Tweet
John Stossel thinks you poor people should just quit your bitching:
Yes, some people have suffered during the recession — but compared to all the other countries in the history of the world, America is rich.
Yeah, sure, some people are eating dog food and living in their cars, but hey, it totally makes your poverty go away if I mention somebody else doesn’t even HAVE dog food or a 1982 Skylark, right?
Anybody else hear some smug assface, after watching Slumdog Millionaire, opine that poor people in THIS country don’t have anything to complain about?
Yeah.
One sign of this attitude is that it’s relatively easy to start a business here. I opened one in Wilmington, Del. I named it the Stossel Store. It was just a table from which I pitched my “Give Me a Break” book and Fox merchandise. I picked Wilmington because our research showed that Delaware and Nevada make opening a business easier than other states. It still took me a week to get legal permission, but it would have taken much longer in Europe.
“I have started businesses in the U.K. and India. It takes at least a month or more just to open doors,” A.J. Khubani, president of TeleBrands, says.
Unfortunately, bureaucrats are threatening this good part of America. I had to register with the Delaware Secretary of State and the Division of Corporations, get a federal employer identification number, buy commercial liability insurance, register with the Delaware state Department of Finance, etc.
My GOD. However did you manage to do four things, John Stossel?
America also has a different idea about failure. The Stossel Store was a bad idea. I lost money. D’Souza says that in other places, that would be evidence that I am a complete failure. I tried to make a profit, failed and so shouldn’t try again.
That’s the attitude in most of the world, says D’Souza.
“You say: ‘You know what? I tried my hand at business. It didn’t work. Now, let me take a salary job where I’ll have some security.”
He says that’s not true in America.
“An American will start a company. It’ll fail. Pretty soon, he’s starting a newspaper, or he’s now trying to export fish to Japan.”
Yes. Americans like idiots to spend their money on business licenses so we can continue to pay for stupid shit like streets and cops. It’s one of our many national charms.
“There’s something in the American temperament that says, ‘Gosh, I lost seven times but that’s OK,’” D’Souza says. “And I think that that’s a resiliency of the American spirit.”
It’s also a reflection of the limits of Daddy’s trust fund. How many meals was Stossel in danger of missing while he exported fish or hawked his book or whatever the fuck he’s on about here? I’m all about the glorious determination of the American people but it’s beyond sociopathic to wax eloquent about it as though that determination can, you know, FEED YOU.
Poverty is always a useful lesson in ingenuity and sacrifice … once you’re rich.
A.
16 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About TBogg
RSS/XML Feed
Speaking of losing and losers: Using D’Souza as an authority for ANYTHING is epic fail AFAIC. You’d think by looking at the quotes that no business can ever get started anywhere but here.
This says it all from the comments over there:
Here is a fact. Stossel is one of the stupidest people alive today. It takes a heapin’ pile of assholery to put yourself in the same sentence as Thomas Edison when your business consisted of selling books bought in bulk by Regnery and Fox coffee mugs that cost you nothing to manufacture. And you failed at it.
He picked Delaware because “research shows it’s one of the states where it’s easiest to open a business” and yet it took him a WEEK to do that stuff? What a loser. I started a business back in January. It took less than 2 days to take care of the registrations, get tax ID number, city business license, etc.
This Stossel character sounds like he’s a lazy slacker. Maybe that’s why his business failed. Either that, or because people hate him because he’s a massive tool.
Compared to some countries, a lot of people in the US are stinking rich. Most of the poor in the US have a very nice place to live, compared to rat warrens. Stossel has made a career on network TV of bitching about things, so who is he to criticize people for bitching? Oh, that’s right, compared to most people, he’s a lying, hypocritical assbag you would need a ten-foot pole and a haz-mat suit to scrape off your shoe if you stepped on him.
Stossel went to Princeton and is an advocate for the Stuttering Foundation. Isn’t that enough for you people?
Some people have suffered?
Headline in today’s Washington Post:
Study: Recession hit half of U.S. Workforce
Exactly. Not to mention it’s downright embarrassing if you have to go all the way back to 1957 to show how our innovation and culture of entrepreneurship is beating all those Asians who “crush Americans on standardized tests.” If America is the country that turns “science into wealth” then you’d think there might be a few more recent examples, and they wouldn’t have “Made in China” written on them.
This asshat confuses “starting a business” with “aping some stupid ploy to bilk a few more bucks out of bigger asshats.”
It drives me crazy when I hear people complaining about how the government makes it so difficult to run a small business. It’s the HEALTH INSURANCE corporations that have tortured my husband and me for the past fourteen years that we’ve had our small business. In three different states. And we’re both healthy. We pay a huge chunk of money a month just to endure their obnoxious bureaucracy because we know we’d be ruined if something DID happen to one of us. As if Stossel really cared about small business people. He loves to help giant corporations rip off the little guy.
Apparently he found it tough to compete with all the remainder bins selling the same product for only a buck.
Oh, were those books? I thought they were crappy doorstops, or poorly-designed toilet plungers, or convenient, tear-off doggie training pad liners.
What all these Repig asshats ignore is the crushing discouragement to entrepreneurship of the dysfunctional health system in this country. It’s an uphill battle to launch out on your own unless you have a spouse with a secure job with benefits, given the paucity and extortionate cost of health insurance for anyone not an employee of a large organization. Compare that to other Western countries where you have the same access to health cover regardless of your employment situation.
But Repigs are more interested in helping big corporations rip off the rest of us than genuinely encouraging entrepreneurship. Hey, if you were worth caring about, your company would be big, loser.
Of course, because what those Repig asshats really care about is (1) helping the very rich get even richer and (2) lining their own pockets. “Entrepreneurship” is just another dogwhistle they use to make people think they actually give a damn about anybody except themselves.
I hate Stossel so very very much. I would like to poke his eyes out with a rusty pitchfork, but I’m afraid my pitchfork would get infected from his eye goo.
I go months without hearing his name, and I am very very happy. Then, I hear his name, and I am overcome with homicidal rage. Sigh.
The Stossel Store?? Is he fucking kidding?? bwahahahahahahahahahahaha Man, that’s hysterical. Why not brag about starting a lemonade stand, dipshit? On the other hand, I guess we should go easy on Stossel. He hasn’t been right in the head since this happened to him:
http://www.spike.com/video/pro-wrestler-nails/2758410
On second thought: Nah, fuck Stossel. Once a schmuck, always a schmuck.
Gee, he had to get a license, etc. – as someone pointed out, 4 whole things to do. Took a whooooole week. He ought to try slogging through the process in, say, India, as the man he quotes himself said. Months, if not years, to get all the permits. Waiting, waiting, not getting in, waiting, waiting, going from one ministry to another ministry then back to the first ministry, etc. The man talks out of his *** with no facts to back up the crap he spouts. Fox is where he belongs; why did ABC put up with him for so long?