Columnist.
"There are no jobs!" That is what people told me outside a government "jobs center" in New York City. To check this out, I sent four researchers around the area. They quickly found 40 job openings. Twenty-four were entry-level positions. One restaurant owner told me he would hire 12 people if workers would just apply. It made me wonder what my government does in buildings called "job centers." So I asked a college intern, Zoelle Mallenbaum, to find out. Here's what she found: "First I went to the Manhattan Jobs Center and asked, "Can I get help finding a job?" They told me they don't do that. 'We sign people up for food stamps.' I tried another jobs center. They told me to enroll for unemployment benefits."
The Chicago teachers strike is over, but the public didn't win. Schools will still transfer bad teachers to other schools because it's nearly impossible to fire them. When bad teachers go from school to school, principals call it "the dance of the lemons." It would be funny if those teachers didn't slowly wreck children's lives. The basic issue is: Who decides how to manage a workplace? Unions say it's good that they protect American workers from arbitrary dismissal and make sure everyone is treated equally. But it's not good. Rules that "protect" government workers from arbitrary dismissal and require everyone be treated equally are bad for taxpayers and "customers" -- and even union workers themselves.
All political candidates call themselves freedom-lovers, but they are not. Neither major party really opposes government control of the economy or of our personal lives. I'm a libertarian because I see the false choice offered by political left and right: Democrats talk about personal liberty; Republicans talk about economic freedom. But what they do once in power belies their words. I say we're best off if government just leaves us alone to our peaceful cooperation with whomever we please. Let politicians *advocate* moral behavior. Let them give to charities. But leave government -- which is physical force -- out of it. That's why I like Gary Johnson, the former Republican governor of New Mexico. He's the Libertarian Party candidate for president. As governor, Johnson vetoed 750 bills, and yet he got re-elected in that blue state. I asked Johnson what it means to be a libertarian.
Bill Clinton got rave reviews for his speech at the Democratic National Convention. My wife said: "Clinton was great. He made Republicans look like liars and losers." Clinton, now a sainted elder statesman, also gets credit for the booming economy of the '90s. Today, he appears in an Obama commercial -- in full "I feel your pain" mode -- saying that Obama "has a plan to rebuild America from the ground up." When someone claims anyone can rebuild a society from the ground up, I say he is arrogant and delusional. Clinton then tries to scare viewers by telling them that Republicans want to "go back to deregulation. That's what got us in trouble in the first place."
The Republican Convention ended on the theme "Believe in America." That sounded nice, but it was just another platitude. Mitt Romney's speech was filled with platitudes: "We will honor America's democratic ideals. ... We're united to preserve liberty." Please. Liberals and conservatives have real differences. We should state them. America is going broke, and tough decisions must be made. To save our future, we must slow the growth of entitlements *and* military spending. Mitt Romney was silent about that.
Forty years ago, the United States locked up fewer than 200 of every 100,000 Americans. Then President Nixon declared war on drugs. Now we lock up more of our people than any other country -- more even than the authoritarian regimes in Russia and China. A war on drugs -- on people, that is -- is unworthy of a country that claims to be free. Unfortunately, this outrage probably won't be discussed in Tampa or Charlotte.
I wanted to like Paul Ryan. Before he was nationally known, Rep. Ryan visited me at ABC, and we went to lunch. He was terrific. He was a rare politician, one who actually cared about America's coming debt crisis and the unfairness of entitlements. He even talked about F.A. Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom"! If only more politicians thought that way. But then the housing bubble burst. Ryan voted for TARP. Then he voted for the auto bailout. Who is this guy? I thought he believed in markets! At Fox, when I got my own TV show, I asked him about that.
I'm a libertarian in part because I see a false choice offered by the political left and right: government control of the economy -- or government control of our personal lives. People on both sides think of themselves as freedom lovers. The left thinks government can lessen income inequality. The right thinks government can make Americans more virtuous. I say we're best off if neither side attempts to advance its agenda via government. Let both *argue* about things like drug use and poverty, but let no one be coerced by government unless he steals or attacks someone. Beyond the small amount needed to fund a highly limited government, let no one forcibly take other people's money. When in doubt, leave it out -- or rather, leave it to the market and other voluntary institutions.
On his recent trip abroad, Mitt Romney observed an American taboo by not criticizing President Obama's military policy. But before his trip, he made his position clear. Obama has "exposed the military to cuts that no one can justify," Romney said. He meant that unless Congress intervenes, Pentagon spending will be cut by more than $500 billion over 10 years under the (bipartisan) budget sequestration scheduled for January. This terrifies those who fear that limiting the growth of the military-industrial complex will leave us less safe. But is that true? Even if $500 billion is actually cut, America still will spend more on defense -- adjusted for inflation -- than we did at the height of the Cold War and the Vietnam War.
The Olympics have gone smoothly despite -- gasp! -- America's team wearing clothing made in China at the opening ceremony. "I'm so upset," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "Take all the uniforms, put them in a big pile, and burn them. ... We have people in the textile industry who are desperate for jobs." Here, Reid demonstrates economic cluelessness. It seems logical that Americans lose if American clothing is made overseas. But that's nonsense. First, it's no surprise the uniforms were made in China. Most clothing is. That's fine. It saves money. We invest the savings in other things, like the machines that Chinese factories buy and the trucks that ship the Olympic uniforms.
Over the past few decades, America has locked up more and more people. Our prison population has tripled. Now we jail a higher percentage of people than even the most repressive countries: China locks up 121 out of every 100,000 people; Russia 511. In America? 730. "Never in the civilized world have so many been locked up for so little," The Economist says. Yet we keep adding more laws and longer jail terms. Lavrentiy Beria, head of Joseph Stalin's secret police in the old Soviet Union, supposedly said, "Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime." Stalin executed anyone he considered a threat, and it didn't take much to be considered a threat. Beria could always find some law the targeted person had broken. That's easy to do when there are tons of vague laws on the books. Stalin "legally" executed nearly a million people that way.
What was your first job? I stuck pieces of plastic and metal together at an Evanston, Ill., assembly line. We produced photocopiers for a company called American Photocopy. I hated the work. It was hot and boring. But it was useful. It taught me to get good grades in school so I might have other choices. Four years later, good grades got me a job as a researcher at a TV station. To my surprise, that became a career. I never planned to be a TV reporter. I hadn't even watched TV news. I never took a journalism course. But by showing up and trying stuff, I found a career.
Last year, Congress agreed to $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts, unless politicians find other things to cut. They didn't, of course. So now, with so-called sequestration looming in January, panic has set in. Even the new "fiscally responsible" Republicans vote against cutting Energy Department handouts to companies like Solyndra and subsidies to sugar producers. Many claim that any cut in military spending will weaken America and increase unemployment. It's another demonstration of the politicians' addiction to spending -- and how we are complicit. "One more infrastructure bill" or "this jobs plan" will jumpstart the economy, and then we'll kick our spending addiction once and for all. But we don't stop. For most of American history, government was tiny. But since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and the promise that government would cure poverty, spending has gone up nonstop. This is not sustainable.
Since progressives want government to run health care, let's look at what government management did to K-12 education. While most every other service in life has gotten better and cheaper, American education remains stagnant. Spending has tripled! Why no improvement? Because K-12 education is a virtual government monopoly -- and monopolies don't improve. In every other sector of the economy, market competition forces providers to improve constantly. It's why most things get better -- often cheaper, too (except when government interferes, as in health care). Politicians claim that education and health care are different -- too important to leave to market competition. Patients and parents aren't real consumers because they don't have the expertise to know which hospital or school is best. That's why they must be centrally planned by government "experts."
I'm scared. I fear that even if the Supreme Court overrules most of Obamacare (or did already, by the time you read this), Republicans will join Democrats in restoring "good" parts of the law, like the requirement that insurance companies cover kids up to age 26 and every American with a pre-existing condition. Those parts of Obamacare are *popular.* People *like* getting what they think is free stuff. But requiring coverage to age 26 makes policies cost more. Even Bill O'Reilly lectures me that government should ban discrimination against those with pre-existing conditions. Most Americans agree with him. Who likes discrimination? Racial discrimination was one of the ugliest parts of American history. None of us wants to be discriminated against. But discrimination is part of freedom. We discriminate when we choose our friends or our spouse, or when we choose what we do with our time.
It's presidential season, so again pundits are indignant that *money* is spent on politics. Spent by corporations! And rich people! Because the Supreme Court allowed that, "2012 will be a miserable year," says The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne. 2012 may be miserable -- but if it is, it won't be because corporations spend on politics. And anyway, they have a right to spend. In politics, money is speech. The very *first* amendment that the Founders chose to add to the Constitution couldn't be more clear: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech ... ." Yet most people support laws against political speech -- when they don't like the speakers.
Any day now, the U.S. Supreme will rule on whether the Obamacare insurance mandate is constitutional. Seems like a no-brainer to me. How can forcing me to engage in commerce be constitutional? But there's a deeper question: Why should government be involved in medicine at all? Right before President Obama took office, the media got hysterical about health care. You heard the claims: America spends more than any country -- $6,000 per person -- yet we get less. Americans die younger than people in Japan and Western Europe. Millions of Americans lack health insurance and worry about paying for care. I have the solution! said Obama. Bigger government will give us more choices and make health care cheaper and better. He proceeded to give us that. Bigger government, that is. The cheaper/better/more choices part -- not so much.
President Obama would do us all a big favor if he'd ask himself this: "Would I start or expand a business without knowing what regulations or taxes government will impose next year?" If he'd just stop and ask that, he'd have a sense of what's wrong with the economy. He'd understand why a country that must create 120,000 new jobs each month just to absorb newcomers created only 69,000 last month. Past recoveries were quicker. Something is different. What could it be? Let's remember that the economy -- which is to say, us -- is already burdened by byzantine bureaucratic impositions. Every week, the feds add another thousand pages of rules and proposals for rules. Local governments add their own. My mayor, in New York City, even proposes micromanaging the size of the drinks restaurants may sell.
Instinctively, we look for people's motives. We need to know whom we can trust and whom we can't. We're especially skeptical of business because we know business wants our money. It took me too long to understand that business's desire for profit is a good thing. To get our money, businesses -- if they can't look to the government for favors -- need to give us what we want. Then they must make continuous improvements and do it better than the competition does.
