stossel
John Stossel
John Stossel is host of “Stossel” on the Fox Business Network. He’s the author of “Give Me a Break” and of “Myth, Lies, and Downright …Read More
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Making life fair in today’s society
When my wife was a liberal, she complained that libertarian reasoning is coldhearted. Since markets produce winners and losers — and many losers did nothing wrong — market competition is cruel. It must seem so. President Obama used the word “fair” in his last State …Read More
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Creating a risk-free world
A child leaving home alone for the first time takes a risk. So does the entrepreneur who opens a new business. I no more want government to prevent us from doing these things than I want it to keep us in padded cells. Everyone has …Read More
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Keeping nature exactly as is ... forever
The human brain is torn between simple intuition and the more complex hard work of figuring out the unintended consequences of any policy. Who doesn’t like thinking about trees and greenery and happy animals? Who doesn’t want to see steps taken to protect those things, …Read More
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The assault on food
Instinct tells us to fear poison. If our ancestors were not cautious about what they put in their mouths, they would not have survived long enough to produce us. Unfortunately, a side effect of that cautious impulse is that whenever someone claims that some chemical …
The economy needs no conductor
We spend too much time waiting for orders — and money — from Washington. The collapse of the housing bubble gave politicians a license to do what they wanted to do all along: spend. The usual checks on extravagance, weak as they are, were washed …
Can our government do anything well?
I’m suspicious of superstitions, like astrology or the belief that “green jobs will fix the environment and the economy.” I understand the appeal of such beliefs. People crave simple answers and want to believe that some higher power determines our fates. The most socially destructive …
Let’s give the Fed some competition
Pssst. Want to buy some Stossels? They’re my own currency with my face on them. Why should you trust them? Because I promise to redeem them for gold. And I’m reliable. I have money in the bank and a job that brings in more than …
Job killers
Politicians say they “create jobs.” In fact, only the private sector generates the information needed to create real, productive jobs. Since this current post-recession job recovery is the slowest in 80 years, you’d think that even know-it-all politicians would want to sweep away the labyrinth …
What is fair?
President Obama says he want to make society more fair. Advocates of big government believe fairness means taking from rich people and giving to others: poor people; or people who do things politicians approve of, like making “green” energy equipment (Solyndra); or old people (even …
Complex societies need simple laws
“If you have 10,000 regulations,” Winston Churchill said, “you destroy all respect for law.” He was right. But Churchill never imagined a government that would add 10,000 year after year. That’s what we have in America. We have 160,000 pages of rules from the feds …
Vulture capitalism
Now that Mitt Romney is likely to be the Republican nominee, we can expect new attacks on his “vulture capitalism.” That’s how Rick Perry characterized his private equity work. Newt Gingrich’s supporters ran an ad about Romney’s firm, Bain Capital, that said, “Their greed was …
Prohibition
Unlike Bill Clinton, President Obama admits he inhaled!. “Frequently,” he said. “That was the point.” People laugh when politicians talk about their drug use. The audience laughed during a 2003 CNN Democratic presidential primary debate when John Kerry, John Edwards and Howard Dean admitted smoking …
Politicians fiddle as fiscal crisis looms
Imagine this family budget: Last year, you earned $24,700. But you spent $37,900, incurring $13,300 in debt, and you were already $153,500 in debt. So you say, “I promise I’ll spend $300 less this year!” Anyone can see that your cutback is pathetic and that …
Never trust government numbers
President Obama said in his State of the Union speech, “We’ve already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings.” That was reassuring. The new budget he released last week promises $4 trillion in “deficit reduction” — about half in tax increases and …
Government can’t make us happy
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson called the pursuit of happiness an unalienable right. This was a radical idea. For most of history, most people didn’t think much about pursuing happiness. They were too busy just trying to survive. Then came the liberal revolution …
Cut military might
With an election approaching and at least some Americans upset about irresponsible spending, the president has finally expressed a political interest in cutting something. He says the Pentagon will spend “only” $525 billion next year. That’s slightly less than the current $531 billion. A cut …
The real state of the union
Has Barack Obama learned nothing in three years? During his State of the Union address, he promised “a blueprint for an economy.” But economies are crushed by blueprints. An economy is really nothing more than people participating in an unfathomably complex spontaneous network of exchanges …
Champions of freedom
It’s election season, and so once again people look for heroes. Is Ron Paul one? Maybe. He’s fought a long, lonely battle to limit the power of government. As government grows, I yearn for champions of freedom who fight back. Rep. Paul has done that. …
Ideas have sex, and we’re better for it
An idea walks into a bar. She meets another idea. They get together, and nine months later (or maybe it’s nine minutes or seconds? It’s not clear how it works with ideas), a new idea is born. A baby idea with the best traits of …
A Libertarian year ahead?
As 2011 was drawing to a close, I wondered: Is freedom winning? Did America become freer this year? Less free? How about the rest of the world? I’m a pessimist. I fear Thomas Jefferson was right when he said, “The natural progress of things is …
