Madoff's scam was small compared to Ponzi schemes the government itself runs: Social Security and Medicare.
John StosselWhat private property does is connect effort to reward, creating an incentive for people to produce for more. Then, if there's a free market, people will trade their surpluses to others for the things they lack. Mutual exchange for mutual benefit makes the community richer.
John StosselI saw how the regulation I called for made things worse, didn't help consumers and simple competition was better. And I started praising business and occasionally criticizing regulation.
John Stossel'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.
John StosselAny money the government spends must be taxed, borrowed or conjured out of thin air by the Federal Reserve, and that will reduce sound private investment. Obama has no real wealth to inject into the economy. He can only move around existing money while inflation robs us of purchasing power. Meanwhile, private investors who might have produced a better engine, battery, computer, cancer treatment or other wealth-creating and life-enhancing innovations hold back for fear that big government will undermine productive efforts.
John StosselWe like to think we're superior to the people who, centuries ago, burned 'witches' for no better reason than a neighbor's belief that his crop failure or impotence was caused by that woman's action. But reporters are still prone to the same mental errors that caused these killings: seeing patterns where there are none, finding causes where there is only coincidence, ignoring our sources' political agendas and turning scanty evidence into panic.
John StosselA handful of people who probably never even ran a small business actually think they can reinvent the health care system.
John StosselCentral authority is bad. The bias should be for freedom. And without a central authority, there are lots of little authorities, and we learn which ones to trust.
John StosselThe political class can't imagine a decentralized world where good things happen...without them. But in the real world, that's exactly how good things happen, and how jobs are created. When government sets simple rules that everyone understands and then gets out of the way, free people create jobs.
John StosselProsperity comes from leaving people free in a legal system that respects their persons and property so they can pursue their dreams while taking responsibility for their actions.
John Stossel..the real world's all we've got. Believers in the supernatural claim to have special wisdom about the world. But real wisdom means knowing truth from falsehood, knowing the difference between evidence and wishful thinking. Yes, the real world is mysterious and sometimes frightening. But would the supernatural make it better? The real world has beauty, poetry, love and the joy of honest discovery. Isn't that enough?
John StosselFreedom works, and government, when it grows beyond the barest minimum, keeps people poor.
John StosselThe 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.
John StosselWhat happened under communism - and increasingly, is happening in America, as Joseph Sobran put it: 'Need' now means wanting someone else's money. 'Greed' means wanting to keep your own. 'Compassion' is when a politician arranges the transfer.'
John StosselIf individuals can take from a common pot regardless of how much they put in it, each person has an incentive to be a free rider, to do as little as possible and take as much as possible because what one fails to take will be taken by someone else.
John StosselWe have all kinds of government compensation systems that are much more efficient than the lawyers.
John StosselLiberalism 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.
John StosselCurrent government regulation interferes with honest voluntary exchanges by imposing arbitrary terms and requiring tons of paperwork disclosing information no one wants anyway.
John StosselWell, who is more likely to volunteer to take a job in a bureaucracy that has little to recommend it except that it gives you the power to use government force to control the lives of others? A dispassionate scientist or a zealot? In government, the zealots eventually take over.
John StosselGovernment is so big today that more than half the population gets a major part of its income from the state.
John StosselDavid Boaz has been my guide to the history, economics, and politics of freedom for years.
John StosselGive me a break - They say taxes are inevitable, like death. At least death doesn't come every year.
John StosselPatrick Henry did not say, 'Give me absolutely safety or give me death.' America is supposed to be about freedom.
John StosselA thousand restaurants close every month. They re-open, and that's good for America. Nobody's rescuing them. They employ people, too. If we let them go bankrupt, the factories don't go away, the creative people don't go away. They get employed more productively by others.
John StosselPeople 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.
John Stossel