On Monday, I received a rather curious notification on Facebook. A friend alerted me that when she tried to share a recent article of mine, the social media site automatically blurred the accompanying image, replacing it with the ominous declaration that the link contained "false information checked by independent fact-checkers."
The article in question was this one: "The Study That Convinced the CDC To Support Mask Mandates in Schools Is Junk Science." As the Reason Roundup daily newsletter (subscribe today!), it contained information on several other subjects as well, but Facebook made matters fairly clear that the fact-checkers were taking issue with the part about masks in schools. Attempting to share the article on Facebook prompted a warning message to appear: This message redirected to an article by Science Feedback, an official Facebook fact-checking organization, which asserted that "masking can help limit transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in schools" and it was false to say that "there's no science behind masks on kids."
Since I had never made this claim, it was odd to see it fact-checked. Indeed, the purveyor of false information here was Science Feedback, which had given people the erroneous impression that my article said something other than what I had actually written.
The source for the article was a recent piece from The Atlantic's David Zweig. My claims were not really unique at all; rather, I had summarized impressive, original research performed by Zweig that demonstrated that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had relied on a flawed study to conclude the school mask mandates were beneficial.
"Masks may well help prevent the spread of COVID, [some experts] told me, and there may well be contexts in which they should be required in schools," wrote Zweig. "But the data being touted by the CDC—which showed a dramatic more-than-tripling of risk for unmasked students—ought to be excluded from this debate."
According to Zweig, the study in question—which was conducted in Arizona—had all sorts of problems. Researchers did not verify that the schools comprising the data set were even open during the time period in question; they ignored important factors like varying vaccination rates; and they counted outbreaks instead of cases. The study's subsequent finding—that schools without mask mandates had far worse COVID-19 outcomes than schools with mask mandates—should not have been so readily believed by the nation's top pandemic policy makers.
That's it. Neither Zweig's article nor mine makes the claim that masks don't work on kids, or that masks fail to limit transmission in schools. Both addressed a single study that concerned mask mandates.
Intriguingly, Zweig's article did not receive the same "false information" label. When I attempted to share it on Facebook, I received no warning. My Reason article, on the other hand, generated the following disclaimer from the social media site: "Pages and websites that repeatedly publish or share false news will see their overall distribution reduced and be restricted in other ways."
Facebook relies on more than 80 third-party organizations to perform fact-checking functions for the site. These were chosen by the company to serve in those roles; they do not have the power to remove content, but once they have reviewed a post and rated it as false, the social media site will automatically deprioritize it so that fewer users encounter it in their feeds. This gives the fact-checkers considerable power. They also handle the appeals internally.
Their decisions can be controversial. John Stossel, host of Stossel TV and a contributor for Reason, has accused Facebook fact-checkers of "stifling open debate." Stossel has also landed himself on the wrong side of "false information" labels: Climate Feedback, a subgroup within Science Feedback, labeled two of his climate change–related videos as "misleading" and "partly false." Stossel's situation is similar to mine in that the fact-checker attributed to him a claim—"forest fires are caused by poor management, not by climate change," in this case—that his video never actually made.
"In my video arguing that government mismanagement fueled California's wildfires, I acknowledged that climate change played a role," Stossel explained in a subsequent video summarizing his side of the dispute.
Stossel eventually succeeded in getting two Climate Feedback editors to admit that they had not watched his video—and after they had watched the video, they agreed with him that it was not misleading, having noted that both government mismanagement and climate change have contributed to forest fires. But Climate Feedback still did not "correct their smear," according to Stossel.
I've had better luck. I contacted both Facebook and Science Feedback, seeking clarification and correction. On Tuesday, Science Feedback admitted that they had flagged my article erroneously and that they would remove the "false information" label.
"We have taken another look at the Reason article and confirm that the rating was applied in error to this article," they wrote. "The flag has been removed. We apologize for the mistake."
I asked for additional details, and receive this note from Ayobami Olugbemiga, a policy communications manager at Facebook.
"Thanks for reaching out and appealing directly to Science Feedback," he wrote. "As you know, our fact-checking partners independently review and rate content on our apps and are responsible for processing your appeal."
Stossel, it should be noted, is currently suing Facebook, Science Feedback, and Climate Feedback. He acknowledges that a private company has the right to ban, take down, or deprioritize content as it sees fit. Moreover, different individuals and organizations can disagree about basic factual questions like the science of climate change. But he says that in attributing to him a direct quotation that he never uttered, the fact-checkers committed defamation.
"This case presents a simple question: do Facebook and its vendors defame a user who posts factually accurate content, when they publicly announce that the content failed a 'fact-check' and is 'partly false,' and by attributing to the user a false claim that he never made?" wrote Stossel's attorneys in the lawsuit. "The answer, of course, is yes."
This is a complicated issue because social media companies and other websites are typically immune from defamation lawsuits aimed at the speech of other actors on the platforms under a federal statute known as Section 230. This statute does not treat all speech that occurs on Facebook as Facebook's speech: One user can sue another user for libel, but they generally can't sue Facebook. There is an exception, of course, for the company's own speech—it would be possible to sue Facebook over a press release, or online statement made by an employee. Facebook has claimed that its third-party fact-checkers are independent and distinct, though the company has acknowledged that it does pay them.
There are many Republicans and Democrats who want to scrap Section 230 entirely: President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump, Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.), and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) have all denounced the statute's protections for Big Tech companies. Getting rid of Section 230 wouldn't solve the problem of overly aggressive fact-checking and content moderation, though. On the contrary, it could very well exacerbate it. The more liability Facebook is subjected to, the less permissive it is likely to be.
But that doesn't mean the status quo is particularly satisfying. It's good that the fact-checker reversed course in my case, but needless to say, Facebook should revisit its formal, contractual relationship with an organization that routinely misquotes the people it scrutinizes.
The post Facebook Said My Article Was 'False Information.' Now the Fact-Checkers Admit They Were Wrong. appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Last Sunday, Mother's Day, made me think how my mom warned me, as a young teen: "Work hard! Or you'll freeze in the dark!"
Sometimes, the warning ended, "Or you'll starve in the cold."
She grew up during the depression. She and her peers were sensibly worried about freezing in the dark.
The message scared me, and I worked hard in school.
When I got my first job, I always put some pay in a savings account, even when (OK, it was long ago) I made only $132 a week. I feared a bad future, and I wanted to make sure I could support myself.
This wasn't all good. I've probably been too anxious all my life. I missed out on things. I didn't contribute to charities until I was in my 40s.
But fear of "freezing in the dark" made me persevere. I studied when I didn't want to. Then I took a job that frightened me.
I'm a stutterer. Stuttering is now among disabilities covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act.
I wonder, had the ADA been law when I started in TV news, would I have struggled as hard to overcome my stutter? Would I have had the career I've had? Probably not.
The TV station wouldn't have hired me. Once the ADA passed, my stutter makes me a member of a "protected class." The station, reasonably, would have viewed me as potential poison.
That's because if they fired me because I didn't work out, I might sue. I could have accused them of failing to "accommodate the disabled," as the law requires. Even if I didn't win, the lawsuit would be expensive. It's safer for employers to avoid members of "protected classes."
Far-fetched? Look at the stats:
Before the ADA passed, 59 percent of disabled men had jobs. After it passed, the number fell to 48 percent. Today, fewer than 30 percent have jobs.
Once again, a law that was supposed to help people did the opposite of what politicians intended.
I think about that when I read about today's $600/week federal unemployment check subsidies for the coronavirus. Added to average $378 state payments, unemployment now often pays better than working.
Incentives matter.
"We have not seen an application in weeks," says Steve Anthony, CEO of the Anthony Timberlands sawmill in Arkansas. He's offering jobs that pay $800/week. But in Arkansas, federal and state unemployment benefits reach $1,051/week.
Anthony told my TV producer Maxim Lott, "If Congress elects to extend this $600 unemployment bonus, it will simply support a higher level of unemployment."
Lott also interviewed Otis Mitchell Jr., who quit his job transporting hospital patients once he learned about the increase in unemployment benefits.
"My little girl is loving it," said Mitchell, because he has more time to spend with her.
But it's bad for hospital patients who need transportation.
Shame on the U.S. government for making unemployment pay better than work.
People who lose jobs because government won't let them work do deserve help. I'm giving more to charities because of that. Charities are able to discriminate—to discern who really needs help while ignoring freeloaders.
But government is a blunt instrument. Its checks go to people whether or not they try to find work or overcome disabilities.
Over time, as people depend on handouts, they often feel that their lives are no longer within their control. They become passive. They don't push through obstacles. They wait for government help.
Social scientists call this "learned helplessness."
It's the struggle to overcome obstacles that that brings fulfillment.
When government programs "take care of us," they kill off some of the best of life and make us much less productive. They don't even make people happy.
If we keep giving the state more power over our lives, we will freeze in the dark.
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
The post When Government Programs Do More Harm Than Good appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Recently, many politicians were in such a hurry to ban plastic bags.
California and Hawaii banned them, then New York. Then Oregon, Connecticut, Maine, and Vermont passed laws against them. More than 400 cities did, too.
Why? Because plastic bags are evil, didn't you know?
"Look at the damage done by plastic bags! It is everywhere!" complained New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D).
A Washington state senator cited "videos of animals choked by plastics, tangled in garbage!"
So what should we use instead of plastic? Cloth bags! They're reusable! "Certainly the way to go!" said New Jersey's assembly speaker.
But now, suddenly, politicians are canceling their bans. Instead, they're banning the once praised reusable bags.
It's because of COVID-19, of course.
Reusable bags already brought bacteria into stores. We're supposed to wash them, but almost no one does. Studies found reusable bags crawling with dangerous bacteria. After plastic bags were banned in San Francisco, food poisoning deaths increased sharply.
But environmental groups, like Greenpeace, call those disease fears "misinformation."
"There are no studies or evidence that reusable bags are transmitting viruses," says Alex Truelove of the Public Interest Research Group, in my new video.
He's right. There are no human studies, but COVID-19 is so new. Millions of piglets died from swine coronavirus. The agriculture department concluded that reusable feed bags were probably the cause.
Still, even now, some politicians can't wait to ban plastic again. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh says "as soon as this crisis is over we'll go back to all paper bags and reusable bags."
"Politicians are always just looking for something to do," complains supermarket executive Andrea Catsimatidis.
She points out that paper bags cost five times what plastic costs. "When you're talking billions of bags, it really adds up!"
And paper bags don't hold as much. They rip.
Plastic is more convenient. Why must politicians take away what's convenient?
"Over two-thirds of everything we use is not recycled or composted and ends up in a landfill," complains Truelove.
So what?
People think America is running out of room for landfills, but that's not true.
"All America's trash for the next century would fit in one landfill just 18 miles square," says environmental economist Ross McKitrick. Landfills take up so little space that "if you look the air you wouldn't even be able to see where landfills are."
And modern landfills hardly pollute. They're surrounded by layers of clay and plastic that keep nasty stuff in the garbage from leaking out.
But what about all that plastic in the ocean?
Plastic bags are sometimes eaten by animals. Some sea turtles mistake the bags for jellyfish and then starve. Islands of floating garbage have formed in the Pacific Ocean.
Green groups have convinced Americans that we are to blame.
But we aren't! Even if you litter—and today, fewer Americans do—your litter is unlikely to end up in an ocean.
Almost all the plastic in oceans comes from Asia and Africa. Less than 1 percent comes from North America.
In other words, banning plastic bags in America will accomplish roughly…nothing.
What it will do is inconvenience Americans and make some of us sick.
Truelove says, "We should…set an example for the rest of the world."
"That's posturing," replies McKitrick. "The rest of the world isn't looking to see what you do with your Starbucks cup.
"If we are concerned about other countries' waste going into their river systems," he adds, "there are better things we can do. We can share technology with them so they process their waste better. That's better than imposing on consumers' tiresome inconveniences in hopes that it will somehow change behavior on the other side of the planet."
Politicians "looking for something to do" routinely do more harm than good.
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
The post Plastic Bag Bans Do More Harm Than Good appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>I'm "social distancing." I stay away from people.
I do it voluntarily.
There's a big difference between voluntary—and force.
Government is force. The media want more of that.
"Ten states have no stay-at-home orders!" complains Don Lemon On CNN. "Some governors are still refusing to take action!"
Fox News' host Steve Hilton agreed. "Shut things down! Everywhere. That includes Utah, Wyoming."
But wait a second. People in Utah and Wyoming already socially distanced just by living there. Why must Utah and Wyoming have the same stay-at-home rules as New York?
I find it creepy how eager some people are for authorities to boss us around.
That's the topic of my new video.
In Raleigh, North Carolina, people gathered to protest a "stay-at-home" order. The police arrested a protester and tweeted, "Protesting is a non-essential activity."
I bet they got a chuckle out of that. But our Constitution guarantees Americans the right to "peaceably assemble" and "petition the government for a redress of grievances."
The coronavirus doesn't override the Constitution.
Protests also erupted in Michigan, where Gov. Gretchen Whitmer imposed some absurd rules. She declared, "All public or private gatherings of any size are prohibited." Her executive order stopped people from seeing relatives and banned anyone with more than one home to travel between them.
Big-box stores are allowed to stay open, but they must not sell things like carpet, flooring, furniture, garden supplies, paint, etc. So, Walmart stores are open, but some of their shelves have tape blocking certain products.
That's just dumb.
Gardening and painting can be done far away from other people.
So can exercise. But in California, police chased down and arrested a paddleboarder paddling in the ocean. He was far more than 6 feet away from anyone.
In Encinitas, California, police fined people $1,000 just for sitting in cars to watch the sunset at the beach. Yes, inside their cars. The police said, "We want compliance from everybody (because of) lives that we're trying to save."
But it's not clear that demanding total compliance is the best way to save lives.
Sweden took a near-opposite approach.
Yes, they encouraged older people to stay inside and sick people to stay home. They didn't want hospitals overwhelmed. But otherwise, Sweden is carrying on almost as normal.
"Closing schools, stringent measures like that, closing borders, you cannot do that for months or years," said epidemiologist Anders Tegnell of the Swedish Health Agency. "What we are doing in Sweden we can continue doing for a very long time. I think that's going to prove to be very important in the long run."
The long run matters most.
Since a vaccine is probably at least a year away, the Swedes reason that the best protection is what epidemiologists call "herd immunity," a critical mass of people who get the disease and then are resistant to it.
The hope is that once enough people get COVID-19, there will be enough immunity to prevent mass outbreaks later. Many of the most vulnerable may then be able to avoid ever getting the virus.
The jury is still out on this experiment. More than 1,500 Swedes have died, five times the death rate of neighboring Norway. But if Swedes acquire "herd immunity," their death rate will be the first to drop.
Other European countries agree that lockdowns are not sustainable.
Last week, Denmark reopened nursery and elementary schools. Germany opened retail stores this week. Norway opens schools next week. Austria reopens shops to people who wear masks on May 1.
That seems smarter than the "absolute shutdown" promoted by so many American authorities. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has threatened to "shut off water and power" to homes of people who do not shelter in place.
Shut off water and power?
Politicians rush to limit our choices in the name of "keeping us safe." They don't even want to think about places like Sweden or the argument that leaving us alone might make us safer.
They just like pushing people around.
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
The post Coronavirus Restrictions That Go Too Far appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The media tell us China "beat coronavirus."
I don't believe it. The Chinese government lies. Derrek Scissors of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) argues that they've underreported the number of COVID-19 cases by millions.
Still, it's possible that China has the virus under control.
But at what cost?
Most of us in America now practice "social distancing." I've barely left my house in a month. I do that voluntarily.
Forty-two states do have some sort of shelter-in-place orders, but most of American's social distancing is voluntary.
Not so in China. China's dictators are quick to take extreme measures against whatever they see as a problem. They locked down Wuhan—closed roads to the city, stopped public transit, and banned private cars. Chinese police have even welded people into their homes to keep them inside. They've tied people to posts for not wearing face masks.
China spies on every citizen, using more than 200 million cameras and social media tracking. Electronic eavesdropping lets them analyze every person's political leanings and social interactions. They use that to give everyone a trust score.
Your "trust" score drops if you criticize the government—or the trust score system. You lose points if you do things like play "too many" video games, watch porn, or have friends with low scores.
Then the government punishes you by doing things like slowing your internet speed, keeping your kids out of good schools, or stopping you from getting good jobs.
Now, some Americans say our government should be more like China's.
"Still no nationwide stay-at-home order!" complains MSNBC's Rachel Maddow (even though that would be unconstitutional—the 10th Amendment leaves such things to states).
Frightened people push bad law.
"You're walking toward the communists voluntarily! That scares me," said Li Schoolland, an immigrant from China I interviewed before the pandemic.
"After I came to the United States I thought, no more politics. I'm in the land of the free!" she recounts. But after she saw some Americans embracing authoritarian ideas, she thought, "No, I have to tell the American people, 'Don't let this happen.'"
Schoolland survived China's Great Leap Forward, Great Famine, and Cultural Revolution. Her parents were doctors, "intellectuals," which meant they, and she, were sent to horrible work camps where they received communist "re-education."
I thought this repressive era of communism was over. Starting in the late 1970s, China's leaders modernized their economy and became a major trading partner with the United States.
But no, "The repression is not over," says Schoolland. China's spying on people to create "social trust" scores is an example of it.
"The control of people's mind, people's mouth, people's pen, never stopped."
That's something to think about now in America, when so many politicians are eager to do more.
Florida set up checkpoints on highways and planes, requiring people who enter from coronavirus hot spots, like New York and Louisiana, to self-quarantine for 14 days. Travelers must give officials contact information so officials can check up on them.
In Rhode Island, police went door to door, checking on people with New York license plates.
Colorado police handcuffed a man for playing softball with his daughter in a park. Father and daughter were more than 6 feet apart, but the officers clustered together to make their arrest.
California police ordered a group of young men to sit on the ground while they photographed them and fined them $1,000 each because they bought beer at 7-Eleven that was an hour away from their homes.
Of course, in a pandemic, some extreme measures are needed.
But repressive government controls like China's should not be our role model. The virus began in China and spread farther because their autocrats suppressed information, denied the virus could spread between people, and punished scientists who told the truth. Even people who post opinions about the virus may be locked up in China.
I'm glad I live in America, where I'm free to say anything I want about the virus—or my government.
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
The post Don't Follow China's Example on COVID-19 appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Two weeks ago, President Donald Trump signed the largest stimulus bill in U.S. history: more than $2 trillion.
For once, both Republicans and Democrats agreed. The Senate voted 96-0. The House didn't even bother with a formal vote.
At the White House, a reporter asked the president, pointing out that the bill includes $25 million for the Kennedy Center, "Shouldn't that money be going to masks?"
"The Kennedy Center has suffered greatly because nobody can go there," Trump responded. "They do need some funding. And look—that was a Democrat request. That was not my request. But you got to give them something."
"Something" they got. The bill includes $25 million for congressional salaries, $50 million for an Institute of Museum and Library Services, and lots of other wasteful things.
Only a few politicians were wary. Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) complained that he wasn't even allowed to speak against the bill.
Rep. Alex Mooney (R–W. Va.) asked: "How do you pay for it? Borrow it from China, borrow it from Russia? Are we going to print the money?"
Those are good questions.
Our national debt is already $24 trillion. Now it will jump, percentage-wise, to where Greece's debt was shortly before unemployment there hit 27 percent.
Greece was bailed out by the European Union. But the United States can't be bailed out by others.
How will we pay off our debt? That's the topic of my new video.
There are really three options:
Let's consider each:
But raising taxes on the rich often kills the wealth and jobs some rich people create. And it won't solve our debt problem. Even if we took all the billionaires' wealth—reducing their net worth to zero—it would cover only an eighth of our debt.
This belief, called Modern Monetary Theory, destroys lives.
Zimbabwe's dictator tried it. Eager to spend more money on wars, higher salaries for government officials, and luxury for himself, he had his government print more money. But that meant more money pursued the same goods. That caused explosive inflation. Soon, a $2 bag of onions cost $30 million Zimbabwean dollars.
The more money the government printed, the more inflation there was. They eventually even issued 100 trillion dollar bills. Today those 100 trillion bills are worth about 40 cents.
Inflation wrecked lives in 1920s Germany, Argentina, and Russia, and in modern-day Venezuela, too.
Defaulting on your debt wrecks economies, too. When Argentina defaulted, unemployment rose to 21 percent.
Once you're deep in debt, no option is good.
How did we get to this point?
Presidents have talked about the dangers of debt for decades. But they didn't deal with it; they just talked about it.
"We have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future," warned Ronald Reagan. "We must act today to preserve tomorrow."
Bill Clinton said, "We've got to deal with this big long term debt problem."
Barack Obama called driving up the national debt "irresponsible" and then proceeded to do exactly that.
Donald Trump complained that Obama "doubled" the nation's debt. But now, under Trump's presidency and the new CARES Act, our debt will grow even faster.
This will not end well.
So far, the deficit spending hasn't done enormous harm. But it will. You can stretch a rubber band only so far, until it breaks.
Our debt will wreck our children's lives.
Yet, today politicians mostly talk about spending more.
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
The post The Coronavirus Stimulus Is Full of Wasteful Spending appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Congress passed and the president signed a $2 trillion "stimulus" bill.
"Not enough!" shrieked politicians. They said the government must do more.
They demanded President Donald Trump reactivate the Defense Production Act, a 1950 law that lets government force companies to make things.
Trump hesitated.
That upset lovers of big government. They demanded the president order companies to make respirators, masks, and other desperately needed medical equipment.
CNN's Alisyn Camerota joined the media mob asking "What's the holdup!?" Then a White House press reporter confronted Trump at the White House, asking, "Why not use it now?"
The president surprised me by responding: "We're a country not based on nationalizing our business. Call a person over in Venezuela, ask them, 'how did nationalization of their businesses work out?' Not too well."
No, it didn't.
Venezuela was once one of the richest countries in Latin America. Now it's one of the poorest.
That's because government dictating production leads to less production.
Although Venezuela has more oil in the ground than any other country, once the socialists nationalized the oil industry, production declined. Today, Venezuelans struggle to buy gasoline.
When government orders companies to do things, companies don't innovate. They're less able to adjust quickly to market demand. That's the topic of my new video.
Today, hospitals need more ventilators. But the government doesn't need to order companies to make more. The private sector is already on it.
Automakers slowed car production and are gearing up their factories to produce ventilators. Other businesses are, too. That's what businesses do when conditions change; they pivot.
Distillers that once made gin and vodka now make hand sanitizer. The federal government had to waive regulations to allow them to sell it.
Some give it away. It's not just charity; it's "goodwill." They hope customers will remember the good deed, and that'll lead to profit in the future.
The best catalyst to spur production is simple pursuit of profit. It's what gets companies to produce new things instantly. Unlike governments, businesses have no guaranteed income. To survive, let alone grow, they must constantly innovate to make sure more money comes in than goes out.
The socialists call that "greed."
Without question, some tycoons are greedy. They pursue profit to the point that they have more money than they will ever need.
That's fine. That greed for success drives them to get me what I need.
I assume it's what inspired Ford to start using 3D printers to make face masks.
The profit motive delivers the goods. Higher prices tell companies what products are most urgently needed.
When our government failed to produce enough coronavirus test kits, private companies filled the gap. Some offered convenient tests you could use at home.
But the government didn't like it, saying the test hadn't been approved. The tests were withdrawn.
Government's rules often make it harder for private actors to help people. In a crisis, America's unsung heroes are people who overcome that.
Many truck drivers wanted to work overtime to help, but federal law said they must not work more than 11 hours a day. Finally, the government suspended the regulation.
We ought to suspend a lot of these rules permanently. Allow Americans to make our own choices about when we want to work.
In this crisis, businesses are trying all sorts of new things. Supermarkets started offering special "senior hours" so older people can safely get supplies we need.
Musicians are livestreaming concerts.
Restaurants are switching to takeout and delivery.
People have lost jobs, but if businesses are free to adapt, they'll create many new jobs.
Because demand for deliveries has increased. Amazon is hiring 100,000 new workers. Walmart is hiring 150,000.
The free market adjusts. We don't need "production acts" to tell us what to do.
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
The post The Private Sector Heroes Leading the Fight Against COVID-19 appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Coronavirus is frightening.
I'm working from home, practicing "social distancing." Experts say it'll help "flatten the curve" so fewer people will be infected simultaneously. Then hospitals won't be overwhelmed.
But the infection rate grows. Doctors and hospitals may yet be overwhelmed.
It didn't have to get to this point.
COVID-19 deaths leveled off in South Korea.
That's because people in Korea could easily find out if they had the disease. There are hundreds of testing locations—even pop-up drive-thru testing centers.
Because Koreans got tested, Korean doctors knew who needed to be isolated and who didn't. As a result, Korea limited the disease without mass quarantines and shortages.
Not in America. In America, a shortage of COVID-19 tests has made it hard for people to get tested. Even those who show all the symptoms have a difficult time.
Why weren't there enough tests?
Because our government insists on control of medical innovation.
That's the topic of my new video.
When the new coronavirus appeared, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made its own tests and insisted that people only use those CDC tests. But the CDC test often gave inaccurate results. Some early versions of the test couldn't distinguish between the new coronavirus and water.
Private companies might have offered better tests, and more of them, but that wasn't allowed. The World Health Organization even released information on how to make such tests, but our government still said no. Instead, all tests must go through the government's cumbersome approval process. That takes months. Or years.
Hundreds of labs had the ability to test for the virus, but they weren't allowed to test.
As a result, doctors can't be sure exactly where outbreaks are happening. Instead of quarantining just sick people, state governors are forcing entire states to go on lockdown.
At the same time, many people who show no symptoms do have COVID-19. Without widespread testing, we don't know who they are, and so the symptomless sick are infecting others.
A few weeks ago, the government finally gave up its monopoly and said it was relaxing the rules. There would be quick "emergency use authorizations" replacing the months- or years-long wait for approval. But even that took so long that few independent tests were approved.
So President Donald Trump waived those rules, too.
Now tests are finally being made. But that delay killed people. It's still killing people.
Other needlessly repressive rules prevented doctors and hospitals from trying more efficient ways to treat patients.
For example, telemedicine allows doctors and patients to communicate through the internet. When sick people consult doctors from home, they don't pass on the virus in crowded waiting rooms.
But lawyers and bureaucrats claimed such communications wouldn't be "secure," and would violate patients' privacy.
Only last week did officials announce they would allow doctors to "serve patients through everyday communications technologies."
Americans shouldn't have to ask permission to use "everyday" technologies.
Now doctors fear that as more people get sick, hospitals won't have enough beds for the critically ill.
But the bed shortage is another consequence of bad law. Critical access hospitals in rural areas are not allowed to have more than 25 beds. Trump has now announced that he's waiving those rules.
In some states, there's a shortage of doctors or nurses. That, too, is often a product of bad law—state licensing laws that make it illegal for professionals licensed in one state to work in another. Trump said he would waive "license requirements so that the doctors from other states can provide services to states with the greatest need." Then it turned out that he could only allow that for Medicare; he didn't have the power to override stupid state licensing rules.
Fortunately, many states finally waived harmful licensing laws on their own.
It's good that governments finally removed some rules.
But the time that took killed people.
Once COVID-19 passes, America should leave those regulations waived.
And we should repeal many others.
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
The post Government Red Tape Delays the COVID-19 Response appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>"We don't have any…!" Fill in the blank.
People are stocking up on things, fearing that we will be stuck in our homes, under quarantine, without essential supplies.
Some hoard toilet paper. A popular internet video features someone driving up to what appears to be a drug dealer but is really someone selling toilet paper.
When it became hard to find hand sanitizer in New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo said the state would produce its own, made by prison labor.
Yet in-demand items like masks and hand sanitizer can still be found. It's just that we have to pay an inflated price.
People on social media are outraged by that. They post pictures showing stores charging high prices, like $19.99 for a can of Lysol spray and $22.99 for a 12 oz bottle of Purell.
We're encouraged to report such high prices to the government because "gouging" is illegal. New York has an online "price gouging complaint form" that people can fill out if they are charged "unconscionably high prices."
"On my watch, we will not tolerate schemes or frauds designed to turn large profits by exploiting people's health concerns," said New York's economically clueless Attorney General Letitia James. "Some people are looking to prey on others' anxiety and line their own pockets."
Well, yes.
People always look for ways to line their own pockets.
But what politicians call "gouging" is just supply and demand. Prices rise and fall all the time.
Most state's anti-gouging laws never even say exactly what is "unconscionably excessive." That invites abuse. Vague laws give politicians dangerous power. They can use anti-gouging law to punish any merchant who doesn't give them money or kiss their rings.
It seems cruel to charge customers more during a crisis, but when there are no laws against sharp price increases, people don't experience long lines and shortages.
Think about what happens when stores don't raise their prices: People rush to buy all they can get. The store sells out. Only the first customers get what they want.
But if the store charges more for items in extraordinary demand, people are less likely to hoard. Customers buy what we need and leave some for others.
Prices should rise during emergencies. That's because prices aren't just money; they are signals, information. They tell suppliers what their customers want most.
Entrepreneurs then make more of them and work hard to get them to the people who need them most. If "anti-gouging" laws don't crush these incentives, prices quickly fall to normal levels.
Stossel in the Classroom contest winners explained that in a video.
Last week, some people bought lots of hand sanitizers and masks and then sold them on the internet. One couple boasted that they made over $100,000 reselling Lysol wipes.
They're not bad people. Their actions allow people desperate for supplies to buy what they need, even if it's at a higher price.
We're supposed to stay indoors, so it's good that we can get these products online. Then we don't leave home and infect others.
Unfortunately, Amazon, eBay, and Facebook, worried about accusations of "profiteering," cracked down on resellers. The companies removed listings for masks, hand sanitizers, and disinfectants.
This will only cause more shortages. Bigger profit was what encouraged people to sell online. Now no one gets those products until the market returns to normal.
In China, there was a severe mask shortage. That raised the price of masks and kickstarted production of face masks all around the world. A factory in France hired more people and raised its production of face masks from 170 million a year to half a billion.
The French company didn't do it only because they want to help people in China. Extra profit motivated them.
Price "gouging" saves lives. In a crisis, we like to think that everyone will volunteer and be altruistic. But it's not realistic to believe that all will.
If we want more supplies, we ask sellers to risk their money, their safety, and comfort. (Sellers often travel long distances to reach people most in need.) Most sellers won't do that unless they'll profit.
Government should dump its anti-price gouging laws and let the free market help those in need.
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
The post Why Price Gouging Laws Are a Bad Idea appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Freelance jobs are "feudalism," says Democratic California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez.
She persuaded California's legislature to pass a new law reclassifying freelance workers as employees. That means many people who hire them must now give them benefits like overtime, unemployment insurance, etc. Politicians said it would help freelancers a lot.
Of course, much of the media agreed. Vox called it "a victory for workers everywhere"!
Sigh. Young reporters just don't understand that stifling economic freedom always creates nasty side effects.
Actually, more understand now, because they got a very personal lesson. Once the bill passed, Vox media cut hundreds of freelance writing jobs.
When Gonzalez was asked if she felt bad about that, she sneered, those weren't "real jobs."
The arrogance of politicians! People choose jobs. Freelancers like flexibility. Politicians have no right to say certain jobs aren't good enough.
"You're thinking you're helping us, but you're not," says musician Ari Herstand in my new video. He says the anti gig-work law could "crash the California music economy."
Why? Before the law passed, if he played a gig where he'd hire a drummer, bassist, and guitar player, "I just cut (each) a check for $200. Now, I have to take that drummer, put him on payroll, W2 him, get workers' comp insurance, unemployment insurance. I have to pay payroll taxes. I also have to now hire a payroll company."
All to hire musicians for one just night. The paperwork alone might cost more than the music.
The anti-gig-work law originally targeted rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft, because unions claimed the companies abuse drivers.
But now many rideshare drivers are upset because the law takes away their freedom.
"I liked being independent!" said one. "I don't want a boss to tell me when or where to drive."
Herstand says Uber and Lyft drivers would often tell him: "I'm a photographer and this is my fourth side gig. I want to do this when I want to do this, and if now I'm an employee, and I'm W2'd, they're going to dictate my hours. I don't want that. (The law is) preventing us from doing what we want to do."
The law upset independent truck drivers, too. After some nosily drove big rigs in front of the legislature, they got an exemption from the law. Other politically connected professions, like lawyers and realtors, got exemptions as well.
Now Herstand's working on getting an exemption for musicians, too.
"Why is that good law?" I asked him. "An exception for whoever is clever enough to get to the politicians?"
"It's definitely not the solution," laughed Herstand. "'Write us out of this law and help us out? Here's money for your next campaign.' No, that doesn't seem like that's a way to legislate."
But that's how it's often done. The more rules politicians pass, the more money they extract from people who are regulated.
Now other politicians want to copy California's law. New York, New Jersey, and Illinois have their own versions of gig economy bills. The House of Representatives wants to nationalize the law. And, this week, Democratic front-runner Joe Biden cluelessly said such a law "will give workers the dignity they deserve."
Democrats do what unions ask them to do. Politico points out that just a few years ago, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) called gig work "a great service for people, giving people jobs. I don't think government should be in the business of trying to restrict job growth." He even joked that Uber drivers might earn more than he does.
But now he wants to outlaw most gig work and calls it "exploitive, abusive!"
It's no surprise that Gonzalez's biggest political donors are unions. She talks a lot about "protecting our union jobs." But now that her bill is killing jobs, she wouldn't agree to an interview.
Neither would the California unions, or any of 75 law professors, political scientists, sociologists, etc., who published a letter in support of the law.
Yes, we contacted all 75.
Herstand says that's because the law now embarrasses its supporters, but politicians won't repeal it because "no politician ever wants to admit they did something wrong."
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
The post The Law That Killed Freelance Work appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>South Carolina mom Debra Harrell worked at McDonald's. She couldn't afford day care for Regina, her 9-year-old daughter, so she took her to work.
But Regina was bored at McDonald's.
One day, she asked if she could just play in the neighborhood park instead. "I felt safe there," tells me in my new video, "because I was with my friends and their parents."
"She had her cellphone, a pocketbook with money in it," says Debra. "She had everything she needed."
Regina was happy. Debra was happy.
But one parent asked Regina where her mom was, and then called the police. Officers went to McDonald's and arrested Debra.
In jail, they berated her.
"You can't leave a child who is 9 years old in the park by herself!" said one officer. "What if some sex offender came by?"
People interviewed by the media were also outraged.
"What if a man came and just snatched her?" asked one.
"This day and time, you never know who's around!" said another.
But what are they talking about? Crime in America is way down, half what it was in the '90s. Reports of missing children are also down.
If kids are kidnapped or molested, it's almost always by a relative or an acquaintance, not by a stranger in a park.
Nevertheless, prosecutors charged Debra Harrell with "willful abandonment of a child," a crime that carries up to a 10-year sentence.
They also took Regina away from her mom—for two weeks. "I would cry as night because I was really scared," Regina told me. "I didn't know where I was, or what was going on."
Fortunately, attorney Robert Phillips took Debra's case for free. He didn't like the way police and media portrayed her.
"Here was this black female that society gives a hard time. 'Welfare queens, living at home, not getting a job!' Well, that's what she was doing," he said. "She was out working, trying the best she could to take care of her child. And now we're beating her up because we didn't like the way she took care of her child."
The cops said that Harrell should have sent her daughter to day care. But even if she could have afforded it, it's not clear that day care is safer. "We found 42 incidents of sexual molestations, rapes in day cares," said Phillips. "We couldn't find (in South Carolina in the last 20 years) a single abduction in a park."
Philips blames people in my business for scaring people about the wrong things. "The media has brought up this 'stranger danger' to where, if you're not under the protective wings of mom and dad 24/7, then you're exposing your child to some unknown danger."
That has frightened police and child welfare workers into taking absurd steps when parents leave children alone.
In Maryland, police accused parents of child neglect for letting their kids roam around their neighborhood.
In Kentucky, after police reported a mom who left her kids in the car while she dashed into a store, child welfare workers strip-searched the kids to make sure they weren't being abused.
This doesn't protect kids. It mostly scares parents into depriving their kids of chances to learn. "When you don't let them spread their wings, that's when they get in trouble!" says Debra.
She was fortunate that her case got enough attention that even Nikki Haley, then South Carolina's governor, asked that Regina be given back to her mom.
Prosecutors finally dropped the child abandonment charge.
It's just not right that when stranger kidnappings are increasingly rare, police and child welfare workers are more eager to punish parents who let kids play on their own.
"A Utah law guarantees that giving kids some reasonable independence isn't 'neglect,'" says Lenore Skenazy, of the nonprofit Let Grow, "More states need this!"
Of course, some parents are so neglectful that government should intervene.
But as lawyer Phillips put it, they should intervene "only if you are subjecting your child to a real harm. We should not have unreasonable intrusions by the government telling us every little detail how to raise our children."
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
The post The Moral Panic Over 'Stranger Danger' appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Bernie Sanders leads the race for the Democratic nomination.
He may become America's first self-described "democratic socialist" president.
What does that mean?
Today, when Sanders talks about socialism, he says: "I'm not looking at Cuba. I'm looking at countries like Denmark and Sweden."
But Denmark and Sweden are not socialist. Denmark's prime minister even came to America to refute Sanders' claims, pointing out that "Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy."
Both Denmark and Sweden do give citizens government-run health care and have bigger welfare programs than America has. However, recently, they've moved away from socialism. Because their socialist policies killed economic growth, they cut regulations and ended government control of many industries.
Sanders probably doesn't know that. He, like many young people, just loves the idea of socialism.
For my new video this week, Stossel TV producer Maxim Lott went through hours of Sanders' old speeches. What he found reveals a lot about what Sanders believes.
When Sanders was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, he went out of his way to defend Fidel Castro. "He educated the kids, gave them health care, totally transformed the society!" Fortunately, Sanders added, "Not to say Fidel Castro or Cuba are perfect."
No, they are not perfect. Castro's government tortured and murdered thousands. By confiscating private property, they destroyed the island's economy. Life got bad enough that thousands died trying to escape.
Even now in Cuba, most people try to live on less than $2 a day
Sanders focuses on other things, like: "They did a lot to eliminate illiteracy!"
Sanders has long had a soft spot for socialist countries. He chose to honeymoon in Communist Russia, where he said people "seem reasonably happy and content." He was "extremely impressed by their public transportation system…[the] cleanest, most effective mass transit system I've ever seen in my life!"
He praised Soviet youth programs: "Cultural programs go far beyond what we do in this country."
He did at least qualify his support, calling the Soviet government "authoritarian."
But Sanders made no such criticism after Nicaragua's socialist revolution. He praised the Sandinistas' land "reform" because they were "giving, for the first time in their lives, real land to farmers so that they can have something that they grow. Nobody denies that they are making significant progress."
Former landowners sure denied it. They'd had their land stolen. Sanders suggested that was OK because landowners are rich.
"Rich people, who used to have a good life there, are not terribly happy," he said. "As a socialist, the word socialism does not frighten me… (P)oor people respect that."
What about the hunger and poverty that socialism creates? Bernie had an odd take on that.
"American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food. That's a good thing! In other countries people don't line up for food; the rich get the food and the poor starve."
After he said he was "impressed" by Sandinista leaders, Sanders added, "Obviously I will be attacked by every editorial writer in the free press for being a dumb dupe."
I join them.
Bernie Sanders is indeed a "dumb dupe" about economics. Or as the Soviet Communists used to put it, "a useful idiot."
Under Ortega's rule, Nicaragua quickly fell further into poverty, and the socialists were voted out in 1990. Ortega later returned as a violent dictator. For most people in Nicaragua, Cuba, and other centrally planned economies, life is hell.
Once Sanders was elected to Congress, he mostly stopped praising violent socialist revolutions.
At that time, Communist governments in Europe were collapsing. It was convenient for embarrassed former supporters of those governments to rebrand themselves.
In Congress, Sanders would call himself an independent and, in the estimation of his fellow Vermonter, former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, he "votes with the Democrats 98 percent of the time."
But Sanders has never taken back the enthusiastic praise he gave to socialist regimes.
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
The post The Socialist Delusions of Bernie Sanders appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>President Donald Trump "saved the United States," says former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
He's one of the "smartest, most clever, and successful" presidents, says Fox's Jeanine Pirro.
No, he's "dumb and racist," says comedian Seth Meyers, and guilty of "rampant corruption," say commentators on MSNBC.
The man divides opinion like no one else in America.
My latest video looks at the "good, bad, and ugly" of Trump. The good is wonderful.
Unemployment is down, and the stock market is up.
Trump deserves credit for that. By criticizing "job-crushing regulations" and appointing some regulators who fear government overreach, Trump signaled people that government would not crush you merely because you make a profit or want to try something new. As a result, 6 million more Americans were hired.
Unemployment fell during Barack Obama's presidency, too, but under Obama, fewer Americans chose to even look for work. People dropped out of the labor force.
Once Trump was elected, more people applied for jobs again.
Why? I say it's because his administration sent a new message. Instead of telling people: "You're victims of an unfair system! You need handouts," Trump said: "You don't need welfare. Most of you can get a job."
Even disability claims, which had been steadily rising, have declined.
Trump did other good things, like appointing judges that tend to rule in favor of free speech and private property.
On the other hand, Trump's done a lot of bad.
To undermine a political opponent and expose the sleaziness of the opponent's son, Trump sleazily withheld aid to an ally. Then he lied about it.
Trump lies about all sorts of things—big and small.
He said his inauguration had "the biggest audience in… history." He kept saying it, even after reports showed it wasn't true.
He broke his promises about ending America's wars.
Unlike his predecessors, he hasn't started new wars—but he's increased bombings. The USA is now dropping more bombs on Afghanistan than at any time in the last 10 years.
Trump broke promises about spending. He promised he'd "cut spending, big-league."
But he did the opposite. Spending has increased by half a trillion dollars since Trump was elected.
Rep. Warren Davidson (R–Ohio) is a Trump supporter, but he's upset that Trump's gone along with a big increase in the national debt. Davidson complained to his fellow Republicans, but suddenly, they didn't seem to care much about the debt now that someone from their party was president.
This week, Trump proposed a budget that would slow the growth of most unsustainable welfare programs. But he knows that won't get through Congress. Probably, he'll sign the gusher of spending that Congress produces instead.
"We are on a path to bankrupting our country," says Davidson.
Trump also says false things about trade. He claimed our $500 billion trade deficit means the U.S. is "losing on trade with China." But that's absurd.
"He's telling people trade isn't win-win; there's a winner and a loser." I complained to Davidson, adding, "I don't think Trump understands trade."
"He has a metaphor that the average American understands," responded Davidson.
"But it's a wrong metaphor, right?" I asked.
"It is technically inaccurate," said Davidson.
Trump is also a bully. That's his ugly part.
He calls people "stupid," "pathetic," "a low-IQ individual." He makes fun of their looks and weight. It's unpresidential.
"Some of his words certainly have been ugly," Davidson agreed.
"He's like a 3-year-old!" I said. "We're supposed to outgrow that narcissism when we're an adult."
"This is all baked into Donald Trump," replied Davidson. "He is true to who everyone knows Donald Trump as, and they love him anyway."
"You love him anyway?" I asked.
"I do," said Davidson. "His policies have been great, and the results are measurably great."
Many are. And Trump is likely to be reelected, according to the odds on my site ElectionBettingOdds.com. So it looks like we'll see much more of him.
I hope we get more of the good and less of the bad and ugly.
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
The post Trump: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>A law in South Carolina bans playing pinball if you're under 18. That's just one of America's many ridiculous laws restricting freedom.
"There is a role for the government in keeping people safe from actual criminals, people who commit murder, robbery," says Rafael Mangual, a "tough-on-crime" guy at the Manhattan Institute.
"But a lot of laws don't keep people safe," he says. "There's a federal prohibition on walking a dog on a leash longer than six feet on federal property. It is a jailable offense."
Three hundred thousand federal criminal offenses are on the books. "It's way too big," says Mangual. "Part of that is because we don't take any old or outmoded laws off the books."
In Michigan, prosecutors filed criminal charges against a 10-year-old who, during a dodgeball game, threw a ball at another kid's face.
"Anyone can be prosecuted for almost anything," says Mangual. "Lying to your boss over the phone about why you didn't come in. That could constitute wire fraud."
Today's laws punish activities unlikely to be performed with criminal intent.
"Taking a rake from New York into New Jersey, that's actually a federal crime," warns Mangual. "If you've ever had a rake in the back of your pickup truck and crossed state lines, you probably committed a federal crime."
In my new video, I push back at Mangual, pointing out that nobody goes to jail for things like that.
"That doesn't mean that it's not a problem," he responds. "Legal compliance is not free. It takes time, money, effort. It violates fundamental norms about fairness."
One woman was prosecuted for sheltering animals during a hurricane. "My goal was to make sure that they were not out there drowning," she said. But North Carolina prosecutors filed criminal charges against her for practicing veterinary medicine without a license.
In Kentucky, Holland Kendall gave eyeglasses to needy people who couldn't afford eye doctors. Then state officials told him that was a crime.
What causes this excess? I was taught that the Constitution created checks and balances that make it difficult for any bill to become a law.
"Everyone has this idea from 'Schoolhouse Rock'," says Mangual, "that a law gets made in a particular way (but) that's not how it works in practice. At the federal level, 98 percent of criminal laws are not passed by elected representatives. They are created by unelected bureaucrats who don't have to answer to anyone."
Established businesses manipulate those bureaucrats into passing rules that squash new competition.
"They can afford the lobbyists. They can afford to comply with the crazy webs of regulations," explains Mangual. "If you've got an established cookie business, you don't want a grandma from down the street who has a better recipe cutting into your business… You go to the legislature and ask them to pass arduous rules about an industrial kitchen and expensive equipment that you that need in order to qualify to participate in this business."
One woman was prosecuted in a sting operation for selling ceviche on Facebook.
In Denver, a bartender mixed vodka with things like pickles and bacon and then put the mix back in the bottle. Some customers liked that. But authorities jailed the bartender for "infusing vodka."
I wish I could jail that prosecutor.
Mangual warns: "People commit crimes all the time without knowing it. It's impossible to know what sort of behavior is criminal."
Law should stick to punishing assault, theft, and fraud. Otherwise, leave us all alone.
A recent Manhattan Institute report makes suggestions for getting closer to that ideal.
The absence of criminal intent should be taken more seriously by legislators. With hundreds of thousands of criminal offenses on the books, the old adage that "ignorance of the law is no excuse" no longer makes sense.
Lawmakers should also consider listing crimes in one place instead of sprinkling them throughout the statutory codes, which would take a lifetime to read.
And government should regularly repeal laws we no longer need.
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
The post Government Should Repeal Out of Date Laws appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The Iowa Caucus, the real start of the 2020 presidential primaries, is next week. Who's favored to win? Sadly, as I write this, the smart money says it's the candidate who's promised Americans the most "free" stuff.
Six months ago, my staff and I tallied the candidates' promises. All wanted to give away trillions—or more accurately, wanted government to tax you and spend your money on the candidates' schemes.
At that point, Senator Kamala Harris led. Fortunately, her promises did not bring her sustained support, and she dropped out.
Unfortunately, now the other candidates are making even more promises.
So, it's time for a new contest.
My new video ranks the current leading candidates by how much of your money they promise to spend. We divide the promises into four categories:
Education
Joe Biden would make community college free, cut student loans in half, increase Pell Grants, and modernize schools.
Added to his previous campaign promises, he'd increase federal spending by $157 billion per year.
Elizabeth Warren would spend much more. She wants government to "provide universal child care for every baby in this country age 0 to 5, universal pre-K for every child, raise the wages of every childcare worker and preschool teacher in America, provide for universal tuition-free college, put $50 billion into historically black colleges and universities… and cancel student loan debt for 95% of the people."
She'd outspend Biden—but not Bernie Sanders.
Sanders would forgive all student loans—even for the rich. He also demands that government give everyone child care and pre-K.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg also promises free child care, more pay for teachers, more career education, free college and Pell Grants, plus the refinancing of student debt.
Good try, Pete, but Sanders "wins" in the education category, with nearly $300 billion in promises.
Climate
All the Democrats pretend they will do something useful about climate change. Biden would spend $170 billion per year, Buttigieg $150 billion to $200 billion, and Warren $300 billion. Sanders "wins" this category, too, by promising more than $1 trillion.
Health Care
Even the "moderate," Biden, now wants to "build out Obamacare" and to cover people here illegally.
So does Buttigieg—but he'd spend twice as much on it.
Warren complains the Buttigieg plan "costs so much less" than her plan. She'd spend $2 trillion a year.
Sanders is again the biggest spender. He'd spend $3 trillion of your money on his "Medicare for All" plan.
Welfare
In this category, Biden, to his credit, plans no new spending.
But Buttigieg has been cranking out lots of new promises, like $45 billion for "affordable housing" and $27 billion to expand Social Security payments beyond what people paid in.
Warren would also spend more on "affordable housing" and give kids more food stamps.
Sanders "wins" again. He promises to guarantee everyone a job, provide "housing for all," and give more people food stamps.
Miscellaneous
Then there's spending that doesn't neatly fit into major categories, like Biden's plans for new foreign aid for Central America, Sanders' high-speed internet, Buttigieg's expanding national service programs like the Peace Corps, and Warren's plan to force government to buy only American-made products.
Finally, we found a spending category that Sanders doesn't win. With $130 billion in new plans, Biden wins the "miscellaneous" round.
And what about that incumbent Republican?
Donald Trump once talked about "cutting waste," but government spending rose more than half a trillion dollars during his first three years.
Now Trump wants $267 billion in new spending for things like infrastructure and "access to high-quality, affordable childcare."
At least Trump wants to spend less than the Democrats.
Biden and Buttigieg would double Trump's increase. Warren would quadruple it. She'd increase spending by almost $3 trillion.
But Bernie Sanders blows them all out of the water, with nearly $5 trillion in proposed new spending!
"I'm not denying we're going to spend a lot of money," he admits.
He'll probably win in Iowa next week. Whoever wins… taxpayers lose.
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
The post Presidential Candidates Promise Freebies for Everyone appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Reporters complain about business. We overlook the constant improvements in our lives made possible by greedy businesses competing for your money. Think about how our access to entertainment has improved.
"When I was a kid," says Sean Malone in a new video for the Foundation for Economic Education, "my TV broadcast options were PBS, Fox, ABC, NBC, and CBS. Depending on the weather, it was hit or miss whether or not they were even watchable."
1977 brought the first video rental store. "We literally had to rent a VCR along with two or three movies we could get on VHS from Blockbuster," Malone reminds us, pointing out how much changed. "Now just about anything I've ever wanted to watch is available at the click of a button."
Here's a short version I released this week of the FEE video. It wasn't government or big movie studios that made the amazing array of new options available. They dragged their feet. Malone points out that "the astounding wealth of home entertainment options we have today are the result of entrepreneurial start-ups, like Blockbuster."
Blockbuster letting people watch movies whenever we wanted was a big improvement. But people are ingrates about the things capitalism makes possible. In the 1990s, people complained that Blockbuster's chokehold on video entertainment was so strong that the company would be able to censor anything it didn't like.
Special sanitized versions of movies were distributed through Blockbuster. How would we ever get to see the movies as they were originally intended? Clearly, Blockbuster was a monopoly. Government should regulate "Big Videotape" and break up the Blockbuster monopoly!
Government didn't. Yet Blockbuster is now bankrupt. Its competitors offered so many better things.
That's something to think about now when people call Facebook and Google monopolies. A few years ago, people claimed Netflix had a monopoly.
But without government suppressing competition, Netflix had no way to maintain its temporary hold on the streaming market. Other companies caught up fast. Customers decide which businesses succeed and which ones fail.
This is why centrally planning an economy doesn't work. "Politicians and bureaucrats don't know what people are going to value," explains Malone. "They pick winners and losers based on what they want or what they think is going to earn them the most important allies."
Blockbuster's demise began when it charged a man named Reed Hastings $40 in late fees. That annoyed him so much, he started a subscription-based, mail-order movie rental company he called Netflix.
Then, Netflix made movies available online.
Now we have instant access to more entertainment than ever through Disney+, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc., all for a fraction of the cost of the original Netflix.
Still, we complain. That's how it is with capitalism, and it's a wonderful thing. While we complain, entrepreneurs like Hastings invent faster, easier ways to get us what we want. Many offer us options we never knew we wanted, putting old giants out of business.
There is an economics lesson in that. When entrepreneurs face competition, they often lose, but the fights make life better for us consumers.
This process of old things being replaced by new and better ones was dubbed "creative destruction" by economist Joseph Schumpeter. We see creative destruction in every industry.
The first flip phone cost $1,000 and couldn't do the things we expect phones to do today. Competition drove further innovation. We got the Blackberry, and then the iPhone.
What amazing things will businesses come up with next?
Malone's video points out that the best way to find out is to keep government and central planning out of the mix.
Once government wades in with regulations, it tends to freeze the current model in place, assuming it's the best way to do things.
But the best way to do things is one that we haven't even thought of yet, produced by the endless creative process called competition.
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
The post Capitalism Has Improved Access to Entertainment appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>People who want to work should be allowed to work. That includes people who once went to jail.
With President Donald Trump's support, Congress spends your money giving ex-cons "employment assistance."
Why bother? State laws often make such employment impossible.
Courtney Haveman had an alcohol problem. When she was 19, she got a DUI. Then she took a swing at a security guard. "I made dumb decisions," she admits in my new video. "Served three days in jail."
Eight years later, and now sober, Courtney enrolled in beauty school. Such schools invite applicants to "turn your interest in beauty into a rewarding career."
The schools do provide good careers—to owners of cosmetology schools. In Pennsylvania, where Courtney applied, they typically charge $6,000 tuition and require 1,000 hours of courses.
All that training is required by the state to work.
Courtney had worked in a salon and wanted to do more. Unfortunately, "doing more" requires not just serving customers well, but getting permission from bureaucrats.
Byzantine state laws demand you get a state-approved license before you may become a hairdresser, tour guide, travel agent, house painter, and all sorts of other jobs where customer happiness should be the guide.
So after taking hundreds of hours of cosmetology courses, Courtney paid more to apply for a Pennsylvania cosmetology license.
Pennsylvania then told her she couldn't do cosmetology there because she has a criminal record.
The bureaucrats said she could appeal. She could prove she has good moral character.
"I sent letters, and people in my 12-step program wrote letters on my behalf, character letters," she says.
The result?
"They sent me a rejection letter that said, 'Sorry. You lack the good moral character requirement'," says Courtney. "One time in my life that I felt like a productive member of society, I was proud of myself…people were proud of me, and then it was just like, you're not good enough still."
This is wrong.
Courtney did her time—all three days of it. She should be allowed the "second chance" that politicians keep promising former prisoners. Her arrest was eight years ago. She then got sober. Now she sponsors other women in AA. She has a toddler to support.
But Pennsylvania says, to protect "public health and safety," she may not practice cosmetology.
The rule doesn't "protect" anyone. Barbers don't have to prove they have "good moral character." Courtney is allowed to work as an "assistant."
"I'm allowed to touch clients, just not allowed to do what I went to school to do!" says Courtney.
She shampoos customers' hair and has intimate contact with them. She's just not allowed to do facials, makeup, waxing—the work she trained for. "Our government makes it extremely difficult for people like me," she says.
"People can't just be kicked out of society," says Institute for Justice lawyer Andrew Ward. He took Courtney's case for free because he believes that the cosmetology law is unconstitutional. "Everyone has a right…to pursue their own happiness…a right to engage in any of the common occupations of life."
Who benefits from restrictive licensing laws?
"It's certainly convenient," says Ward, "that established players have a law that gets to keep new people, that would compete with them, out."
Right. Cosmetology boards are dominated by people who run beauty schools. They benefit by making it hard for newcomers to compete for customers by offering better service.
The established schools and salons lobby legislators, demanding stringent "safety" requirements. It's "accidental" that they limit competition.
Courtney says, "Years of my life have been wasted." She paid to train for a job she is not allowed to do.
State licensing rules like Pennsylvania's cosmetology rule don't protect public health. They don't help customers.
They crush the little guy and limit competition.
Get rid of them.
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
The post Occupational Licensing Hurts the Little Guy appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Congressional hearings were created to educate lawmakers so they have knowledge before they pass bills or impeach a president.
Not today. Today, hardly any education happens.
During the President Trump impeachment "testimony," legislators tried to score points. At least five times, Rep. Adam Schiff (D–Calif.) shut down criticism by shouting, "Gentleman is not recognized!"
I get that politicians are eager for "face time" in front of a larger audience, but I assumed they would at least try to learn things. Nope.
Maybe they don't want to ask real questions because they fear looking as dumb as then-Sen. Orrin Hatch (R–Utah) did at a hearing on Facebook. He asked Mark Zuckerberg, "How do you sustain a business model in which users don't pay for your service?"
"We run ads," smirked Zuckerberg. "I see," said Hatch.
What's obvious to most people somehow eludes the oblivious "experts" in Congress.
At another Facebook hearing, Congress grilled Zuckerberg about his plan to launch an electronic currency called Libra. Zuckerberg said, "I actually don't know if Libra is going to work, but I believe it's important to try new things."
He was right. But instead of asking about technological or economic implications of the idea, Rep. Al Green (D–Texas) asked Zuckerberg, of the companies partnering with him, "how many are headed by women?"
"Congressman, I do not know the answer," replied Zuckerberg.
"How many of them are minorities?" asked Green. "Are there any members of the LGBTQ+ community?"
Green doesn't want to learn anything. He wants to sneer and score points.
Politicians' sloppy ignorance is extraordinary. Rep. Steve King (R–Iowa) grilled Google CEO Sundar Pichai about iPhones, citing a story about his granddaughter using one, leading Pichai to explain, "Congressman, iPhone is made by a different company."
Today's posturing is not what the founders had in mind when they invented hearings in 1789. George Mason said members of Congress "possess inquisitorial powers" to "inspect the Conduct of public offices."
Yes! Investigate government.
But today, they are more likely to threaten CEOs and bully opponents.
"Are you stupid?" then-Rep. Darrell Issa (R–Calif.) said to one witness. They want to showboat, not learn. Often, they ask questions even when they know the answers.
"Ms. DeVos, have you ever taken out a student loan?" asked Sen. Elizabeth Warren, (D–Mass.) of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. "Have any of your children had to borrow money?"
Warren knows that DeVos is a billionaire, but she wanted to score points with her fans.
One of the louder showboaters today is self-proclaimed socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.). She asked Wells Fargo boss Tim Sloan, "Why was the bank involved in the caging of children?"
"We weren't," replied Sloan.
Some of today's hearings are useful in that we get to see how absurd and ignorant our representatives can be.
During a hearing on military personnel being stationed on the island of Guam, Rep. Hank Johnson (D–Georgia) said, "My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it would tip over and capsize." Really. He said that.
Then there was the time Rep. Maxine Waters, (D–Calif.) chair of the House Financial Services Committee, summoned bank CEOs to Washington and demanded, "What are you guys doing to help us with this student loan debt?!"
"We stopped making student loans in 2007," Bank of America's Brian Moynihan told her.
"We actually ended student lending in 2009," added Citigroup's Michael Corbat.
"When the government took over student lending in 2010 … we stopped doing all student lending," explained Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase.
The Chair of the Financial Services Committee didn't even know that her own party kicked bankers out of the student loan business, insisting that government take over?!
Apparently not. She is so eager to blame business for government's mistakes that she didn't research her own topic.
The more I watch politicians, the more I hate them. Let's give them less power.
Watch more below:
The post Can We Stop With All the Congressional Grandstanding? appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Congressional hearings date back to the first Congress in 1789, and they're supposed to educate lawmakers. But now hearings are more about scoring points.
During recent impeachment hearings, Rep. Adam Schiff (D–Calif.) shouted at least five times, "Gentleman is not recognized!" to shut down opposition points.
Republicans are ridiculous, too. Some should wish they'd been shut down. Several years ago, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R–Utah) asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg the silly question: "How do you sustain a business model in which users don't pay for your service?"
After a pause, Zuckerberg responded, "Senator, we run ads." Hatch couldn't figure that out on his own?
Rep. Al Green (D–Texas) interrogated Zuckerberg about groups that Facebook partners with to create a new cryptocurrency.
"How many are headed by women?" Green demanded.
"Congressman, I do not know the answer," Zuckerberg replied.
"How many of them are minorities, Mr. Zuckerberg? … Are there any members of the LGBTQ+ community?"
Republican Steve King (R–Iowa) complained to Google's CEO about what his granddaughter saw on an iPhone. He demanded, "how does that show up on a 7-year-old's iPhone, who's playing a kid's game?" he asked.
"Congressman, the iPhone is made by a different company," Google's CEO had to tell King.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Hot Air on the Hill appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Even as Venezuelans starve, Senator Rand Paul (R–Ky.) notes that socialism has gained ground in the United States.
That's why he wrote "The Case Against Socialism." The chapter on Venezuelan socialism is titled, "Because Eating Your Pets is Overrated."
"You would think that…when your economy gets to the point where people are eating their pets, people might have second thoughts about what economic system they've chosen," Paul tells John Stossel.
But Stossel notes that today American socialists say, "We won't be like that." Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) says, "when I talk about Democratic socialism, I'm not looking at Venezuela. I'm not looking at Cuba. I'm looking at countries like Denmark and Sweden."
But Paul debunks that myth in his book.
"It's not true that the Scandinavian countries are socialist," Paul tells Stossel.
Stossel points out that while Scandinavia tried socialist policies years ago, they then turned away from socialism, privatizing industries and repealing regulations. In fact, when experts rank economic freedom, Scandinavian countries rank near the top.
Denmark's prime minister even responded to Sanders, saying: "Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy."
Scandinavia did keep socialist policies like government-run health care. Media outlets suggest that's why Scandinavians live longer.
But Paul says: "This is the trick of statistics…it started way before socialized medicine."
His book has the stats to back that up. In the 1960s, before Sweden's healthcare was totally nationalized, Swedish men already lived five years longer than American men. Now, they…still live five years longer.
Stossel says Paul's book is different from other politicians' platitude-filled books. Paul did actual research. He cites sources that back up his point about health care, comparing the life expectancy of Swedish and American men in 1960s.
Regarding Sweden's ability to pull people out of poverty, Paul credits Swedish culture, not government programs. He tells Stossel of a story about Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman:
"This Swedish economist comes up to him and he says, 'You know in Sweden we have no poverty.' And Friedman responds, 'Well, yeah, in America we have no poverty among Swedish Americans.'"
Paul confirms that with data from Swedish researcher Nima Sanandaji, who writes: "Danish Americans today have fully 55 percent higher living standard than Danes. Similarly, Swedish Americans have a 53 percent higher living standard than Swedes."
Stossel says it's good that Paul debunks these myths and warns against repeating the tragic history of socialism.
Paul gives a partial list of failures: "Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Chavez, Maduro. It doesn't work."
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: The Case Against Socialism appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>She adds, "When we have these exaggerated numbers, it forces people to go into this crazy emergency moral panic mode that ends up not helping the actual problem that we have."
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Moral Panic Over Sex Work appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Tim Pool is part of what some call the new media—citizen journalists who work for themselves.
Increasingly, John Stossel says, such journalists cover things the mainstream media misses.
That brings them viewers. More than a million people subscribe to Pool's online channels.
Pool leans left and supported Bernie Sanders. But he reports whatever he sees.
Earlier this year, the media jumped on a video of a grinning Covington High School kid wearing a Trump hat, claiming he was taunting a native American man—but Pool was skeptical.
"All of these big news outlets, even the Washington Post, CNN, they immediately made the assumption 'he must be a racist,'" Pool told Stossel.
"I didn't make that assumption … I said, I have no idea what this is. I just see a guy banging a drum and a kid with a weird look on his face. So I looked at some other videos," Pool said.
On YouTube, Pool found a longer clip of the encounter and used that to show that the Native American elder approached the kids as they waited for a bus—not the other way around, as had been claimed. There was no evidence that the kids were racist.
"No one watched the longer video?" Stossel asks?
"Nope," Pool says. "Here's what happens. One left-wing journalist says, look at this racist. His buddy sees it and says, wow, look at this racist. And that's a big ole circular game of telephone where no one actually does any fact-checking. And then—New York Times, Washington Post, CNN all publish the same fake story."
Pool, along with Reason's Robby Soave, told the real story.
Pool wouldn't have been hired by most legacy media outlets—he doesn't have a college degree. Or even a high school degree.
"I like it that you're a high school dropout," Stossel tells Pool.
"Yeah, me too," Pool says. Instead of going through the traditional education system, Pool learned to report by actually doing it.
He got his start filming Occupy Wall Street and posting his videos online. He also covered fighting in Ferguson, Missouri, in Ukraine, and in Catalonia.
But his video that got the most views on YouTube is one where he went to Sweden to find out the truth about alleged "no-go zones."
"Your video said what?" Stossel asks.
"That it was nuanced," Pool replies. Crime is up after Sweden took a lot of refugees, but still really low by American standards.
"You got lots of views with nuance?" Stossel replies.
"Yeah … Here's what I think happens. The establishment, the corporate media … They seem to have a narrative on these things," Pool says. "The average person just wants some kind of honest take on it."
Pool is part of a new wave of independent journalists and thinkers—leftists, centrists libertarians, and conservatives—who use the new media to get the word out.
Stossel says he's glad that gives us more options.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: The Rise of Citizen Journalists appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Politicians and reporters often rail about "the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer."
But as John Stossel explains, it's not true.
In fact, the incomes of poor and middle-income Americans are up 32 percent since the government began keeping track several decades ago.
Yes, that increase is adjusted for inflation.
Another misleading claim, says Stossel, is the idea that the U.S. "no longer has economic mobility."
But a paper in The Quarterly Journal of Economics found that most people born to the richest fifth of Americans fall out of that bracket within 20 years (Table 2). Likewise, most born to the poorest fifth climb to a higher quintile. Some climb all the way to the top.
Another claim is that inequality itself is a huge problem.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio warns: "There's inequality in this country right now that is threatening to tear us apart."
Stossel says that it might tear us apart—but only if people come to believe that all inequality is evil.
But it isn't, he says. It's just part of life. Some people are better singers than others. The best athletes are just physically different.
Society doesn't try to equalize those things—or many others—for good reason.
Former investment banker Carol Roth tell Stossel, "I have two kidneys. There are people out there who need one, don't have one that functions. Should the government be able to take my kidney because somebody else needs it?"
"There's inequality in everything," she adds. "There's inequality in free time. There's inequality in parents. I don't have any parents or grandparents. Life is unfair…unfair is a feature. It's not a bug."
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Inequality Myths appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Once, Microsoft had zero lobbyists. The company focused on innovating.
"Microsoft in the early 1990s was the largest company in the world. Incredibly successful … They had no presence in Washington, D.C. Not a single lawyer," Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute tells John Stossel.
But things changed.
Brook explains how Microsoft's CEO was "literally brought in front of Congress … Orrin Hatch from Utah … said, 'You guys need to get involved here in Washington, D.C. You need to build a building here. You need to hire lawyers here.'"
Microsoft, courageously, didn't. Instead, Brook recounts, "Microsoft walked out of the meeting and said, 'You know what? You leave us alone, we will leave you alone … We're busy. We're running the biggest company in the world. There's a lot to do.'"
But soon after that, Attorney General Janet Reno announced that the Justice Department was charging Microsoft with "engaging in anti-competitive and exclusionary practices designed to maintain its monopoly."
Brook says the government was essentially saying, "we're here to prosecute yo u because you're offering the American public … a product for free. This is Internet Explorer, at a time when we were buying Netscape and paying money for it—they offered it for free, and that was deemed bad business practice."
"For 10 years they had to fight that lawsuit," he adds. "They lost, they got regulated, they got controlled. Guess how much Microsoft spends today in Washington, D.C.? … Tens of millions of dollars."
Stossel calls that "sad."
Now, even worse, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg asks government for more regulation. He wants Congress to "require companies to build systems for keeping harmful content to a bare minimum".
Wouldn't that violate the First Amendment?
Stossel says it also, conveniently, would protect Facebook from competitors who don't restrict content. It also makes it harder for them to innovate in ways that might challenge Facebook.
Stossel and Brook's solution? Smaller government: separation of economy and state.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Enough Crony Capitalism! appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>You've probably heard about how it's critical to eat breakfast—that it may have health benefits, and even help you lose weight.
John Stossel looks at the evidence with nutritionist Ruth Kava, and finds that there's no proof of any of those things.
For example, people push breakfast because, as one cereal maker's ad puts it, "a study from none other than Harvard University states that men who regularly skip breakfast have a 27% higher risk of suffering a heart attack."
That's true—but that's largely because the type of people who skip breakfast are also the type of people who are more likely to smoke, drink alcohol, and eat unhealthy foods. After adjusting for those things, breakfast itself has no significant effect.
As this study notes, "it remains unknown whether specific eating habits … influence coronary heart disease."
Another myth is that eating breakfast helps people lose weight. The US Health and Agriculture Departments claimed in 2010 that "consuming breakfast has been associated with weight loss." Wonderful! But no, a recent review of studies found that, if anything, the opposite is true. The government backed away from its claim.
One possible reason for the myth is industry funding of scientific studies.
"Of the 15 studies involving children mentioned by the government, five list funding from General Mills or Kellogg," Stossel says to Kava.
She replies: "Yeah, well, they're the ones that are interested in having their products sold."
Industry funding doesn't always mean bias. Dr. Andrew Brown, a health professor at Indiana University, told Stossel about a study that found that eating breakfast does not help lose weight.
"The study was supported by Quaker Oats, and presented as abstracts by the authors, but not published as a paper for years," Brown said. "Quaker Oats actually followed up with the authors to make sure the authors published the study that conflicted with their interests."
Kava says: "Good for Quaker Oats."
Bottom line, says Stossel, don't worry about skipping breakfast.
Instead, Kava says, just eat when it feels right to you, adding, "Eat breakfast if you're hungry."
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: The Breakfast Myth appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>As Venezuela collapses, many people say, "don't blame socialism."
"Blaming socialism for Venezuela's riches to rags story is grossly misleading," an Al Jazeera reporter claims.
John Oliver claims: "If you follow conservative media at all you might have seen it frequently painted as the inevitable dire consequences of a socialist government." Oliver blames it instead on "epic mismanagement."
But John Stossel says: "Mismanagement is what happens under socialist governments. It always happens, because no group of central planners is wise enough to manage an entire economy. Even if they have good intentions, the socialists eventually run out of other people's money."
In Venezuela, when their socialist government ran out of money, they just printed more. When business owners raised prices to keep up with inflation, the government often took away their businesses.
Yet celebrities praised Hugo Chavez, who started Venezuela's socialism. Model Naomi Campbell visited Chavez, calling him "a rebel angel."
After Chavez's death in 2013, Oliver Stone tweeted, "Hugo Chavez will live forever in history. My friend, rest finally in a peace long earned." Sean Penn told The Hollywood Reporter that "poor people around the world lost a champion."
Stossel says the good news is that, unlike American celebrities, "most Venezuelans who escaped their country's socialism do understand what went wrong."
In Florida, reporter Gloria Alverez talked to Venezuelan immigrants, and most of them told her socialism doesn't work. One said, "It's never gonna work." Another man explained, "It's something that breeds and leads to other misery and destruction."
Stossel warns that if we don't realize that socialism is to blame for Venezuela's destruction, "other tragedies like Venezuela will happen again and again."
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Venezuela <em>Is</em> Socialism appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Seven academic journals recently published papers that were actually hoaxes designed to show the absurdity found in such academic fields as gender studies, race studies, and queer studies. The hoaxers intentionally submitted papers that were ridiculous. One included gibberish about rape culture in dog parks. Another was a section of Hitler's Mein Kampf re-written with feminist buzzwords.
Six journal editors would not talk to Stossel, but one—Roberto Refinetti, editor in chief of Sexuality and Culture—agreed to an interview.
He condemns what the hoaxers did: "You're deceiving people without much of a reason."
He complains, "If you're going to do your research with people, you have to propose your research, submit to a body called an Institutional Review Board."
One of the hoaxers, Peter Boghossian, was found guilty by his employer (Portland State University) of violating its rules requiring him to get approval for the experiment. Of course, since the Institutional Review Board would have insisted that the researchers inform the journals that they were being tested, the test wouldn't have worked.
Stossel says he thinks the hoaxers had good reason not to go to the review board first. "Their hoax woke us up to the fact that some academic journals publish nonsense," he says.
Refinetti's journal, for instance, published the hoax paper titled, "Going in Through the Back Door: Challenging Straight Male Homohysteria, Transhysteria, and Transphobia Through Receptive Penetrative Sex Toy Use."
The paper touted "encouraging male anal eroticism with sex toys" because it would help make men more feminist.
Sexuality and Culture published that paper after its reviewers praised it glowingly. One called it "an incredibly rich and exciting contribution…timely, and worthy of publication."
Refinetti defends his journal, saying that it publishes mind-expanding questions.
"What is the problem with [the subject of the paper]? I don't see a problem….It's nothing really absurd or unusual," Refinetti says.
He also says: "Let's question our assumptions, because maybe we're making assumptions that we shouldn't be making….When homosexuality was considered a mental illness. People pushed, the psychiatrists got together, and said…'it's a perfectly fine thing to choose and not to call it mental illness.' So that's the type of thing that a journal in sexuality and culture does, is discuss."
Discussion is good, Stossel agrees. But in journals today, it seems that only certain conclusions are permitted. The hoaxers complain that in many university fields: "A culture has developed in which only certain conclusions are allowed, like those that make whiteness and masculinity problematic."
"I wouldn't be surprised to find out that in some places that is correct," Refinetti agrees.
"Is that a problem?" asks Stossel.
Refinetti replies: "How big of a problem is it? Is it worse than hunger? Is it worse than people shooting each other?"
But a lack of diversity of ideas does make it harder to find truth—and more likely for ridiculous ideas to thrive. Today's colleges have an extreme lack of diversity: A National Association of Scholars report found that professors at top liberal arts colleges are 10 times more likely to be Democrats than Republicans.
Refinetti says that's not surprising.
"I think it's very reasonable—because what is the job of learning?…Being more open to new ideas, which is what being a liberal is," he says.
Stossel pushes back: "This is your left-leaning definition; it's conservatives that proposed changes like school vouchers…privatizing air traffic control."
"That's an interesting point," Refinetti responds. "Then the hypothesis is shut down. See, that's how things work. You show the idea, you discuss the idea, and get it."
Refinetti says his journal publishes multiple viewpoints. It has published articles that question feminist orthodoxy.
Stossel says he's grateful that Refinetti was willing to have a conversation, but he still cheers the hoaxers for revealing that much of what passes for scholarship at colleges is bunk.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Debating a Hoaxed Journal Editor appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>On 60 Minutes, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) recently said "people are going to have to start paying their fair share in taxes."
Anderson Cooper then asked her what a "fair share" would be.
Ocasio-Cortez responded that in the past, "Sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60-70 percent."
Soon, that became the progressive plan.
But economic historian Phil Magness, of the American Institute for Economic Research, says that progressives miss an important fact: The high tax rates that America had in the past actually didn't bring in much revenue.
When rates were at 70 percent, Magness tells John Stossel, "A millionaire on average would pay 41 percent."
That's because rich people find loopholes. When America had its highest top tax rates, newspapers ran ads like "Cruise for free…$2,499 value."
Magness explains: "Basically [you could] take a vacation around the Caribbean, but while you're onboard the ship, you attend, say, an investing seminar or a real estate seminar—then write off the [whole] trip."
Stossel says that deductions became so complex that rich people, instead of investing in, say, a precursor to the iPhone, hired accountants and tax lawyers to study the tax code. Some also worked less.
This led President Ronald Reagan, with bipartisan support from Democrats, to lower rates and remove deductions. That began the path to the 37 percent top rate that rates that we have today.
Despite the lower rates, federal government revenue—as a percentage of the economy—is still about the same as it was when the top rate was 70 percent. It's even about the same as it was when the rate was 90 percent.
Stossel asks Magness about the claim that "the government will collect more and do good things."
"You're asking for an economic disaster," Magness replies. More money will be wasted in the hands of government. "Do we leave it in the private sector where the market decides? Or do we subject it to corrupt politicians?"
Stossel says: Let the market decide, even though that means some get really rich, because economic growth benefits everyone.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Tax Myths appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Three academics conducted what they call a "grievance studies" experiment. They wrote fake papers on ridiculous subjects and submitted them to prominent academic journals in fields that study gender, race, and sexuality.
They did this to "expose a political corruption that has taken hold of the universities," say the hoaxers in a video which documented the process.
John Stossel interviewed James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian who, along with Helen Pluckrose, sent so-called research papers to 20 journals.
They were surprised when seven papers were accepted. One claimed that "dog humping incidents at dog parks" can be taken as "evidence of rape culture." It was honored as "excellent scholarship."
Another paper rewrote a section of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf as intersectional feminism.
Stossel assumed that the journals would apologize for publishing nonsense and question the quality of their scholarship. But instead they criticized the the hoaxers, complaining that they "engaged in flawed and unethical research."
Of course, that was the point of the hoax.
Boghossian is unapologetic, telling Stossel the hoax shows "scholarship in these disciplines is utterly corrupted … they have placed an agenda before the truth."
When Stossel suggests, "maybe you are just conservative hacks looking to defend your white privilege." Lindsay replied "I've never voted for a Republican in my life." Boghossian added, "Nor have I."
Stossel says what upsets him is that after the hoax "no university said 'we're not gonna use these journals' and no editor publicly said, 'we have to raise our standards.'"
Instead, Portland State University began disciplinary procedures against Boghossian.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Academic Hoax appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The U.S. sugar program is "Stalin-style price controls," Ross Marchand of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance tells John Stossel.
The U.S. government uses a complex system of loans, domestic quotas, and limits on how much sugar we can import. The goal is to control the price of sugar.
Stossel calls it "welfare for the rich." Economists say the program costs consumers billions a year. And yet the sugar industry makes videos that say "it costs taxpayers nothing."
Economist Vincent H. Smith writes that the "Stalinist-style," supply control, "substantially increases U.S. prices–on average U.S. sugar prices are about twice as high as world prices."
Yet politicians from sugar-producing states defend the program. "It basically allows our sugar industry to compete with other countries that are heavily subsidized by their home countries," Senator Marco Rubio said in an interview with Fox News.
Stossel takes Rubio's claim to Marchand, "It's only fair to our sugar producers who don't get subsidized, who can't compete with these subsidized countries."
Marchand replies, "Is it fair for customers to pay double the world rate for sugar? Is it fair for taxpayers to have to bail out a handful of super rich super-connected sugar processors? No."
Ryan Weston, representing the Sugarcane Growers, goes on TV programs and says, "we are a no cost program, no cost to the taxpayer."
"That's absolutely bogus, taxpayers do pay the cost," retorts Marchand. When sugar prices drop, "Government will buy sugar from the sugar processors and sell it to ethanol producers at a below market rate. Who's paying the difference? Who's footing the bill? U.S. taxpayers."
Why aren't people upset with these crony capitalists?
In a video produced by Learn Liberty, Economist Diana Thomas explains that the U.S. sugar program cost each of us "about $10 more on sugar products a year. So we don't even notice it." But sugar producers will lobby hard for their special deal because "each American sugar farmer made roughly $3 million dollars a year extra."
The people who do notice the price controls most are candy makers. According to an Iowa University study, 20,000 American jobs a year are lost because of high sugar prices. Marchand says, "there is one candy cane producer left in Ohio. That's absolutely ridiculous. And look at all those jobs."
Stossel challenges Marchand by saying that it's probably good that we eat less sugar and candy. Marchand replies, "the fact that sugar is in everything means that healthy and unhealthy products alike are going to cost more."
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Sugar's Sweetheart Deal appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>3 million kids (mostly boys) are given medication that's supposed to make them sit still and focus.
But what if schools, not kids, are the problem?
One former public school student, Cade Summers, tells John Stossel that he hated the effect of the drugs–that it was like he had been "lobotomized."
Cade's parents took him off the "attention deficit" drugs and sent him to other schools. But Cade hated them all. "I would come home and I would sometimes just cry," Cade tells Stossel.
Then he heard of a new type of school in Austin, Texas. It promised to let kids discuss ideas, and to do real-world work.
But the school, the Academy of Thought and Industry, is a private school that charges tuition.
So Cade started getting up at 3 a.m. to work in a coffee shop to help pay the tuition.
What kind of school could possibly be worth that to a kid?
The school's founder, Michael Strong, says kids learn best when they are given actual responsibility, real life work. "Teens need responsibility…Ben Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, started their careers at the age of 12 or 13," he points out.
Nowadays people consider that abusive child labor, Stossel notes.
"I worked as a teen," Strong replies. "I loved it. Teens very often want to work."
Strong's schools do many things differently. Students get Fridays off to work on their own projects. School starts at 10 a.m. There are no lectures–instead students read, and then discuss what they read.
That's different from schools Strong once attended–and hated.
"School is 13 years of how to be passive, how to be dependent," Strong tells Stossel.
"School is about aim, aim, aim, aim, aim, and never get stuff done. So I want students who just go out there and get stuff done, fail, get up, try again. That's how we become creators, entrepreneurs…We want them to do what they love now."
For Cade, that meant doing a marketing internship Fridays, where he did actual work.
When he completed Strong's school, he got a job right away–at a tech startup that normally requires a college degree.
Another Academy graduate runs a successful metal music festival called "Austin Terror Fest."
All kids at Strong's schools work on some kind of project.
"I'm currently working on making a web-based chat application," one boy told us. "I wanna be a programmer. I love programming".
A girl at the school works at a paintball range on weekends. "If they love paintball, then they should do a business in that," says Strong.
Most of his students also end up going to college. Strong points out, "We've had students admitted to top liberal arts colleges. Bard, Bennington …"
"Of course they do well," Stossel interrupts. "You're charging fat tuition. Only rich kids can afford to go there and they're going to do well."
"The kind of kids that we get come from all walks of life," Strong responds. "We had a student from New Jersey…he was incapable of functioning in the highly structured public school systems…in the public schools needed a full time aide…He was costing the state an enormous amount of money. He came to our school…He did not need an aide."
"Coming here is just healing. It's incredible," that student, Josh, told us.
Strong hopes his schools will be a model for other schools that let kids learn through real world work.
That approach works so much better for some kid that they willingly wake up at 3 a.m. to go to work to help pay tuition.
"It was me choosing my life," Cade says.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: A Better School appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>San Francisco is one of America's richest cities, yet it has a major problem with homelessness and crime. An average of 85 cars are broken into daily, yet fewer than 2 percent lead to arrests.
The homeless themselves are often harassed. "They run around and they shout at themselves," one man who usually sleeps on the streets told our crew. "They make it bad for people like us that hang out with a sign."
Since store owners can't rely on city cops for help, some have hired private police to patrol their stores. There used to be hundreds of these private cops citiwide—and then the city's police union complained. There are fewer than 10 left.
San Francisco's politicians have promised to help the homeless going back decades. In 1982, Mayor Dianne Feinstein bragged about creating "a thousands units right here in the Tenderloin." In 2002, Mayor Willie Brown said "you gotta do something about it." In 2008, Mayor Gavin Newsom boasted about moving "6,860 human beings off the street." In 2018, San Francisco passed a new local tax to help pay for homeless services.
Why have the results been so lackluster? One reason: San Francisco has the nation's highest rents.
Laura Foote runs the non-profit "YIMBY Action," which stands for "yes in my backyard." The organization promotes policies that encourage more housing construction as a way to bring down prices.
Many San Francisco residents object to this mission.
"I would hate it," one woman told John Stossel.
"I think it'd be really congested," said another.
"Let me build," said developer John Dennis. He spent years trying to get permission to replace a graffiti-covered, long-defunct meat-packing plant with a 60-unit building. He eventually got permission—but it took 4 years.
"And all that time, we're paying property taxes and we're paying for maintenance of the building," Dennis told Stossel.
"I'll never do another project here," he says.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Bad Laws Worsen the Homeless Crisis appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Mercedes-Benz Stadium is home to the Atlanta Falcons and the site of this year's Super Bowl. Costing $1.5 billion, it's one of the most expensive stadiums in America.
The owner of Atlanta's football team, billionaire Arthur Blank, persuaded Atlanta officials to force taxpayers to pay for more than $700 million in subsidies for his stadium.
John Stossel says he understands why politicians subsidize stadiums. "They like going to games, and like telling voters, 'I brought a team to our town!'" says Stossel.
He also understands why billionaires take the money, "if politicians are giving money away, Blank's partners would consider him irresponsible not to take it."
And when it comes to already-rich people getting poorer people to fund their stadiums, Atlanta is not unusual. The Oakland Raiders got $750 million of taxpayer money to move the Raiders to Las Vegas.
"In the last two decades…taxpayers across the country have spent nearly $7 billion on [NFL] stadiums," according to a Huffington Post article.
In fact "12 teams … actually turned a profit on stadium subsidies alone," according to a Fox News report.
Politicians claim their subsidies are "an investment." They argue the economic benefits a stadium will bring a city outweigh the cost. Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman said, "It really is a benefit to us that really could spill over into something."
Stossel says this "spillover is bunk." Numerous economic studies have shown that stadiums are a bad investment for taxpayers.
One by George Mason University concludes, "Despite the many millions of dollars spent on professional sports, little or none of that money makes its way back to the taxpayers who subsidize professional sports teams." In fact "… sports teams may actually hurt economic growth."
Economist J.C. Bradbury points out that while money spent at football games is the "seen benefit, the unseen cost is that those people would otherwise be spending their money elsewhere in the local communities. At the local bar there's one less bartender. There was one less waitress hired at another restaurant. A movie theater that had one less theater full."
Stossel reminds everyone, "When politicians brag about their stadium and the many economic benefits, let's also remember all the jobs they destroyed and taxpayer money they squandered."
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Super Bowl of Welfare appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>It's school choice week. Many kids don't have choice in where they go to school. The school choice movement is trying to give them that opportunity.
Of course, having choice when it comes to what kids learn is important too.
Many schools teach kids that capitalism hurts people.
So John Stossel started a charity called Stossel in the Classroom. It offers teachers free videos that introduce kids to free market ideas. Students rarely hear about these ideas in school.
Graduates from Queens Technical High School in New York City who watched the videos while they were in high school explained that the videos were different from what they were used to.
"They really opened up my mind to think differently" said Xiomara Inga. Antonio Parada added the videos "changed the way that I viewed the world."
Gabriel Miller was so inspired by videos about the founding of America, he decided to enlist in the National Guard. He explains, "We are taught that this country is horrible." But after watching the videos, "I felt ashamed for what I initially believed…[so] I wanted to give back."
Diony Perez was inspired to open his own business, an auto leasing company called Familia Motor Group. "The Stossel videos helped me become more of an entrepreneur," Diony said.
Other students explained that certain videos like "The Unintended Consequences …" and "The Evil Rich" stuck with them. Johann Astudillo learned about unintended consequences from a video about minimum wage, "minimum wage increase priced out young people from getting jobs into the market."
Victoria Guerrero learned that most rich people get rich by providing some benefit to society. "If it wasn't for Steve Jobs … our life would not be as easy as it is today."
Stossel says he is glad his charity helps students understand free market ideas.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Exposing Students to Free Markets appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The government shutdown is now longer than any in history. The media say it's a "crisis."
The Washington Post talks talks about the "shutdown's pain." The New York Times says it's "just too much."
John Stossel says: wait a second. Looking around America, everything seems pretty normal. Life goes on. Kids still play and learn, adults still work, stock prices have actually increased during the shutdown. It's hardly the end of the world.
But he adds that the government shutdown is still a problem. For some 400,000 furloughed workers, and another 400,000 working without pay for now, the shutdown hurts.
But while New York Times columnist Paul Krugman calls it "Trump's big libertarian experiment," Stossel notes that the shutdown is not libertarian. Government's rules are still in effect, and soon workers will be paid for not working. Stossel calls that an un-libertarian experiment.
Libertarians want to permanently cut government, not shut down parts for a few weeks and then pay the workers anyway.
There are lessons to be learned from the shutdown.
Government stopped collecting trash and cleaning up public parks in DC, so volunteers stepped in to pick up trash. Without so much government, Stossel says, private citizens will often step in to do things government workers used to do.
Stossel says the shutdown highlights where some government waste can be trimmed.
Farmers don't get their "support" checks during the shutdown. But Stossel asks–why should they get checks at all? While the big subsidies go to grain and corn farmers, most fruit and vegetable farmers get no subsidies. They survive without them. Other farmers could, too.
FDA inspection of food has stopped during the shutdown. Paul Krugman asks smugly, "does contaminated food smell like freedom?"
But Stossel notes that the main reason food is safe isn't government. It's competition. Companies worry about their reputation. Just ask Chipotle, Stossel says. Their stock fell by more than half after food poisoning incidents at their stores; since then they have instituted far more food inspection than government requires.
Most food producers already do that. Beef carcasses undergo hot steam rinses, and microbiological testing goes well beyond what government requires. Market competition protects us better than rule-bound government bureaucrats.
Stossel says most of government could be done away with or privatized.
Even airport security. TSA workers aren't getting paid. But some airports (San Francisco, Orlando, Kansas City, and 19 others) privatized security. Those workers are still getting paid. They also do a better job. A leaked TSA study found that the private security agents, in test runs, are much better at detecting weapons in bags than the TSA. A congressional report found they are also faster at processing passengers.
Stossel says that while politicians bicker about $5.7 billion in wall funding (much less than 1 percent of the federal budget) what they really should worry about is that America's debt will soon reach $22 trillion because government squanders money on useless things.
At union protests, government workers say "We are essential!"
But based on the above, Stossel says: Give us a break.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Government Shutdown Shows Private Is Better appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Ten states plus Washington, D.C., have legalized pot for adults.
In several states, it's been legal now for five years. How has it worked out?
John Stossel visited legal weed stores in California and talked with people on the street.
Almost unanimously, people said that legalization has worked well.
"See any disasters? Seems pretty alright to me," one man told Stossel.
One woman added: "There's a dispensary around the corner from my house and it's actually probably cleaned up the corner."
"Why would it clean up the corner?" Stossel asked.
"They have a lot of security … they really paid attention to who's on the sidewalk, who's interacting with their customers. They're actually pretty much a class act."
But Paul Chabot, a drug warrior who served in both the Clinton and Bush administrations, disagrees. Years ago, he told Stossel that legalization would create all kinds of problems. He hasn't changed his mind.
Chabot tells Stossel that "Colorado youth have an 85% higher marijuana use rate than the rest of the country."
But Stossel pointed out that a New England Journal of Medicine study says that teen use actually dropped slightly after legalization.
On the other hand, data on marijuana-linked traffic fatalities is mixed.
Chabot tells Stossel that "pot driving fatalities in Colorado are up 151%." But that statistic is misleading because many of those people may not have been high while driving. The 151% includes anyone who tests positive for marijuana after an accident, even though traces of marijuana stay in a person's system for weeks. A more stringent measure that more reliably predicts whether someone was high at the time of an accident indicates cannabis-related accidents are up 84 percent.
That's still an increase. But the total numbers are low—just 35 accidents in 2017. More study is needed.
Marijuana is not harmless, but Stossel notes that the drug war usually does more harm than the drug itself. Banning marijuana drives sales into a black market, where criminals make the profit. Driving sales underground also deprives consumers of the quality and safety testing now provided by competitive legal markets. It doesn't stop teenagers from using the drug. A study before legalization found that teens said marijuana was easier to buy than alcohol. A black market leads dealers to sell in schools and may even increase marijuana's use.
America once tried banning alcohol. That, like the drug war, created organized crime, and much more violence.
"Prohibition hasn't worked," Stossel tells Chabot.
"Just because something doesn't work doesn't mean that we end it … doesn't mean we quit," Chabot replies.
"At some point when it's doing more harm than good, shouldn't we quit?" Stossel responds.
"No, because then we give up. And that's not American," Chabot tells him.
But more and more, Americans are giving up on the drug war. New Jersey and New York plan to legalize marijuana soon. Stossel says that's a good thing.
"Adults should have the right to make their own decisions about what to put in their own bodies." he says.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Legal Weed So Far appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Asian Americans are suing Harvard for illegally discriminating against them.
The lawsuit forced Harvard to release admissions data which reveal that admitted Asian applicants score 22 points higher on the SAT than whites and 63 points higher than blacks.
Harvard admits to using race as a factor in admissions for the sake of diversity. But the school says it does so without any hard quotas or race-based points system—that they merely consider it informally. Past Supreme Courts have allowed that.
But the Asian Americans suing Harvard argue that the university gives them artificially low personality ratings to keep their admissions rate down. They say Harvard treats Asian Americans as "boring little grade grubbers."
Harvard's data show that a typical Asian applicant is less than half as likely to get a good personality rating in Harvard's admissions process than a typical black applicant.
Lee Cheng of the Asian American Legal Foundation says the data show clear, systematic discrimination based on race.
"Harvard didn't just use race as one of many factors. It was the determinative factor," Cheng tells Stossel.
Many experts say that Harvard's case may reach the Supreme Court. If it does, then the court—with President Trump's new appointees—might strike down all college racial preferences. Ending racial preferences would increase the share of Asian and white students in colleges, but decrease the share of black and hispanic students.
Harry Holzer, an economist and Harvard Alum who studies affirmative action, says that would be a big mistake.
"When you have a long history of discrimination based on race, you have to take race into account," Holzer tells Stossel.
But Cheng says Harvard's preferences don't help disadvantaged people.
"Race based affirmative action helps rich people….70 percent of the students of every ethnic group at Harvard come from the top 20 percent of family income," Cheng tells Stossel.
Holzer responds: "It's okay….Race in America matters at any level of income."
But Cheng responds that when wealthy people use race to get a leg up, poor whites and poor Asians get hurt.
He first became passionate about racial discrimination when he faced it in high school. San Francisco had a strict racial quota for admission to the Lowell public magnet high school. Because there were many Chinese kids in the area, Cheng and other Chinese Americans had to score higher than kids of other races.
"I was just shocked," Cheng tells Stossel. "I was just taught in civics and history that in America everybody was supposed to be equal under the law."
Cheng got in, but he says he saw many of his friends get left behind because of racial preferences.
"The kids who were negatively affected … were the kids of the dishwashers and the seamstresses and who lived in Chinatown, who were very poor."
Cheng eventually sued San Francisco and forced them to end their quotas. Now he hopes the lawsuit against Harvard will do the same to universities.
"I have three kids," Cheng says. "I'll be damned if I'm going to not fight very, very hard to make sure that they don't get treated as second class citizens in the land in which they were born."
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: End Racial Preferences at Colleges? appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Leaked emails show some Google engineers blaming their company for Trump's 2016 win, suggesting that the site should censor outlets like The Daily Caller and Breitbart.
Google says the company never did that, but for many people, it raises the question: could Google executives flip an election?
"Google's senior management was heavily in favor of Hillary Clinton," The Creepy Line writer Peter Schweizer tells John Stossel. "Their ability to manipulate the algorithm is something that they've demonstrated the ability to do in the past…and the evidence from academics who monitored 2016 was clearly that they did."
Schweizer's film features psychologist Robert Epstein, whose research claimed that people rated Google's top search results in 2016 as more positive to Hilary Clinton than to Donald Trump.
Stossel says that it doesn't prove that Google's results were biased. It may just be that major media outlets ran more positive headlines about Clinton, and since Google's results rely on the major media, that would bring more positive Clinton headlines, even without any bias on Google's part.
Even if Google's search algorithm is fair, major social media outlets do manipulate us by determining what we can not see.
The film plays a clip of psychologist Jordan Peterson, who points out: "They're not using unbiased algorithms to do things like search for unacceptable content on twitter and on YouTube and on Facebook–those aren't unbiased at all. They're built specifically to filter out whatever's bad."
Stossel notes that Google and Facebook employ human content monitors, some of whom despise conservatives, to determine what is "bad."
Peterson himself has reason to worry. After he criticized a Canadian law that would mandate use of people's preferred pronouns (like "ze" or "xir"), Google briefly shut down Peterson's YouTube channel. They even blocked him from his own Gmail account.
"That's a real problem," says Peterson. "You come to rely on these things and when the plug is pulled suddenly then that puts a big hole in your life."
Stossel wonders: what can consumers do about possible social media manipulation or censorship? One speaker in Schweizer's film says, "delete your accounts!" Stossel tells Schweizer: "I don't want to delete my accounts–and you can't, without cutting yourself off from much of the best of the world."
Schweizer admits that it's a challenge, but says he's switched to Google's competitors.
For simple searches, Schweizer uses DuckDuckGo.com instead of Google.
For email, Schweizer uses the encrypted service ProtonMail.com, based in Switzerland, rather than Gmail.
The web browser Brave provides an alternative to Google's Chrome. Brave was founded by Brendan Eich, who created the browser Firefox but was then forced to leave his own company because he once donated to a ballot proposition against gay marriage.
But most people won't switch. Stossel hasn't switched. He wonders if a few individuals switching will change much.
"That's all we have? A pathetic act that won't make any difference?" he asks.
Schweizer replies: "If people make clear to Google that they don't like their manipulation, and they don't like their invasion of privacy … they will be forced to make changes. That's part of the reason we love and support the market the way we do."
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Does Silicon Valley Manipulate Users? appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Holiday season is here. To help your friends or family learn about liberty, why not give them a book?
John Stossel has some ideas.
First, there's The Road to Serfdom. In it, Friedrich Hayek explains why government intervention in the economy leads to serfdom. He explains why no central planner can allocate resources as well as individuals can.
Stossel says this is a great book for your socialist friends—if they are willing to read it.
They might not be, Stossel says, because the language is old. Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics is more current. Sowell explains that trade is not a zero-sum game—it's not as if one country wins and another loses. Both sides benefit. Stossel suggests that someone should give Sowell's book to our President.
Another myth-busting book is The Myth of the Robber Barons. Historian Burton Folsom explains that Cornelius Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller didn't get rich by robbing people. They got rich by creating better things.
Another good book that covers basic economics is Free to Choose, by Milton and Rose Friedman.
Stossel also briefly mentions a bonus book by a former clueless, lefty, big-government loving reporter who finally woke up to the benefits of markets. That book is Give Me a Break.
Prefer fiction? Stossel recommends two classics, Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, and Animal Farm, by George Orwell.
Any of these books, Stossel says, would make a great Christmas gift.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel's Stocking Stuffers appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Companies like Google and Facebook collect information about us and sell it to advertisers.
The information they collect and the way they collect it cross the "creepy line" according to a new documentary called "The Creepy Line."
John Stossel asks the writer of the documentary, Peter Schweizer: "What's the big deal? They're giving me information."
Schweizer responds "to the extent that somebody can do something for you, they can do something to you." He goes on to make a powerful case that Google and Facebook abuse their power.
The documentary says that Google tracks you even when you are not online. As soon as you connect to the internet, Android uploads to Google a complete history of where you've been that day.
Schweizer wants Google and Facebook to be regulated like media companies.
Stossel is skeptical "You want regulation? That's going to make it better?" he asks.
Schweizer answers: "one of the ways you deal with Google's market concentration, and its massive control of search is, put it under the same shackles [as] other media companies."
Stossel doesn't presume to know what, if anything, ought to be done about Google and Facebook. But he says that the documentary makes a compelling case that these giant companies do creepy things.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Google and Facebook Cross 'The Creepy Line' appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Socialism is now cool in some circles. Newly elected Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez praises "Democratic Socialism" and told comedian Stephen Colbert, "in a modern, moral and wealthy society, no person in America should be too poor to live."
Colbert ate it up. "Seems pretty simple!" he replied, to cheers from his audience.
But socialism shouldn't be cool, Gloria Alvarez reported recently, noting that it wrecks economies. In this video she points out that it also leads to government using force against its own citizens.
Regimes that call themselves socialist have killed millions of people. Tens of millions were killed in the USSR. Same in China. Millions also died in Cambodia and North Korea, which claimed to follow socialist ideals.
Today's socialists say that those countries didn't practice "real" socialism. They promise that their experiment will be different, and better. "Democratic socialists" like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez certainly promise to avoid anything like the horrors of previous self-described socialist governments.
But Alvarez says that socialism, whatever the variant, tends to turn out the same way. Right now, people die in Latin American countries that fell for socialism's promises.
In Cuba, because government restricts private property and trade, Cubans trade on the black market to survive. Sometimes the government violently cracks down on them.
Alvarez interviews Ibis Valdes, who says: "my father was a political prisoner [in Cuba] for almost a decade … because in his 20s he sold soaps and perfumes and did not want to relinquish all of his profits to the government."
Michel Ibarra, who escaped Cuba, says: "Socialism is the perfect excuse for someone who wants to rule an authoritarian regime."
Political violence in the name of socialism also occurred in Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Alvarez interviews Ramón Muchacho, a former mayor of a section of Venezuela's capital city, Caracas. He tell Alvarez that he was pressured by socialist leaders to use his police force to brutally suppress protests against the regime. Because he refused, he was threatened with jail. He fled to America.
"It seems to me we are not able to learn," Ramón Muchacho tells Alvarez. "[Politicians] will always be dreaming about the future and never delivering. People keep falling in love with that kind of crap."
Alvarez hopes that some will learn. Gustavo Tefel, who fled violence in Nicaragua tells her that he did.
"I don't think [people] realize how deep socialism is involved in all [the violence]…America is a great country. People really don't appreciate it much…they should travel a little more to poor countries to really get a feeling for what they have here in the United States. Just look around, you know, and really get some knowledge."
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Socialism Leads To Violence appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Our government says e-cigarettes and vaping are the latest "epidemic" among teens. So the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it will restrict them. Cities across the country are banning e-cigarette use in public.
But e-cigarettes help smokers quit traditional cigarettes. Michelle Minton of the Competitive Enterprise Institute tells John Stossel that people have misconceptions about e-cigarettes. "It's about 95 percent less harmful than a normal traditional cigarette," she says.
That's because e-cigarettes let people get a hit of nicotine without actually burning tobacco. The burning of paper and tobacco leaves is what makes cigarettes so dangerous.
Minton admits that the nicotine in e-cigarettes is addictive. But "on the spectrum of drugs that you can become addicted to, nicotine and caffeine are very similar to each other."
The Surgeon General says there are other health risks to vaping: "Besides nicotine, e-cigarettes can contain harmful and potentially harmful ingredients."
Despite the dangers, researchers seem to agree that e-cigarettes are substantially less dangerous than combustible cigarettes.
Other studies concluded that long-term e-cigarette use is "associated with substantially reduced levels of measured carcinogens and toxicants relative to cigarette-only smoking."
Nevertheless, the FDA threatens to crack down to discourage kids from using e-cigarettes.
Minton says that is a bad idea: "Do we want children to become addicted to anything? No….But keeping a small percent of teenagers from trying e-cigarettes is not worth sacrificing adults whose lives could be saved."
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Let Them Vape appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Sen. Bernie Sanders recently came up with a new business to attack: Amazon. Sanders said Amazon didn't pay its workers enough and because of that, many qualified for government assistance.
At first, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos defended his company.
That was the right thing to do, says John Stossel. He notes: "It's not companies' fault that some workers qualify for handouts. More people would collect them if Amazon were not hiring. By creating jobs, Bezos gives workers better choices."
But the media rarely mention that. Instead, they bombarded Amazon with negative coverage.
So Bezos caved. He declared that all Amazon workers would now all be paid $15 an hour or more. That higher wage sounds good to most people, but Stossel point out that while the higher minimum is good for workers who have jobs now, it can shut out beginners.
Kelsey Holder (now Kelsey Turner) started working at age 13, for minimum wage, at Mossman's Coffee Shops and Catering Company in Bakersfield, California.
By the time Stossel interviewed her in 2010, she was making $20 an hour. She told him: "For being only 13…minimum wage was fine. If you work hard, you can make more, it's just you have to prove yourself."
The skills she learned through work—even at minimum wage—served her well. Kelsie is now the restaurant's manager. Had the minimum wage been higher when she started, she may never have gotten that opportunity.
When Amazon sets a high minimum wage at its own company, unskilled workers can still find jobs at other companies.
But Amazon did not stop there. It has also begun lobbying for the government to force all its competitors to pay a higher minimum wage too.
That could help Amazon, Stossel says: "Amazon's already replacing workers with robots. Bezos knows a higher minimum wage will hurt his competitors more than it hurts him."
Amazon often tries to get favors from government. It didn't just announce a second headquarters. It started a competition to see which politicians would give it the largest tax incentives.
"Give me a break," Stossel says. "Politicians shouldn't pander to companies, and companies shouldn't pander to politicians. I wish Bezos would stick to innovating, not scheming with politicians to get special breaks. Some of the worst enemies of capitalism are capitalists."
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Why Some Capitalists Are the Worst Enemies of Capitalism appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Democratic socialists in the United States point to Sweden as a socialist success. But Swedish historian Johan Norberg says, "Sweden is not socialist."
Norberg hosts a documentary called Sweden: Lessons for America?, in which he notes that in Sweden, "government doesn't own the means of production. To see that you have to go to Venezuela or Cuba or North Korea."
John Stossel asks Norberg why so many Americans think Sweden is socialist. Norberg answers, "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."
But big government led to problems. "Our economy was in crisis, inflation reached 10 percent, and for a brief period interest rates soared to 500 percent. At that point the Swedish population just said, 'Enough, we can't do this,'" Norberg says.
Sweden cut public spending, privatized the national rail network, abolished certain government monopolies, eliminated inheritance taxes, sold state-owned businesses, and switched to a school voucher system. It also "lowered taxes and reformed the pension system," adds Norberg.
So Stossel asks why we keep hearing "that Sweden is this socialist paradise."
Norberg answers: "We do have a bigger welfare state than the U.S. and higher taxes than the U.S. But in other areas, when it comes to free markets, when it comes to competition, when it comes to free trade, Sweden is actually more free market."
He's right, according to the Heritage Foundation's Economic Freedom Rankings. Sweden ranks higher than the U.S.
Norberg also tells Stossel that Sweden's tax system may surprise Americans. "This is the dirty little secret….We don't take from the rich and give to the poor. We squeeze the poor, because rich people might leave."
Even people who earn below average income pay up to 60 percent in taxes.
Stossel asks: What lessons should Americans take from Sweden?
"You can't turn your backs [on] the creation of wealth," warns Norberg.
Sweden: Lessons for America? airs on PBS on October 29th at 7 p.m. Eastern. You can also watch it at freetochoose.tv.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Sweden Is Not a Socialist Success appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>In New York, Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo wants to raise taxes.
But John Stossel interviews an interesting candidate with a different plan–Libertarian Larry Sharpe. He proposes alternative ways to raise money.
One idea is to lease naming rights on public infrastructure.
"The Triborough Bridge could be called the Staples Bridge, or the Apple Bridge," Sharpe explains to Stossel. "Hundreds of thousands of vehicles pass by, and see that big sign. That's valuable!"
Most people we asked on the street didn't like his idea. "I definitely wouldn't want to rename something after some sort of corporation," one man told us.
Sharpe says it's necessary, "You can shake your fist and say 'this doesn't sound good' if you want to. And you're going to wind up in a place where the tax burden is insanely high." That, he points out, would lead to more businesses and people leaving New York.
Although Sharpe is the Libertarian candidate, he's doing well for a third-party. A recent poll has him getting 13 percent of the vote. And after survey respondents hear his campaign pitch, that number goes up to 25 percent.
Stossel thinks the reasons for his success may be that he speaks well, campaigns constantly, and–unlike most libertarians–doesn't propose cutting existing government programs. He only wants to stop creating new ones. Sharpe also talks positively about unions.
"There are [rail] systems out there…that are both safe and unionized, so we keep the unions happy and our workers safe," Sharpe told Stossel.
"Why do you want to keep the unions happy?" Stossel responded. "Unions can be destructive."
"They can be, absolutely," Sharpe said. "[But] unions are part of our First Amendment. It's people getting together saying they won't do X until you do Y. Nothing wrong with that at all."
"It raises prices," Stossel pushed back.
"Fine, that's okay," Sharpe said. "It is what it is. Collective bargaining is fine. My issue with the unions has always been, are you forcing me to be in a union? Are you forcing unionized labor? If you're forcing it, I'm libertarian, I have a problem with that. But you're voluntarily doing it? I don't have a problem at all."
He assures Stossel that he'd prevent any new government programs.
"You do know what party I am part of, right?" Sharpe asks. "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."
Stossel is glad that there's a small-government candidate running for office who actually draws enthusiastic crowds.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Libertarian Larry Sharpe Brings New Ideas to New York appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Socialism has become cool in America, under the nice name "democratic socialism."
Gloria Álvarez ?knows better, because she's from Latin America and studied socialism there. She says: Watch out! Socialism has a clear track record of wrecking every country that implements it.
Cuba tried socialism. Things got so bad that tens of thousands fled the island on dangerous, makeshift rafts. Others paid lots of money to be allowed to leave.
Álvarez interviews people who fled. One man told her that in Cuba: "You don't see any future. Everything is stagnated…health care, education, nowadays they're in ruins."
Another said: "My father [a doctor] had to sell illegal meats out of his ambulance…because Cuban doctors earn less than 1% of American doctors."
Because of his experience with socialism, that man is now running as a libertarian for a Florida State House seat.
He adds: "I tell my Venezuelan friends, we warned you guys!"
After Cuba, Venezuela became immersed in socialism. For a while, things seemed to work OK thanks to the country's oil wealth; Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, and used to be the richest country in Latin America.
Celebrities like Michael Moore and Sean Penn visited Hugo Chavez and praised his socialism.
Venezuelans were happy, too. A former mayor in Venezuela's capital city told Álvarez: "People were clapping so hard. They were like, 'Oh, finally there is somebody here making social justice.'"
But eventually socialism led to a mismanagement of the economy that was so bad that money started to run out. The government just printed more. So much more that it led to million-percent inflation.
Life savings were wiped out.
When businesses raised prices to try to keep up with inflation, Chavez and his successor, President Maduro, banned that.
When businesses did it anyway, they were seized by the government. This tragic video shows a shopkeeper pleading as his business is taken away. It wasn't a one-time thing; more than 30,000 businesses were confiscated.
Now, millions starve. The average Venezuelan has lost 24 pounds. More than 2 million people have fled the country.
"It's like the apocalypse. It's no food. No medicine," one Venezuelan told Álvarez.
But some still defend socialism, saying that what happened there "isn't real socialism." Bernie Sanders says: "when I talk about Socialism I am not looking at Venezuela, I'm not looking at Cuba. I'm looking at countries like Denmark, like Sweden."
But Denmark's prime minister says that's a mistake: "Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy," he clarifies.
In Scandinavian countries, government regulates business less than America's government does. Scandinavian countries don't even have a minimum wage.
Real socialism looks more like Cuba and Venezuela.
Álvarez hopes people look at socialism's track record before implementing it anywhere else.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Socialism Fails Every Time appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Dave Rubin is a popular YouTube host who was once on the left. He worked for The Young Turks TV show.
But Rubin tells John Stossel how he gradually changed his mind and became a classical liberal. For that, Rubin lost friends and gets protested at college campuses.
While many leftists are so angry at Rubin that they will no longer talk to him, conservatives are eager to talk. Rubin says that surprised him because, "I'm pro-choice. Most of them are pro-life. I'm against the death penalty, most of them are for the death penalty."
Stossel had a similar experience. "When I went from left to libertarian, the right was willing to argue," he tells Rubin.
Why would that be? Rubin speculates that it comes down to treating people as individuals rather than groups. "If you believe in the individual, then you fundamentally understand that individuals are different. So you are willing to sit down with someone different than you," he says.
Rubin gets flak for talking with right-wing provocateurs like Milo Yiannopoulos, and for criticizing leftists.
When Rubin, who is gay, tried to give a speech at the University of New Hampshire, a gender studies professor screamed, "we don't want you in the LGBT community, so get the f*** out."
Another woman at the speech said Rubin is insensitive to victims. But when Rubin asked how she had been oppressed, she responded, "I have no reason to tell you about my oppression because that's just like mental energy, unless I'm going to be paid."
Rubin calls the atmosphere on many campuses an "Oppression Olympics," where students and faculty compete to be the biggest victim.
As a result, ideas that offend "victims" are often off limits for discussion.
But Rubin says he will not bow to political correctness. He'll keep discussing uncomfortable ideas: "I would rather live and stand for whatever I believe in than just bow forever."
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: Leaving the Left appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>If you live in one of 65 U.S. cities, you've probably seen electric scooters.
To unlock one, you just use an app on your phone. It costs one dollar to unlock and 15-cents a minute after that. You go where you need to go, and then just leave the scooter anywhere. The scooter stays there until someone else rents it. It has a GPS which allows riders to locate them and prevents theft.
John Stossel tested one in Washington, D.C. He wonders if this is the next revolution in urban travel.
Jennifer Skees, who studies technology policy at the Mercatus Center, calls the scooters "a new twist on old technology…something that works even better, to solve needs in dense urban areas."
Yet some cities have banned electric scooters. San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said they endanger "public health and safety." Skees calls that ironic "because San Francisco always seems to be clamoring for more transportation options…complaining about the traffic and asking for green transportation."
What about safety? A man reportedly died after falling off a scooter and reckless scooter riders have injured pedestrians. Skees answers, "we actually haven't seen a large number of accidents or injuries…we don't ban bicycles because somebody might get hurt on a bicycle."
The scooters anger lots of people. Some complain about safety risks—others despise them as a symbol of techie gentrification. Videos show people throwing scooters into the ocean and setting scooters on fire.
But Maggie Gendron, director of strategic development at the scooter-sharing company Lime, tells Stossel, "it's a low percentage of vandalism…[in one city] 10,000 rides and 18 vandalism complaints."
Some cities are starting to welcome the scooters. San Francisco recently lifted its ban, granting permits to two small companies but rejecting permits to 10 companies including Lime and Bird. Washington, D.C., Austin, Seattle, and about 62 other cities have active scooter-sharing now.
Stossel says, as often happens, entrepreneurs invented something great. He wonders how many cities will impose destructive regulation.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Like us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.
The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.
The post Stossel: War on Electric Scooters appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>