.