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.

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.

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.

For decades, Mississippi has been the punchline in national discussions about economic performance - often ranked at the bottom in income, education, and opportunity.

But something remarkable has happened in recent years: the Magnolia State is undergoing a genuine resurgence, driven not by federal handouts or gimmicks, but by principled free-market reforms.

A major national publication, the Washington Examiner, recently spotlighted this transformation in a feature titled "Mississippi Turning." The article notes that Mississippi has achieved more economic growth in the past five years than in the previous 15 combined.

This isn't hyperbole; recent data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows Mississippi posting some of the nation's strongest GDP growth rates, including a 4.2% real GDP increase in 2024 that ranked second nationally.

What’s fueling this engine? Bold structural changes that prioritize freedom, competition, and low barriers to opportunity.

First, labor-market reforms have opened doors for workers and entrepreneurs. In 2021, Mississippi enacted universal recognition of out-of-state occupational licenses, allowing skilled professionals to bring their talents here without jumping through needless bureaucratic hoops. The state has also slashed red tape on in-state licensing requirements, eliminating hundreds of hours of mandatory training for many everyday jobs. These changes have attracted talent, put downward pressure on remaining barriers, and made it easier for Mississippians to earn a living.

Second, historic tax reform is putting money back in people's pockets. Starting with the largest tax cut in state history in 2022, Mississippi phased in a flat 4% income tax. In 2025, lawmakers went further, enacting legislation to reduce the rate to 3% by 2030 and trigger annual cuts thereafter until the state income tax is fully eliminated—the first such move by a state in decades. This pro-growth policy rewards work and ambition while making Mississippi more competitive for businesses and families.

Third, a commitment to reliable, low-cost energy has made the state a magnet for investment. By resisting costly subsidized green mandates, Mississippi has kept electricity prices among the nation's lowest, powering energy-intensive industries like data centers and advanced manufacturing. Major announcements, including billions from companies like Amazon Web Services, underscore how affordable energy translates into jobs and capital inflows. Since 2020, the state has attracted tens of billions in private investment, fueling record-breaking economic development.The results speak for themselves: explosive GDP growth, surging personal incomes, rising university enrollments, and—for the first time in generations—net in-migration as people choose to move to Mississippi rather than away. Recent years have seen positive net migration, reversing long-standing outflows and signaling a brighter future.

This turnaround didn't happen by accident. It's the direct consequence of free-market ideas championed by policymakers and advocates who refused to accept the status quo. Mississippi is no longer just catching up; it's becoming a national model that other states are watching closely.

As we close out another productive year, moments like the Washington Examiner's recognition remind us that principled, steady work pays off. Mississippi is proving that freedom works—creating a freer, more prosperous place for all its citizens. Other states should take note: lower taxes, fewer regulations, and reliable energy are the path to revival.

Click here to read the Washington Examiner article.

The future for our state looks bright.  In just the past five years, Mississippi has seen more economic growth than in the entire fifteen years before that combined.
 
We’re on track to phase out the state income tax entirely, allowing families to keep more of what they earn.  Mississippi has attracted a surge of new investment, and for the first time in years, our workforce participation rate is finally heading in the right direction.
 
Zoom out, and the picture gets even better.  Contrary to the endless gloom from the pundits, the American economy has consistently outperformed expectations for decades. Since the late 1990s, the U.S. has delivered strong, steady growth that few forecasters saw coming.
 
But there is one dark cloud on all our horizons that we cannot forever ignore; US national debt.

As of today, US national debt stands at $38 trillion (with a capital T).  
 
To grasp how enormous a single trillion really is, try this:
 

• One million seconds ago was just last week, right before Halloween. 
• One billion seconds ago was early 1994, when Clinton was president and the internet was dial-up. 
• One trillion seconds ago was roughly 30,000 BC, deep in the Stone Age, when humans were still chasing mammoths.

 
Now here’s the gut-punch: that $38 trillion mountain of debt has roughly doubled in just the past ten years.
 
Costly foreign wars, mega bailouts, COVID giveaways and all those federal entitlement programs LBJ said would “end poverty”, eventually add up.  (Incidentally, living standards for America’s poorest citizens are light-years higher than when those programs launched in the 1960s (indoor plumbing, air conditioning, smartphones, modern medicine), but the number of people dependent on government assistance is larger than ever).
 
Rather than pay for all that using tax receipts, the US government has borrowed, issuing IOUs.  Today we spend more money servicing all those IOUs than we do on defense.

As my fellow Brit, the historian Niall Ferguson, likes to point out, any great power that spends more on debt servicing than on defense risks ceasing to be a great power.  That was true of the Romans and the British, the Habsburgs and the Dutch. 
 
What must America do to avoid a similar fate?
 
When President Trump was first elected, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy launched the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with an ambitious target: to reduce annual federal spending by $2 trillion.
 
Because mandatory entitlement programs - Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid - remained largely untouched, DOGE hasn’t come close to achieving that yet.  The federal deficit has barely budged.
 
Where, one might ask, are all those Tea Party types that railed against federal overspending ten years ago as the debt to GDP ratio went from 90 percent in 2010 to 125 percent today? 
 
If the US cannot rein in the growth of the debt, the only other way to avoid going the way of the Romans is to try to make the GDP part of the equation rise faster.  In other words, to try to grow our way out of the debt. 
 
In order to stabilize debt-to-GDP at the current 125 percent of GDP, America will need to achieve real GDP growth of about 4 - 5 percent for the next 10 to 20 years.  With the advent of AI and robotics, as Elon Musk suggests, it could be done.
 
Put it another way; without an AI / Robotics induced growth surge, US debt will hit 150 – 170 percent of GDP by 2050.  Mamdani-economics would then become the least of our worries, as inflation and tax rises became inevitable whoever held office.
 
The older I get, the more I think that there are two fundamental things that the federal government needs to get under control: mass immigration and the deficit.  Do that, and states like Mississippi have a bright future.  Don’t, and all the good that we might do will only matter at the margins.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 30, 2025

MISSISSIPPI CENTER FOR PUBLIC POLICY HONORS LEGISLATIVE HEROES AT ANNUAL GALA CELEBRATING STATE SUCCESS

JACKSON, MS – October 30, 2025 –Six of Mississippi’s leading lawmakers were presented with award to honor them for championing principled conservative policy. Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review, presented each of the winners.

Healthcare
Rep. Sam Creekmore and Rep. Hank Zuber were jointly honored for their leadership in challenging Mississippi’s Certificate of Need (CON) laws, which restrict the expansion of healthcare providers and limit patient access.

Countering DEI
Sen. Angela Hill received the award for her early and unwavering stand against the encroachment of divisive DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) policies in Mississippi’s public universities. Long before the issue gained national attention, Sen. Hill worked to safeguard academic freedom and institutional integrity at the state’s flagship campuses.

Education Reform 
Rep. Jansen Owen was recognized for leading the 2025 legislative effort to expand open enrollment through HB 1435. Though the bill passed the House with broad bipartisan support - uniting parents, educators, and lawmakers - it was ultimately blocked in the Senate.

Income Tax Elimination
Mississippi became the first state since Alaska in 1980 to phase out its personal income tax through HB1. Rep. Trey Lamar and Speaker Jason White were honored as the driving forces behind this transformative reform. Through public town halls, transparent negotiations, and superior policy arguments, the duo outmaneuvered opposition and delivered a pro-family, pro-growth tax cut that is already attracting investment and enhancing Mississippi’s competitiveness.“

These lawmakers represent the best of conservative leadership - courageous, principled, and effective,” said Douglas Carswell of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. “Their work is making Mississippi a national model for freedom, opportunity, and common-sense governance.”

Remember the tariff debates that dominated Washington just a few months ago?  For a while it was the only thing anyone seemed to talk about.
 
First tariffs were raised by eyewatering amounts.  Then they weren’t.  Eventually, after all sorts of back and forth, we saw tariffs imposed at the highest rates in decades. Free trade advocates warned of economic catastrophe, while protectionists claimed tariff revenue would fix the deficit. When immediate disaster didn’t strike, the issue seemed to fade – until now.
 
Two local stories that caught my eye this week suggest that we are going to hear a lot more about tariffs.
 
Agriculture is Mississippi’s largest industry, and soybeans the largest crop.  Only a few days ago, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced $10-15 billion in federal support for soybean farmers, including those in the Mississippi Delta.  Why is the federal government having to support soybean farmers in one of the most fertile places in America? Exports have collapsed. China, which once bought over half our soybean crop, now purchases from Brazil due to steep retaliatory tariffs on U.S. soybeans, triggered by U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods.
 
In other words, federal funds are now bailing out farmers hurt by federal tariffs.
 
A second story that got my attention this week was about grocery prices.  53% of Americans say grocery costs are a major concern, with prices spiking last month at the fastest rate in three years.  I couldn’t help also notice another news item about how coffee prices have jumped 20% in the past year, partly because of a 50% U.S. tariff on Brazilian coffee imports.
 
It is said that we often tend to overestimate the impact of new technology in the short term and underestimate the impact in the long term.  I wonder if the same might be said of tariffs. The sky did not fall in when tariffs went up, but the lag effects of the historic hike are only just beginning to be felt by ordinary Americans. 
 
There may yet be something in what the free traders keep trying to tell us.  Defenders of free trade have been reluctant to speak up.  I suspect that may be about to change. By the time of the midterm elections, I suspect millions of Americans will be feeling the effects of tariffs.  Tariffs?  We are going to hear a lot more about them than some people expect.