Immigrants Aren’t Draining Welfare: The Welfare State Is Draining America

Immigration is one of those peculiar topics in US policy debates that produce durable myths. They sound like plausible claims in theory, but collapse under the slightest bit of empirical evidence. Over the years, immigrants have been accused of spikes in crime, overwhelming public services, and draining this country's finances. These claims are so hard-wired into the political discourse that they harden into "conventional wisdom." Last year, I examined the "migrant crime wave" claim and refuted it by showing how immigrants are much less likely to commit crimes. 

Schrödinger's Immigrant and the Myth about Immigrants and Welfare

The welfare argument is no exception. In policy debates, you see what is jokingly referred to as Schrödinger's immigrant: an immigrant who is too lazy to work but manages to take all the jobs, which is a paradox that plays into an inaccurate, nativist caricature of immigrants. The nativist crowd at the Center for Immigrant Studies argues that immigrants consuming welfare and working can go together, thereby trying to refute the idea of Schrödinger's immigrant. While rhetorically clever, it only focuses on the theoretical possibility of the two co-existing rather than actual welfare consumption patterns. 

This is where research from the Cato Institute that was released last week comes into play. They actually did the work to see how much welfare and means-tested benefits are consumed by immigrants versus native-born US citizens. It turns out that immigrants consume about 24 percent less in welfare benefits than native-born citizens on a per capita basis. This finding lines up with a National Bureau of Economic Research paper from 2020 that looked at welfare use from 1995 to 2018. Guess what? Those researchers found that immigrants consume much less welfare than their native-born counterparts. 

Why Immigrants Consume Less Welfare

Immigrants consuming less welfare makes sense when you think it through. Immigrants are younger, healthier, and are more likely to either be working or actively seeking work. Because they come with a higher labor force participation rate and fewer chronic health conditions, they are less likely to need disability benefits or unemployment insurance. Furthermore, immigrants face legal and administrative barriers to receiving benefits. 

Immigrants as Net Contributors to Society

When you hear this anti-immigrant diatribe of immigrants draining the welfare system, it ignores the other half of the conversation, which is what immigrants contribute to the economy and to society. In 2024, I illustrated how immigrants contribute billions in income, property, and sales taxes every year. When you look at both the costs and the benefits, the picture flips. Immigrants do not merely "pay their own way." It turns out that immigrants are actually a net positive for government budgets. 

The Real Problem: The Welfare State

The evidence is clear. Immigrants are not the ones bankrupting this country. Immigrants use less welfare than native-born citizens and also contribute significantly in taxes. In net, immigrants are a benefit to the economy, not a burden. I have been consistent in critiquing the welfare state, whether it has been Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, or TANF. The anti-immigrant crowd rails against immigrants supposedly "draining the system" (which they don't), yet pays far less attention to the programs that drain this country's finances. If anti-immigrant nativists want to get at the real problem, they would go after the real problem of a large welfare state that costs the American people hundreds of billions of dollars every year. Otherwise, that is not fiscal responsibility or concerns about taxpayer dollars. That's just scapegoating dressed up as moral outrage.

Americans Pay, Trump Tariffs Stay: New Study Confirms Why Tariffs Are Ridiculous

From tomatoes and furniture to automobiles and movies, the U.S. tariff regime has expanded dramatically under President Trump's second term. Trump has insisted that tariffs would be paid by foreigners. Economists have shown that tariffs are hidden domestic taxes paid by the American people. This should not come as a surprise. As I explained last year, it was the American consumer that almost exclusively paid for the cost of Trump's tariffs in his first term. 

Now we have a study from the Kiel Institute released last week showing that about 96 percent of tariffs in Trump's second term have been paid for by the American people. That translates to Americans paying $267 billion in tariffs last year. This study is significant because it uses recent trade data and millions of imports transactions totaling trillions of dollars in trade. This study acts as hard, empirical evidence for the second-term Trump tariffs that goes beyond theory or anecdote. 

So why do Americans end up paying for Trump's tariffs? Tariffs are taxes on imports. When foreign exporters decide to not reduce their prices enough to absorb them (and let's be real...they rarely do, as we see with this new study), U.S. importers face higher costs. Most firms respond by passing the increase along to consumers, either directly in retail price increases or indirectly through higher costs for goods that rely on imported inputs. In effect, tariffs function as a hidden tax on American households, hitting every buyer in the store, from groceries to electronics. 

Trump's tariff rhetoric rested on more than the claim that foreign exporters would pay for them. Trump also promised that tariffs would protect American industries and workers, and that they would strengthen the United States in trade negotiations. The reality, as the Kiel Institute study makes crystal clear is that 96 percent of the cost of Trump's second-term tariffs have been borne by American consumers and businesses, not foreigners. 

As for protecting domestic producers, this protects a small group of well-connected producers, but causes net unemployment. This outcome played out with Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum. Those modest gains to the protected industries are infinitesimally small in comparison to the cost to the consumers. In net, the tariffs act as a wealth transfer from the American people to the few producers who are protected as a result of Trump's tariffs. 

Regarding the leverage in international trade, it does not fare much better. Trump's logic was simple: raising the cost of exports for foreign countries exporting to the United States and they will capitulate to Trump's demands. What we see is that it is not foreign countries that pay for this bargaining tool, but it is U.S. consumers that foot the bill for Trump's negotiating strategy. This negotiation advantage is rhetorical in its bluster, but divorced from economic reality. 

Whether it is the idea that foreigners pay tariffs, the U.S. economy fares better, or it provides the United States with better negotiating leverage, we see that Trump's tariffs are myths built on a flimsy house of cards. Trump's tariffs ended up being a wealth transfer from the American people to select, well-connected domestic firms. The Kiel Institute study is not merely an academic exercise. It provides a clear and evidence-based counterargument against the populism that drives Trump's tariff policy. Americans get stuck with the bill, economists are shaking their heads, Trump's tariff promises remain unfulfilled, and yet the tariffs remain. If there were a 21st-century textbook example of trade travesty, these tariffs would be it. 

The Weight of Reality and How Fat Positivity Meets the Economics of Airplane Seats

Southwest Airlines made some changes to its airline policy that went into effect today. It might sound relatively uneventful at first glance, but one of its policy changes re-ignited a culture war. No, it was not announcing assigned seating, although Southwest distinguished itself by not having assigned seating. It was its decision to charge obese customers (or what Southwest calls "customers of size") for an extra seat if they take up two seats' worth of space on an airplane. 

Not Just a Tight Fit: The U.S. Versus the World

On the one hand, airline seats have been shrinking since the 1980s. On the other hand, economy seats across the world have a seat width of 16 to 18 inches and a seat pitch of 30 to 32 inches. Yet it is only in the United States that this amounts to a battlefield in the culture wars. Why? The United States is made up of a lot of fat people. I wish that were hyperbole. According to a 2024 study from The Lancet, about three quarters of Americans are either overweight or obese. A 2024 report from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found that the United States is the most obese country in the developed world. 

Fat Acceptance v. Economic Reality

The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), which apparently is a thing, took issue with Southwest's decision and framed it as an accessibility issue. The fact that there is a NAAFA or that the word "fatphobia" made its way into the English language is part of the problem. As I pointed out in my 2022 piece entitled We Should Not Shame the Obese, But We Should Not Glorify Obesity Either, obesity should not be normalized or glorified because obesity comes with serious health and economic consequences. 

While there are genetic and environmental factors that influence weight, too often people treat it like someone else's fault, whether it is the food industry, sedentary jobs, or society writ large. As I wrote last Rosh Hashanah, it is easy to blame circumstances for outcomes, but taking ownership of one's life means accepting the consequences of one's actions. Is it easy to maintain a good diet, sleep hygiene, and exercise regimen? It is not easy, but it is necessary for living a healthy life. As the saying goes, "if you do not make time for your wellness, you will be forced to make time for your illness." Treating being obese as a harmless identity or glorifying it undermines personal responsibility and a public understanding of those consequences.

Whether or not the people at NAAFA want to hear it, one of those consequences and downstream effects of obesity has to do with fitting in airline seats. There is an economic reality that the fat acceptance crowd does not want to hear. The number of seats on an airplane is limited, and this economic scarcity creates constraints. This is complicated by the fact that in spite of high revenue, airlines make about a 3-4 percent profit margin. According to the data from the NYU Stern School of Business (as of January 2026), this is actually a low profit margin compared to the overall average of 9.7 percent. It is especially low compared to pharmaceuticals at 18.5 percent, financial services at 22 percent, or insurance at 12.4 percent.

It's Economics, Not Oppression of Fat People

Rhetoric about discrimination against fat people collapses when it runs into economic reality. Airline margins are thin and airline seats are revenue generators. Because of these economic limits, the choice is not whether to charge, but rather who pays the cost. If the airline absorbs the cost, seats will become more expensive for everyone. If the non-plus-size customers pay for it, it creates crowding and resentment. If it is the plus-size customer, then that is cost-based differential pricing because a passenger who requires more physical space imposes higher capacity costs on the carrier. 

Competition Could Fix This....If the FAA Would Let It

There is another factor that the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) details in its analysis on this issue: a lack of market competition in the airline industry. CEI points out that airline consolidation and a lack of true competition reduce carriers' incentives to innovate or offer differentiated seating options, which incentivizes airlines to rely on blunt, uniform policies like charging for extra seats. Since competition is constrained, customers are left with few options when it comes to pricing or such customer quality measures as seat sizes. As a result of this market structure, airlines are left to allocate that scarce space in socially awkward and tense ways. CEI identifies such barriers as airline slot controls, exclusive-use gate leases, and barring foreign competitors from competing on domestic U.S. routes as culprits. I personally think it would be great if the Federal Aviation Administration removed those barriers, but whether they get around to it is a whole different story. 

Airline Economics > Culture War Outrage

When all is said and done, this is not about the moral failing of airlines or whether fat people are "oppressed." Blaming Southwest will not alter physics and tweeting about discrimination against fat people does not change such realities as airlines operating on wafer-thin margins, the finite number of seats, the lack of market competition, or that Americans take up more space than they used to. The truth is that this poorly functioning market cannot allocate seats as efficiently as it ought to. This is not personal or a moral condemnation of obese people. Planes cannot defy physics and passengers cannot contort themselves to fit into seats. Until the U.S. airline market faces real competition or until waistlines shrink, airline seating will remain as uncomfortable as the culture war arguments over it.

Trump’s Credit Card Crackdown and the Costly Consequences of His Price Controls

Credit cards are a convenient and safe way to make purchases, but they come at a cost. There are interest rates, annual fees, late payment fees, cash advance fees, balance transfer fees, foreign transaction fees, returned payment fees, the list goes on. These extra costs add up over time. Data from the Federal Reserve shows that U.S. credit card has increased over time and is now over $1 trillion. According to consumer intelligence company J.D. Power, 53 percent of current cardholders are carrying card debt, which is up from 51 percent the previous year.  

Trump has made affordability a top priority for his domestic policy in 2026. One aspect of affordability that Trump has eyed is credit cards. On January 9, Trump used Truth Social to announce his support for a credit card interest rate cap at 10 percent, which is even lower than what Bernie Sanders' 15 percent proposed in 2018. The following Tuesday, January 13, Trump said that he was in favor of the Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA), which includes a cap on credit card swipe fees. Three days later, the Senate reintroduced the CCCA. While capping credit card interest rates and swipe fees sound appealing or helpful on the surface, the truth is that they have unintended consequences for consumers and the credit market. 

Credit Card Interest Rate Caps Cannot Cap Economic Reality

President Trump's proposal to cap credit card interest rates at 10 percent for one year is rooted in affordability concerns. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) does a fine job at analyzing the empirical evidence and explaining how Trump's premise is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how credit card markets work. Interest rates on credit cards are not arbitrary price gouging or profiteering by the "greedy credit card companies." They are the price of risk and operation costs for unsecured lending. Setting an artificial ceiling below the market rate does not make credit magically cheaper. It reduces availability by making lending to higher-risk borrowers unprofitable. CEI cites examples across borders and across time illustrating where interest rate caps constrained credit supply, showing that lenders retreat from offering loans when a price ceiling binds. This will mean fewer credit cards, reduced access for lower-income and subprime consumers, and unintentionally harming the everyday American that Trump claims that he is helping. 

Moreover, CEI points out that those who manage to keep their credit cards still pay in the form of higher fees, lower rewards, and reduced credit limits. This will parallel what happened with the Durbin Amendment's cap on debit card interchange fees, which resulted in higher checking account fees and lower rewards for consumers. An interest rate cap will punish consumers with the real potential of pushing Americans towards riskier alternatives, whether that is payday loans, pawn shops, or loan sharks.

Forced Routing Won't Solve Credit Card Woes

The 2026 Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA) continues the approach of earlier versions of the CCCA by requiring large credit card issuers to allow merchant to route transactions over multiple networks, inching at leas one network outside of Visa and Mastercard. The premise of this bill is to encourage competition to loosen the grip of the "Visa-Mastercard" duopoly, which arguably exists. According to the most recent market data, Visa and Mastercard account for about 90 percent of the market measured in purchase volume. While this aims to increase competition and put downward pressure on swipe fees, the bill does not impose a hard federal fee cap like the Durbin Amendment does for debit cards. 

Regardless of the market concentration, this forced routing is not a solution to the problem. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you view it), this forced routing has been proposed and scrutinized in the past, which gives more to say about the proposal. As International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) Senior Scholar Julian Morris points out, this routing scheme would incentivize merchants to reroute transactions to the lowest-cost network, regardless of rewards or security. This would explain why a research paper from the University of Miami shows that if implemented, small businesses will lose access to $700 billion in access to revolving credit and $1 billion in rewards (Chakraborty, 2024).

This is plausible because we already saw with the Durbin Amendment's debit card interchange fee cap what happens, as CEI illustrates in its analysis. Rather than lower consumer prices, the cap primarily benefited large retailers while banks recouped lost revenue by charging higher fees and reducing free or low-cost banking services, all of which harmed the consumers that this was meant to help. Research from ICLE details historic examples of these price controls beyond the United States, including Australia, the European Union, and Spain prior to joining the European Union (Morris et al., 2022). 

The CCCA's forced routing mechanism is different than a hard cap, but it is an example of using federal power to try to engineer lower prices with price controls in a complex market, damn the unintended consequences. If this passes, do not be surprised if there are higher credit card fees, lower credit access, lower cash back rewards, and lower rewards points. 

Two Different Policies, One Failed Approach of Price Controls

In the 2024 presidential campaign, Kamala Harris proposed a ban on price gouging for groceries. Aside from me calling her out on economic idiocy, Trump called her proposed price control Communist and "Soviet-style." He was right to do so because price controls are a staple of a communist economy. 

Trump’s critique, however, loses credibility when he embraces that same Soviet-style thinking that price controls work because his intention is to help with affordability. It does not matter whether it is through an interest rate cap or the CCCA's forced routing. Price controls are government meddling that do not eliminate prices, but rather shifts prices and typically does so towards the very customers politicians are claiming to help. 

Smaller competitors like Discover, American Express, or fintech networks do not need government mandates to compete. They can grow organically by offering better rewards, lower fees, superior technology, and innovative consumer experiences that attract both banks and merchants. Meanwhile, the government can remove burdensome regulations, whether it is compliance costs for new entrants (e.g., AML, KYC, PCI), adjust risk-weighting rules to better reflect actual credit risk (especially in Basel III in Dodd-Frank), repeal the existing price controls in the Durbin Amendment, and simplify disclosure requirements for merchants. Real competition arises when incentives alight naturally, not when the government attempts to engineer outcomes. 

Markets do not become more humane when one political party adopts price controls versus another. And they sure do not stop being destructive when it is targeted at credit cards instead of groceries. Economic reality does not change for an election year, no matter how much politicians wish it would. 

Excluding MTF Transgender Athletes From Women’s Sports Protects Women’s Sports and Freedom of Association

The debate over transgender athletes in women's sports has come to the forefront of the culture wars in the United States, sitting at a peculiar intersection of fairness, biology, identity, and law. Supporters of allowing male-to-female (MTF) transgender athletes to compete in women's sports frame the issue as one of inclusion and fairness to transgender people. For supporters, exclusion is seen as unfair, stigmatizing, and for some, a form of bigotry. Opponents argue that women's sports exist to offset the biological differences between the two sexes, and that inclusion of MTF athletes in women's sports undermines the fairness and purpose of sex-segregated competition. A recent Gallup poll shows that 69 percent of Americans believe that transgender athletes should only play on sports teams that match their biological sex.

The question of which version of fairness should prevail is no longer an abstraction or one confined to an isolated incident here or there. Last week, the Supreme Court heard two cases on the matter: Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. These cases are important because they touch upon how competing priorities are balanced in public institutions. While women's sports began in the late 19th century, they were enshrined in law with Title IX, which is a U.S. law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any education program or activity receiving federal funding, including athletics. 

Since these cases involve public schools, any eligibility rules are going to be framed in terms of government power, as well as taking a side on a culture war issue. The laws prohibiting MTF transgender athletes from participating in public school athletics are the legal question at hand for the Supreme Court. I want to look at this issue more generally of whether MTF transgender athletes should be allowed to participate in women's sports from a lens of freedom and fairness. 

Why This Is Not a Ban

First, I want to point out that excluding MTF transgender athletes from playing in women's sports is not a ban. From a public policy standpoint, a ban prohibits someone from participating in an activity altogether. An eligibility rule, by contrast, defines who qualifies for a particular category while leaving open other avenues for participation. As we will see later, there is a reason why women's sports impose eligibility criteria. 

MTF transgender athletes are not prohibited from competing or participating in sports altogether. There are alternatives available. They are still free to participate in men's sports, co-ed leagues, or recreational leagues, as well as in private clubs or leagues that allow them access. This policy is context-specific, proportional, and based on relevant characteristics, making it a case of principled exclusion rather than oppression. 

Importantly, this discussion is about structures and rules, not the worth of any individual. Transgender people should be treated with dignity, just like everyone else. At the same time, biological women should also be treated with dignity, which is why they should be allowed to compete on a fair and level playing field, even if that means excluding MTF transgender athletes. 

Freedom of Association, Positive Discrimination, and Why Exclusion Happens Daily without Malice

When we hear words like "discrimination" and "exclusion," they are framed in a negative context and are often seen as something that we should not do. Freedom of association is an individual's right to join or leave groups voluntarily, and also determines who we spend our time with. For freedom of association to work, you need positive discrimination.

The fact of the matter is that we accept positive discrimination as a normal and daily part of life, even without realizing it or viewing it as malicious. We naturally prioritize our loved ones, whether it is family or friends, over strangers when it comes to our time, resources, and attention. We choose whom to befriend, whom to date, whom to hire (if you run a business or are a hiring manager), and whom to help, all at the exclusion of others. Here are a few examples of when that discrimination comes into play in real life: 

• Religious institutions typically define participation or membership based on religious identity. It is not a denial of religious freedom of non-practitioners of a given religion, but protecting the associational and spiritual integrity of the community. 
• Ethnic clubs, heritage societies, and cultural centers often limit membership to members of the in-group. Since the goals of such organizations are cultural preservation, support networks, and shared experience, inclusion of outsiders can undermine the purpose that the group is meant to provide. 
• Professional associations and fraternities/sororities define membership based on criteria, whether it is profession, skill, or gender. The exclusion protects the purpose and experience for intended members.
• With charitable giving, you give to a cause that means something to you. By extension, you choose to not give to other causes, i.e., you exclude other charities from your giving. Being forced to give to all causes equally would violate your freedom to direct your resources as you wish. 
• LGBT centers exist to provide community and safety for a marginalized group. Allowing people outside of that demographic dilutes the space's purpose and its sense of security. 
• Employers select employees based on skills, experience, and cultural fit. An employer is not obligated to hire anyone who submits a job application. 
• In romantic relations, you choose someone you're attracted to and whose values, interests, and/or personality align with yours. You cannot coerce romance without destroying the meaning of romance and what makes it so special. This is why I took such an issue with the argument of "not dating a trans person is transphobic." A similar argument can also be made with friendship and why you cannot be forced to be friends with just anybody. 

Why Women's Sports Exist and Why Biology Isn't Optional

Women's sports are not an exception to this rule when it comes to freedom of association or positive discrimination. They operate on the same principle. I brought this up in my 2019 analysis of MTF transgender athletes in women's sports, but it merits repeating. Women's sports exist because in most sports, biological differences matter. 

It does not matter what type of cosmetic surgery one undergoes, how many hormones are taken, what government paperwork is altered, or how one decides to live their life. Biological reality does not disappear through identification or medical intervention. Gender identity is a societal construct, but biological sex (or simply sex) is not. Male-to-female transgender individuals remain biologically male, even after transition, and no amount of identifying otherwise changes that reality. Another way to frame this is that MTF transgender individuals are a subset of men, in spite of their best efforts. 

This should be an obvious observation of reality because MTF transgender individuals transitioning does not erase the biological advantages they incurred. The physical differences between men and women were apparent in the caveman days, but now we have the ability to measure them more precisely. As I brought up in 2019, men have greater lean body mass, larger hearts, higher cardiac outputs, larger hemoglobin mass, larger VO2 max, greater glycogen utilization, and higher anaerobic capacity. The Journal of Applied Physiology acknowledged biological realities in a study last year (Joyner et al., 2025; see infographic below). Another study, this one from Sports Medicine, shows how testosterone suppression for MTF transgender athletes has minimal effect and how the other advantages are still maintained (Hilton and Lundberg, 2021). 

I am not here to rattle off the entire evidence base on the topic, but I do want to make an observation. If there were no biological difference, there would be a more symmetrical effect observed in men's sports and women's sports. The truth is that an FTM transgender individual, which de facto is a subset of women, entering men's sports is not controversial because odds are that said athlete will not have a distinct biological advantage over men. 

Why Women's Sports Are a Protected Space

Women's sports exist precisely because biological and physiological differences between men and women matter. Without a protected space, women would be crowded out of meaningful sports participation, not by malice, but by reality. Open competition would systematically favor male physiology, leaving women with fewer opportunities to compete, succeed, and develop as athletes.

Women's sports exist to prevent that outcome. Women's sports are not some arbitrary carve-out, but a deliberate response to biological inequality. Excluding MTF transgender athletes is not a moral condemnation of transgender individuals or an act of cruelty for its own sake. It is an acknowledgment that not every space can serve every individual. When women's sports are no longer permitted to draw sex-based boundaries, it ends up undermining and eroding the very purpose that such a space was created for women in the first place. 

When Ideology Collides with Biological Reality

Women's sports is arguably the clearest example of where gender identity theory collides with biological reality. In many policy debates, whether trans women are women or not comes off as abstract. With athletics, it is observable and immediately apparent that they are not truly women. That clarity creates discomfort and cognitive dissonance for those who falsely believe that trans women are women, making it difficult to rationalize it away. For those who treat gender identity as fully substitutable for biological sex, this fight is more than being about athletic competitions or whether transgender people deserve dignity. Conceding limits in athletics and acknowledging biological reality would mean acknowledging the absurdity of the entire gender identity framework, particularly that gender identity overrides biological sex. Rather than lose face, activists and politicians continue to double down, even at the expense of their own credibility since it is the path of least resistance.

The Stakes for Sex-Based Rights

Letting gender ideology win this battle is more than about women's sports. Last August, I brought up how kowtowing to gender identity creates conceptual and legal incoherence. If sex is no longer an objective category, then any institution or rights organized around biological sex becomes indefensible. When sex is treated as a feeling rather than a fact, many aspects of women's rights and gay rights become negotiable, whether that is women's sports or same-sex marriage. Women's sports are a clear casualty of such an approach, as is illustrated by the 2024 United Nations report that estimated that female athletes have lost over 890 medals to transgender athletes. 

The moment that biological sex is replaced by the subjective self-identity that is gender identity is the moment that sex-based protections and spaces collapse. The question before the Supreme Court is not whether transgender people should be treated with dignity (to reiterate, they should), but whether sex-based rights are allowed to remain real. If biological sex is optional, women's sports and any other sex-based space or rights are also optional. As such, I hope that the Supreme Court rules in favor of women's sports over gender ideology.

$2,500 Marriage Incentive Payment: The Government Shouldn’t Play Matchmaker by Subsidizing Love

Frank Sinatra once sang that love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage. That is not the case anymore, if it ever was in the first place. The median age of marriage has been on the rise for decades while marriage rates are on the decline. Fewer than 50 percent of households are married couples, which is a shift from the 66 percent in the 1970s.These marriage trends are precipitating a debate among policymakers and think tanks about how or whether the government should respond. 

Government as Cupid

One recent proposal came from the Right-leaning Heritage Foundation in its new report Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years. Among the ideas presented in this report was creating a Newlywed Early Starters Trust (NEST) account. This federal program would give couples a $2,500 incentive payment upon marrying by a target age, paid into a special long-term investment account designed to grow over time. While the NEST accounts are justified as a means of encouraging marriage and asset accumulation, they reflect an underlying confidence in social engineering in which the government can steer private choices using financial incentives. 

The Price of Love: Ethics in Subsidized Marriage

Framed this way, Heritage's proposal raises a deep concern. Marriage is not like purchasing a car, selecting a vacation destination, or opting into a retirement account. By tying marriage to a NEST account, it risks reducing an intimate human relationship to a transaction for government benefits. Even if marriage had transactional components in the past (e.g., dowries, uniting families or territories), those were not centralized state efforts to steer personal behavior through financial incentives. The fact that marriage has evolved into a voluntary and personal commitment is exactly what makes the NEST account an ethically fraught idea. It treats relationships as policy levers rather than autonomous human choices while it commodifies intimacy and undermines the intrinsic value that gives marriage its social, emotional, and moral significance. 

Why Cash Can't Buy Commitment

It is not simply the ethics that are problematic. While Heritage proposes a $2,500 policy lever to encourage marriage, research suggests that financial incentives of this level are unlikely to produce lasting change. For example, a change in tax incentives has been shown to influence the timing of when someone got married, but it did not affect whether someone got married in the first place. Welfare evidence has also shown that altering benefit structures can encourage married couples to stay, but does little to help the decision of whether single parents decide to marry. 

When Prices Rise, Vows Wait

Meanwhile, structural economic barriers play a much larger role in delaying or discouraging marriage. A 2025 study from South Korea shows that rising house prices reduce marriage rates and delays marriage (La, 2025). Another study of 35 Chinese cities shows how economic restraints delay marriage (Song et al., 2024). Evidence from Obamacare Medicaid expansion (Chatterjee, 2021) shows that when a real economic benefit to marriage (in this case, health insurance) was available outside of marriage, low-educated, non-elderly adults were 6.9 percent less likely to marry. This decline was 11.9 percent for women. This is meant to show that a $2,500 NEST account will not meaningfully alter the deep tradeoffs that couples face with respect to marriage. It might nudge some couples to tie the knot sooner, but financial stability, long-term compatibility, and relationship readiness will play much larger roles in a couple's decision to marry. 

Marriage Cannot Be Bought, Only Chosen

We live in a more individualistic society that prioritizes career or personal development. There is greater acceptance of cohabitation without marriage, not to mention changing norms about gender equality or household roles. Combined with the financial barriers young couples face, a $2,500 NEST account becomes a dubious way to spur marriage rates. None of this means a hostility toward marriage itself. I would like to be married one day. I can believe marriage is valuable while still rejecting the idea that it should be subsidized, engineered, or optimized by government policy. Marriage simply cannot be bought off. Modest financial incentives like the NEST account do not address the core issues behind lower marriage rates while risking the trivialization of what ought to remain a freely chosen and deeply meaningful institution. 

Maduro’s Capture: Justice for Venezuela or a Precedent We Should Fear?

A little over a week ago, the Trump administration sent shockwaves throughout the world with the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia. The Maduros are facing charges of narco-terrorism and drug trafficking. I could question Trump's rationale for it. After all, there are multiple countries that have had unfair elections, leaders tied to drug trafficking, and/or could be construed as a threat to U.S. national security. On the flip side, I could bring up how using military force abroad without a formal declaration of war is anything but unique to Trump and actually dates back to Thomas Jefferson. Today I do not want to get into whether this capture was legal or if Trump did it for the oil. The question I hope to answer is whether this is a rare example of limited and liberty-advancing force or if this move is something that should have us worried. 

Years of Socialist Tyranny

One thing I noticed is that Venezuelans across the world were cheering the capture, including Buenos Aires, Lima, Madrid, and Miami. Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, turned one of the richest countries in Latin America into a bona fide basket case. About half of Venezuelans live in poverty due to the hyperinflation. The corruption is so bad that it is ranked by Transparency International as the 3rd most corrupt country on the planet. Let's say the vast majority of Venezuelans were not feeling the warmth of collectivism. The repression under Maduro got so dire that it created about 8 million Venezuelan refugees. Maduro was an oppressive tyrant and an hijo de puta that caused human suffering. His removal is reason for Venezuelans worldwide to celebrate. 

Historical Precedent for Limited Military Intervention

While this seems like a victory for liberty, the broader implications of this capture need to be taken into account. As I brought up in the intro, this is hardly the first time this has happened where a president took a limited, targeted military or covert action without congressional approval. Truman did it with the Korean War, Kennedy with the Cuban missile crisis, Reagan with Grenada, Bush Sr. with Panama, Obama with Libya, and Trump last year with Iran. 

I would also point out that, as anti-war as I am generally, not all uses of war are morally equivalent in terms of magnitude. A targeted intervention that seeks to end suffering and restore human rights could be justified, but it would have to be limited and proportional. If Trump's attack on Venezuela is a one-off and truly surgical, one could argue that this a military equivalent of limited government that could help avoid a much larger military intervention. 

Potential for Mission Creep

Putting aside the grey area with congressional authority or the War Powers Resolution, I have to question what will happen next in Venezuela. The interim leader of Venezuela is Delcy Rodríguez, who was Maduro's Vice President. If the military and security infrastructures stay intact, this will be a pyrrhic victory in which the old regime under slightly different management remains, which does nothing good for Venezuela in the grand scheme of things. 

Alternatively, Trump said to reporters last Wednesday that the U.S. could end up running Venezuela for years, which has the potential to be an imperial overreach that undermines democracy and international law. Mission creep in this case could result in the U.S. becoming responsible for managing Venezuela's political transition, economic recovery, or security. If that is the case, it risks the United States repeating the mistakes of Vietnam or of Afghanistan, especially if militias or pro-Maduro factions resist. 

The U.S.' Track Record on Regime Change in Latin America

It is not as though the United States has the best history on regime change in Latin America. In 1954, the CIA overthrew the democratically elected Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala, which ushered in a dictatorship and a civil war. The CIA toppled Salvador Allende in Chile and ended up with the dictator Augusto Pinochet. The U.S. supporting the Contra rebels in their fight against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua led to civil war. And let's not forget the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, which almost started World War III. Given the U.S.' unfortunate history with meddling in Latin America, removing Maduro could be another quagmire that makes the situation worse for years to come.

Upsetting International Order

The capture of Maduro raises profound questions about the international legal order and respect for sovereignty. Under the UN Charter, the use of force is prohibited, except in cases of self-defense. This norm exists to promote diplomatic conflict resolution, maintain peace, and preserve state sovereignty. By unilaterally removing a foreign leader, it creates a disturbing precedent in which a state could justify intervention in another country's affairs under the guise of law enforcement. 

Nations like Russia or China could follow suit, turn international affairs into a free-for-all, and have military force become the go-to for settling disputes instead of diplomacy or international law. I am not here to say international law is perfect. I was questioning the efficacy of international law last week. Even in spite of imperfect international norms, breaking them without a better framework makes the world less predictable and stable. It would be a return to imperialist norms in which powerful nations felt entitled to intervene in weaker states without impunity. 

Wrestling with Venezuela's Regime Change

Capturing Maduro and ousting him from his rule in Venezuela is an important milestone. Liberty may have gained a symbolic victory in Venezuela, but the next step is about who governs Venezuela, how Venezuela is governed, and whether the lives of Venezuelans are improved as a result. Without a credible, internally driven transition, Venezuela risks continued instability under different management. Whether Venezuela emerges freer, stabler, and self-deeming remains the real test and is far from finished.