7 Conservative Policies That Can Help Make Life More Affordable for Americans

Democrats are always claiming that the next “free” giveaway or government program is going to give everyone a free unicorn, a leprechaun’s pot of gold, and make the whole country into a Utopia. Meanwhile, the places they completely control, like San Francisco and New York City, have some of the highest taxes, highest rents, and most income inequality in America. That’s because their policies and programs don’t work. We’re not going to tax our way to success, get cheap rent via rent control, and give people confiscated money until they get ahead. The world just doesn’t work that way.

Still, it’s hard to beat something with nothing, and Republicans traditionally tend to get into office and not do much of anything. Granted, since the government often makes problems worse over the long haul, there’s a lot to be said for that. However, there are better ideas and better policies out there than the ones we currently have in our country, so why not pursue them?

That’s especially important since the huge surge of inflation we had during COVID has put a lot of people in a tough spot. Just to give you an example, here in North Myrtle Beach, where I live, rent has gone up something like 40% in the last five years – and it’s not the only thing that’s gone up.

There are an awful lot of Americans who felt like they were doing fine in 2019, who are feeling the pressure today. There are ways to help address those problems that will actually improve people’s lives, and that, unlike solutions promised by Democrats (see Obamacare as a great example of this), will actually work long-term. Believe it or not, the Trump administration is already trying to implement many of these ideas.

1) Limiting drug costs: “Roughly 75% of global pharmaceutical profits come from American taxpayers.” This is because drug companies often charge Americans premium prices for medicines, then sell the same drugs in other countries at a fraction of the cost.

Trump’s proposal to solve this is to tell these companies that they can’t sell their drugs for less in other developed countries than they do here. Some people have referred to this as “price controls,” which absolutely are bad, but this policy isn’t really what’s traditionally thought of as price controls.

After all, the drug companies could charge any price they choose. They could charge 10 million dollars per pill if they wanted, but they just couldn’t price-gouge Americans so that we could supplement the cost of drugs for the whole rest of the globe anymore. That would dramatically lower the cost of medicine for Americans.

2) Ending taxes on people making less than 100k per year: Donald Trump has talked about replacing the income tax with tariffs. That doesn’t seem realistic unless the government is reduced to a fraction of the size it is today (which isn’t going to happen).

However, after doing some back-of-the-envelope math, eliminating the income tax for people making under 100k? That seems possible. Generally, this sort of thing is a bad idea because it creates a large number of people who vote, but don’t have to pay for what they’re voting for. On the other hand, it’s entirely possible that AI will make it nearly impossible for a significant chunk of the population to get full-time jobs in the next decade or two.

A universal basic income may sound appealing to some people, but it would require ruinous tax increases that would probably destroy the economy to fund it. On the other hand, tariffs might be able to fully pay for this program. Like many conservatives, I think we’d be better off spending that money on reducing the deficit, but it’s hard to not at least seriously consider a policy that could help so many Americans get ahead.

3) Getting rid of illegal aliens: This is a very simplistic example but imagine that you live in a town that has a thousand places to live, a thousand jobs, and a thousand people living there, one to a home. First of all, if 20% of the population disappeared, what would happen to the price of housing? It would drop significantly because the landlords would need to compete to get people to rent from them. On the other hand, what would happen to pay? It would go up because there wouldn’t be enough employees to go around, and the businesses would need to offer more to attract employees.

Guess what? This is how it works with illegal aliens, too. You remove them and pay goes up for Americans while housing costs go down. You don’t hear this very often, even though it’s absolutely true, but there are very few things we could do to help the poor and middle class in America that would be more effective than simply getting rid of illegal aliens.

4) No tax on tips: Trump campaigned on this and has delivered no tax on tips below $25,000. This is a great idea, not just because most people getting tips aren’t necessarily making a lot of money to begin with, but the reality is that a lot of people lie about what they make in cash tips anyway. This both helps working people who need it and takes the fear of an audit off the table for them, which improves their quality of life.

It’s a good policy and boosts exactly the sort of working people we should be trying to boost in our country. Granted, this would become mostly irrelevant if we ended taxes on people making less than 100k per year, but it’s definitely a good idea in the interim.

5) Ending large corporate purchases of single-family homes: Like most conservatives, I’m business-friendly and want corporations to make profits. However, we’ve gotten to the point where corporate interests are buying up so much of the market for homes that it’s starting to drive prices out of reach for single families. Investors are buying up somewhere around 1-in-6 homes nationwide, and in certain areas, it’s north of 30%. That’s too much because it’s distorting the market.

Corporate interests should be welcome to build as much NEW HOUSING as they want, but limits need to be put on how many homes they can buy to help keep homes affordable for regular Americans. Let them make their money on something else that doesn’t make it harder for Americans to own a home.

6) Getting spending under control: If you want to understand why this is so important to the poor and middle class, let me explain it to you in a simple way. Let’s say you loaned me $100 this morning, and after going to the ATM, I pay you back this afternoon. Neither of us profited or lost anything.

On the other hand, let’s say you loan me $100 and twenty years from now, when that amount of money is worth, let’s say $5 in today’s money, I pay you $100 back. In that case, I’d have screwed you big time.

Well, our government has 38 trillion dollars in debt that they absolutely, positively cannot pay back unless inflation DRAMATICALLY decreases the value of the dollar. Do the math, and you will understand how that’s going to play out over the next few decades.

Inflation is hard on everyone, but it eats the poor and middle class alive because, unlike the rich, they’re spending a large percentage of their money as it comes in, and they can’t afford to stick it in assets that dramatically increase in value along with inflation.

There’s absolutely NOTHING, NOT ONE, SINGLE, SOLITARY THING, that will help the poor and middle class in America more over the long term than getting spending under control.

7) A government savings account for each child: Trump accounts are actually a really interesting idea. It’s putting $1,000 into an account for each child born and allowing up to $5,000 per year to be contributed, which will be invested into stock index funds.

If the parents never put in any money, that will likely come out to around $6,000 when the child reaches 18, which is SOMETHING at least. On the other hand, if the parents max it out, you’re probably talking about an amount more like 300k. In other words, it could pay for college, a car, and give them some money left over to get a good start on life.

The price tag for this is roughly 1.5 billion per year, which is a lot of money, but when you consider that we wasted 35 billion dollars in appropriations on USAID in 2024, it’s a comparatively small amount that can have an outsized positive impact.

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