There is not one magic silver bullet that’s going to fix the financial mess our "leaders" have gotten us into (read more about our financial crisis here). We have gone so far down the rabbit hole that it will take an across-the-board hard correction to turn this thing around. But we promise it will be worth it! Please believe, it’s far better to endure a little pain now – while we still have control over how to absorb it – than to live in denial until the music just stops and there aren’t enough chairs.
It may not always be a ton of fun, but we can absolutely do it! We got this, America!! We have all the necessary ingredients – unlimited talent and intelligence, unparalleled freedom of opportunity, and vast economic resources – to cultivate the strength and goodness of America that we all know exists.
The easiest, least overwhelming way to think about this challenge is in terms of the SHORT-RUN and the LONG-RUN.
As hard as it may be to swallow, we need to understand and accept that not everything is about us. Meaning, there are some issues we must start correcting straightaway, even though some of us will never see the full benefit of doing so. These are things like stabilizing Social Security and Medicare; safeguarding our environment; and investing in cutting-edge research and development as well as state-of-the-art infrastructure.
We are not doing these things for ourselves. We are doing these things for our children and their children and their children. We seem to have forgotten that we are only temporary stewards of the United States of America. To say we have been inadequate in our role as guardians is a huge understatement. There are millions of people who have to live in this country long after we’re gone – and we must do right by them.
That’s the long run stuff. Then there are the things we need to do to bring more IMMEDIATE RELIEF to American families, many of whom are getting crushed.
If you ever brainstorm ideas for short-term relief with Democrats, you often hear things thrown around like Guaranteed Annual Income or Universal Basic Income (UBI), price controls/freezes, and proposals like the new mayor of NYC Zohran Mamdani’s network of government-run grocery stores. Even though these ideas sound like music to the ears of weary voters on the campaign trail, there are two problems with them. The first is they don’t work.
< Note: Guaranteed Annual Income and Universal Basic Income are very different from the Child Tax Credit which, although far from perfect, does work. Learn more here. >
In a recent working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, researchers from the nonprofit OpenResearch and several universities discovered that monthly checks intended to help disadvantaged children – in this case payments of $1,000 a month – had few long-term benefits and did little for the child’s well-being:
“After the first four years of the intervention, we find no statistically significant impacts of the cash transfers on four pre-registered primary outcomes (language, executive function, social-emotional problems, and high-frequency brain activity) nor on three secondary outcomes (visual processing/spatial perception, pre-literacy, maternal reports of developmental diagnoses).” Greg J. Duncan, an economist at the University of California, Irvine and one of the researchers, said, “I was very surprised – we were all very surprised. The money did not make a difference.”
Meanwhile, Kansas City poured almost $18 million of taxpayer money into the city-backed Sun Fresh grocery store at 31st Street and Prospect Avenue only to have it close in August 2025 after ten years. Two reasons given for the closure were crime and operational challenges – both of which contributed to the store’s unsustainable financial losses (Sun Fresh lost $1.3 million in 2023).
“It’s a deep, deep, deep hole,” said Emmet Pierson Jr., President and CEO of Community Builders of Kansas City, the nonprofit that ran the store – noting that the store was far from breaking even, “even with all this city money.” This should come as no surprise because, in the best of circumstances, the average grocery store only makes around a 1-3 percent profit. < There is still one Sun Fresh in Kansas City but it’s evidently in trouble also. >
Likewise, in Florida, Baldwin Market – a town-owned grocery store that opened in 2019 when Baldwin’s only for-profit grocery store closed – was forced to shut its doors because the financial losses were unsustainable. Although the city never intended to make a profit, they needed to at least breakeven – but the losses continued to be significant (in FY2021 there was a $178,000 shortfall and in FY2022 that number was $171,000).
Herein lies the paradox of Problem #1: Things like food and rent are never free. Just because something is paid for and/or operated by state or federal governments doesn’t mean that we aren’t still paying for them. We absolutely are – because we are the state and federal governments. The costs of food and rent don’t just magically disappear. The ways we pay for them are just shifted around.
Which leads us to Problem #2. Solutions like Guaranteed Annual Income and government-owned grocery stores not only do nothing more than shift costs around, but they also prolong and exacerbate our original problem… digging our hole even deeper. Take price “freezes,” for example. On the 2025 campaign trail, Democrats promised to freeze prices on everything from rent to electricity rates. Without question, these things could bring temporary financial relief.
But the key word here is temporary. These interventions cannot possibly go on forever, so we are just kicking the can down the road AGAIN! While we buy ourselves nine to twelve months of relief, we are also distorting markets. The illusion of lower prices signals more supply than demand – even though in reality just the opposite is happening – which will push prices up even further.
Markets will get jammed up even more because companies will be using fuzzy data to make decisions on where to concentrate goods and services. Plus, prices capped/frozen near or below the costs of production leads to less maintenance and investment which leads to shortages and rationing.
“Government-paid-for” anything at this point in our financial crisis is nothing more than politicians trying to continue the party – where the music doesn’t stop on their watch – and we can’t keep doing it. Our only choice at this point is an across-the-board hard correction, and that means that we can’t keep putting Band-Aids over gaping wounds.
As we navigate our hard correction – which at times may not be pleasant – it will help if we always remember what we are fighting for. Our overriding end goal is this: To restore the dream that is America.
The American Dream is a real thing. Americans are the most dynamic and innovative people in the world. We are courageous, convicted and confident and we possess a unique sense of assertiveness and adaptability.
American strive. Americans thrive. Americans believe.