Government excels at NOT getting things done. But politicians promise more things anyway.
Kamala Harris declared that our government would “build thousands of miles of fiber-optic cable!” This “broadband connectivity agenda” was supported by “every House Republican on Energy and Commerce,” write Republican representatives.
Three years later, not a single person has been connected.
Why? Because, as Milton Friedman put it, “Few people spend other people’s money as carefully as they spend their own.”
Private individuals and businesses constantly adjust to save time and money. But politicians, spending your money, have little interest in that. They routinely add rules that make everything take longer.
You have to “hire certain people based on their color, their sex,” complains investor Matt Cole in my new video.
“You already have a talent problem, now you’re looking at only being able to recruit from a very small minority of individuals. Then you have to do climate pledges. Then you have to hire from unions.”
“But diversity is good,” I push back.
“That doesn’t mean that you should hire someone because of their race or skin color … . You have all these companies that could actually [build broadband], but it’s unimplementable with the restrictions. They just walk away.”
Eventually, I assume the government will install at least some broadband. By then, their cables may be unnecessary, because of satellite internet, like Starlink, which doesn’t require digging up streets.
“They could do it, literally, today,” says Cole. “You could have devices in these people’s homes within the next couple of months.”
Why don’t government officials do that? At first, President Joe Biden’s bureaucrats said, “Starlink failed to demonstrate that it had the technical and financial ability.”
When it became clear that Starlink obviously did, the administration suddenly called it a monopoly. The Federal Communications Commission chair sneered, “Our economy doesn’t benefit from monopolies.”
“First, they’re not functional. Now, it’s a monopoly,” says Cole. “The reality is, they didn’t want that to be the solution.”
They didn’t want it to be, because Biden Democrats didn’t want to give money to Elon Musk.
Now, Musk has a friend in government. Maybe things will change.
But government giving contracts to friends is not good policy. It’s also not a smart way to get things built.
Government pumped billions into “high-speed rail.” Fifteen years later, they’re still talking about the future.
Bureaucrats wasted $500 million of your money on the solar company Solyndra, which then went bankrupt. They wasted millions more trying and failing to create “synthetic fuel.”
More recently, Biden doled out $7 billion to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations. Two years later, they’ve built seven.
Republicans joined Democrats in funding a CHIPS Act, meant to bring chipmaker jobs to America. It isn’t working. Most chips are still made in Taiwan.
“Even if they get what they promise,” I point out to Cole, Congress appropriated “$53 billion for 115,000 promised jobs. Almost half a million dollars per job!”
“You expect nothing else from government,” he replies.
With Republicans in charge, some say things will be better. But the problem isn’t just Democrats; it’s government.
Donald Trump’s steel tariffs destroyed American jobs by raising the price of steel.
Politicians should just stop subsidizing certain businesses.
Maybe Musk will persuade Trump to do that. He’s actually tweeted the U.S. should “remove subsidies from all industries,” including his own! Good for him. That would be great.
End the $30 billion handed to Big Agriculture, useless subsidies for “clean” energy, government-guaranteed loans politically to connected businesses, etc.
Maybe Trump will end that part of the deep state.
But I won’t hold my breath. Once politicians are in power, they always want to do more.
With your money.
John Stossel is the creator of Stossel TV videos, and author of “No They Can’t! Why Government Fails—But Individuals Succeed.”
Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal – By John Stossel
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
Politicians are responsible for the mess because they write checks with everyone else’s checkbook. Lifetime career politicians that receive special interest campaign money is another reason term limits are a necessary safeguard. Eliminating the lobby would go a long way to end coercion and back door deals.
Who is guilty? Politician for treating money as if it grew on a tree or taxpayer who votes him in for life?
Stossel is correct. The less the government interferes, the better. Hope Trump actually privatizes the Post Office. As for Kamala….wish the media would stop supporting her by showing her all the time. She and Al Sharpton are nothing but money and fame seekers who are totally irrelevant.
Here’s my question. Untold billions (probably trillions) were appropriated by this corrupt, criminal, treasonous administration for countless projects and functions, which work was never done. So where is the money? Has it disappeared into the overseas bank accounts of the Biden Crime Clan and their friends? Has any kind of audit been performed? Does anyone even care?
Most Americans worship government,looking to government as their savior.As long as that continues,there is no hope of saving this country.
Awesome! We can use that nonexistant fiber optic high speed broadband to download an app showing EV drivers where the nonexistent power stations Biden-Harris spent hundreds of billions on never built.
The late,great Walter Williams said,”We have become a nation of thieves,using our vote to steal from others”.
John Stossel: Your videos are the BEST!!! I too am not holding my breath but anything DOGE and Trump do will be better for America than anything Obama or Biden ever did. We need to start right now to make sure that JD Vance can be President in 2028 so he can finish what Trump started. I can’t wait for your DOGE taxpayer waste expose video!!
In one word – TYRANNY – they don’t get to tell us who to hire – start fighting back people.
This article misses one key point. The government no longer actually builds anything. Back in the day the BLM (and other agencies, I assume) had folks that actually went out and built roads and fences. That ended a long time ago and our government employees are now just bureaucrats pushing paper. From that vantage point we can see why doing nothing may seem (to them) like a better option than doing something wrong. Unfortunately to taxpayers the result is the same. Huge overhead, very little gets built and the cost of the entire process is absurd!
Obviously there are exceptions; the military, law enforcement and perhaps there are some in NIH or other healthcare related areas who actually deliver a product but even in these instances the administrative portions of the operations likely exceed the number of productive workers, why?
you do understand all this fiber the government is funding will allow the government to view and hear everything said and done in the privacy of your abode, don’t you?
ALL political offices should be limited to 2 terms and no pensions. Let them get a job and actually work for their $$$ like the rest of us do.
What a “coincidence” to see the Harris photo at the head of this article entitled, “Your tax dollars not at work”.
As any civilized society needs to utilize its’ approved capital and expense budgets in the most efficient way conceivable, it’s not unreasonable to look forward to when our tax revenues aren’t tossed into the waste basket of gratuitous spending to buy votes. We have not come very far, but, we need to go farther.
Our taxes won’t go down until our government becomes honest.Our taxes WON’T go down.
The Libertarian Party is the ONLY party commited to less government.As long as that party gets less than 5% of the votes,tells me that the majority wants more government.Trump will continue supporting massive government.