Tom Giovanetti

President

tomg@ipi.org | Download a high-res image

Tom Giovanetti is president of the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), a 38-year-old conservative, free-market public policy “think tank” based in Dallas, Texas.

In addition to his administrative and fundraising duties, Tom writes for IPI and for leading publications on a variety of policy topics including tax policy, economic growth, self-government, civil liberties and constitutional protections, judicial supremacy, intellectual property, Social Security personal accounts, technology and Internet policy, and government spending.  In addition to being regularly published in major outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, FoxNews.com and The Dallas Morning News, Tom writes often for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Tom frequently appears in the media and is a regular guest and occasional substitute host of the Mark Davis Show in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. 

Tom loves thinking out-of-the-box to design novel solutions to policy problems and explaining complicated policy issues in ways average folks can understand.

Tom's mission at IPI is to use issues to teach conservative, free market thinking and to push back against unprincipled populism. He seeks to encourage continued skepticism of Big Government, to maintain faith in markets, and to defend individual liberty as the best means of achieving human flourishing. His most recent work has focused on free market solutions to student loan debt, preserving online freedom, and persuading state legislatures to override local and municipal rules that restrict economic liberty.

Mr. Giovanetti has represented IPI at many national and international organizations, including the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), and represented IPI during negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. Mr. Giovanetti is a popular speaker and writer and testifies before state and federal legislative committees on a variety of topics.

Follow Tom on Twitter (X) at @tgiovanetti

January 10, 2006

Testimony Before Indiana Senate Regarding Telecom Deregulation

by Tom Giovanetti

September 24, 2005

Intellectual Property Rights and Human Rights

by Tom Giovanetti, Merrill Matthews

The 20th century saw the trial and error of a philosophy that privately-owned economic goods did not benefit the general public. However, the 21st century has begun with a new twist: Is the public harmed by private ownership of intellectual property goods? Fortunately, earlier and wiser voices were insightful enough to include intellectual property protection in some of the basic documents that the world looks to as pillars of civil society.

July 13, 2005

Price Indexing: The Undoing of Large Personal Retirement Accounts

by Tom Giovanetti, Peter Ferrara

Indexing Social Security benefits to the growth of prices is politically indefensible. Even with small personal accounts, price indexing would result in even lower returns for workers, and likely to lead to tax increases. A far better alternative are large personal accounts, which would make price indexing completely unnecessary. Such accounts would provide workers with much higher returns than under the current system, and restore Social Security to permanent solvency.

March 26, 2005

Sen. Graham Turns His Back on the Conservative Cause

by Tom Giovanetti

Sen. Graham is either unfamiliar with or willingly ignorant of this important work done by the Social Security Administration. He should spend a few hours studying it, or spend his time working on something else.

February 28, 2005

Design Principles For Strengthening Social Security Through Personal Accounts

by Lawrence A. Hunter, Tom Giovanetti

The public debate about Personal Retirement Accounts has been clouded by a smokescreen of false arguments from critics, and by a confusing array of options from reformers. Everything, it seems, is "on the table," except true Social Security reform based on personal accounts.

In an attempt to bring clarity and guidance to the debate, the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) submits these Design Principles for Social Security reform.

July 19, 2004

Social Security Personal Savings and Prosperity

by Tom Giovanetti

The Social Security Personal Savings and Prosperity Act of 2004 has been introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). The bill closely follows the proposal authored by IPI Senior Fellow Peter Ferrara, published by IPI in June of 2003. The bill's reforms would ultimately provide for a dramatic increase in the personal prosperity of working people in America. It would be the most sweeping change in America's social and economic policy since the New Deal.

September 20, 2003

The Social Security System: A Catastropic Problem, A Transforming Solution

by Tom Giovanetti

This is the PowerPoint presentation given by IPI president Tom Giovanetti on 9/20/2003 at Congressman Pete Sessions' town hall meeting on Social Security. Click on the link at top right that says "Full Text".

June 10, 2003

Equity Towards Excellence: A Proposed Framework for Funding Public Education in Texas

by Tom Giovanetti

Texas has an education problem, not just an education-funding problem. The current “Robin Hood” school finance system is but one fact of Texas’ education problem.

December 4, 2002

Perspective: A tech tool for future tyrants?

by Tom Giovanetti

It is a fact that the worst violators of Web site privacy policies are federal government Web sites. To those who say it will be impossible to use the database to violate the privacy of citizens, well, it's just a matter of who is sitting at the console.

August 28, 2002

Why Intellectual Property is Important

by Merrill Matthews, Tom Giovanetti

Although people often can get free use of someone’s intellectual property, that doesn’t make it right—or legal. Does it really hurt anyone? Is intellectual property really all that important?

Total Records: 737