John Stossel receives standing ovation

By: John Morelli
Edited by: Erin Hillard

On Wednesday, reporter John Stossel spoke to a full crowd in Central Michigan University’s Plachta Auditorium about a multitude of topics.

Stossel discussed errors in capitalism, education and drug control to a mostly supportive crowd.

“I think it was awesome,” Commerce junior Jon Tarrant said. “More people nowadays should think like him, especially here in Michigan.”

Tarrant supported Stossel’s standpoint on education. Stossel believes a major hindrance on the education system in America is that the money for every student in K-12 schooling is attached to the school and the government but not the student.

According to Stossel, American students in 12^th grade are far behind the intelligence levels of students in countries where the money is attached to the student.

Stossel’s standpoint on socialized medicine and universal systems in general was also a topic of discussion by many students.

“I think (socialized medicine) is popular because it looks appealing,” said Howell junior John Reineke II. “Everything ‘free’ looks appealing, but there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

Stossel argued that if a government guarantees protection it will be taking money from the rich to pay for the health care services.

A percentage of the money taxed from the rich would be taken by the government and the poor would not receive all the funding they should. Additionally, the rich would stop supporting new medicine research so the poor would never truly get healthier.

Every student seemed to have found a different point made by Stossel to be the most important comment of the night.

“He talked about how poverty is the number one thing that will take days off your life,” Fraser senior Steve Cullen said. “Wealth is health.”

Stossel discussed how people below the poverty line live, on average, 7 to 10 years less than those above it.

After living below the poverty line, the next two causes which take days off of the average person’s life span are smoking cigarettes and driving.

According to Stossel, airplane crashes and terrorists attacks cause a small fraction of the damage to lives caused by cigarettes and automobiles.

However, Stossel pointed out how the media uses a multitude of scare tactics in relaying the news to the public, the news will discuss the things that are rarer more than the common problems, which makes people fear things which are not likely to happen.

Stossel was brought to Central by the Students for a Free Economy, CMU Campus Conservatives and the Young America’s Foundation.