No wonder Cuba wallows in poverty.
Last week, the New York Times reported that the Castro brothers opened a special business zone where foreign companies "would be given greater control over setting wages at factories. ... (P)roposals would be approved or rejected within 60 days."
What? If I want to give someone a raise, I have to wait up to two months for government approval! That's absurd.
This Christmas Eve, if you see a fat man in a sleigh distributing presents, tell him he is in violation of several government regulations.
The Federal Aviation Administration is upset about his secret flight path, and his gift bag violates charity tax rules.
In real life, government barely lets people give each other rides in cars. But now the Internet has given birth to exciting businesses that challenge the rules.
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.
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 the past century, not much more than it heated up the century before that. Warming may increase, but no one can be certain of that.
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, NHL matches, UFC events ...
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.
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.
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.
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 "revolution," and the late Peter Jennings from ABC likened Americans to 2-year-olds throwing a tantrum.
A group of Washington overlords -- federal prosecutors -- sometimes break rules and wreck people's lives.
Fifty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson declared "War on Poverty." It sounded great to me. I was taught at Princeton, "We're a rich country. All we have to do is tax the rich, and then use that money to create programs that will lift the poor out of poverty." Government created job-training programs for the strong and expanded social security for the weak.
It seemed to work. The poverty rate dropped from 17 percent to 12 percent in the programs' first decade. Unfortunately, few people noticed that during the half-decade before the "War," the rate dropped from 22 percent to 17 percent. Without big government, Americans were already lifting themselves out of poverty!
Americans now face beheadings, gang warfare, Ebola, ISIS and a new war in Syria. It's natural to assume that the world has gotten more dangerous. But it hasn't.
People believe that crime has gotten worse. But over the past two decades, murder and robbery in the U.S. are down by more than half, and rape by a third, even as complaints about "rape culture" grow louder.
John Stossel is host of "Stossel" on Fox News and author of "No They Can't! Why Government Fails, but Individuals Succeed." For other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.
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Democrats often call themselves "pro-choice." Republicans defend "freedom." Unfortunately, neither party really believes in letting individuals do what we want.
When Democrats say they are "pro-choice," they are talking about abortion. Some act as if a right to legal abortion is the most important freedom in America.
Conservatives rightly point out that America is a nation of laws. No one should be exempt. That's why many oppose amnesty and other paths to citizenship for illegal immigrants who are here now.
"If they want to be in America," the argument goes, "they ought to return to their own countries and apply for a visa legally. America should not reward law breaking."
That sounds sensible -- but what happens when the immigrant does that, goes to the U.S. embassy and says, I'd like to work in America legally?
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.
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 of people, uh, flush. The air we breathe is also cleaner than it's been for 60 years.
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 town.
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 of people in places such as Pakistan and Yemen, countries against which we have not declared war.
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.
