In this episode of Qualified Opinions, host Veronique de Rugy welcomes Akash Chougule, President of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP), to explore how classical liberal ideas can drive real economic mobility for lower-income Americans.

Akash breaks down FREOPP's unique mission—applying free-market principles specifically to uplift the bottom half of the socioeconomic ladder—and explains why lasting policy reform requires genuine bipartisan coalition building. They examine the recent deregulation of housing supply as a blueprint for legislative success before taking a deep dive into the state of organized labor in 21st-century America.

Veronique de Rugy speaks with Thomas Howes and James Patterson about their book, Why Postliberalism Failed. The authors examine the growing post-liberal movement, particularly Catholic integralism, which rejects representative government and religious neutrality in favor of a powerful executive guided by a state-supported conception of the common good.

Drawing on examples from interwar Europe and Latin America—including Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal, Vichy France, Slovakia, Croatia, Brazil, and Argentina—they argue that these ideas have already been tested. Rather than restoring religious faith or social order, post-liberal regimes became authoritarian, persecuted minorities, and compromised the churches that supported them. Political leaders used religious institutions for legitimacy while steadily subordinating them to the state, ultimately contributing to religious disaffiliation.

The conversation also explores postliberalism's influence on today's American right, its relationship to protectionism and Christian nationalism, and its failure to resist antisemitism within its broader coalition. Howes and Patterson conclude that religious communities would achieve more through liberal institutions—religious liberty, limited government, school choice, and voluntary association—than by attempting to capture the power of the state.

Welcome back to Qualified Opinions. This week, we tackle the revived debate on redistribution versus growth following the release of the 2026 World Inequality Report. To help us slice through the noise, we sit down with Dr. Phil Magness (Independence Institute) and Dr. Vincent Geloso (George Mason University). Together, they expose the flaws in contemporary inequality metrics, discuss how robust institutions and open markets destroy barriers to upward mobility, and explain why a country's institutional health matters far more than its wealth distribution.