The Consequences of Policy

October 10, 2025

Doug Leyendecker

Welcome to This Week’s Leyendecker View

I think that a life properly lived is just learn, learn, learn all the time.
–Charlie Munger

FAVORITE READS OF THE WEEK

The mental inheritance of being poor
It’s not an easy mindset to change.

Keeping your soul in a corporate world
Lamenting the change in “work.”

It’s the internet, stupid
The force behind global populism.

THINKING OUT LOUD

The Consequences of Policy
There are always consequences

All policy decisions by the government have consequences beyond the policy’s original intent. This is true no matter how well-intended a policy might be—it will have unintended consequences

Consider the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act signed into law in 1969 by then California Governor Ronald Reagan. This law made no-fault divorce legal. Previously, divorce was only allowed with proof of infidelity and/or physical abuse.

What Reagan, a staunch conservative, did not understand at the time was that this bill would spur more divorce, which it did. This broke up families, which reduced the economic well-being of women and increased the mental health challenges for children.

In 1969, the divorce rate was about 9.2 per one thousand married women. By the 1980s, it had risen to 22.6 divorces per one thousand married women. Today, the divorce rate has declined to around 15 per one thousand married women.

It’s easy to look at that data and assume that, after a spike in the divorce rate, it’s come down. But that’s not the whole story.

As divorce contracted, so too did the number of married households. In 1970, a married couple headed 71% of households, while today that rate is around 46%. (As an aside, it was 78.8% in 1949.) Our stable nuclear families have dropped from 71% to 46% since Reagan signed that bill. This has had its own consequences.

In 1969, the number of children born out of wedlock was about 10%. Today, it’s about 40%. In 1969, about 9% of children were raised in a single-parent home. Today, it is 25%. This increase has contributed to a growing number of disaffected youth.

Throw in the internet and social media, especially in households with just one parent to supervise a child’s tech use, and we see yet another driver of our youth mental health crisis.

One bill, with some good intentions behind it, signed by a conservative who cared about family values has, all these decades later, continued to degrade the nuclear family and hurt children.

You want to know why health care is now unaffordable to the average person? Why people can’t pay back their student loans? Why education is failing our youth? Why we’re in an inflationary period?

They all share the same cause: the consequences of government policy.

Of course, we can’t have a civil society without some form of productive government. But we should never forget that all policies have consequences, sometimes very bad ones that affect the lives and well-being of the people the government purports to care for. Shouldn’t dire effects like the destruction of families or a medical system that is increasingly out of reach beg us to ask: How smart is the government, really? Should we really trust the government to be so involved in the details of our lives?

It’s tempting to lay all the blame at the feet of government. To be sure, many policies reflect the natural tendency of institutions to expand their own power. But we also have agency. We elect the people who write these laws. We shape the culture that rewards certain policies and punishes others.

That’s why the real question isn’t just What are they doing? but What are we doing?

When we disengage from serious civic life, when we trade books and conversations for endless scrolling and passive consumption, we become easier to govern—and not always in ways that serve us well. A society that forgets its own history and that neglects to teach its children how their government was designed to work will inevitably drift toward policies that undermine the very freedoms it once prized.

The consequences of policy are not abstract. They show up in the cost of health care, in the shape of our families, in the quality of our schools. And because those policies are a reflection of the choices we make, the responsibility for their outcomes ultimately circles back to us.

So next time you step into the voting booth or talk with your children about the world they’re inheriting, pause and ask: What kinds of consequences am I endorsing? Are the policies I support likely to solve problems or merely shift them somewhere else, waiting to surface in another form?

THE RANDOMS

It’s great to get a ceasefire deal in Gaza, but let’s wait to see how it unfolds before celebrating too much. If it holds, do you think the “ceasefire now!” people will celebrate? They’ve been awfully quiet so far…

Trump was able to craft this peace deal because he flipped the script and also went all in with Israel. Will he now go all in with Ukraine?

Another reminder of the fragility of our over tech’d world.

News stories are appearing suggesting that Trump’s new visa policy will push the world’s best talent to places like India and China. Now, what really smart person wants to live in either of those countries, or anywhere else in the world, for that matter?

When we read stories about businesses struggling or closing down because of economic policy changes, let’s remember we live in a market economy world. In order for there to be winners, there have to be losers.

One of the best things about air travel is people watching at the airport. Wow, are we Americans a diverse group of humans.

Maybe Europe should start sending drones around sensitive Russian sites. Tit for tat, Mr. Putin.

The University o f Chicago is selling a historically prime asset to raise money. It’s going to use the proceeds to invest in private markets. Is this a buy-low opportunity for the school, or is this a canary in the coal mine for higher education and/or the investment markets?

Years ago, we started transitioning work from the factory to the office. Now with AI, we may have started transitioning work from the office back to the factory.

ECONOMIC NEWS

Economy

US services industries stall out
America’s best- and worst-run cities
Chicago is on the verge of fiscal collapse
Biden’s progressive infrastructure boondoggle

Labor

Could working from home be a legal right?
Septuagenarians are the hot entrepreneurs
Are you an effective trailblazer?

A Little Health Care

Amazon putting up drug vending machines
Doctors say cool it on supplements
Scientists make human embryos from skin

The Lone Star

John Deere invests more in Texas
Houston to get another new factory
Austin bulking up on defense tech

BUSINESS

Finance

$2.3B has simply vanished
BDCs are looking shaky
Texas pension goes big on private investments
NYSE to invest in betting portal
Take-private deals have exploded
VCs go BIG investing in AI