If We Can’t End the Fed, Can We at Least Subject It to Competition?

Ron Paul has made “End the Fed” a popular slogan, but some people worry that this is a radical untested idea. In part, this is because it is human nature to fear the unknown. But there are plenty of examples of policy reforms that used to be considered radical but are now commonplace. Statists used [...]

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Exposing Dishonest Washington Budget Math with John Stossel

About this time last year, with the White House about to release a new budget, the press was filled with stories about President Obama being a tough-minded budget cutter. Once the budget was released, I looked at the real numbers and explained how the burden of government spending would jump by $2 trillion in just [...]

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The Pilgrims Learned from Their Mistakes, so Why Can’t Obama?

There’s an odd debate in the blogosphere. As happens every Thanksgiving, libertarians and conservatives take joy in pointing out that there was mass starvation and suffering during the early years of the Plymouth Colony because of a socialist economic model. Here’s what John Stossel recently wrote. Long before the failure of modern socialism, the earliest [...]

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Obama Should Listen to John Stossel if He Wants to Get Reelected

One of the main factors determining incumbent election success is economic performance. When disposable income is rising and people feel good about the future, it is difficult for an incumbent to lose. So why, then, is Obama pursuing policies that are undermining growth? Sure, it is in the interests of the left in the long [...]

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The Private Sector Always Does a Better Job than Government

Using road management as an example, John Stossel explains that government does a worse job than the private sector, even at things that theoretically are a government responsibility. Part of this is because of the profit motive, to be sure, but a big reason is probably because government bureaucracies inevitably are filled with overpaid bureaucrats who [...]

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Alan Greenspan Should “Man Up” or Drop Out of Sight

John Stossel appropriately scolds the former Federal Reserve Chairman for blaming the financial crisis on the free market. I’ll go one step farther and say that Greenspan’s behavior is a reprehensible example of someone lacking the cojones to take responsibility for his mistakes. Greenspan is surely not responsible for the corrupt system of subsidies from [...]

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Government Thuggery

It is common to mock paper-pushing bureaucrats and nanny-state politicians for silly laws and mindless regulations, but sometimes absurd policies translate into genuine oppression. John Stossel outlines some of the disturbing ways that the American people are being mistreated. Something’s happened to America, and it isn’t good. It’s become easier to get into trouble. We’ve become a nation [...]

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Look Before You Leap on Nuclear Energy

In his Townhall column, John Stossel cites my Cato colleague Jerry Taylor as he explains that nuclear energy may not be viable without government subsidies. President Obama recently announced $8 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear power plants. I smiled when I heard. Finally, even Democrats woke up to the benefits of nuclear power. But [...]

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The Real-World Version of Atlas Shrugged

John Stossel’s show tomorrow on Fox Business News will discuss how modern events are eerily similar to what happened in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Writing about the show in his column, Stossel asks which political figure from today would be akin to the evil Wesley Mouch in the book. That’s a challenging question. During the [...]

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