Troy Williams

Homeschool dad of four. Built RichesRedeemed - biblical high school finance. Strategy alum (McKinsey, Ameriprise, U.S. Bank). Cornerstone Academy teacher.

[Troy Williams @troyw_learns]

@ClassicLearner For curriculum help or as a finance employee on your internal team?

If the former I created https://t.co/Ov1cTQke2d and have taught this course to our co-op, largely focused on high school age.

Could see very creative partnerships!

[Troy Williams @troyw_learns]

@aaron_renn Very well written and compelling arguments. I agree that work will continue no matter what incentive and need, if AI “takes over” so to speak.

The reason is that work was both created by God (Genesis 1 and 2) but also part of the curse (Genesis 3).

[Troy Williams @troyw_learns]

@JesseKellyDC a few years ago said that Trump may not get policies and decisions right immediately, but that he listens to feedback and opinions more than previous presidents.

Case in point on rising food prices.

Apologies Jesse if I butchered your wording / sentiment but we can't all be as awesome as you

[Troy Williams @troyw_learns]

"Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
when he speaks with his enemies in the gate."
Psalm 127:3-5

"And God blessed them. And God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'” Genesis 1:28

"And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.'” Genesis 9:1

[Troy Williams @troyw_learns]

"Government revenue. Government-administered prices. Government-suppressed interest rates. A government-written subsidy for leverage. Government pension money supplying the equity, chasing a return a legislature invented."

[Porter Stansberry @porterstansb]

In 1990, 38% of the world's population lived on less than $2 a day. Last year that figure was 8.5%. In 1990, one child in 11 died before turning five. Now it's one in 27. And, I expect in the next decade, it will become one in 500.

But how? How did the environment for humans improve so rapidly? Your schools will teach you it was the miracle of government. Government, they will claim, gave us widespread public health and a decent standard of living. Lol. It was not government aid. It was not a treaty. Or the U.N. Or anything that Obama! promised.

None of this happened because G.W. Bush did save us from weapons of mass destruction.

None of that matter at all.

What created this unprecedented prosperity was property rights. Property rights translate into prices. And prices convey critical information, for free, across vast and disperse markets -- a form of distributed communication networks. That efficiency, of knowing what's needed and what's in surplus, turns into capital. And that capital has enabled hundreds of millions of people to keep more of the output of their labor, enriching billions of people.

Thus, when I read Gretchen Morgenson (see below), I don't feel contempt. I feel something much worse. This is a person who knows better. This is the kind of person, who, if they're not standing up for property rights... oh man. You've got to be kidding me. When thought leaders like this don't understand or recognize the most important truths of economics... what hope is there for our civilization? My critics will condemn me. But that isn't an exaggeration. Our thought leaders are abandoning capitalism, because they simply do not understand it. That's how bad our education system has become.

So, let's look at the facts.

Cerberus Capital Management bought Caritas Christi out of the Boston archdiocese in 2010 and named it Steward. Cerberus pulled out roughly $800 million and left in 2020. Bankruptcy came in May 2024.

Morgenson blames capitalism -- property rights and "greed."

But, look at what Cerberus actually bought.

Massachusetts publishes payer data on every hospital in the state. In fiscal 2023, St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Brighton drew 49% of its patient revenue from Medicare and another 18% from Medicaid. The state classified it a High Public Payer hospital, a designation reserved for hospitals collecting at least 63% of gross patient revenue from the government. Saint Anne's in Fall River ran 72.7% public. All of the hospitals in this deal follow the same model: steal from taxpayers.

Cerberus did not buy a business. It bought the right to tax. It simply called doing so healthcare.

Can you blame them? American medicine is a $5.3 trillion enterprise that consumes 18% of national output. Medicare and Medicaid writes 39% of those checks. Can you imagine how much fraud is baked into those numbers?!?

Is this capitalism? The money is collected through coercion (taxes). It is spent through committees that should be called "five year planning commissions." Every price in our health care system is set administratively. Every dollar of revenue arrives through a fee negotiated in Washington.

Why would anyone ever expect any positive outcome from any part of such of system? There is no way any intelligent journalist, acting in good faith, could reach these conclusions.

And here's what's worse. She doesn't even recognize that what enables the entire charade is paper money.

Cerberus borrowed against those hospitals during years when the Federal Reserve pinned the overnight rate between zero and 0.25%, from December 2008 to December 2015 and again from March 2020 to March 2022. There are no private lender who would ever finance loans at these rates. Who did? The twelve people on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Whose money were they lending? Not theirs, of course: yours.

If you don't understand this farce yet, then look to the tax code. Until 2022 a company could deduct interest against 30% of EBITDA, struck before depreciation, which handed asset-heavy borrowers a tax shelter no equity investor normally gets.

So who profited?

The buyout fund she demonizes manages almost none of its own capital. In 2024, The California Public Employees' Retirement System raised its private equity target to 17% of the fund. Private equity manages government pensions.

Why? Because legislatures promised those pensions and refused to tax anybody to fund them, so the shortfall has to be conjured out of an asset class that works. How does it work? By profiting from graft that the government creates.

Government revenue. Government-administered prices. Government-suppressed interest rates. A government-written subsidy for leverage. Government pension money supplying the equity, chasing a return a legislature invented.

And ... she knows all of this.

But Morgenson ignores all of these facts and, instead, indicts the "free market" -- a market that doesn't exist anywhere in America in healthcare.

Like they say: it's turtles all the way down.

So, why doesn't she write the truth? She knows the truth.

In 2011 Morgenstern and Joshua Rosner published Reckless Endangerment. They followed the housing collapse to its origin: the affordable-housing mandate, Fannie Mae, and James A. Johnson, who ran a congressionally chartered enterprise like a ward machine -- and bankrupted the world.

So... why this incredibly banal book, now? Because villains are easy to sell.

Meanwhile there are still 692 million human beings living on less than $2.15 a day, and not one of them will be lifted out of poverty by a Senate hearing. Or a government pension -- lol.

Gretchen, you already wrote the real book about the incredible danger of governments to our well being.

Start over.

The plunderers are all in Washington.

[Troy Williams @troyw_learns]

@DataRepublican But how did the government build roads, wage war, etc....generally function, WITHOUT AN INCOME TAX for the first not quite ~150 years of its existence?

Turns out quite well. Individuals had far more incentive to produce.

[Troy Williams @troyw_learns]

@SecScottBessent @SenWarren Financial education needs extend to the highest levels!

[Troy Williams @troyw_learns]

Does the U.S. have 500 million people in it??? The thread has a handful of sources

[Tall Roman Statue @TallRomanStatue]

LexisNexis, Iron Mountain, and others agree that there are at least 500 million people in the US

[O.W. Root @owroot]

A nice thing about homeschooling your kids is they don't have to wake up at 6AM automatically. You don't have to start your day as a family at the crazy early (and not even helpful) time public school demands.

[Troy Williams @troyw_learns]

Agree with nearly all of this. There may be ages when you outsource some of the curriculum, especially as they get older (e.g., our family loves Shormann Math once the kids get to, say, Algebra 1 or a little later, depending on the kid).

There also comes a point when they might want college credit (PSEO outsourcing) or higher college acceptance (e.g., only certified places give AP credit on the transcript), or maybe your kids want the social element of a co-op (many types of those!).

But I love this overall-

[Troy Williams @troyw_learns]

@AlpacaAurelius We no longer celebrate excellence, beauty, or value longevity. Everyone has a short term mindset

[Troy Williams @troyw_learns]

@JesseKellyDC Or imagine if he did… “my house is so big I haven’t even visited all of the rooms!”

[Troy Williams @troyw_learns]

I first got on X (Twitter at the time) and read posts like this. Very refreshing to get an “on the ground” view of business and have been following Shawn ever since!

[Shawn Gorham @shawngorham]

I make a living flipping homes in So Cal. I was a little offended when @sweatystartup listed it as a "business he didn't like".
But today I made an offer on a house.

$630,000 purchase
$80,000 in repairs
$850,000 sale price

So I make $140,000 right? No so fast.

[Troy Williams @troyw_learns]

Just be present and active with your kids. Provide a sense of wonder with the world. And learn with them if you need!

(I’m technically what the world would call “highly educated” and I’ve learned so much side by side with my kids. And, they’re now smarter than me in many subjects, but without the formal accolades)

[BowTiedQueenBee 💯 @BowtiedQueenBee]

My mom homeschooled four kids. She went to a year of bible college.

She homeschooled what became two engineers, a nurse and an accountant.

This was before curriculum was even available for sale to the public.

I don’t say this contrary to Caitlin. I just want to add my story in here because this was actually the majority of mothers I knew in the 80’s and 90’s.

You DEFINITELY don’t have to have a lot of education to homeschool.

[vittorio @IterIntellectus]

growing up, i knew my great-grandmother and used to spend the summer holidays with her and my grandma.
i knew all of my parents’ aunts and uncles. my dad told me stories about his great-grandparents and their relatives during the great war and wwii. our house had dozens of framed family photographs, and we were expected to know everyone's name and which branch of the family they belonged to, even if they were the great uncle's cousin's son. my grandma knew our family tree back at least eight generations.

you grew up knowing you were one piece in a large lineage that began long before you and was supposed to continue long after you. there was genuine pride in what came before and a sense of duty to what came after.

modern man has been removed from history and locked in the present. the past is forgotten or has become something to be ashamed of, the future became abstract and something to fear, and life shrank to career, consumption, individualism and self-expression.

then one day people realize the chain ends with them. by then, often, it is too late.

a civilization that teaches people to be ashamed of their ancestors should not be surprised when so many stop wanting to become ancestors themselves.

[Troy Williams @troyw_learns]

Everyone should read https://t.co/luL4j3A3Y2. Thanks to @wesbury for "introducing" his work to me long ago via one of his posts.

Learn more about Scott at https://t.co/R1KFvDMYNN.

[Troy Williams @troyw_learns]

Sign me up!

[Steve · Millionaire Habits @SteveOnSpeed]

I'd be perfectly okay forfeiting 100% of my Social Security benefits if the government would refund everything I've paid in over the years.

I'll sign a contract. No benefits.

Just give me my money back.

[Troy Williams @troyw_learns]

@JackPosobiec Or how about no Flock and we just prosecute criminals like we used to and don't tolerate living like this

[Troy Williams @troyw_learns]

@RobertMSterling This happens a lot...and is biologically, quite normal.

[Nickitruesdell @nickitruesdell]

Across 50 states, homeschool laws vary widely, with different levels of required reporting, oversight, and testing. Some states have zero requirements! But across all 50 states, homeschooled students consistently test 25-29 percentile points higher than their public school peers in reading, language, math, social studies, and science.

It's quite interesting to note that more homeschool regulation has a negative effect on test scores, according to the latest peer-reviewed research!

Read the 2026 study by NHERI (National Home Education Research Institute) here:
https://t.co/vV6VMhFV87

Listen to Dr. Brian Ray of NHERI explain the research on my latest podcast

Apple: https://t.co/gwYcx1k7bA
Spotify: https://t.co/RQwh4CuFXR
YouTube: https://t.co/2KSNrkvR8f