Walter E. Williams

John Stossel, ABC's "20/20" anchorman, has a recently released book about the various untruths we accept, many from the media and academic elite. The book is appropriately titled "Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity."
Being a longtime media insider, Stossel is well positioned to talk about the media's gross lack of understanding that often becomes part of the conventional wisdom. Stossel gives many examples; let's look at a few.

We're sometimes presented with television scenes of starving people, and it's often blamed on overpopulation. Ted Turner warned, "There are lots of problems in the world caused by too many people." News articles warn of "the population bomb" and the "tidal wave of humanity," and people call for subsidies for birth control.

Stossel says that one writer, worrying about Niger, said that birthrates must be reduced drastically or the world will face permanent famine. Viewers and readers are left with the idea that the problem is the number of people, but that's nonsense. Niger's population density is nine people per square kilometer; however, population density in the United States is 28 per square kilometer, Japan 340, the Netherlands 484, and Hong Kong 6,621. One would have to be brain-dead to argue that high population density causes poverty and starvation. A better argument is oppressive and corrupt governments.

Outsourcing destroys good jobs, and the new jobs created are inferior hamburger-flipping jobs. This myth is created by the likes of CNN's Lou Dobbs, who said, "This country has lost the ability to feed and to clothe itself, to build its own automobiles, to provide its appliances, its electronics, its computers." CNN correspondent Lisa Sylvester chimes, "The United States has been hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs."

First, since 1992 there's been a loss of 391 million jobs; however, during those years, America created 411 million new jobs, for a net gain of 20 million. A Dartmouth University Tuck School of Business study found that companies that send jobs abroad ended up hiring twice as many workers at home. Most new jobs created are higher-paid.

Walter E. Williams
