Moochers and Looters

John Stossel  May 03, 2023

There's a socialist wave in Latin America. Mexico, Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil recently elected leftists. These politicians at least distance themselves from thugs like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, but all propose socialism-lite policies giving government more control over more people. Why don't people in Latin America learn from the mistakes of the past? Gloria Alvarez, a social media star from Guatemala, is running for president of her country to try to educate people about the damage socialism does.  People do need educating.

"It's like Stockholm syndrome," says Alvarez in my new video. "When you ask people, 'Who should take care of health, education, football, arts, whatever?' They always answer, 'government.' How are you going to not have corruption if you leave everything in the hands of the government?"..........People push for socialism because they don't study it."............One survey found that most millennials support socialism. But "when they were asked to define or describe socialism, none of them could!" says Alvarez. "They don't know socialism's massive failures.".....To Read More...

Scientific 'Integrity'

John Stossel Aug 24, 2022

"Trust the science," say the media. Polls show that fewer Americans do. There's good reason for that. "They don't trust science because science is increasingly untrustworthy," says science writer Andrew Follet in my new video. "The only group that trusts science right now is Democrats." Sixty-four percent of Democrats have "a great deal" of confidence in the scientific community, compared to 34% of Republicans.  Of course, true science -- using the scientific method -- is important. But that's not what much of "science" is these days.

Instead, today government science is misused by progressive politicians.

Example 1: Environmental activists want to limit commercial fishing. They want Congress to pass what they call the "Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act." It claims climate change is the "greatest threat to America's national security" and offers a dubious solution: close more of the ocean to commercial fishing.  The administration's deputy director of Climate, Jane Lubchenco, told Congress that a scientific paper concludes that closing more of the ocean can actually increase catches of fish.  Really? That doesn't seem logical.

It isn't. The paper was retracted. One scientist called its logic "biologically impossible.".......Follett blames this perversion of science on government. Its science agencies, like much of America, have been taken over by leftists hungry to promote themselves and their agenda...............To Read More...

My Take - This is a great piece until Stossel goes over the cliff calling it right wing junk science calling into question these false covid vaccines and global warming.  My comment on the post follows:

Saying vaccines don't work isn't right wing junk science, if these vaccines aren't really vaccines. The right only questions these false vaccines that's being pushed onto the world dealing with this covid virus and it's variants. They don't deliver immunization nor to they prevent transmission, which until now was a requirement for a drug to be called a vaccine. It's the left who attack legitimate vaccines that have worked for decades. Furthermore, anthropogenic climate change was the greatest scientific fraud ever perpetrated on humanity, at least until this fraudulent pandemic.

 

The Horrid Consequences of Rent Control

June 19, 2022 by Dan Mitchell@ International Liberty 

 

As John Stossel discusses in this new video, few economic policies are as insanely foolish as rent control.

As you saw in the video, supporters of rent control tend to be the cranks and crazies, such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

 

The vast majority of economists, by contrast, recognize that such policies undermine incentives to provide and maintain rental housing.

Who is going to invest in a new apartment complex, after all, if politicians impose laws that ensure it will be a money-losing project?

The video highlights what has recently happened in Minnesota.

I wrote about that mistake last year. Christian Britschgi of Reason also looked at what happened. Here are some excerpts from his column.

Another housing development in St. Paul, Minnesota, is on hold… The reason? St. Paul’s newly-passed rent control ordinance, which Alatus’ principals say is making their once-eager investors skittish about doing business in the city. …the policy has developed a rock bottom reputation among economists over the past few decades. They almost uniformly argued that capping rents deterred developers from building new homes, and discouraged landlords from taking care of the ones that already exist. The inevitable result is less, and less well-maintained, housing. …Rent control is always going to disincentivize housing construction.

I recommend reading the entire article, since it also discusses the pernicious impact of zoning laws.

Since we’re on the topic of rent control, here’s the abstract of a study published by the American Economic Review in 2019. Because the policy discourages construction of new units, Rebecca Diamond, Time McQuade, and Franklin Qian found rent control actually increases rents in the long run.

Using a 1994 law change, we exploit quasi-experimental variation in the assignment of rent control in San Francisco to study its impacts on tenants and landlords. Leveraging new data tracking individuals’ migration, we find rent control limits renters’ mobility by 20 percent and lowers displacement from San Francisco. Landlords treated by rent control reduce rental housing supplies by 15 percent by selling to owner-occupants and redeveloping buildings. Thus, while rent control prevents displacement of incumbent renters in the short run, the lost rental housing supply likely drove up market rents in the long run, ultimately undermining the goals of the law.

Rent control is bad for both landlords and renters.

 

But renters generally don’t understand the topic, which is why many of them support demagogic politicians pushing the policy.

The bottom line is that rent control is a form of price control. And we have centuries and centuries of evidence that such policies produce shortages and other forms of economic damage.

 

Capitalism Myths: Part 1

Get Off My Property!

John Stossel

Before dawn, dozens of union activists invaded a strawberry farm, shouting through bullhorns. This frightened workers and infuriated the farm's owner, Mike Fahner, who thought that in America, owning property means you have a right to control access to that property — your home is your castle, and all that.

Not in California, where politicians allow union organizers to raid farms.  "If I didn't allow them, I'm the one going to jail," says an outraged Fahner in my new video. "That is asinine."

The property invasion law's supporters say the United Farm Workers union deserves the exception to property rules because rich farmers abuse migrant workers.  I threw their argument at Fahner, who replied that it's absurd to say he abuses workers, because they keep coming back: "450 people travel 400 miles. ... Why in the world, if they were being abused, would they continue to return year after year?"

Because they don't know they have other options, says the union. They also don't know about their right to unionize, so unions must come onto farms to tell them about union benefits.  The union's predawn farm invasion didn't win over many of Fahner's employees. Fewer than 10% joined the union. Fahner already pays almost double California's minimum wage.

But the protests themselves impose a cost. He only has six weeks to harvest, pack, ship and process his strawberry plants. "If we miss that window, you destroy the fields."  In response to the farmers' complaints, California Deputy Attorney General Matthew Wise claimed, "Any access to the property is brief, unobtrusive..."

But the law allows union organizers to enter a farm three hours a day, up to 120 days a year. That's hardly "brief" or "unobtrusive." This week, Fahner and another business, Fowler Packing, challenged the law at the Supreme Court. I hope the Court sends a strong message to California's union-owned politicians: Get off people's private property!  In earlier court battles, Wise said the exception to private property rules is justified because "workers remain isolated ... from the flow of information that is characteristic of modern society."

But that's not true. Maybe it was true in 1975 when the law passed, but now there's the internet. And cellphones.  "Every person has a cellphone in their pocket," says Fahner "All have phones?" I ask. "Yes," Fahner replies. "They know how to communicate through Facebook and through Twitter, much better than most!"  Even if they didn't, the union could always approach workers after work at their motels.

"All those union people had access to (the motel rooms). They could knock on their door and talk to them about their agenda."  Plus, the union has two radio stations.  But it's much more fun to intimidate businesses with predawn protests.

California officials now argue that this Supreme Court case "threatens ... public health." Leftist media like Vox quickly agrees, claiming that denying access to farms "could endanger government functions like fire inspection and workplace safety."   But that's not true, says Fahner's pro-bono attorney from the Pacific Legal Foundation, Joshua Thompson. He points out that "Those types of routine government inspections are searching in a reasonable manner. What happened here is the government is taking our property... just giving that to a third party to come on to proselytize. To use bullhorns to intimidate."

I asked the United Farm Workers union for their side of the story. They didn't respond.  So, in my video, Fahner gets the last word.  

He uses it well, saying, "This is trespassing. You should be going to jail for doing this."

Myths of Socialism With John Stossel

Standing Up to the Mob

John Stossel Jan 20, 2021

Joe Biden says he'll "advance racial equity" by making "bold investments" in "Affordable Housing," aiding "businesses owned by Black and Brown people," establishing an "Equity Commission," etc.

Gosh, that'll do it.

Others demand reparations for slavery, more social programs and defunding the police.

Yet, economist Thomas Sowell says, "I haven't been able to find a single country in the world where policies advocated for Blacks in the United States lifted any people out of poverty."  Sowell's a Black man who grew up in poverty. His father died before he was born, and his mother died soon after.  "We were much poorer than the people in Harlem and most anywhere else today," he reflects. "But in the sense of things you need to get ahead, I was enormously more fortunate than most Black kids today."

That's because he discovered the public library. "When you start getting in the habit of reading when you're 8 years old, it's a different ballgame!"........... To Read More.....

 

Video of the Day

Progressive Policies Wreck Everything

John Stossel Jul 22, 2020 @ Townhall.Com

I laughed when I saw The Washington Post headline: "Minneapolis had progressive policies, but its economy still left black families behind."

The media are so clueless. Instead of "but," the headline should have said, "therefore," or "so, obviously."

Of course, progressive policies failed! They almost always do.

"If you wanted a poster child for the progressive movement, it would be Minneapolis," says Republican Minnesota Senate candidate Jason Lewis in my new video. "This is the same city council that voted to abolish the police department."

The council, which has no Republicans, spends taxpayer money on most every progressive idea.
They brag that they recycle most everything. They have a plan to stop climate change. They tell landlords to whom they must rent. They will force employers to pay every worker $15 an hour. They even tell supermarkets what cereal they must sell.

Despite such policies, meant to improve life for minorities and the poor, the Minneapolis income gap between whites and Blacks is the second-highest in the country.

While that surprises the media, it's no surprise to Lewis, who points out, "When you take away the incentive for work and savings and investment, you get less of it!"

Exactly. When the government sends checks to people who don't work, more people don't work. Guarantees like a high minimum wage raise the cost of potential workers, so some never get hired. High taxes to fund progressives' programs make it difficult for businesses to open in the first place.

Lewis says; " I've been touring businesses that were burned. They did not mention global warming, recycling or the environment one single time. You know what they say? Give me low taxes and give me public order."

Lewis says Minnesota is now a "command and control economy. ... They're not even shy about it. (Congresswoman) Ilhan Omar said we need to abolish capitalism!"

Not exactly. But Omar did call for "dismantling the whole system of oppression," including America's economic systems that, "prioritize profit."

Lewis says she wants to create "equal poverty for everybody."

No, I push back, "She thinks her ideas will lift everybody up."

"Show us, Ilhan," he responds. "Where has it worked? Everything that you're proposing hasn't worked!"

He's right.

But Cam Gordon, a current Minneapolis councilman, tells me the city's economic "disparities were caused by a long trail of historic racism."

He tweeted: "Time to end capitalism as we know it."

He says that would be good because "We could have more democratic control of our resources." Cam Gordon is the kind of guy who gets elected in Minneapolis.

"Every alternative to capitalism brings stagnation and poverty," I say to him.

Gordon answers, "I think we can take care of each other better."

Lewis points out that before COVID-19, "the people gaining the most were at the bottom end of the wage scale. Women, Hispanics, African Americans were gaining the most. A rising tide truly lifts all boats."

He's right again. In the past 50 years, while progressives attacked profits, capitalism -- the pursuit of profit -- lifted more than a (SET ITAL)billion(END ITAL) people out of extreme poverty.
When I point that out to Gordon, he simply ignores my point about fabulous progress around the world and says: "The problem with capitalism as we know it is this idea that we have to have constant growth. ... Capitalism got us the housing crisis right now and ... climate change. It's actually going to destroy the planet."

Sigh.

His Green Party's "community-based economics" would give the community control over private property. Seems to me like community-based economics is just another way to say socialism. That's brought poverty and tyranny every time it's been tried.

"When socialism fails," says Lewis, "the apologists always say, 'We just didn't do it enough, just didn't do it the right way.' (But) it's always failed."

Sadly, today in America, the progressives are winning.

Video of the Day!

Slum by the Bay

John Stossel Feb 07, 2019

San Francisco is one of the richest cities it the world. It's given us music, technology and elegant architecture.  Now it gives us filthy homeless encampments.  One urban planner told me, "I just returned from the Tenderloin (a section of San Francisco). It's worse than slums of India, Haiti, Africa!"  So I went to San Francisco to make a video about that.  I've never seen slums in Africa, but I've seen them in Haiti and India.

What I saw in San Francisco looked similar. As one local resident put it, "There's s--- everywhere. It's just a mess out here."  There's also lots of mental illness. One man told us, "Vampires are real. I'm paranoid as hell." San Francisco authorities mostly leave the mentally ill to fend for themselves on the street.

Other vagrants complain about them. "They make it bad for people like us that hang out with a sign," one beggar told us.  San Francisco is a pretty good place to "hang out with a sign." People are rarely arrested for vagrancy, aggressive panhandling or going to the bathroom in front of people's homes. In 2015, there were 60,491 complaints to police, but only 125 people were arrested..........To Read More....

The Seen vs. the Unseen

John Stossel  Jan 30, 2019

Sunday is the Super Bowl.

I look forward to playing poker and watching. It's easy to do both because in a three-hour-plus NFL game there are just 11 minutes of actual football action.  So we'll have plenty of time to watch Atlanta politicians take credit for the stadium that will host the game. Atlanta's former mayor calls it "simply the best facility in the world."  But politicians aren't likely to talk about what I explain in my latest video -- how taxpayers were forced to donate more than $700 million to the owner of Atlanta's football team, billionaire Arthur Blank, to get him to build the stadium.

In addition to the subsidies, the Falcons get all the money from parking, restaurants and merchandise sales. Sweet deal.........That's why economists who study stadium subsidies call them a bad deal for taxpayers............To Read More....  

Sweden Isn’t Socialist

John Stossel / @JohnStossel / January 04, 2019

 For years, I’ve heard American leftists say Sweden is proof that socialism works, that it doesn’t have to turn out as badly as the Soviet Union or Cuba or Venezuela did. But that’s not what Swedish historian Johan Norberg says in a new documentary and Stossel TV video.

“Sweden is not socialist—because the government doesn’t own the means of production. To see that, you have to go to Venezuela or Cuba or North Korea,” says Norberg. “We did have a period in the 1970s and 1980s when we had something that resembled socialism: a big government that taxed and spent heavily. And that’s the period in Swedish history when our economy was going south.”

Per capita gross domestic product fell. Sweden’s growth fell behind other countries. Inflation increased. Even socialistic Swedes complained about the high taxes.

Astrid Lindgren, author of the popular “Pippi Longstocking” children’s books, discovered that she was losing money by being popular. She had to pay a tax of 102 percent on any new book she sold. “She wrote this angry essay about a witch who was mean and vicious—but not as vicious as the Swedish tax authorities,” says Norberg.

Yet even those high taxes did not bring in enough money to fund Sweden’s big welfare state. “People couldn’t get the pension that they thought they depended on for the future,” recounts Norberg. “At that point the Swedish population just said, ‘Enough, we can’t do this.'”

Sweden then reduced government’s role. They cut public spending, privatized the national rail network, abolished certain government monopolies, eliminated inheritance taxes, and sold state-owned businesses like the maker of Absolut Vodka. They also reduced pension promises “so that it wasn’t as unsustainable,” adds Norberg.

As a result, says Norberg, his “impoverished peasant nation developed into one of the world’s richest countries.” .........To Read More.....

The College Scam

Liberty Gifts

John Stossel | Dec 12, 2018 @ Townhall.Com

Struggling to find gifts to get for loved ones? How about a book?  I just made a video about some books that shaped my thinking.

First, Friedrich Hayek's "Road to Serfdom" recounts how government trying to centrally plan an economy often leads to tyranny.

Government shouldn't intervene, wrote Hayek, because a free market, like a school of fish or a flock of birds, creates a spontaneous order. No central planner will allocate resources as efficiently as individuals do themselves. For arguing that, Hayek was ridiculed. But years later, even defenders of socialism conceded that he was right.

With "democratic socialism" newly popular and celebrities like Jim Carrey saying, "We have to say yes to socialism -- to the word and everything!" today is a great time to give "Road to Serfdom" to your socialist friends.

If only they'd read it...

Of course, "Road to Serfdom" is written in old-fashioned language that some people find tough going. A simpler, more America-focused book from which to learn about economics is Thomas Sowell's "Basic Economics."  Sowell writes in plain English, without graphs or equations. Not only will Sowell educate your socialist friends, he'll show Donald Trump fans why free trade is good.

Two even easier-to-read introductions to economics and free market philosophy are the cartoon-filled "Libertarianism for Beginners" by Todd Seavey and "Give Me a Break," written by an ignorant anti-business reporter (me) who finally discovered the benefits of markets.  But promoting those would be self-serving (Todd helps me write this column) so I won't even mention those fine books. I'll move on.

Prefer fiction?

How about "Animal Farm" for the animals in your family? George Orwell describes how farm animals revolt against an abusive human master -- only to end up ruled by new tyrants, the pigs.  "Animal Farm" was meant to be an allegory for the Russian revolution turning into Soviet tyranny, but it could just as easily apply to today's America if populists get their way.

Another fun read is Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." It's long -- more than a thousand pages -- but easy reading because the novel pulls you along, describing how cultural bias against capitalism and love of big government grows.  Rand depicts creeping government oppression so convincingly that it feels like she's describing America today.  Rand argues that government isn't just inefficient; it's evil because it violates property rights and tells people how to live their lives. Government is like a looter or burglar, she wrote.

Today's media, by contrast, call capitalists looters and burglars. Years ago, the media called the most successful of them "robber barons."  

A book by Burton W. Folsom, "Myth of the Robber Barons," debunks those myths. It explains that capitalists such as John D. Rockefeller and Cornelius Vanderbilt were neither robbers nor barons. They were not born rich, and they did not get rich by robbing people. They got rich by creating better things.  Rockefeller lowered the price of kerosene so much that it allowed poor people to read at night.  He probably even "saved the whales." That's because once Rockefeller made oil cheap, killing whales to get whale oil was no longer profitable. Bet your kids won't learn that in environmental studies class.  "Robber baron" Cornelius Vanderbilt didn't rob people. He made steamship travel faster and cheaper. It was jealous competitors who called him a "robber baron" because he charged lower prices than they did. The ignorant media picked up the term, and it stuck.

Finally, another great introduction to freedom is the book "Free to Choose," in which Milton and Rose Friedman explain how limiting government creates prosperity.  Friedman reportedly joked that if you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand.

In the TV series accompanying "Free to Choose" he argued, "We somehow or other have to find a way to prevent government from continuing to grow and continuing to take over more and more control over our lives."  Well, we've failed at that!  But at Stossel TV, we won't quit trying. Those books should help.

I hope my columns help a little bit, too. Happy holidays!

A Bridge to Sell You

John Stossel Oct 31, 2018

"Libertarians believe that you should be as conservative or as liberal as you want to be as long as you don't want to force yourself on others," says Larry Sharpe, Libertarian candidate for governor of New York.  Sharpe is an unusual Libertarian candidate because he's doing well in some polls.  One found Sharpe getting 13 percent, and after people heard his campaign pitch, 25 percent. That would put him in second place, ahead of the Republican.  So of course the establishment shuts him out -- he and other third-party candidates weren't allowed in the one gubernatorial debate.

Sharpe wins fans by arguing that it would be good if individuals make their own decisions without government spending constantly getting in the way..........To Read More.....

Shut Up, They Explain

John Stossel Oct 17, 2018

Gloria Alvarez, the young woman from Guatemala I wrote about last week, just got blocked by Facebook. Why? Because she criticizes socialism.

After Alvarez joined me in my American studio to make a video we titled "Socialism Fails Every Time," she flew to Mexico City to make a speech.

A few days later she wrote me that "some leftist 'students' posted on a fanpage called 'Marxist and Leninist Memes': 'BOYCOTT Gloria Alvarez in our University! We won't let her in!'".......To Read More......

Socialism Destroys

John Stossel Oct 10, 2018

 

Socialism is hot.

Famous actors recently made a commercial proclaiming that "democratic socialism" creates some of the best parts of America. It's "your kids' public school" (says Susan Sarandon), the "interstate highway system" (Rosario Dawson), "public libraries" (Jay Ferguson), "EMTs" (Ethan Embry), "workers who plow our streets" (Max Carver) and "scientists" (Danny DeVito).

Wow. I guess every popular thing government does is socialism.

The celebrities conclude: "We can do better when we do them together."

There is sometimes truth to that, but the movie stars don't know that America's first highways were built by capitalist contractors. They also probably didn't notice that the more popular parts of government -- public schools, EMTs, snow plowing, libraries, etc. -- are largely locally funded.
"They should wake up," says Gloria Alvarez. She is from Guatemala and says, "I've seen the impact of socialism. My father escaped Cuba. My grandfather suffered under Communists in Hungary before escaping."

This week I turn my video channel over to Alvarez so she can give her perspective on democratic socialism's new popularity...........To Read More....

 

Feel the Bern: Venezuela's Socialist Paradise with John Stossel

Thanksgiving Tragedy

By John Stossel November 23, 2016

Tomorrow, as you celebrate the meal the Pilgrims ate with Indians, pause a moment to thank private property.    

I know that seems weird, but before that first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims nearly starved to death because they didn't respect private property.  When they first arrived in Massachusetts, they acted like Bernie Sanders wants us to act. They farmed "collectively." Pilgrims said, "We'll grow food together and divide the harvest equally."  Bad idea. Economists call this the "tragedy of the commons." When everyone works "together," some people don't work very hard.     Likewise, when the crops were ready to eat, some grabbed extra food -- sometimes picking corn at night, before it was fully ready. Teenagers were especially lazy and likely to steal the commune's crops.   

Pilgrims almost starved. Governor Bradford wrote in his diary, "So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could ... that they might not still thus languish in misery."   

His answer: He divided the commune into parcels and assigned each Pilgrim his own property, or as Bradford put it, "set corn every man for his own particular. ... Assigned every family a parcel of land."  That simple change brought the Pilgrims so much plenty that they could share food with Indians. Bradford wrote that it "made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been."......To Read More.... 

My Take - Some added information sent to me by Maury and Dog.  The Puritans landed in 1620 with 132 people.  By fall of 1621 only 53 were left alive.  But, they had a harvest, but didn't thrive until they accepted the foundation of capitalism - personal ownership of land, personal responsibility and personal profit!  Personal profit isn't a dirty word it's the foundation for across the board wealth accumulation for society as a whole.

By 1640 there were 11,000 people living in what's now the New England region.

As would be expected with that sort of wealth creation and success, New England flourished, and was a key component of the 13 colonies.  It was a society of based on individual farmers and families working their own land.

The Jamestown colony formed in 1607.  According to Richard Maybury - Within 12 months over half would be dead.  As a result of their socialist concepts, "most of the work was being done by only one-fifth of the men, the other four-fifths choosing to be parasites." "In the winter of 1609/1610, called "The Starving Time" the population fell from 500 to 60."  The Virginia colony had 8000 people land there between 1607 and 1625 with a 15% survival rate. 

So, what drove people to keep coming?  Religious conflict and instability in England as well as the rest of Europe.  Also, Spain's exploitation of the New World gave them unprecedented economic power in Europe and it was realized the vast majority of the New World was untouched - the potential for riches was obvious in "fisheries, timber, furs and expanses of fertile soil."  Not the easy wealth of mineral resources, but wealth that could only be developed by real colonization and hard work.  Long term wealth and power.

But once they all abandoned the insanity of socialism and adopted capitalism they thrived beyond their dreams."In 1614, [Virginia] Colony Secretary Ralph Hamor wrote that after the switch, there was "plenty of food, which every man by his own industry may easily and doth procure." He said that when the socialist system had prevailed, "we reaped not so much corn from the labors of 30 men as three men have done for themselves now."

So the most important meal officially celebrated in America is a toast to capitalism, individual ownership of land, and personal industriousness - and an absolute repudiation of leftism in all it's manifestations.  Truth is the sublime convergence of history and reality.