When good intentions replace honest evidence, the people politicians claim to help pay the price.
Thirty years in private equity and credit markets taught me one thing about motivated reasoning: people who are wrong and know it get very good at explaining why the evidence doesn’t apply to them. That skill is not limited to Wall Street. Washington has made it into an art form — and four recent policies show exactly how the trick works.
Transgender Athletes: Biology Is Not a Talking Point
After New Jersey’s Governor Murphy and California’s Governor Newsom signed legislation allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports, the science was dismissed as transphobia. Science did not care. A 2024 study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found transgender women retained handgrip strength averaging 40.7 kg versus 34.2 kg for cisgender women, even after hormone therapy. A 2021 military study by Roberts et al. found transgender women still ran 12 percent faster than their female counterparts after two full years on feminizing hormones.
A 2021 systematic review by Harper et al. covering 24 studies put it plainly: strength and lean body mass in transgender women “remain above those of cisgender women, even after 36 months.” Male puberty produces skeletal and muscular advantages that hormones reduce but do not erase. I coached women's track athletes. I know what it costs to earn a lane. Female athletes did not volunteer to absorb the cost of anyone’s policy evasion.
No-Cash Bail: The Predictable Results Were Predicted
New York’s 2020 no-cash-bail reform released 90 percent of misdemeanor and non-violent felony defendants with no financial conditions. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told viewers that crime would go down. The National Academy of Sciences, Gary Becker’s 1968 deterrence model, and a 2020 RAND meta-analysis all said otherwise — in print, in advance, with data.
The results: NYC homicides hit 468 in 2020, up about 47 percent from 2019. Shootings nearly doubled. Chicago cut its police budget by over $100 million and recorded about a 56 percent homicide spike. The FBI logged the largest single-year national homicide increase ever recorded, roughly 30 percent. New York later tightened its bail law. Homicides dropped 25 percent from the peak. Robberies fell by 36 percent. The deterrence model worked exactly as advertised.
Student Loan Forgiveness: A Transfer, Not a Fix
President Biden’s 2022 loan forgiveness plan was sold as giving Americans a “fair shot.” What it actually did was write a check to borrowers while leaving the machine that created the debt fully operational. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Staff Report No. 733 found that each additional dollar in federally subsidized loans raises posted tuition by about 60 cents. That’s the Bennett Hypothesis, which Education Secretary William Bennett identified in 1987. Forgiveness does not challenge it. It funds it.
Tuition at public four-year institutions rose 114 percent in real terms between 1993 and 2023, three times general inflation. The fix is accreditation reform tied to graduate outcomes, income-contingent repayment linked to actual earnings, and institutional accountability for defaults. Those policies are harder to announce at a rally. They would also work.
Assault Weapon Bans: Addressing Three Percent of the Problem
After Uvalde, New York Governor Hochul announced new assault weapon restrictions. The political instinct is understandable. The policy is not. CDC data shows rifles of all types account for roughly 3 percent of gun homicides annually. Handguns account for 45 to 50 percent. The National Institute of Justice’s own evaluation of the 1994 federal assault weapon ban concluded its impact on gun violence was “likely to be small at best.”
Chicago has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the Midwest. Its homicide rate remains chronically elevated. Illegal handgun trafficking is the actual pipeline. RAND’s 2020 gun policy research found that permit-to-purchase requirements and red flag laws with judicial oversight have real evidence behind them. Those are harder to pass. Assault weapon bans photograph better.
The Pattern
All four cases share the same structure. A real problem. A policy that addresses its most visible, emotionally resonant surface. Critics were reframed as opponents of a value rather than participants in a factual argument. Predictable consequences. Alternative explanations. Repeat.
The people who paid the bill in each case were not the lawmakers. They were female athletes who lost competitive opportunities. Homicide victims in neighborhoods where the revolving door spun fastest. Non-college workers who subsidize tuition inflation through loan guarantees. Urban residents who are waiting for a gun policy that targets actual supply chains.
Evidence-based governance is not complicated. It requires looking honestly at what the data show and making the tradeoffs explicit. That willingness has not vanished from the citizenry. Politicians who want to keep their jobs should assume their constituents still have it.
Jay Rogers is President of Alpha Strategies and a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management. He has a BS from Northeastern University and has completed postgraduate studies at UCLA, UPENN, and Harvard. He writes about issues in finance, constitutional law, national security, human nature, and public policy.
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