John Stossel on Where'd the Jobs Go?

Via realclearpolitics.com:

Why isn't the economy recovering? After previous recessions, unemployment didn't get stuck at close to 10 percent. If left alone, the economy can and does heal itself, as the mistakes of the previous inflationary boom are corrected.

The problem today is that the economy is not being left alone. Instead, it is haunted by uncertainty on a hundred fronts. When rules are unintelligible and unpredictable, when new workers are potential threats because of Labor Department regulations, businesses have little confidence to hire. President Obama's vaunted legislative record not only left entrepreneurs with the burden of bigger government, it also makes it impossible for them to accurately estimate the new burden.

You will find the whole thing at this link.

We had better all hope that the American people walk into the polling stations this November and start the process of halting and reversing the economy-killing insanity that began with the passage of TARP and has only accelerated since.

We are running out of both chances as well as time to keep the good ship America from rolling over for good, as it is now listing perilously close to the tipping point.

John Stossel Laments Our Trip Down the Road to Serfdom

February 10, 2010

Increasing Government Power Threatens Freedom

By John Stossel

Government is taking us a long way down the Road to Serfdom. That doesn't just mean that more of us must work for the government. It means that we are changing from independent, self-responsible people into a submissive flock. The welfare state kills the creative spirit.

F.A. Hayek, an Austrian economist living in Britain, wrote "The Road to Serfdom" in 1944 as a warning that central economic planning would extinguish freedom. The book was a hit. Reader's Digest produced a condensed version that sold 5 million copies.

Hayek meant that governments can't plan economies without planning people's lives. After all, an economy is just individuals engaging in exchanges. The scientific-sounding language of President Obama's economic planning hides the fact that people must shelve their own plans in favor of government's single plan.

At the beginning of "The Road to Serfdom," Hayek acknowledges that mere material wealth is not all that's at stake when the government controls our lives: "The most important change ... is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people."

This shouldn't be controversial. If government relieves us of the responsibility of living by bailing us out, character will atrophy. The welfare state, however good its intentions of creating material equality, can't help but make us dependent. That changes the psychology of society.

I'll explore this tomorrow night on my Fox Business show, 8 p.m. Eastern (rebroadcast Friday at 10 p.m.).

According to the Tax Foundation, 60 percent of the population now gets more in government benefits than it pays in taxes. What does it say about a society in which more than half the people live at the expense of the rest? Worse, the dependent class is growing. The 60 percent will soon be 70 percent.

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin seems to understand the threat: He worries that "more people have a stake in the welfare state than in free enterprise. This is a road that Hayek perfectly described as 'the road to serfdom.'" (Tomorrow I will ask Ryan why, if he understands this, he voted for TARP and the auto bailouts.)

Kurt Vonnegut understood the threat of government-imposed equality. His short story "Harrison Bergeron" portrays a future in which no one is permitted to have any physical or intellectual advantage over anyone else. A government Handicapper General weighs down the strong and agile, masks the faces of the beautiful and distracts the smart.

So far, the Handicapper General is just fantasy. But Vice President Joe Biden did shout at the Democratic National Convention: "Everyone is your equal, and everyone is equal to you." If he meant that we're all equal in rights and before the law, fine. If he meant government shouldn't put barriers in the way of opportunity, great. But statists like Biden usually have more in mind: They want government to make results more equal.

Two actual examples of the lunacy:

When colleges innovated by having students use Kindle e-book readers instead of expensive textbooks, the Justice Department sued them, complaining that the Kindle discriminates against blind students. The department also is suing the Massachusetts prison system because it makes prospective prison guards take a physical test. Since women don't do as well as men on that test, Justice claims the test discriminates against women.

Arthur Brooks, who heads the American Enterprise Institute, says statism is becoming the "central organizing power in our economy," and that the battle between free enterprise and statism will shape our futures. He remains optimistic because a recent poll showed that 70 percent of Americans want free enterprise. I'm less sanguine. In that same poll, 54 percent of Americans said government should exert more control over the economy. Brooks discounts that, claiming people forget their "core values" during crises.

But he asks the right question: Do we want a culture of takers or makers? Ryan and Brooks say most people want "the American idea": freedom and self-responsibility. I fear they want a Mommy State to take care of them. What do you think?

The choice is crucial. If we continue down the Road to Serfdom, our destination will be a poorer society, high unemployment, stagnation and complacency.

Copyright 2010, Creators Syndicate Inc.

Note: The above John Stossel article was originally posted here.

John Stossel Calls BS on Bailout

Unless you have been lost in a Peruvian rainstorm, or have been hiding in a closet under a blanket for the last month or so, you are aware that this nation is in the midst of a financial crisis that, according to many, if not handled correctly by our government, could very well result in a deep recession, if not an out-right depression. Others have said it could lead to a world-wide financial collapse. Dear me.

A little over one week ago, our congressional representatives (affectionately known around here as congress-critters) in the U. S. House of Representatives, with help from some well-heeled Wall Street financial types, came up with an unprecedented government bailout bill. This plan, which was going to sock it to us hapless taxpayers for $700 billion, was hastily thrown together and put up for a vote in the House.

The legislation, which comprised all of three pages, went down in flames after a House vote, with a sizable number of representatives from both parties treating as if it had the Plague and running for the proverbial tall grass.

In the short run up to the House vote, mass outrage poured forth on the part of the American people, who were not at all pleased with the idea of footing the bill for a $700 billion bailout, and who were not exactly shy about letting their representatives know of their displeasure.

However, undaunted, and apparently deaf-as-a-post, the U.S. Senate went to work on its own version of the bill, and eventually hammered out a deal they insisted would be more palatable than the three page version that had failed to pass muster over in the House.

What they eventually came up with was 450-plus pages worth of government giveaway goodies, dripping with enough pork fat to make Emeril Lagasse positively swoon. This version, promptly re-packaged as a "rescue bill," sailed right through the Senate with nary an audible whimper, and was promptly rushed over to the House.

There it easily won passage, despite the congressional phone lines and email servers that were no doubt putting out enough blue smoke from us irate voters slamming them 24/7, that Chinese spy-satellites could probably make it out.

With the ink probably still wet from whatever stamp of approval the House hurriedly affixed to it, the finished product was rushed right over to be signed into law by a very eager President George W. Bush, and before you could say "Hey, wait a second, here..." Boom! it was the law of the land.

It has now been over a week since the "The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008" was passed and immediately signed into law, in what I can only say must have been record time.

After all, our economic underpinnings were on the line! Millions would be out of work! It would be soup lines for all!

Or so we were told.

As most of you even partially plugged in to the the goings-on within the MSM (Main Stream Media) are probably aware, journalism, in the traditional sense, is deader than a doornail. What now passes for this once proud profession has, in recent years, degenerated into nothing more than a support mechanism for socialism. Sadly, for those of us who value freedom, the MSM has embraced a political philosophy that is decidedly unfriendly to the concepts of individual liberty, and freedom in general.

One notable exception is John Stossel, who bucks this unfortunate trend in a big way over at ABC. Needless to say, his approach is decidedly different than what now passes for the norm in his profession, so much so that I am truly amazed that ABC hasn't kicked him out the door.

Mr. Stossel has weighed in with his thoughts on the so-called government bailout. As he is probably the closest thing to a libertarian as one will find in the MSM, I have been waiting to hear what he has to say on the matter.

He, like me, feels it would have been better if the government essentially backed away and allowed the free market to take care of itself.

The idea that the very same government that helped get us into this mess to begin with, was somehow going to magically fix thirty years of government mismanagement in a three day period has seemed a little suspicious to me.

My impression is that we have just witnessed a heretofore unseen transfer of the reins of our entire financial system over to the federal government.

I am not really sure the government is going to hand them back.

Ever.