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. Douglas Carswell is the President and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.
13 comments:
Gee, Douggie, my future doesn’t look so bright in Mississippi. Once Amazon gets that data center up and running with all the AI Robots that will replace jobs Mississippians could have done, my electric and water bills will at least double. Here’s another shiny fact for you: without oversight Entergy is free to raise its rates on its captive customers however and whenever it chooses.
There's one other unmentioned land mine. At some point in the future, Mississippi will be run by democrats. When this threshold is crossed, it will be a race to the bottom and all of the gains will be erased in one, or two generations. We are going to climb out of the grave only to get kicked in the face one final time.
@3:08pm If/when MS goes blue, you can bet that will be towards the end of this national experiment started in 1776.
You people are such drama queens…..
Agree! There is a way out. Solutions are easy when u have everyone wanting a better quality of life. Unfortunately in MS, the good ole boy system must be first identified and eliminated for this to happen. The people have been blinded and cannot see even when it is presented to them directly. The kings fly high in their castles eating the easy prey of MS and they are arrogant enough to brag about it in the open as they eat the person. Couple that with a broken medical system and the place is not livable. Company health insurance turned into government insurance at 65 is the pits!!!! The rules are as convoluted as IRS tax rules and one wrong move and u are screwed. I even had a company paid consultant that was supposed to be knowledgeable. My lifetime mess up can only be cured by moving out of state. Retirees are supposed to be the ones having lots of time, resources and knowledge to help those in our communities. My last 8 years have broken my heart, I was fully immersed in living among the common people of MS for the first time. When I worked, I spent the majority of time with people outside the state so I was not really not exposed to the reality of MS and what I saw was earth shaking. The severe lack of leadership in this state both in the government, businesses and people has crippled this state. I need leaders that think big picture instead of out of ulterior motive or fear. Those weaker attributes are what make the leaders eat their subordinates. No one can fix the ills of MS until the people have a change of heart. Fortunately I realized the rest of America is not like this. U just have to research to find the quality of life u want. And funny thing happened to me. I meet more people from MS living here than ever before. We talk about how lucky we are that we finally found a better place. And that is bittersweet because MS doesn’t have to be the way it is. They too could enjoy a higher quality of life. U just gotta want it bad it enough to stand up and say no and change it. Quit supporting the idiots. U can never fix stupid.
“Goes blue,” “run by democrats,” I know what you’re thinking. I know just exactly what you mean.
Rather than try to balance the budget on the back of regular people that have PAID INTO social security and Medicare and the poorest of our nation that depend on Medicaid for their health care, how about we end corporate entitlement welfare programs?
A 2024 study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) found widespread tax avoidance among profitable companies from 2018 through 2022. Out of 342 consistently profitable corporations studied, 23 paid zero federal income tax over the entire five-year period. Additionally, 109 of the companies paid zero federal tax in at least one of the five years.
In 2020, 55 profitable Fortune 500 companies paid no federal income taxes. These companies made a combined $40 billion in profits and would have paid an estimated $8.5 billion in taxes at the statutory rate. Instead of paying taxes, these companies received a collective $3.5 billion in rebates due to tax breaks.
Drama queens indeed...goodness
November 15, 2025 at 8:43 AM, I agree. Historically, Mississippi was the first State to offer tax breaks to corporations to lure them to locate here. However, the benefits of doing so no longer balance (especially in Mississippi’s favor). Logically, we should stop doing offering the billionaires tax breaks and other incentives off the backs of locals to get a few jobs here.
If Mississippians really paid attention to what their Leaders and Legislators are doing to them, none would be re-elected.
SOCIAL SECURITY IS NOT AN ENTITLEMENT!!! We paid that money into the system separate from the other taxes. Most of us will never benefit from the majority of the money that we were forced to pay. Social Security could have operated just fine as a separate entity, but congress - not Dem. not Reps. All of them - have consistently robbed the surplus for the last 30 years until it has become a problem.
All congressmen who have voted for any bill authorizing use of the SS surplus and the presidents who signed them should forfeit all personal assets to SS. It won't fix the problem, but it will be fair and satisfying.
Yes...Being 'first' would indeed mean 'historically'.
This is exactly why the President needs to give every taxpayer that 2,000 bonus!
Bottom of the barrel writing.
Mamdani economics: expanded childcare for all.
It is exactly what Republicans are doing in Mississippi. Because they understand if we truly value life, if we want the family to thrive while we push for increased economic development and jobs, workers need places that can take care of their kids while they are on the job.
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