John Stossel stories, Page 6

Hollywood is now obsessing about increasing ethnic and gender diversity. Good. There’s been nasty racial and gender discrimination in the movie business. Unfortunately, Hollywood has no interest in one type of diversity: diversity of thought. In most every movie, capitalism is evil. Greedy miners want to kill nature-loving aliens in...

Families argued this Thanksgiving. Such arguments have a long tradition. The Pilgrims had clashing ideas about how to organize their settlement in the New World. The resolution of that debate made the first Thanksgiving possible. The Pilgrims were religious, united by faith and a powerful desire to start anew, away...

“How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood!” insisted teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg at the United Nations. “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction!” Many people say that we’re destroying the Earth. It all sounds so scary. But I’ve been a consumer reporter for...

Governments create problems. Then they complain about them. “A public health crisis exists,” says Kentucky’s government, citing a report that found “a shortage of ambulance providers.” Local TV stations report on “people waiting hours for medical transportation.” “Six-year-old Kyler Truesdell fell off his motorcycle,” reported Channel 12 news. “The local...

House members summoned Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to Washington, D.C., and grilled him — harshly — about his plan to create a new currency, Libra. I liked it when Zuckerberg said, “I actually don’t know if Libra’s going to work, but I believe that it’s important to try new things.” He...

Four years ago, the media were talking about a “Libertarian Moment.” I had high hopes! Sen. Rand Paul ran for president, promising to “take our country back from special interests.” But his campaign never took off. He “shouldn’t even be on the stage,” said Donald Trump at a Republican presidential...

Student loan debt keeps growing. There is a better solution than the ones politicians offer, which stick the taxpayer or the loan lenders with the whole bill. It’s called an income share agreement (ISA). Investors give money to a college, and the college then gives a free or partially free...

The media keep telling us: There’s no difference between male and female brains. I don’t believe it. Many of you must be skeptical, too. Nonetheless, people now fill auditoriums to hear neuroscientist Gina Rippon talk about her new book that claims “New Neuroscience Explodes the Myths of the Male and...

Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is controversial within her party. She says the U.S. should talk to its enemies. She was criticized for meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. But Democrats were supposed to be the anti-war party. “They’re heavily influenced by a foreign policy establishment … whose whole...

When political arguments aren’t getting you anywhere, what can you do? Start your own country! Unfortunately, most of the world’s land is controlled by rapacious governments unwilling to let others experiment. But fortunately, that still leaves oceans. If people move 12 miles offshore (or 24 miles in the case of...

I rarely watch cable news anymore. It’s all hysteria, all the time. CNN: “We are destroying the planet.” MSNBC: “The middle class is disappearing!” I’m glad my favorite magazine, Reason, cuts through the gloom and tells us the truth: There is less war and more food. We live healthier and...

With most services, you get to shop around, but rarely can you do that with government-run schools. Philadelphia mom Elaine Wells was upset to learn that there were fights every day in the school her son attended. So she walked him over to another school. “We went to go enroll...

On Labor Day, did you celebrate workers? More likely, you made it a day of rest. Fine. It’s good to have a choice. I didn’t have a choice about joining a union when I was hired by CBS and then ABC. They told me that if I wanted to work,...

Why does most of Africa stay poor while other parts of the world prosper? People blame things like climate, the history of colonialism, racism, etc. But I say Senegalese businesswoman Magatte Wade gives the right explanation: too many rules. “Once you hire someone, good luck getting rid of them for...

President Trump promised he’d get rid of bad rules. “Remove the anchor dragging us down!” he said when campaigning for president. “We’re going to cancel every needless job-killing regulation!” Trump was a developer, so he knew that the thicket of rules government imposes often makes it impossible to get things...

Have you volunteered to be an organ donor? I did. I just clicked the box on the government form that asks if, once I die, I’m willing to donate my organs to someone who needs them. Why not? Lots of people need kidneys, livers, etc. When I’m dead, I sure...

“Fake news!” shouts the president. His supporters cheer. That drives my colleagues into a frenzy of self-absorbed handwringing: “Threats to press freedom … press persecution!” It’s silly. American reporters are hardly less safe because of President Trump’s hyperbole. (Trump is reckless when he uses the term in other countries. Authoritarians...

Never before have presidential candidates offered voters so much “free” stuff. Kamala Harris wants you to “collect up to $500 a month.” No one has tracked the cost of all of the promises. So my video team did! Who will spend the most? Here are the new spending proposals from...

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign was disrupted by campaign workers demanding the same $15 per hour Sanders demands government force all employers to pay. It serves him right. Years ago, the activist group ACORN faced the same problem. After fighting for a higher minimum wage, they tried to convince a...

Recording events from public land shouldn’t be a crime. Yet when a woman in Utah, standing by a public road, filmed farmworkers pushing a cow with a bulldozer, the farmer told her, “You cannot videotape my property.” Soon the police came and local prosecutors charged her with “agricultural operation interference.”...

The city of Dunedin, Fla., wants Jim Ficken’s home. Ficken’s mom died, so he went to South Carolina to take care of her estate. He asked a friend to look after his house. But then the friend died, and no one cut Ficken’s grass. When it grew to 10 inches,...

Happy Fourth of July! We have reason to celebrate. The Fourth honors the founding of America. It’s the anniversary of the day in 1776 that the Declaration of Independence was approved. The Declaration was important. It didn’t say that America would be the best country because it would have the...

So many people want to be president. Unfortunately, many have terrible ideas. Sen. Kamala Harris wants companies to prove they pay men and women equally. “Penalties if they don’t!” she shouts. But there are lots of reasons, other than sexism, why companies pay some men more than women. Harris also...

Presidential candidates and the media keep telling people “it’s immoral” that a few rich people have so much more money than everyone else. They talk as if it doesn’t matter what the rich did to get the money. Instead, the fact that they are rich is itself immoral. Yaron Brook...

Soon, some of you will try to make “better babies.” Already, people pay labs to examine embryos so they can pick ones with DNA they like. Some screen for gender or eye color. Some screen out certain diseases. So far, they’ve been limited to selecting genes that exist in the...