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.
John StosselGovernment has no wealth of its own. Before it gives anything to anyone, it must take from those who produced it.
John StosselI was bullied as a kid, and I got a job on television. And I had a camera. And so I wanted to go after those business bullies. And I just have been following that instinct.
John StosselCompetition leads both drug companies and private regulators to be trustworthy. If they are not trustworthy, they die.
John StosselTo 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?
John StosselMany people are priced out of the medical and insurance markets for one reason: the politicians refusal to give up power. Allowing them to seize another 16 percent of the economy won't solve our problems. Freedom will.
John StosselThe one thing I've learned is that stuttering in public is never as bad as I fear it will be.
John StosselI had to watch government fail for 25 years doing consumer reporting before I really saw it because intuitively, the reaction is problem, bring government and government will make it better.
John StosselThe people who have the biggest passion for restricting other people's behavior are the very people we should worry about most. Unfortunately, they keep running for office.
John StosselIt’s not about electing the right people. It’s about a narrowing their responsibilities.
John StosselAs coercive monopolies that spend other people's money taken by force, governments are uniquely unqualified to solve problems. They are riddled by ignorance, perverse incentives, incompetence and are self-serving.
John StosselA system that rewards politicians skilled at campaigning - which is the art of creating an illusion - and that puts hundreds of billions of coerced taxpayer dollars at the disposal of the winners will tend to attract men and women with a comparative advantage in manipulation.
John StosselWhere I live in Manhattan and where I work at ABC, people say conservative the way people say child molester.
John StosselFraud 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.
John StosselIf government were less important in our lives, politicians would have fewer goodies to trade. In return, we'd have more money and more freedom.
John StosselMost people are oblivious to F.A. Hayek's insight that the critical information needed to run an economy - or even 15 percent of one - doesn't exist in any one place where it is accessible to central planners. Instead, it is scattered piecemeal among millions of people. All those people put together are far wiser and better informed than Congress could ever be. Only markets - private property, free exchange and the price system - can put this knowledge at the disposal of entrepreneurs and consumers, ensuring the system will serve the people and not just the political class.
John Stossel[T]he only way to shrink the trade deficit is for the government to prohibit us from buying whatever we want.
John StosselLiving with the liberals, you get to hear their arguments, fight with them all the time. Keeps me alert.
John StosselWhat I've learned in 40 years of consumer reporting is that the market is imperfect, and some people get ripped off.
John StosselSaying 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.
John StosselWhen entrepreneurs are free to compete, they grow the pie so that everyone's share gets larger.
John StosselYou can either invade a country or leave them alone and trade with them. When goods cross borders, armies don't.
John StosselGovernment has no money of its own. All it does is take resources from one group and given them to another.
John StosselThe happiest stutterers, I learned, are those who are willing to stutter in front of others.
John StosselPoliticians and bureaucrats clearly have no idea how complicated markets are. Every day people make countless tradeoffs, in all areas of life, based on subjective value judgements and personal information as they delicately balance their interests, needs and wants. Who is in a better position than they to tailor those choices to best serve their purposes? Yet the politicians believe they can plan the medical market the way you plan a birthday party.
John StosselAsking someone in the media about liberal bias is like asking a fish about water. 'Huh, what are you talking about? Where is it?'
John StosselUnions 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.
John StosselI'm an American. I'm for prosperity. I've discovered, from 40 years of reporting, that what creates prosperity is limited government.
John StosselPeople acting in their own self-interest is the fuel for all the discovery, innovation, and prosperity that powers the world.
John StosselThe 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.
John StosselWhy, in our "free" country, do Americans meekly stand aside and let the state limit our choices, even when we are dying?
John StosselNothing keeps a company honest and efficient like the threat of other companies coming along and taking its business away.
John StosselI'm a little embarrassed about how long it took me to see the folly of most government intervention. It was probably 15 years before I really woke up to the fact that almost everything government attempts to do, it makes worse.
John StosselWhat would you think of a person who earned $24,000 a year but spent $35,000? Suppose on top of that, he was already $170,000 in debt. You'd tell him to get his act together - stop spending so much or he'd destroy his family, impoverish his kids and wreck their future. Of course, no individual could live so irresponsibly for long. But tack on eight more zeroes to that budget and you have the checkbook for our out-of-control, big-spending federal government.
John Stossel