John Stossel
John Stossel
John Frank Stosselis an American consumer television personality, author, and libertarian pundit. In October 2009, Stossel left his long-time employment at ABC News to join the Fox Business Channel and Fox News Channel. He is the host of a weekly news show on Fox Business, Stossel, which was first broadcast on December 10, 2009. Stossel also regularly provides analysis, appearing on various Fox News programs, which include weekly appearances on The O'Reilly Factor. He also writes a Fox News Blog,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth6 March 1947
CountryUnited States of America
Unions say, 'Education of the children is too important to be left to the vagaries of the market.' The opposite is true. Education is too important to be left to the calcified union/government monopoly.
Liberalism had come to mean spending more on everything-speech police, failed poverty programs that reward dependence, a bigger nanny state telling us we cannot eat fatty foods, workplace roles that stifle opportunity, and absurd environmental regulations.
Government is so big today that more than half the population gets a major part of its income from the state.
Saying that government is not the way to solve problems is not saying that humanity cannot solve its problems. What I've finally learned is this: Despite the obstacles created by governments, voluntary networks of private individuals - through voluntary exchange - solve all sorts of challenges.
People vastly overestimate the ability of central planners to improve on the independent action of diverse individuals. What I've learned watching regulators is that they almost always make things worse. If regulators did nothing, the self-correcting mechanisms of the market would mitigate most problems with more finesse. And less cost.
The theory of government I was taught says that government provides benefits, primarily security, to the entire population. In return we pay taxes. But lately the government has been a distributor of special privileges, taking money from some and giving it to others. America is now about evenly split between those who pay income taxes and those who consume them.
The one thing I've learned is that stuttering in public is never as bad as I fear it will be.
The welfare state has done to Black Americans what slavery (and Jim Crow and racism) could not have done. . .break up the black family. Today, just slightly over 30 percent of black kids live in two-parent families. Historically, from the 1870s on. . . 75-90 percent of black kids lived in two-parent families.
To finance 'entitlement' programs, the government threatens force against the taxpayers who provide the money. Why are people who favor compulsion called humanitarians, while those who favor freedom are stigmatized as greedy?
The happiest stutterers, I learned, are those who are willing to stutter in front of others.
The market performs miracles so routinely that we take it for granted. Supermarkets provide 30,000 choices at rock-bottom prices. We take it for granted that when we stick a piece of plastic in a wall, cash will come out; that when we give the same plastic to a stranger, he will rent us a car, and the next month, VISA will have the accounting correct to the penny. By contrast, 'experts' in government can't even count the vote accurately.
Nothing keeps a company honest and efficient like the threat of other companies coming along and taking its business away.
Fraud will always exist. Enforcement of anti-fraud laws is a useful deterrent, but in the end there's no substitute for investor vigilance. Government regulations provide a false sense of security - and that's worth less than no sense of security at all.
'Live and let life' used to be a noble approach to life. Now you're considered compassionate if you demand that government impose your preferences on others.