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 SPOKANE -- In advance of a speech at Gonzaga on Tuesday, 20/20 co-anchor John Stossel gave a pair of interviews to KXLY 4 where he talked about the evolution of his political thought process.
"I'm going to talk about what I've learned over 35 years of reporting," Stossel said Monday night, referring to what he intended to cover in Tuesday's lecture. "When I started out I saw business as evil; it's ripping us off. Capitalism is OK - it gives us stuff - but it's by and large unfair and we've got to have government fixing it."
After decades of covering these issues, though, Stossel found his opinion had changed drastically.
"Now, after watching [the government] fail, I figured out that
competition between businesses solves problems on its own and the
government should butt out," he said.
Later, Stossel touched on the idea of scare tactics being pushed disingenously by the meda.
"We freak out about global warming and the killer bees coming up
from Mexico and Avian Bird Flu is going to kill us and the activists in
the government looking for more power and money constantly want to
scare us about things," he said. "We should remember that we are living
longer than ever; we're wealthier than ever."
Currently, Stossel suggested that the media has taken too alarmist a
tone when reporting economic concerns and rising gas prices.
"Gas prices aren't even at a record," he claimed. "It you adjust for inflation, it's about what it was in 1981."
Stossel is slated to be the keynote speaker at an economic symposium
for Gonzaga's School of Business Administration. The speech starts at
11:30 a.m. Tuesday morning.
The title of the lecture is "Freedom and its Enemies," where Stossel
will cover how economic freedom leads to incentives for market growth
and exchange, defined property rights and opportunity for profit and
wealth.
Shortly before the speech got underway, there were still a few
tickets left. Cost is $100 a person or $1000 for a table of ten. All
proceeds benefit the Gonzaga University School of Business
Administrations scholarship programs. Source
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