John Stossel certainly gets it, it’s too bad all those career politicians we keep reelecting to govern the country are clueless.

We spend too much time waiting for orders — and money — from Washington.

The collapse of the housing bubble gave politicians a license to do what they wanted to do all along: spend. The usual checks on extravagance, weak as they are, were washed away. Budgets? We’ll worry about that later. Inflation? We’ll worry about that later.

As I point out in my brand new book, “No, We Can’t: Why Government Fails — and Individuals Succeed,”
a true free market doesn’t require much. It’s not like an orchestra in need of a conductor. What it needs is property rights, so no one can take your stuff. Then people trade property to their mutual advantage. Resources move around without the need for a central, coercive government telling people which resources should go where — or telling them that they must get permission to do what they think is advantageous.

Italics mine.

Superbly put, and exactly what America’s founding fathers would have said.

This formula brought a new nation, in less than two centuries, to the forefront of the world in terms of inventiveness, riches and power.

You got something good, you stick with it, right?

Unfortunately, our politicians can’t seem to grasp this concept, so they’ve gone a different route.

You have to wonder if one day, enough of them will wake up and return us to what works.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting…