Last November, in his final show before the Presidential election, John Stossel devoted most of the hour to election issues. One segment was on economic myths that the candidates believe or, at least, say they believe. Sallie James of Cato and I were on it that segment.
Here’s the whole show. For our segment, go to the 5th of the 6 segments. You can tell which is which by the little white dots at the bottom. Our segment starts at about 29:30.
READER COMMENTS
Joe Cushing
Mar 8 2013 at 10:37pm
I’m glad you pointed out that the politicians might just be saying they believe false stuff about economics and not actually believe it. While there are probably some ignorant ones, I can’t imagine that most of them are nearly as ignorant as they pretend to be. I’m reminded of the NJ governor or maybe it was NY, who said he thought about letting the free market work to bring gas to the Sandy victims but decided instead to ramp up the warnings and enforcement against price gouging. That’s evidence that they know the truth but will just do what makes them more powerful. If we had true economic freedom, there would be no need for politicians. That’s why they pretend to be ignorant about economics. They want us to be ignorant. They depend on us being ignorant for their very way of life.
BigEd
Mar 9 2013 at 4:32am
Mr. Cushing sounds a little resentful this evening.
Joe Cushing
Mar 10 2013 at 11:02am
BigEd
It’s not just tonight. I have a permanent state of resentment for the government. That said, there is no resentment emotion expressed in my above comment. I just put out the facts. You correctly extrapolated an emotion from it though because you clearly have empathy. Anyone who sees the truth of the way government behaves would feel the resentment.
Curtis
Mar 11 2013 at 5:31pm
Great segment. You mention Wal-mart having trouble starting a bank because of regulations. I have a small anecdote about that.
Early in my career in working at a large financial institution (where I worked for 12 years, until about a year ago) I was on a conference call/webcast being listened to/watched by thousands of employees. On that call, I recall very distinctly hearing the CEO say something along the lines of, “We love regulations because it keeps the smaller guys out.” (This was in the midst of the early-2000s massive bank consolidations. I worked for three banks within three years without changing jobs.) Having grown up in a conservative home, and working for a presumably “conservative” financial institution, I was aghast. That was a politically defining moment for me, and from there I started exploring libertarianism more deeply.
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