Jon Sanders is director of the Center for Food, Power, and Life and also research editor at the John Locke Foundation. At the CFPL Jon focuses on the policy issues of agriculture, energy, and the environment. These are issues of critical importance to people, their families, and their businesses — food, power, and life — and as such, he knows it is vital to protect and expand freedom in these all-important areas.
Jon is also Senior Fellow in the Center for American Prosperity at America First Policy Institute and Senior Fellow of Regulations and the New Economy for the Beacon Center of Tennessee.
Jon is a classical liberal, which is a technically accurate term for his philosophy but one he realizes sounds like being a socialist with a penchant for Mozart. For Jon, it means favoring liberalism without coercion. He takes to heart the revolutionary declaration that all of us are created equal and endowed by God with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, property, and the enjoyment of the fruits of their labor. He shares the belief with Milton Friedman and Gary Becker that “the greatest beneficiaries of capitalism are those at the bottom of the income ladder” and agrees with Julian Simon that “the ultimate resource is people.”
Jon holds a master’s degree in economics with a minor in statistics along with a bachelor of arts degree in English literature and language from North Carolina State University. This left brain/right brain confluence sometimes causes Jon to cite Jane Austen in discussing energy, Chaucer in lending regulations, C.S. Lewis in overregulation, and Shakespeare pretty much whenever he thinks he can get away with it. He’s also prone to drop pop-culture references as the mood strikes.
Previously, Jon researched issues in regulatory policy for Locke and before that, issues in higher education for the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy (now the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal). He is a contributing columnist to the American Institute for Economic Research. Jon has also taught economics as an adjunct instructor for the Tillman School of Business at Mount Olive University and the Poole College of Management at North Carolina State University.
Jon enjoys music, arts and literature, cooking, logic, dad jokes, Scotch, entrepreneurship, and wit. Don’t get him started on the Aubrey/Maturin novels of Patrick O’Brian. He lives in Raleigh with his beautiful, out-of-his-league-but-don’t-tell-her wife.