Research Editor and Senior Fellow, Regulatory Studies, John Locke Foundation
Jon Sanders is an economist studying state regulations, that spreading kudzu of invasive government and unintended consequences. Serving as Senior Fellow of Regulatory Studies and also Research Editor at the John Locke Foundation, Jon gets in the weeds of all kinds of policy areas: energy and electricity policy; occupational licensing; red tape and overregulation; executive orders and overreach; emerging ideas and economic growth; cronyism and other public-choice problems; alcohol policy; poverty and opportunity; and other issues as they arise.
Jon is also a contributing columnist to the American Institute for Economic Research and the Senior Fellow of Regulations and the New Economy for the Beacon Center of Tennessee. He 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.
Prior to joining the research division at JLF, Jon researched issues in higher education for the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy (now the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal). He 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, his two children, a dog who doesn’t claim him, and a cat who does.