David Bahnsen on AI, Tariffs, and the Moral Case for Capitalism

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Meet David L. Bahnsen—the dividend evangelist with a $7 billion pulpit. He’s the Founder, Managing Partner, and Chief Investment Officer of The Bahnsen Group, a national private wealth firm with coast-to-coast offices from Newport Beach and New York City to Nashville, Austin, Phoenix, and beyond. If you follow markets, you’ve seen him: a perennial Barron’s/Forbes/Financial Times Top Advisor, and a frequent voice on CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox News, and Fox Business. He also pens the sharp weekly macro note Dividend Cafe , hosts the free-enterprise podcast Capital Record, and serves on the boards of the Acton Institute, National Review, and Hightower Advisors. Before launching The Bahnsen Group, he logged time at Morgan Stanley and UBS and has authored four books, including There's No Free Lunch : 250 Economic Truths and Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life. Translation: when Bahnsen talks dividends, policy, and the moral case for markets, serious investors listen—and subscribers should, too.

In this Capital & Power episode with AINvest’s Adam Shapiro, Bahnsen ranges from first principles to portfolio construction, with quotable moments throughout. The opening frames the stakes: the interviewer cites Bahnsen’s own line from There’s No Free Lunch—“it is far too easy to lose passion for that which has enabled our abundance and prosperity when we are so engulfed in the blessings of our abundance and prosperity.” Bahnsen ties it to Smith and Schumpeter, noting, “I think that there is a sense where what is embedded into the blessings of free enterprise are the very things that sometimes can undermine it.” Markets work so well they become invisible—until they don’t.

Policy and politics come next, with New York’s ideological crosscurrents as case study. Bahnsen is clear on how to engage skeptical or younger voters: acknowledge shared ends, then argue means. Many debates, he says, have been “adjudicated by reality.” On the candidate in question, he separates sincerity from soundness: “Mamdani seems to me to be a real believer.” The problem? “He’s a real believer in very bad ideas.” His solution is persuasion, not dunks—win on the record of socialism and on the moral case for free enterprise.

That moral case is a through-line. Bahnsen rejects turning markets into an idol even as he defends them fiercely on human grounds: “We care about economic growth because we care for the human person and the human person can flourish when they are free to grow and prosper. What optimizes this aim is my desire and what impedes this aim is my enemy.” He roots it in first things—“I do like every person have a belief system that governs the way I live my life… The first one is thou shalt have no other gods before me”—and extends it to business reality: “All return on capital is a byproduct of human action.” The spreadsheet measures outcomes; human agency creates them.

Investors will love the nuts-and-bolts. Bahnsen describes his team’s toolkit frankly: “we use technology to create more efficiencies around what we believe to be human processes… I believe in the process of human wisdom and adjudication in interpreting data to make good decisions.” The flagship strategy? Concentrated, in-house Dividend Growth Equity: “we have about 4.2 billion of our 8.1 billion in what we refer to as dividend growth equity, and we manage it entirely in-house,” with 25–35 names “on the basis of their ability to sustain a growing dividend.” Management intent matters as much as metrics; he flags the telltale signs of a “begrudging” dividend culture and why that’s a risk to durability.

On today’s market manias, he’s candid. Crypto? “I don't consider it an asset class and so I don't have anything constructive to say. I don't allocate whatsoever to it.” As a fiduciary: “I do not invest where there's no internal rate of return. I cannot value it… any speculation can be profitable, but I have no interest in doing it as a fiduciary.” AI? Expect disruption, dispersion, and a valuation sorting hat. “I really do believe the late 90s internet analogy is useful… everybody got right that the internet was gonna change the world and almost everybody got wrong how it did.” The portfolio test is practical: “The AI thing can't be huge if it isn't benefiting the 32 companies we own.”

Macro watchers get a sober dashboard. Bahnsen sees a fragile equilibrium—“I think that we're in a very vulnerable place with a lot of uncertainty”—with the labor market as keystone. Tariffs worry him not only for CPI optics but for profits, capex, and jobs: “If corporate profits decline because of tariffs… out of declining corporate profits, you get declining wage growth, declining jobs, declining capital investment. I'm sorry, nobody's gonna like how that plays out.” He’s monitoring foreign flows—still strong, but pivotal to productivity and multiples—and warns that modest pullbacks can have outsized macro effects.

The conversation also hits state intervention, from equity stakes to sovereign-fund flirtations. “I agree with you 100%… I wrote a whole issue about separation of business and state as to why I think that Intel deal, both literally, but even worse symbolically, does represent a real concern.” The principle is simple: “Capital has an incredibly efficient and rational process by which it finds its most efficient use.”

The close brings it back to purpose. What drives him? “I believe what motivates me every day is my God-given capacity for productivity, that I want to be a faithful servant and make the best of what God's given me.” On envy economics: “people go through their lives thinking that the world runs on greed, but it doesn't run on greed, it runs on envy.” And the parting challenge: “everyone needs to question what their standard is by which we think about these great questions in life.”

If you want a playbook that blends dividends, discipline, and first principles—with quotable clarity and zero gimmicks—press play.