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A
This is an I Heart podcast. Welcome to the Tutor Dixon podcast. This is going to be an awesome one. One of my favorite people. We have the ultimate mythbuster and fact checker with us here today, John Stossel. John, welcome to the podcast.
B
Thank you.
A
Thank you for being here. So I have had a discussion with a lot of people across the state of Michigan lately. One that they don't really like to hear and that is that I don't believe that this generation is worse off my parents generation financially. I see them spending wildly and that seems to be the problem. You've recently done a few articles. You did an episode on this. So what's your take on this?
B
I just did one video. I just do one a week. But yes, it was about that, about all the whining on the Internet. I wasn't familiar with all of it, but the younger people on my staff have seen these memes about how life is so much tougher now. I can't afford a home. Nobody can afford a home. And we looked into it and it's just crap. It's just not true. Almost every category. Life is easier today.
A
Yeah. So I was watching your video and you made some really great points. You had someone on, actually, I love the way you go about your videos. So I encourage anybody who's listening to check these videos out. I love the fact that you stepped out of traditional TV and took a chance on this. And the way you talked about what is happening with this next generation is something that I've talked to my friends about as as our kids are going out and looking for homes. Just a couple days ago, one of my friends called and she said there's just no home homes for sale. And I said my first house had one bathroom, two bedrooms, no basement, just like three, four rooms in the entire house. But these kids today, they want to have the same size house I have now. They want to have a four bedroom home or more, a huge yard. They want to live out on a big piece of property. They can afford the smaller house. Right.
B
Though there are fewer smaller houses for sale. That's true. Because that's not what most people want these days. We're not aware that we want more. We expect more. We expect cars that don't rust and don't break down quickly and have all the gadgets that go with it. But people don't calculate that when they compare these things. I was struck in the comments to my video. Like we release on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and all these different formats and usually people are Pretty positive. And this was so obvious to me that I thought people would say, yeah, what are these people complaining about? But no, there were all these ignorant complaints like you mentioned. Yeah, I can't, it's not true. I can't find a house. It's not true. Cars cost much, much harder to buy a car now and so forth.
A
Well, it was rare for my friends to go on a vacation if we were. When we were young and before we had kids, it took us months and years. I mean, my husband and I, before we had kids, we were married for eight years and we took two vacations in those eight years and we saved for years to go on those vacations. But I see this generation now. My, my husband's sister is 18 years younger than us and they go on a vacation every six months. And I think. And they're mad if they haven't gone on a vacation. It's stunning to me the fact that it just is in this entitlement that you go away.
B
Or that you eat out and.
A
Very good point. Yes.
B
I'm older than you and the memes that I saw started with blaming the baby boomers for everything. And I'm one. And we never went out to eat twice a year. And it was a big deal to go to a restaurant.
A
I remember when we were kids, we would go to McDonald's probably once a week. And my dad at the time would say for us to go to McDonald's as kids was such a big deal. And constantly, always tell every time we went to McDonald's it was like, you don't understand what a treat this is. We went to McDonald's every few months if we were lucky. And at the time, you know, I had, we had, we were certainly weren't eating out to dinner every night, but absolutely now it's constantly eating out. Interestingly, eating out has also changed because of this climate of everything is, is so expensive in stores are buying this prepackaged food and eating out has become different. We're spending more restauran to be spending less. But it's a whole, it's just a totally different lifestyle. But you talk about politicians a lot in the videos that you do. I, I mean, I saw it in your puppy stores video. I saw it in your socialism video. I see it in this video as well. Because you talk about the fact that politicians can adjust the way people think. I don't think it was as obvious. When I was young, I didn't really know what politicians were saying because you were hearing it on the nightly news. At 10 o' clock at night. And I wasn't always watching that when I was young. But now kids are constantly pushed with the political rhetoric because it's on their phones.
B
And we have changed our behavior in that we were happy looking at the news at night, the end of the day, if we looked at all. And now I find myself checking all the freaking time. And this makes us, this hurts us. I mean, it's a wonderful thing in many ways. It hurts us in other ways because the more you watch, the more you look, the more scared people are of the world. Old people who don't go out a lot fear crime more. It's the nature of the news business to talk about the problems. It's amazing that all these planes take off and land inches from each other without crashing. It's not news. It's not. Nobody's out by the back fence gossiping about who's faithful to their spouse. Bad news is news. And when we consume more of it, the world seems worse.
A
It reminds me, I was watching your video with you had an expert in dei, a DEI trainer who had stepped out of the profession because he felt like it had gone the wrong direction. But that was kind of what he was saying. If you don't have racism, then you can't have anti racism racism. And so there's almost this perpetuation of something bad to create some billion dollar industry to fight that thing that's so bad.
B
Everybody wants attention and you get attention pointing out a problem. His point that I found most interesting was that in the places where he was a DEI teacher, he found the courses made different races more fearful about speaking to each other. They were less likely to engage.
A
Yeah, that was the thing that I thought was the scariest. And that's something that I see with my kids. My kids are in high school and they've felt like that they've felt like, well, should I not? Am I bad? Am I a problem? Should I not engage with someone who's a different race? And it's something I had never considered as a kid. I hadn't thought about it. They think about it in a totally different way because I think it is pushed upon them. You are different. They are different than you. You may not get along because of that. So we have to push you to. He even talked about microaggressions, which I always thought was a weird thing when it came out years ago. But you're so afraid now that you might commit a microaggression that you'd rather not talk at all.
B
And Good was intended, I assume with waking people up to things we might say that might hurt somebody else's feelings. But as always, you get more attention the farther you take it, and that hurts people.
A
As I have watched what you've created, though, I was looking at it as from the perspective of someone who ran for office and thinking you've really done something incredibly unique with the program that you've created because you're not a partisan. You're not, you're actually super inquisitive in these interviews, which I love. And you are, you're trying to point out really common sense. But you, you are letting the other person also come to that conclusion. And I think for the political world, the strategy behind politics now is, I mean, it's different than what I thought when I got into it. I was very naive about the fact that I thought you did it because you wanted to do the right thing. And then you get into it and there's a million people around you and it's exactly what you say. If you have this rhetoric, these people will come. And if you have this rhetoric, these people will come. And you start to look at it and say, what do people actually believe? And then you see young people becoming more and more reliant on government because government and politicians are about promising things. You've done a phenomenal job of pointing this out without being critical.
B
And they're also telling you that life's getting worse, therefore you need government to intervene. One of the best examples for me that I learned from is welfare. I was at Princeton at the time it was being formulated and all my professors were saying, it's horrible that in this rich country some people are still poor and we can fix this with programs. And that just made total sense to me. Then I became a reporter. I started covering these programs and I saw how, yeah, they give money to people who really could use it and that helped them, but it also made them feel entitled and it cut off their need to figure out how to become self sufficient by themselves. And the longer the programs continued, the more entitled people got and angry if it wasn't just done just the way they were entitled to it. And if you look at the total numbers now, Americans, the graph was going down. Americans were lifting themselves out of poverty since the beginning of the country. It was slow progress, but it was progress. And then the war on poverty began. And for seven years, the progress was even faster. More people were lifted above the poverty line. But since then, for the last 50 years, progress stopped. Poverty rates gone up and down a little bit. But for as many people were helped, as many people were taught to be dependent and passive and that's horrible for people.
A
I think the younger generation is now thinking that that's what government is there for. Because I go to college campuses and I'll sit there and these college age students will look at me and say, why should I vote for this candidate over this candidate? What is the government going to do me if this candidate is in? And so I've started saying, why do you ask that question? What, what are you expecting? Because it's not something I ever asked when I was young and never thought about. What would, what would I get if I vote for you? What are you going to hand over to me? But there is this mindset now that I need something free. I need a reward for voting for you.
B
And my wish is that government would say, well, I promise to leave you alone. And yes, we need limited government to protect us from foreign invaders and crime at the run courts and the police, even schools and fire departments. But that's local government. That's not the feds and government was once 2% of the economy. It's now 40% and it keeps growing.
A
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on the Tudor Dixon Podcast.
C
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A
It's funny to me, government seems to do things that are I see so often government hands something and then the strings come in. It's you first get it. It seems lovely. It's beautiful. It's this amazing gift and then suddenly they start attaching all the strings because they want something back. We gave this to you. Now we want you to give US something. This is Michigan, I think, is a great example right now. In 2018, we had marijuana pass marijuana, the marijuana bill, when it was a ballot initiative. And Democrats got elected in Mass in 2018 because they were all about, we want you to have marijuana. We want it to be legal. And now we have small businesses across the state that have been built on marijuana. And I gotta tell you, when I ran in 2022, I was like, I don't love this. I'm a factory person. I grew up in. In factories. My dad owned a factory. I worked in the factory. It's hard to tell if somebody's high. You know, you have a whole different level of danger. But this last few weeks, my mind has really adjusted on this because I saw the Democrats last week come out and say, we make so much money in taxes on marijuana that we want to add a 24% tax on marijuana. We're going to get a lot more money from you on marijuana. Now, our small businesses, one of the thriving small businesses that we have in Michigan, because we're really, we're really hurting small businesses. One of the thriving small businesses we have now has a 24% tax on it. We're going to look at the people who are using marijuana and ask them to pay our bills, ask them to restore our roads and pay for our schools. This is the only industry out there, one of the only industries out there that has a very dangerous black market. So we've just created a huge crime problem and we can't foresee that. We give you marijuana and then all the strings come. What's your thought on that?
B
I should have been able to foresee it. It happened in California, one of the first states to legalize. But they put on so many regulations. It's not just the taxes, it's the stupid rules. So they could say, oh, you can't show it to children, you can't have open windows, that the black market is as big as ever. And, you know, marijuana will cause some problems. But banning it doesn't necessarily make that better. It didn't work for alcohol, for Prohibition, and we should realize that with other drugs.
A
You have had other programs where you've talked about the government coming in to ban things. It doesn't seem like you're a fan of banning things. And I find it interesting the way you break it down and that's one of the things that you recently came out and did a video on. This is why we did this. This is how I stepped out of TV and started this program. But you Went into the detail of the facts that you. The fact checking that you go through and the team that you have, which is, I think, very critical in this world right now, where a podcast comes out every day and it's someone's opinion and it feels very much like fact. But there's not the behind the scenes that goes into it. Like your show. You did a. You recently did this show on puppy stores. And it was, to me, it was very valuable because my family absolutely loved. Loves dogs. We love to go out and buy dogs. There are no dog puppy stores in my town. They have all been run out of town. There's one left in Grand Rapids. But I had been under this impression that these dog. These puppy stores had puppy mills attached. And you showed the pictures, which I loved, of that scared me to death. And I went, oh, my gosh. Yeah, I can't get a dog at a. At a dog store. I have to go to a breeder. So I went to this breeder. I know nothing about this breeder. I got the most reject dog you could possibly have. He's got skin infections. He's got all kinds of health disorders. Would he have been that way if I'd got him from a puppy store? I don't know. But you did a great job of breaking down. Really, this is government intervention that doesn't need to be there.
B
And don't you call them pet stores. You call them puppy stores. I mean, they sell cats and rabbits. Are now a ban, too. Eight states. I didn't know that your state was one of them. Have banned all pet stores from selling dogs, cats, and rabbits because of the puppy mill problem. But as with drugs or alcohol, prohibition creates new problems. And you're supposed to only buy from a reliable breeder. But how do you know who that is? You look at the Internet and they all say they're a reliable breeder. At least the pet store, your town, they had to maintain a reputation. And if they sold sick dogs from a puppy mill that cruelly inbred dogs, word would spread. And now, thanks to ratings on the Internet, word spreads even faster. But the humane societies, which are much richer than I thought they were, they have hundreds of millions of dollars, and they pay themselves well and spend very little running shelters. They've got this ban stores, ban pet store campaign, and they're winning.
A
And I think that's something that people don't realize either. These organizations, they feel good. You're rescuing a dog. You feel like you've done something amazing. And they put this rhetoric out there. And they have so much money that they then have lobbyists and they can buy their message through the government as well. They go to legislators and they say, you can't allow this. You've got. You don't understand how this is hurting the dogs. These poor dogs that'll never find a home because you've allowed these people to sell new dogs. And there's this whole behind the scenes nobody really knows about.
B
Maybe they know, but they don't think about it. I mean, in the case of the puppy mill campaigns, they also get people to stand on the street holding signs, stop abusing puppies. Bad pet stores. And they make contributions to politicians, and that gets results. That's the way you do things in politics. And I mean, I disagree with your comment about politics a little bit in that I think most people who go into it want to do good. It's the process that five years later turns them into opportunists. Because to get anything done, you have to make deals. And I find. And in government, the good people don't get paid more. You're barely allowed to give them a raise. The horrible person who sleeps at the desk next to you can't be fired because of civil service rules. This soon sucks the initiative out of you. And government becomes what it is.
A
Right? The bureaucracy that is involved with that, they can stay there forever. They can make more money than the elected, elected officials, and they have a lot of power. And then you, if you have term limits, you have somebody that doesn't know the system, and they come in and they're taken over by the bureaucracy. I completely agree with you. We just had. I was just in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan a couple of weeks ago, and they were telling us we have a terrible bear problem. Now I'm. I live in the Lower Peninsula. We don't have a terrible bear problem. I don't think about it. It doesn't affect me. In fact, a few years ago, they had a terrible wolf problem. And the Lower Peninsula had a campaign saying we could no longer shoot wolves in the state of Michigan. And it was so. It was so impactful, it hurt. I mean, you would watch these tiny puppy wolves on tv. How could you shoot this wolf? These people want to shoot wolves. We've got to stop it. Well, they were effective. We put a ballot initiative through saying that you couldn't kill the wolves in Michigan anymore. The people in the Upper Peninsula who act actually deal with the wolves. We don't see them. They said our livestock is being ripped apart. Now they can't they told us a couple weeks ago we can't hunt deer anymore because the bear are all taking the deer right out of the fields. You can watch them take the deer right out of the fields. And I think, you know, these are the things that. It's very easy for a politician to come to me and say, we can't give out any more bear tags. We don't have enough bear. Whereas I don't live where the bear are. I have no idea what the bear are doing.
B
Which is why people say local government is better. But that's not always true either.
A
Right. Well, local government can also. I mean, this is why I go back to when the next generation says to me, what is the government going to do for me? Why do you want so much government? Why are you looking for more government? What has happened in that generation that they're so desperate for more government?
B
They've been brainwashed by schools? I don't know. It's upsetting to hear that when you speak, that's what the students ask. They don't ask me that, but maybe that's because they know I'm a libertarian and I'm making fewer speeches lately because I don't need the money anymore. But they no longer. I don't remember them asking that. And that's sad that. That that's what they ask you.
A
I think it's. It's just this new motivation, as you see the Mamdanis of the world saying, look, if you come, we'll give you free. We'll give you free transportation, we'll give you free groceries, we'll give you everything free. I mean, what is your take on what's happening in New York?
B
All your problems and my kids are for him. It's so upsetting to me. Part of it's because he's just a reasonable guy, as opposed to these creepy alternatives that we have had. He seems like one. Like a nice guy who cares about people, wants to make things better. But it's because of their vast ignorance from bad schools, I guess, because the basic question should be, where has socialism ever worked? In what country, in what state, anywhere? And people say Scandinavia. But they are not socialists. Sweden went socialist and it was such a disaster, they pulled it back. They're capitalist countries. The Danish prime minister even came to Harvard to shout, we are not a socialist economy. It's never worked. It wrecks lives wherever it's been tried. And yet these politicians keep promising it.
A
They say it's democratic socialism. It's different.
B
Which just means you vote for the guy. But once in power, socialism means we control the means of production, we run things, and that inevitably becomes oppression and poverty.
A
That's a statement that Mamdani has made. He wants to seize the means of production. He, he clearly openly said that. And people thought that that was great because he was gonna come in and help to make sure prices are lower. It would be helpful to the people in New York. And he'll take from the billionaires because they shouldn't be allowed to have that kind of money anyway.
B
It sounds good. Government will run it and they're not looking to make a big profit, so it'll be better. And two answers to that. One is think the Department of Motor Vehicles. That's the experience you have in government stores. Again, because the guy who's a really good worker gets paid no more than the slacker next to him. And maybe you keep trying for a year, but after five years when nobody could be fired, you stop trying and the services just go downhill. And the second point I've now forgotten. So never mind.
A
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on the Tudor Dixon Podcast.
C
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A
Well, I've also said to young people who say, well, we want free public transportation. I always tell them, you know, even if you're just paying a small amount for public transportation, you have a different level of respect for that. Studies show show this. They've done psychological studies. If you get something for free, do you respect it as much as if you just pay 50 cents for it? Even if you just pay A small amount. Why do you want it to be free if you can afford it? It's a very hard message to get through to this generation.
B
Well, that's one I think is less evil because the city's already running buses and it barely makes money on them. And it costs money to collect the fares and police the fare cheaters. If that were free, if they would save money elsewhere, it wouldn't be so terrible. But I now remember my second point. The other problem is that people think there's a fixed amount of money and if Jeff Bezos has a billion dollars, that we have a billion dollars less. But it doesn't work that way. The only way Bezos at Amazon got rich was to offer us something we like like better than the alternatives. And in fact, Amazon lowered prices so much that it even affected the Consumer Price Index. He saved us money while making billions for himself. It's hard to get your brain around that, that these greedy capitalists perform a service to us when they sell us all this stuff.
A
But they do, and I mean states fight over who's going to get the next Amazon center because they know that they're going to have tons of jobs.
B
That too.
A
It is always interesting for me to see people mad at the billionaires because they are the job creators. They are actually putting wealth into the country. But there's a narrative that goes the other direction. If we watch your show, we would know that that is not the case, that we would actually learn the facts. So I appreciate what you do. Please tell the audience where they can watch your show and listen to your show.
B
YouTube is the best. Just type in John Stossel or just Google me and you'll find it.
A
That's where I watch it.
B
If you sign up, we'll just send you an email once a week. We won't sell your name and we'll give you the video by email.
A
Wonderful. Thank you so much. John Stossel. Thank you for coming on the podcast today.
B
Thanks for having me.
A
Absolutely. And thank you all for listening to the podcast. You can get this one on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And you can always watch on Rumble or YouTube, uterdixon and join us next time. Have a blessed day. This is an Iheart podcast.
The Tudor Dixon Podcast: John Stossel on Socialism, Entitlement, and the Lost Understanding of Capitalism
Date: October 10, 2025
Guest: John Stossel
Host: Tudor Dixon
Tudor Dixon welcomes veteran journalist and noted media mythbuster John Stossel for a candid discussion about generational entitlement, modern misconceptions about capitalism and socialism, and how government intervention often creates more problems than it solves. The episode delves deeply into how expectations of younger generations differ from those of their parents, the role of politicians and media in shifting public perception, and the unintended consequences of regulatory overreach—from welfare to marijuana legalization and puppy store bans.
[00:18–03:12]
“We looked into it and it's just crap. It's just not true. Almost every category. Life is easier today.” (John Stossel, 00:47)
“We're not aware that we want more. We expect more. We expect cars that don't rust and don't break down quickly.” (01:25)
[03:12–05:35]
“We never went out to eat twice a year. And it was a big deal to go to a restaurant.” (03:54)
[05:35–07:08]
“It's the nature of the news business to talk about the problems. ... Bad news is news. And when we consume more of it, the world seems worse.” (John Stossel, 05:58)
[06:36–08:16]
“He found the courses made different races more fearful about speaking to each other. They were less likely to engage.” (John Stossel, 07:20)
[08:34–12:39]
“They're also telling you that life's getting worse, therefore you need government to intervene.” (09:51)
“It also made them feel entitled and it cut off their need to figure out how to become self sufficient... the longer the programs continued, the more entitled people got and angry if it wasn't just done just the way they were entitled to it.” (10:22)
“Government was once 2% of the economy. It's now 40% and it keeps growing.” (12:30)
[13:47–21:15]
“They put on so many regulations. It's not just the taxes, it's the stupid rules... the black market is as big as ever.” (15:56) “Banning it doesn't necessarily make that better. It didn't work for alcohol, for Prohibition, and we should realize that with other drugs.” (16:19)
“At least the pet store… had to maintain a reputation. And if they sold sick dogs… word would spread. And now, thanks to ratings on the Internet, word spreads even faster.” (18:43)
“They have hundreds of millions of dollars, and they pay themselves well and spend very little running shelters.” (18:30)
[20:11–22:50]
“It's the process that five years later turns them into opportunists. … The horrible person who sleeps at the desk next to you can't be fired because of civil service rules. This soon sucks the initiative out of you. And government becomes what it is.” (20:53)
[23:18–26:31]
“They've been brainwashed by schools? I don't know. It's upsetting… That's sad.” (23:18)
“The basic question should be, where has socialism ever worked? In what country, in what state, anywhere? … The Danish prime minister even came to Harvard to shout, we are not a socialist economy. It's never worked. It wrecks lives wherever it's been tried.” (24:28)
“Which just means you vote for the guy. But once in power, socialism means we control the means of production… and that inevitably becomes oppression and poverty.” (25:13)
“The experience you have in government stores... the guy who's a really good worker gets paid no more than the slacker next to him...you stop trying and the services just go downhill.” (25:49)
[27:38–29:14]
“The other problem is that people think there's a fixed amount of money and if Jeff Bezos has a billion dollars, that we have a billion dollars less. But it doesn't work that way... Amazon lowered prices so much that it even affected the Consumer Price Index.” (28:41)
This episode serves as both a mythbusting reality check and a call for greater skepticism about government solutions, social narratives, and the ongoing allure of socialism. Stossel and Dixon challenge listeners to question entitlement mentalities and to understand the value of capitalism, individual effort, and skepticism toward claims from both politicians and activist organizations. The tone is candid, direct, and often wry, characteristic of both speakers’ styles.
End of summary.