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Before I came to Mississippi, I was a Member of the British Parliament for 12 years for Clacton.  Donald Trump's friend, Nigel Farage, has now decided to run for election in Clacton on July 4th.

I'm delighted and I encouraged Nigel to run the moment it was announced that there would be a General Election. (I know, the Brits do politics differently with flexible, rather than fixed, terms)

Back in the old country, the Conservative party faces annihilation.  
 
Having sat in office since 2010, Britain’s Conservatives have failed to govern on conservative principles.  Today, their supporters are abandoning them for Nigel Farage’s new Reform party. 
 
Perhaps this should serve as a stark warning for those who campaign as conservatives, but who govern as progressives.
 
Here in Mississippi, Republicans have been in charge since 2011, about as long as Britain’s Conservatives. 
 
Where are the big strategic changes our state needs?  What reforms are being advanced to elevate Mississippi?
 
There are, I would suggest, three top challenges Mississippi faces:
 

 
Imagine if we were to use the notionally conservative majority in our state to accomplish actual conservative reforms to tackle any of this?  
 
Here is a list of some of the bills that were blocked in the most recent legislative session:
 

 
The one big achievement of the session, Rep. Rob Roberson’s INSPIRE bill which personalizes school funding for students, passed because of Speaker White’s drive and determination.  Eight weeks ago there were still some in the Senate intent on preserving the old Soviet-era funding formula.
 
Morton Blackwell, a great American hero who I happened to meet for tea in Jackson, once said that “In politics, nothing moves unless it’s pushed.”

He’s right.  If we want to see conservative policies implemented in our state, we are going to have to do a lot of pushing! 
 
Nobody likes to be pushed, particularly politicians.  Leaders will not thank you for making them do something they would preferred not to have done, as my experience with Brexit taught me.
 
Here at the Mississippi Center for Public Policy we are 100 percent in the business of pushing for the kind of bold, principled conservative reforms we need. 
 
We need to start using our conservative majority to deliver the kind of changes we are starting to see in Republican-run states throughout the South.

You can tell a lot about someone’s politics given what they might have to say about the conviction of Donald Trump.
 
Anyone telling you that Trump’s conviction is comeuppance for a sordid hush-money scandal, in which he broke the law, probably leans left.
 
Someone explaining that it was all a disgraceful attempt by Joe Biden’s Democrats to stop the 45th President from being re-elected, is likely to be a conservative.
 
In an increasingly post-religious society, politics has become a substitute belief system for many.  The danger is that we view everything through the prism of politics.

Rather than ask what Trump’s conviction means for your side in the Reds versus Blues battle, perhaps what we ought to reflect on what this might all mean for America. 

For most of human history, the law meant whatever the powerful said it meant.  Anyone who has ever tried to do business in Russia or China knows that’s still the way things are in much of the non-Western world.
 
A system in which the law is elevated above the executive – in which the rule of law has supremacy – is historically unusual.  Indeed, it is largely the creation of people who spoke and wrote in the language in which you are reading this.
 
It was English-speaking civilization that invented the notion that the powerful are constrained by rules, and that the rules should apply to everyone equally.  A straight line runs from Magna Carta at Runnymede to the Founders at Philadelphia.  The US Bill of

Rights of 1789 was preceded by an English Bill of Rights of 1689. 

America has become the most successful society on earth precisely because in this Republic, government doesn’t get to change the rules as it likes.

“Exactly!” the anti-Trumpers will say. “Trump’s conviction is true to that tradition!  Even former Presidents are subject to the same rules as everyone else”.

But is that really so?  In what way has Trump been subjected to the same set of rules?  Surely, those on the right will say, he has been singled out, prosecuted over something essentially trivial?
 
Those that brought the charges, it seems to me, were motivated by politics, rather than justice.
 
Prosecuting political rivals is what they do in Russia, Brazil or Malaysia.  It is awful to see political prosecutions in the United States – and it bodes ill for the future of freedom in this country and around the world. 

Twenty years ago, George Bush’s electoral strategist, Karl Rove, hit upon the idea of using ‘wedge-issues’ to galvanize the conservative base.  At the time, Rove seemed to be remarkably successful.  Republicans won.
 
Two decades on, I wonder if it was partly Rove’s ‘wedge-issue’ approach that provoked the left into doing something similar.  Under Obama, the left became increasingly inflammatory.  Perhaps there is a straight line that runs from the politics of ‘wedge-issues’ in the noughties to the culture wars we see today?
 
Some on the left might be tempted to celebrate the use of lawfare to try to take down a political opponent.  They might want to stop and think first.  It is, I worry, only a question of time before we start to see something similar from the right. 
 
If lawfare becomes part of American politics, what chance is there that the United States remains exceptional compare with all those other less happy republics? 

It is not just the legal process that America needs to de-politicize.  We need to stop making everything a question of where you stand in the culture war.  Your views on Disney or money management, Taylor Swift or Chick-Fil-A should not automatically correlate with the way you vote. 

If it is politics alone that gives you a belief system in life, you are going to end up desperately disappointed with both politics and life.
 
The United States was founded by people that believed that to survive, a Republic needs a moral citizenry.  America needs to believe in something above politics and beyond the next election cycle.

This week, it emerged that the newly appointed head of America’s NPR (National   Public Radio) hates the US Constitution.  Speaking in 2021, she described the First Amendment which safeguards free speech as “a challenge.”

How could it be that the head of America’s public broadcasting service, established by an act of Congress, has such contempt for the US Constitution?

In her previous role running Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, Katherine Maher rejected a “free and open internet” as a guiding principle.  Such principles are, in her words, a “white male Westernized construct,” according to reports.

Katherine Maher, reports say, support efforts to censor opinions that do not conform with her leftist world view.  She spoke of the truth as being “a distraction”.

Sadly, Katherine Maher is not a one off.  She is fairly typical of the sort of people now running many of America’s institutions, HR departments, government agencies and universities. 

Ms Maher’s social media posts might read like parody.  There is nothing funny about the way that people with Ms Maher’s outlook and opinions are subverting America’s Founding principles, and replacing them with a grim leftist dogma that risks destroying American and the West.

Conservatives need to push back, but how?

Until now, many conservatives have been better at identifying the problem than at tackling it.

To defeat DEI, we need to pass laws, reform institutions, appoint the right people and set the right incentives.  Most of all, however, we need to counter bad ideas with good ideas.

States can take a lead in the fight back.  Here in Mississippi, for example, there was a successful campaign two years ago for a bill to combat Critical Race Theory.  The new law goes some way to addressing the issue, but not far enough. 

If we are serious about restricting DEI dogma, we need to ensure that your tax dollars cannot be spent promoting this divisive ideology.

Florida’s Governor, Ron DeSantis, has shown that states can take the lead against DEI, signing an Executive Order, restricting the use of public money for DEI programs.  State leaders in Oklahoma, Utah and Texas have also done something similar.  We need to see similar action here in Mississippi.

Did you know that many public universities use your tax dollars to promote Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) programs?

One of our leading public universities here in Mississippi has an “institutional diversity, equity, and inclusion plan” governing every aspect of campus life.  DEI shapes not only university admissions, administration and faculty hiring, but what young people are taught, with the development of an academic equity scorecard. 

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.  That is why conservatives need to expose how many of your tax dollars are being spent to DEI programs. 

Instead of more DEI hires, the University of Florida recently decided to eliminate all DEI employee positions.  Last month, the University of Texas at Austin fired dozens of employees who used to work in diversity, equity and inclusion programs.  Every state should aim for something similar.

The best way to defeat bad ideas is with good ideas.  Teaching young people the following truths about America will give them immunity against the ‘woke’ mind virus. 

This is a fight that we can win.  One day we will look back and think it absurd that someone with Katherine Maher’s outlook could be put in charge of producing public service broadcasting content.  But there is a great deal that we need to do right now in order to get there!

Douglas Carswell is the President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.

Beware of politicians who want to ban things.

What would you most like to see Mississippi’s elected lawmakers do during the current legislative session? 

Action to eliminate the reams of red tape holding our state back, maybe?  Further tax cuts, perhaps?  With so many other southern states moving ahead with school choice, you might wish that our lawmakers would do something similar.

I doubt that a bill to ban “squatted” trucks is your top priority. Yet, that is precisely what one bill in our state legislature aims to do. 

I’m not about to invest a lot of effort into opposing this bill, but I do think we should be wary of politicians in the business of banning things. 

Typically, politicians resort to banning things when they don’t have any other ideas.  The impulse to ban things is driven by their search for validation and purpose. 


Those in favor of a ban on “squatted” trucks are quick to tell us that action is urgent given how dangerous these trucks are.  I can think of a lot of things that could be deemed dangerous. 
 
Do conservatives really want to get into the business of banning things because they are dangerous?  Once you start, where do you stop?  If trucks are to be banned for being dangerous, wait ‘til you hear what progressives have to say about guns.
 
Under this proposed law, anyone caught driving a vehicle whose front ends are raised more than four inches above the height of the rear fender faces a $100 fine.  Will police officers pull people over to measure their fenders?  Should the guy with a truck raised a mere 3 inches expect to get pulled over every time?  

As the parent of a teenager, I’ve discovered how adding a young person to your insurance policy can make your premiums soar.  This is because the insurance system is good at assessing risk.  Higher risk = higher premiums. 
 
If squatted trucks really were the danger that the detractors claim, surely it would be reflected in raised insurance premiums to the point where they became prohibitively expensive.
 
In a free society, there must be an overwhelmingly good reason to use the state’s monopoly of force to restrict something.  It is not enough to ban something because we disapprove of it.  Or. as I fear, disapprove of the people that drive “squatted” trucks.  

Once politicians form the habit of seeking out things to ban for the benefit of the rest of us, they won’t stop.  Next will come a ban on certain types of vapes.  Or, as in California, certain food additives and Skittles.  If they can ban one type of truck, why not another?
 
If you want to see where relentless banning leads, take a look at my own native Britain.  Despite having had notionally conservative governments, politicians across the pond have relentlessly banned things from certain breeds of dog to plastic drinking straws.  From the ability to use email lists for marketing to self-defense pepper spray.  From disposable cutlery and gas water heaters to the internal combustion engine (from 2035).

On their own, none of these restrictions have proved to be a catastrophe (although the ban on internal combustion cars, once it comes into force, may yet prove to be).  Collectively, however, the blizzard of bans has been devastating by infantilizing British society.  
 
Treated like children, more and more people behave like children.  Denied responsibility, society grows irresponsible.  Britain today feels utterly demoralized as a consequence.  This is what happens when you put politicians in charge of deciding what’s best for everyone else.
 
Banning tilted trucks won’t be the end of the world for Mississippi.  It will be the end of a little bit more liberty.

The impulse to ban things, I believe, comes from what H.L. Mencken called “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be having a good time.”  Let’s leave Mississippi truck drivers alone.

Douglas Carswell is the President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.

The University of Florida just fired all their DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) staff.  The University closed the office of the Chief Diversity Officer, and terminated DEI-focused contracts. 
 
Florida is not alone in taking decisive action against the ‘woke’ mind virus that has been running rampant on US college campuses for years.  In Alabama, a bill (SB 129) to ban DEI programs in all state institutions, including colleges, was recently voted through the state legislature.  The University of Arkansas has decided to eliminate its diversity, equity and inclusion division. 
 
Here in Mississippi, meanwhile, crickets…...  No executive orders.  No legislation.   Why? 
 
Senator Angela Hill presented a bill to eliminate DEI programs in any state-funded institution (SB2402).  So, too, did Representative Becky Currie in the House (HB127).  Yet both bills died in committee.

Saying that the bills “died in committee” makes it sound like they were victims of some freak accident.  Neither bill, of course, was struck by lightning or afflicted by some random misfortune.  The bills failed to come out of committee because those that chaired the relevant committees to which each bill had been referred decided not to allow the bills to proceed. 

In the Senate, the two committees in question were Accountability, Efficiency & Transparency, and Universities, chaired by Sen David Parker and Sen Nicole Boyd respectively.  I doubt that Parker or Boyd would have killed the anti DEI bill without approval from Senate leader, Delbert Hosemann. 

In the House, the committee out of which the bill failed to emerge is chaired by Rep Donnie Scoggin. 

“But is an anti DEI bill actually necessary?”, I hear you ask.  “Is there really that much DEI here in Mississippi in the first place?”   
  
If any member of the legislature spent more than a couple of minutes browsing the University of Mississippi’s website, they would see that it is an institution run by people 100 percent committed to DEI.  Do those lawmakers that killed the anti DEI bill approve? 
 
DEI dogma not only influences the way Ole Miss is run.  DEI seeks to shape what young people are taught there.  Ole Miss’s “Equity in Action” plans, for example, increasingly touch upon almost every aspect of university life.  

Concealed behind innocuous jargon in the university’s “Pathways to Equity” strategic plan, Ole Miss has an active DEI program that impacts everything from teaching practices, course content and student evaluation.  The way I read it, Ole Miss even seems to endorse the hiring of some faculty on the basis of race, rather than merit. 
 
Without any action from the state Senate or the IHL, this is all being done on your tax dollar.  We know this thanks to Shad White, our State Auditor. 
 
Shad White is one of the few leaders to actually show leadership on this issue, and he has tried to calculate how much all this is costing Mississippi taxpayers.
 
White’s recent report showed that Mississippi universities spent over $23 million on DEI from July 2019 to June 2023.  Nearly $11 million of state taxpayer funds went to DEI programs, most of which was spent on salaries for DEI employees.  Without any action from our state leaders, DEI spending soared almost 50 percent since 2019.  

In case anyone needs reminding why DEI needs to be rooted out of our public universities, here’s a quick reminder.
 
The United States is founded on the revolutionary idea that all Americans are created equal.  America might have produced some laws and leaders that failed to live up to that high standard.  But as a principle, it has never been bettered.
 
DEI overturns America’s founding principle, promoting instead the idea that each of us is defined by our immutable characteristics.  This is not just profoundly un-American.  DEI ideology takes us back to a pre-modern, pre-Enlightenment idea that we are defined by what we are born.  It is a profoundly anti-Western ideology.  

It is not a coincidence that the ‘woke’ mobs that appeared on Ivy League college campuses after the Hamas terror attacks last October seemed to side with America’s enemies.  DEI proponents are hostile to America and the West.
 
DEI demoralizes Americans.  It teaches the young to believe that their country is always in the wrong.  It demands that history be rewritten to press the past into a narrative of exploitation. 
 
How regrettable that conservative leaders in this conservative state should do so little about it while leaders in states all around us take action.

Not enough people in Mississippi work.  Out of every 100 working age adults in our state, 46 are not in the labor force. 
 
Nearly half of working age Mississippians are not in formal employment – and they aren’t actively looking for employment either.  
 
At the same time, there are a record number of jobs available.  According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in October last year there were 80,000 unfilled jobs across the state. 

Not only are there lots of jobs available in Mississippi, but according to new research a record number of people are now moving to Mississippi to take up those opportunities.  2022 saw a net inflow of 12,000 (often young) people to our state, coming largely from Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Texas and Florida. 

A combination of labor market deregulation, inward investment and tax cuts seems to be transforming Mississippi for the better.  Our state is no longer a place that people leave, but somewhere people move to in search of new opportunities.  What can we do to ensure that more people in Mississippi take full advantage of those job opportunities?

It is not enough to merely talk about opportunities.  With 80,000 job vacancies right here, right now, there are opportunities to work all around us.  The issue is why some folk aren’t taking the opportunities that are there.  

Some have suggested that we hire more career counsellors in high schools.  I am certain that career counsellors do a wonderful job, but if that is the only policy solution, I suspect labor force participation will remain low.
  
If we are going to increase workforce participation, we need to ask difficult questions about welfare.  Does welfare create disincentives against work?

 
Mississippi has a population of 2.95 million.  Approximately one in five (19 percent) live below the poverty line (calculated as the minimum income needed to get by with the bare essentials.)

The way in which the myriad of assistance programs impacts the half a million plus people below the poverty line matters, and needs to be properly understood if we are to improve workforce participation.
 
Welfare programs can have unintended consequences, and one of them is the creation of so-called ‘benefit cliffs’.  A benefit cliff is what happens when someone loses benefits if their income increases, but the benefits they lose outweigh the additional income gained. 

Given the maximum income thresholds allowed, we know, for example, that if someone’s monthly income went from $400 a month to $410 a month, they would no longer qualify for some Temporary Assistance programs.
 
If your income rose above $1,215 a month, you could lose the right to claim Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).  When your income per person goes over $19,392 a year, you may no longer qualify for Medicaid (although the ‘cliff’ cut-off is not always as abrupt as is sometimes supposed). 
 
Take into account the different benefit cliffs, and you could have a powerful range of disincentives.

Even if a person was notionally better off when holding down a 35 hour week job, the time and effort it would take for a relatively modest increase in income might leave some feeling having a job was not worth it.

 
It has been suggested that benefits do not create a problem of ‘cliffs’, but of straight forward dependency.  They point out, for example, that those on food stamps are not those hovering on the edge of the labor market, but full-time welfare dependents.  There may be some truth in that, too. 

So, what is the solution?

The answer to benefit ‘cliffs’ is not to increase welfare payments in order to remove disincentives, but to institute more stringent work requirements for those on welfare programs. 

In Arkansas under Sarah Huckabee Sanders, anyone that fails to accept a suitable job within five days of being offered one, or who fails to show up for job interviews without notice, can now lose their benefits. 

If we are serious about increasing workforce participation, we may well need to implement something similar.

Thirty three years ago, the Soviet Union fell apart.  A Marxist-Leninist system that had stood in competition with the Western way of life for half a century was no more.
 
Unfortunately, in that moment of triumph, Western leaders made a grave error; they started to believe that there had been an inevitability about Western success. 
 
If the Soviet Union had ditched communism in favor of free markets, everyone else would become more Western, too, right?  Wrong – and nowhere more so than with regard to China.  

At the turn of the century, when China was welcomed into the World Trade Organization, all the clever people at the State Department assumed it was only a matter of time before China’s emerging middle class would make the country more like us. 
 
Under Deng Xiaoping and immediately after, China had permitted private enterprise, and the country’s communist rulers had imposed limits on their power.  China’s provinces enjoyed a high degree of autonomy, with Hong Kong even having her own legal system, currency and democracy.
 
Deng’s leadership, we can now see, did not represent a new direction for China, but a brief interlude.  Under Xi, China has reverted to the Ming tradition; authoritarian government, overzealous control, the targeting of anyone independently wealthy. 
 
Rather than becoming part of the international system, China seems to be a threat to it.  Democracy has been crushed in Hong Kong.  Military bases have been built in the south China sea.  Taiwan is at risk of invasion.

If China is behaving like she is in competition with the Western way it is because she is.  We need to recognize this and act accordingly.

Just as there was never anything inevitable about the success of the West, nor is there anything inevitable now about the rise of China. 

In fact, China faces serious demographic decline.  Ruled by an innovation-sapping authoritarian regime, China may not be destined for global hegemony the way we have been told.  But that may not make the Chinese government any easier to deal with. 

At the same time, rather than becoming more Western, many parts of the world besides China – such as Turkey, Pakistan or Egypt - seem less Western than they were. 

The West itself is becoming less Western, with Europe undergoing dramatic demographic change.  Having prevailed against a Marxist-Leninist system in Russia, Western leaders allowed a Marxist-Identitarian system to incubate in our universities.  Many US universities no longer teach Western Classics and have in effect abandoned the European Enlightenment.

The West needs leaders willing to set aside post-Cold War assumptions.  Rather than presume Western success, we need leaders who recognize that it is tough and difficult to stand up for Western interests – but also essential. 
 
Above all, we need leaders that appreciate that Western culture is the product of ideas and insights that did not arise in a vacuum.  The Western way needs safeguarding not just aboard, but on college campuses here in the United States, too.  

I arrived in Mississippi exactly three years ago, and I am as excited to be here as I was that first day.
 
With so many negative stories in the news media, and progressive pundits constantly talking America down, I wanted to share with you half a dozen things I love about living in your country.

1.  Mississippi.   

I love living right here in Mississippi.  Yes, it was a big change from London, but my family and I love it.  

Bizarrely, there is a certain sort of progressive in our state that is never happier than when moaning about Mississippi.  Ignore them.  If living in America makes me feel that I’ve won the lottery of life, having the good fortune to be in the 20th state of the Union makes me feel like I drew the winning powerball.  

2. Optimism.
 
Americans are, in my opinion, the most optimistic people on the planet.  This is a country where people believe that tomorrow will be better than today, and that next year will be better than the last.  By and large, they are right. 
 
This optimism is, I suspect, one of the secrets of American success.  Don’t ever lose it!

3. Patriotism. 

Americans, for the most part, have an uncomplicated and infectious love of their country.  
 
Over in Europe, elite opinion sneers at those who love their country.  Chinese patriotism seems to me to often be less about love for China and more about an aggressive form of ethno-nationalism.
 
In America, by contrast, anyone can become American if they subscribe to a set of ideals.  This, to me, still feels like magic.

4. Gratitude.  

One of the keys to living a happy life, I was brought up to believe, is a sense of gratitude.  Americans not only have lots to be grateful for, but I believe show enormous gratitude for what they have.  (You even have a national holiday called “Thanksgiving”!)
 
Everyone living in America today is the beneficiary of good choices made by those who came before us.  Some of the best choices ever were made in a courthouse in Philadelphia in 1787.  Every American today is a direct beneficiary. 

5. Belief. 

America, or at least the southern part of it, has lots of full churches.  In London, people would ask me if I went to church.  In Mississippi, people ask me where I go to church.
 
GK Chesterton once observed that when a man loses faith in the divine, he does not believe in nothing, but becomes capable of believing anything. 
 
The cult of climate change, and ‘woke’ ideology, it seems to me to have become secular belief systems for people that lack any other faith.  I am not sure that faith in either Greta or Gaia will provide ‘woke’ people with much metaphysical comfort.  This could explain why, unlike most folk I meet in Mississippi, they never seem very happy.

6. My job. 

I love working for the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, our state’s unashamedly conservative think tank.  MCPP believes in low taxes, limited government and individual freedom. 
 
Over the past three years, thanks to your support, MCPP has been able to achieve some big wins.  MCPP helped lead the fight to slash the state income tax, introduce a law to combat Critical Race theory and deregulate the labor market.  Mississippi is, I believe, tantalisingly close to achieving universal school choice, healthcare reform and further reductions in tax.

So, are there any downsides to living in America, I am sometimes asked?   
 
I think America is brilliant (as we Brits say).  But the US would be even more brilliant if you made a couple of very minor changes.  Firstly, you need to do hot tea properly.  Second, you could do with a few more roundabouts – the perfect small state traffic management solution.   Oh, and the tune you guys sing to “Away in a Manager” is wrong (Don’t ask me to sing you the right version).  But apart from that, I would not change a thing.

Thanks for having me.  It is wonderful to be here.  

We’ve all heard of the ‘success sequence’, right?  This is the idea that if someone manages to achieve three things - finish high school, get a full-time job and get married before having kids – they will avoid poverty.  
 
According to lots of robust research, anyone that passes these three milestones stands a 97 percent chance of not being poor. 

If only we could just get every young American to do those three things, some suggest, poverty would soon be a thing of the past.  But is the ‘success sequence’ really a solution to America’s socio-economic problems? 


Encouraging young Americans to graduate from high school, find gainful employment and marry before having kids is a good and worthwhile thing to do.  However, I am doubtful that prescribing the ‘success sequence’ as some sort of magic solution will get us very far. 
 
Why?  Sociologists may be right when they point out the correlation between the success sequence and avoiding poverty. But might that not be because the kind of person that finishes high school, holds down a job and invests in stable relationships tends to be the kind of person that has what it takes to make a success of their life anyhow?

I imagine that every US company with a market capitalization in excess of, say, $ 1 billion has impressive corporate head offices.  But shiny corporate offices are just an indication of success.  Big corporate HQs do not themselves explain why successful firms are successful.
 
It is something else – having lots of happy customers, perhaps – that accounts for both the high market capitalization and the impressive corporate offices.  Similarly, it is not the success sequence itself that is the engine of a person’s accomplishment, but rather a reflection of it.  

So, what might the engine of personal accomplishment be?  
 
When people talk excitedly about the success sequence, I suspect they are really talking about one of the most important (and often overlooked) ideas in economics; time preferences.

Several decades ago, a professor at Stanford, Walter Mischel, conducted the famous marshmallow experiment.  He offered kids one marshmallow right away, or two marsh mallows if the child chose to wait a while before eating it.
 
Mischel’s marshmallow experiment measured the extent to which each child was prepared to delay gratification.  Those that were willing to wait had what we call a low time preference.  Think of them as being ‘tomorrow people’, prepared to wait for what they wanted. 
 
Those that preferred one marshmallow, but right away had what economists would call a high time preference.  Think of these as ‘today people’, more inclined to want things right away. 

Over the years that followed, Mischel discovered a remarkable correlation between the time preferences of the kids, and their subsequent achievements in life, not only academic but in terms of relationships, too.  
 
‘Tomorrow people’ tend to have brighter tomorrows than ‘today people’.
 
Those that invest the time and effort in graduating high school, starting out in the jobs market and forming permanent relationships, I would venture, have lower time preferences than those that don’t. 
 
Rather than see the success sequence milestones as the solution to poverty eradication, policy makers ought to think instead about how we might encourage us to be better ‘tomorrow people’.  Many government policies encourage us to be ‘today people’.  High inflation, for example, discourages savings and incentivizes us to spend.  Low interest rates encourage us to borrow.  Welfare programs leave millions living a hand-to-mouth existence.

If we want to see more young Americans follow the success sequence, we should implement policies that encourage them to invest their time and efforts in the future.  That means stable prices, but it also means taking steps to ensure young Americans can afford to buy a home of their own.
 
It means lower income taxes, so those that work get to keep more of what they earn. It means taking more active steps to reduce long term welfare dependency.  It means giving young families school choice so that they can ensure their children get the right education for them. 

Politicians should not just talk about the success sequence.  They need to make changes to public policy so that it is easier for young Americans to do the right thing.

The ‘success sequence’ must never become a pretext for social engineering.  Someone’s own time preferences are ultimately a matter of personal choice.  Some Americans are more ‘today people’ than ‘tomorrow people’, and it takes a certain conceit to believe that government can change that.

Even with the most benign public policies in place, there will always be some who make impulsive choices that diminish their chances of a better tomorrow.  Good public policy deals with human nature as it is, not as some might want it to be. 

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