"Government is taking us a long way down the Road to Serfdom. That doesn't just mean that more of us must work for the government. It means that we are changing from independent, self-responsible people into a submissive flock. The welfare state kills the creative spirit."
So today writes John Stossel, once a lefty journalist who had a conversion to the libertarian side several years ago. Stossel is now the host of Stossel on the Fox Business Network. He's the author of Give Me a Break and of Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity. To find out more about John Stossel, visit his site at johnstossel.com. His short essay on Reason magazine's website is a nice, short look at Austrian Economist School F.A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom, where he argued that governments, to control the economy, would have to control our lives completely.
Stossel writes, "Hayek meant that governments can't plan economies without planning people's lives. After all, an economy is just individuals engaging in exchanges. The scientific-sounding language of President Obama's economic planning hides the fact that people must shelve their own plans in favor of government's single plan." And such central planning creates people's dependency on government, and governments don't actually create wealth: Governments just seize other people's wealth and redistribute it (and inefficiently at that).