Author: John Stossel

It’s the season for giving. That doesn’t mean it’s the season for government. Government creates loyalty in the minds of citizens by pretending to be Santa Claus, doling out gifts and favors. Politicians claim they help those unfortunates who aren’t helped by coldhearted capitalism. The truth is, government gets in the way of charity, making […]

People argue about whether the “consensus” of scientists is that we face disaster because of global warming. Instead of debating whether man’s greenhouse gasses will raise temperatures, we should argue about how we gauge disasters. If you take most environmentalists and climate scientists at their word, the Earth heated up about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit over […]

Want to bet on tomorrow’s NFL game between Chicago and Dallas? I do. Newspapers and websites all over America tell their readers that Dallas is favored by three points. That’s the “spread” posted by bookies. Millions will be bet on that game, and billions will be bet on other games this weekend — college football, NBA games, […]

This Thanksgiving, I give thanks for something our forebears gave us: property rights. People associate property rights with greed and selfishness, but they are keys to our prosperity. Things go wrong when resources are held in common. Before the Pilgrims were able to hold the first Thanksgiving, they nearly starved. Although they had inherited ideas […]

Control freaks want to run your life. They call themselves “public servants.” But whether student council president, environmental bureaucrat or member of Congress, most believe they know how to run your life better than you do. I admit I was once guilty of this kind of thinking. As a young consumer reporter, I researched what […]

When the Berlin Wall came down 25 years ago this week, people in the Soviet Bloc gained something even more valuable than a right to vote: a free market. Democracy is definitely better than taking orders from Communist dictators. But real freedom means doing what you choose as an individual, not waiting for the rest […]

I watch election results to gauge whether America has become freer or more tyrannical. It’s hard to know whether Tuesday’s results will make much difference. Often, individual liberty erodes in ways that neither major political party much cares about. Last weekend, I suffered through the New York Marathon. I suffered not because I ran 26.2 […]

I’m told that the public is “angry” at today’s politicians. Eighty-two percent disapprove of the job Congress is doing. So will Tuesday’s election bring a big shakeup? No. Congressional reelection rates never drop below 85 percent. The last big “wave” election was 1994, when Democrats lost control of both houses. The media called it a […]

A group of Washington overlords — federal prosecutors — sometimes break rules and wreck people’s lives. President Obama may soon appoint one of them to be America’s next Attorney General. The prosecutorial bullying is detailed in a new book by Sidney Powell, “Licensed to Lie.” She reports that the Department of Justice’s narcissistic and dishonest […]

“Do you have a strategy now, Mr. President?” asked the cover of the Daily News next to a photo of the second American journalist to be beheaded by the terrorist group ISIS. The impulse to “do something” to counter such evil is strong. But why do we assume that government doing something is always an […]

Last week I said the Environmental Protection Agency has become a monster that does more harm than good. But logical people say, “What else we got?” It’s natural to assume greedy capitalists will run amok and destroy the Earth unless stopped by regulation. These critics don’t understand the real power of private ownership, says Terry […]

Thanks, Environmental Protection Agency! You’ve required sewage treatment plants, catalytic converters on cars and other things that made the world cleaner than the world in which I grew up. Good work. Today, America’s waterways are so much cleaner that I swim in New York City’s once-filthy Hudson River — right beside skyscrapers in which millions […]

Libertarians warned for years that government is force, that government always grows and that America’s police have become too much like an occupying army. We get accused of being paranoid, but we look less paranoid after heavily armed police in Ferguson, Missouri, tear gassed peaceful protesters, arrested journalists and stopped some journalists from entering the […]

Drones — unmanned flying machines — will soon fill our skies. They conjure up fears, especially among some of my fellow libertarians, of spying and death from above. These fears aren’t groundless. President Bush approved the use of armed drones against suspected terrorists overseas, and President Obama vastly increased their use. Drones have killed thousands […]

If I drive across a U.S. border, I expect to stop at a Border Patrol checkpoint. But imagine driving to the grocery store, or Mom’s house, well inside America, and being stopped by the Border Patrol. Many Americans don’t have to imagine it — it’s how they live. Even as the federal government fails to […]

I’m the underachiever in my family. My parents also produced Harvard Medical School research director Thomas Stossel. Mom called him the one who had “a real job.” For years, my brother annoyed me by not embracing the libertarianism that changed my life. It bored him. He was comfortable in his Harvard cocoon. But then he […]

I want the police to be better armed than the bad guys, but what exactly does that mean today? Apparently it means the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security equip even the tiniest rural police departments with massive military vehicles, body armor and grenade launchers. The equipment is surplus from the long wars we fought […]

“Tea party members don’t think there’s a federal role in transportation!” complained Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, last week, near the site of a $5.8 million highway project. If only most tea party members were that radical. While Brown and other big-government folks worry that Republicans will cut spending, Republicans debate adding another $10.5 billion to […]

Wars, plane crashes, mass murder — it’s easy to report news that happens suddenly. Reporters do a good job covering that. But we do a bad job telling you about what’s really changing in the world, because we miss the stories that happen slowly. These are usually the more important stories. Recently, President Barack Obama […]

There’s capitalism, and then there’s “crapitalism” — crony capitalism. Capitalism is great because it lets entrepreneurs raise money so they can scale up and get their products and services to more people. If there is free competition, innovators with the best ideas raise the most money, and the best and cheapest products spread far and […]

Reporter Sharyl Attkisson’s story sounds familiar to me: A major network got tired of her reports criticizing government. She no longer works there. The CBS correspondent reported on Fast and Furious, the shifting explanation for the Benghazi, Libya, attacks and the bungled rollout of the Obamacare website. “But as time went on, it was harder […]

Ray Kurzweil — inventor of things like machines that turn text into speech — has popularized the idea that we are rapidly approaching “the singularity,” the point at which machines not only think for themselves but develop intellectually faster than we. At that point, maybe we no longer talk about “human history.” It will be […]

Both libertarians and conservatives want to keep America safe. We differ on how best to do that. Most libertarians believe our attempts to create or support democracy around the world have made us new enemies, and done harm as well as good. We want less military spending. Some conservatives respond to that by calling us […]

“Young people are exploited!” “Income mobility is down!” “Poor people are locked into poverty!” Those are samples of popular nonsense peddled today. Leftist economist Thomas Piketty’s book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” has been No. 1 on best-seller lists for weeks (with 400 pages of statistics, I assume “Capital” is bought more often than it […]

It’s easy to scare people about what’s in their food, but the danger is almost never real. And the fear itself kills. Take the panic over genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Ninety percent of all corn grown in America is genetically modified now. That means it grew from a seed that scientists altered by playing […]

Are you worried about the future? It’s hard not to be. If you watch the news, you mostly see violence, disasters, danger. Some in my business call it “fear porn” or “pessimism porn.” People like the stuff; it makes them feel alive and informed. Of course, it’s our job to tell you about problems. If […]

It’s wedding season! More Americans get married in June than in other months. Why June? The timing seems pretty arbitrary if you look up its history. Some claim it’s because June was named after Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage. Others say it’s because in the 1500s, people took their annual bath in May, which […]

Last week, when the NBA banned racist team owner Donald Sterling, some said: “What about free speech? Can’t a guy say what he thinks anymore?” The answer: yes, you can. But the free market may punish you. In America today, the market punishes racists aggressively. This punishment is not “censorship.” Censorship is something only governments […]

Did you know that I started Facebook? Really! Well, sort of … When I was in college at all-male Princeton, I tried to make money by adding photos to a snarky guide to neighboring girls’ schools. The guide had been a profitable publishing success, and my idea was simply to add the girls’ pictures. Schools […]

“The heavens reek, the waters below are foul … we are in a crisis of survival.” That’s how Walter Cronkite and CBS hyped the first Earth Day, back in 1970. Somehow we’ve survived since then, and most of life got better, although I never hear that from the worrywarts. Of course, some things got better […]