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.
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