• The State Against Blacks

      Posted by John Stossel | June 01, 2011

      My Fox Business show tonight is titled “The State Against Blacks.” That sounds counter-intuitive. After all, government has created all sorts of programs that are supposed to help minorities.

      But as I write in my syndicated column this week, the opposite happens. Economist Walter Williams argues:

      "The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery (and Jim Crow and racism) could not have done … break up the black family. Today, just slightly over 30 percent of black kids live in two-parent families. Historically, from the 1870s on ... 75-90 percent of black kids lived in two-parent families."

      Why does the welfare state create illegitimacy?

      "(Without welfare,) people would decide, 'I'm going to go out and get a job, I'm going to live more responsibly.'" And that would include getting married before having children, something the welfare system discourages.

      The minimum wage is another example:

      Williams says the minimum wage law has also been a tool of racism. In his book "South Africa's War Against Capitalism," he studied that country's labor markets during apartheid:

      "White racist unions in South Africa that would never have a black as a member were the major supporters of minimum wage laws. Their stated purpose was to protect white workers from having to compete with low-skill, low-wage black workers.

      Read the rest of the column for more examples of big government programs that end up hurting minorities.

      TAGS
      Government
      Syndicated Column
      Unintended Consequences

    • JOHN HAS A NEW BOOK! ORDER TODAY

    This Week's Show -- May 16, 2013

    Government is at war against the little guy.

     

    Bureaucrats pass thousands of regulations to "keep people safer" and "make the marketplace more fair." Today 170,000 pages of federal regulations are on the books. Break just one rule, and government may wreck your life.

     

    So Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson started a "Victims of Government" website that features victims of overregulation.

     

    Nevada bureaucrats tell people who teach movie make-up that they must get an expensive license or close.

     

    Stossel has two empty rooms in his house now that his kids moved out. Using sites like Roomorama, he could make a little money and rent the rooms out. But two years ago, New York passed a law that makes most of what apartment rental sites do illegal. Stossel debates Liz Kreuger, who sponsored that bill.

     

    Is there any hope for the little guy? Authors of "Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers", Edward Lopez and Wayne Leighton, point out that deregulation did happen once. Americans pay much less to fly and to ship something because the CAB and ICC no longer exist. And we have cell phones because the FCC finally allowed spectrum auction. They say the only time things change is when the right people, the right ideas and the right circumstances all come together to repeal the bureaucrats rules.

     

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