Author: Kerby Anderson

Kerby Anderson
Inflation has been so much a part of our economic lives, so we take it for granted. Although the Federal Reserve aims for an inflation target of 2 percent, some economists are suggesting we should reexamine that target especially since we won’t be hitting it very soon.
Two years ago, I mentioned a book by Jeff Booth. In the The Price of Tomorrow, he argues that we should be seeing deflation in our society. His argument is simple: Technology is deflationary. That is the nature of technology.
Think about cell phones. He explains that his first cell phone (which was a Motorola 8000). “It had thirty minutes of talk time before it needed to be charged for ten to twelve hours, and it cost about $2,000.” Think of the cell phone in your hand today.
While we are talking about cell phones, perhaps you have seen the graphic that compares the Apollo 11 computer with the Apple iPhone. The Apollo guidance computer used 12,250 flops (floating point operations per second). The Apple iPhone 12 now processes 11 trillion flops. It is 900 million times faster than the Apollo computer and also a fraction of the cost.
Jeff Booth reminds us, “Our economic systems were not built for a world driven by technology where prices keep falling. They were built for a pre-technology era where labor and capital were inextricably linked, an era that counted on growth and inflation, an era where we made money from scarcity and inefficiency.”
We should be experiencing deflation, which is a world where you get more for your money. But we have inflation due to money printing and the declining value of the dollar. Perhaps it is time to rethink how we do this economy.

Kerby Anderson
The most recent Gallup survey has both good news and bad news. The good news is that Americans over the age of 60 may be some of the happiest people on earth. The bad news is that young Americans under 30 are not happy. In fact, they rank very far down the chart on global happiness.
Smartphones explain the difference. Two professors have been documenting this for the last decade. Jean Twenge is best known for her book, iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy–And Completely Unprepared. She found consistently decreased levels of happiness beginning in 2013.
Because they were on their phones, adolescents were spending less time interacting with others. They spend less time developing friendships, get less sleep, and attend fewer religious services. Instead, they spend their time looking at screens, posting comments on social media, texting, and playing games. No wonder she has found a causal link between teen depression and smartphones.
Jonathan Haidt has been on my program to talk about his book, The Coddling of the American Mind. His new book just came out: The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.
He provided a preview of his research in Atlantic, “End the Phone-Based Childhood Now.” He begins his article by documenting that “something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s.” Suicide rates (along with loneliness and friendlessness) rose dramatically. Young people were struggling to find meaning in life.
I encourage you to read his twenty-page article in Atlantic. It should be a wake-up call to all parents.

Kerby Anderson
Bjorn Lomborg reminds us, “More than one million people die in traffic accidents globally each year.” He says we could solve that problem by having governments reduce speed limits to 3 miles an hour. Of course, we will never do that because you need to consider other factors.
He makes that point to illustrate that the mantra “follow the science” does not allow a rational evaluation of cost and benefit. “That assertion lets politicians obscure—and avoid responsibility for—lopsided climate-policy trade-offs.”
The Biden administration has set a goal of achieving a net-zero emissions economy by no later than 2050. Outgoing climate envoy, John Kerry, has said there is no alternative, and has also dismissed the idea that this goal is politically motivated.
Lomborg explains that this way of thinking “conflates climate science and climate policy. Man-made climate change exists, but what societies do in response is still a matter of choice.” The mantra that we must “follow the science” essentially shuts down rational discussions about the enormous and unsustainable costs being proposed.
He reminds us that “the world still gets four-fifths of its energy from fossil fuels” and “half the world’s population entirely depends on food grown with synthetic fertilizer.” Economist Neil Record showed an abrupt end to fossil fuel use would cause six billion deaths in less than a year.
In addition to the human cost is the economic cost. The latest economic research estimates that net zero policies would be more than seven times as costly as the climate problem it is trying to address.
We need a sensible, rational policy discussion when addressing the issue of climate change.

Kerby Anderson
Four years ago, we heard the announcement about “15 days to slow the spread.” The anniversary of that campaign brought many articles. Scott Atlas wrote about “Covid Lessons Learned, Four Years Later.” John Stossel did a YouTube video and follow-up commentary on “Covid: Don’t Let Them Off the Hook.”
Scott Atlas reminded us that the benefits of the lockdowns were tiny. It supposedly prevented some deaths, but those numbers are very small when compared to the number of Americans who die of the flu each year. The number of non-Covid excess deaths are huge, especially when compared to other European countries. A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the U.S. “would have had 1.60 million fewer deaths if it had the performance of Sweden.”
The impact on the economy and jobs was staggering. “According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as many as 49 million Americans were out of work in May 2020. This shock had health consequences.” And prolonged school closings led to permanent learning loss and later increases in “psychiatric illness, self-harm, obesity, and substance abuse.”
John Stossel says he was always wary of politicians but “was surprised at how authoritarian many were eager to be.” Many mayors and governors locked down the society in ways that didn’t even make sense from a medical perspective.
It is worth mentioning that four years ago, I did a radio program and radio commentaries on the book, The Price of Panic. It was written by experts in several fields documenting the problems with the lockdowns and predicting much of what we can now see clearly.
These are lessons learned that we need to remember, especially during this election year when candidates will be asking for your vote.

Kerby Anderson
Today is Good Friday. On this day, believers around the world commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. We all understand that. What most of us don’t understand is why this dark day in which Jesus suffered and died is called “Good Friday.” Why isn’t it called Bad Friday or Dark Friday?
Over the years, people have put forward various theories. Some argue that it is called Good Friday because something good came about because of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. While that is certainly true theologically, that is not the linguistic origin of the term Good Friday.
Others have suggested that Good Friday came from a shortening of the words God’s Friday. Although you do see that suggestion in some articles on the Internet, there really isn’t any connection between the words god and good. At best, this is mere linguistic speculation.
It is more likely that the term “Good Friday” comes from an older meaning of the word good. It used to mean holy. So you can think of the term Good Friday as really meaning Holy Friday. This fits with other languages that refer to this day as Sacred Friday or even Passion Friday.
Today we commemorate when the wrath of God was poured out on Jesus. He was sinless, and thus the perfect sacrifice for our sins. He paid the penalty that we deserved to pay. As the song says: “He paid a debt He did not owe” because “I owed a debt I could not pay.”
Good Friday begins the most momentous weekend in the history of the world. Because of the death of Jesus, we can receive the free gift of eternal life. Because of the resurrection of Jesus, we can know that there is life beyond the grave. That is why this weekend is a cause for great celebration.

Kerby Anderson
The latest research shows that Christian parents are sending mixed signals to their kids about living the Christian life. More than a decade ago, Probe Ministries surveyed born-again millennials and found that if parents had an inconsistent biblical view, their children would also have an inconsistent view. The only major exception to that would be for kids who got involved with a campus Christian ministry and grew in their faith.
The latest research by George Barna illustrates this same finding in even more detail. His research at Arizona Christian University’s Cultural Research Center found that “a mere 5 percent of parents have beliefs that are in harmony with a biblical worldview, more often than not, those same parents do not follow through with consistent biblical behavior.”
Put another way, most parents are not even talking the talk, but the few that do are not walking the walk. This is sending mixed signals to their children who quickly pick up contradictions between what parents say they believe and how they behave.
Among pre-teen parents who attend Catholic, mainline Protestant, or traditionally black churches, merely 3 percent were found to have a consistent biblical set of beliefs. Surveys of parents attending Pentecostal, non-denominational or independent Protestant churches show only 9 percent of the parents of pre-teens had a biblical worldview.
George Barna concludes that, “It’s not surprising that young people in our nation are confused regarding gender and sexuality, the value of human life, and even why and how to nurture positive personal relationships.” Churches, he says, “must be facilitating clarity rather than confusion.”
Parents need a better understanding of biblical viewpoints and biblical behavior. And they shouldn’t feel guilty about imposing their views on children but should “bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4).

Kerby Anderson
I have found that most speakers can tell you what question they receive most often. Melissa Cain Travis was on my radio program recently and said her most asked question is about the possibility of extraterrestrials. That makes sense since she often speaks on science topics that include a discussion of the vastness of the universe.
The quick answer is that Scripture is silent on the possibility of other intelligent life forms in the universe. She reminds her audience that the Bible isn’t meant to be a comprehensive cosmic encyclopedia. The discovery of divine creations that aren’t mentioned in Genesis would not undermine the veracity of Scripture.
What if we did discover extraterrestrial creatures? Wouldn’t they need salvation just like we need? There are two possible answers to that question. If their world was fallen, then they would also need salvation. But there is another possibility that C.S. Lewis proposed in his Ransom trilogy. An alien world may not be fallen.
Of course, atheists love to pursue that question. Scientific American posted a provocative article entitled, “Did Jesus Save the Klingons?” The author suggests that the discovery of life beyond Earth “might wreak havoc on certain religions.” She goes on to argue that this would be a “serious theological problem” to imagine Jesus being born in many different alien worlds.
But Melissa doesn’t see a problem with that view. There doesn’t seem to be any theological reason why the Son of God may have been incarnated and atoned for sin in more than one place. That wouldn’t diminish our value as described in Psalm 8.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. As I discussed in a commentary in May of last year, the ongoing investigations of UFOs haven’t turned up any extraterrestrials just yet. The question is still hypothetical.

Kerby Anderson
For most of us, perception is reality. But there is mounting evidence that the perceptions of most Americans aren’t even close to reality. Two months ago, I talked on my radio program about a survey done by YouGov, an international research, data, and analytics group.
I didn’t do a commentary on it at the time because there were so many other topics in the news. But now that the graph is showing up on social media sites, it’s worth mentioning. The survey found that Americans tend to overestimate percentages.
Put another way, most Americans lack even a little bit of common sense. For example, the average American guessed that 30 percent of the American population lives in New York City, 30 percent in Texas, and 32 percent in California. Apparently, those surveyed believe that a total of 92 percent of the American population lives in one city and two states. They also found that Americans assumed that 30 percent of Americans are gay or lesbian and another 21 percent are transgender. That would be more than half the population.
When it came to estimating the percentage of minorities in this country, they didn’t do any better. They estimated that 41 percent are black, 39 percent are Hispanic, and 29 percent are Asian. You could also add the 27 percent they guessed were Muslim.
In the past, when I wanted to illustrate the influence of the media on perceptions, I used to say that if all someone knew about America was what was on TV, that person would think that there were lots of homosexuals, few Christians, and lots of violence in the streets.
Unfortunately, the average American’s perception of the world through media is also skewed. This is the view of reality held by many voters. Let me add one more. This skewed view of reality also seems to be held by many of the politicians we elect.

Kerby Anderson
I go to bookstores frequently, but I don’t ever venture into the area of books for children. But a recent video and column by John Stossel has changed that. “Go into Barnes & Noble,” says Bethany Mandel, “and you will be met with a wall of biographies. Probably 27 different books about former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” She also talks about lots of books about Kamala Harris.
But what about biographies on conservatives like Margaret Thatcher or Amy Coney Barrett? According to Bethany Mandel, there are none. That is why she started a company that told the story of “Heroes of Liberty” like Ronald Reagan and Thomas Sowell.
Her top seller is her biography of Sowell, who overcame adversity to become a famous economist. When Sowell’s family moved to New York, his new teachers put him in a lower grade because they assumed that he couldn’t compete. He didn’t play the victim but asked to see the principal. It is an encouraging story.
John Stossel reminds us that conservatives make up about half the country so you would assume that book publishers would want to appeal to them. But that is not what is happening. Bethany Mandel explains that libraries buy many more books than moms and dads so there is an incentive to churn out books that librarians will buy.
Most of us (including John Stossel) assume that librarians would be apolitical. But he provides one statistic that shows that 90 percent of librarians’ political donations go to Democrats. Our tax dollars are used to buy a thousand copies of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and zero copies of Amy Coney Barrett.
Fortunately, there are alternatives. Heroes of Faith and the Tuttle Twins are some conservative alternatives. And Christian publishers have been providing inspiring books as well. Unfortunately, you won’t find these books in your local library.

Kerby Anderson
Even after millions died worldwide from Covid-19, there still seems to be little interest on the part of the media and most politicians in uncovering how the pandemic happened. Senator Rand Paul is the exception and has written, Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up.
He says we shouldn’t be surprised that the totalitarian government of the Chinese Communist Party engaged in a cover-up. But we should be concerned with the cover-up that took place in this country. He documents the deliberate attempt by government bureaucrats to ridicule the idea the COVID virus originated with a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But he also explains why they wanted to hide that fact.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has been funding gain-of-function research for years. We now have the emails that illustrate the cover-up. One researcher in the UK admitted that he acquired a burner phone and held clandestine meetings to shield messages from future records requests.
Senator Paul not only looks to the past; he is fearful of the future. He sees a real potential for disaster. Currently, anyone can order synthetic DNA on the Internet. If they have even a minimal amount of expertise, they can make the polio virus among others. He quotes from a biochemist who reminds us that “The U.S. grants 125 doctoral degrees in virology each year.”
The goal of this research is supposedly to prevent future pandemics. But Senator Paul concludes the risk-benefit ratio doesn’t add up. While he points to some legislation that provides some protection, I believe the COVID pandemic is a vivid reminder that we shouldn’t allow such dangerous research, especially now that we know there was a COVID cover-up.

Kerby Anderson
One of the slogans we often hear from radical environmentalists is that there are too many people on the planet. Once someone makes that statement, it is worth asking, what do you propose we do about it?
Usually, they suggest we reduce the population by reducing the fertility rate. Of course, that has been happening in every developed country. As I mentioned in my December commentary, one of my professors in graduate school was a co-founder of Zero Population Growth.
But there are some who want to go far beyond zero population growth or even negative population growth. Professor Peter Singer (Princeton) seriously questioned years ago whether it was even “justifiable” for the human species to continue.
More recently you have a Finnish bioethicist explaining in the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics that he “would be pleased to see no one have children, because that would be a rational thing to do. Reproducing carries risks to the possible future individuals.”
I recently did an interview with Wesley J. Smith, who discovered this article and talked about the current intellectual push for human extinction. I mentioned to him a commentary I wrote 16 years ago about a professor at the University of Texas who rejected the idea that humans have value. At the end of his speech, he proclaimed, “We’re no better than bacteria!”
That is not true. The Bible teaches that human beings are created in the image of God and have dignity and value. We are commanded to be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over the creation.
All of this push for human extinction reminds me of the famous quote from G.K. Chesterton. “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”

Kerby Anderson
In April 1983, the US Secretary of Education in the Reagan Administration created the National Commission on Excellence in Education. The panel discovered that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”
Perhaps the most famous line from that report was this. “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might have viewed it as an act of war.”
I read that line from the report on the radio the other day while doing an interview with Larry Sand, president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network. He quoted from that original study to emphasize that education hasn’t improved very much in the last 40 years since that dismal assessment.
He cited the NAEP, often known as the “Nation’s Report Card.” It documented that less than a third (29%) of 8th graders are proficient in reading and less than a third (29%) are proficient in math. The average scores from college exams have fallen the last six years in a row.
He explained that schools seem to be spending more and more valuable class time on wokeism. He gave many examples, but one of the most concerning is how federal money is being spent on younger and younger students. An organization called Woke Kindergarten trains teachers to “confront white supremacy, disrupt racism and oppression, and remove those barriers to learning.”
No wonder that the latest Gallup poll shows just a quarter (26%) of respondents said they have a “great deal/fair amount” of confidence in our public schools. We have had an educational crisis for decades. It is time to address this chronic problem.

Kerby Anderson
Crime costs both victims and society a great deal. Several years ago, Walter Williams wrote about the “Unappreciated Crime Costs” that especially hit black residents in low-income neighborhoods. His commentary is even more relevant today.
Thousands of black Americans are murdered each year in cities like Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, and Philadelphia. He documented that over 90 percent of the time the perpetrator was also black.
Crime also imposes a hefty tax on people in these neighborhoods, who can least afford it. Residents must bear the time cost and other costs of having to shop outside their neighborhoods. There are few supermarkets in high-crime, low-income neighborhoods that are often referred to as “food deserts.”
Delivery companies routinely leave packages on the doorstop of homes in low-crime neighborhoods. They wouldn’t dare do that in these high-crime neighborhoods. Taxi drivers, fearing robberies in these dangerous neighborhoods, often refuse to accept telephone calls for home pickups.
You might wonder why black people in these areas often fail to report crime to law enforcement. First, many of them have a deep mistrust of police. Second, there is also the real fear of reprisals by black criminals. Reporting a crime or criminal can have serious repercussions. Criminals rarely fear being brought to justice.
Walter Williams concluded that many of the problems in the black community in previous decades were due to racial discrimination. He then argued that the problems today are due to “high illegitimacy, family breakdown, and unsafe communities.” That’s why I believe the best solutions must come from churches and faith-based organizations.

Kerby Anderson
What is happening at the University of Florida might be spreading to other universities. Earlier this month, the university announced that it was ending its experiment with DEI, which stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. The college closed the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer and eliminated DEI positions, thereby saving more than $5 million each year on the controversial program.
DEI is dying in Florida because of the Florida governor and the actions of the Florida legislature, that passed a law prohibiting state funding of DEI programs. When he signed the law, Governor Ron DeSantis observed that “DEI is better viewed as standing for discrimination, exclusion, and indoctrination,” and that it thus has “no place in our public institutions.”
Still the legal actions by the governor and legislature might have met resistance if not for the current president of the University of Florida. Ben Sasse left his position as US Senator to become the new university president. “Last year, in his inaugural address, Sasse made it clear that universities ought not to be ‘in the business of advancing either a theology of the right, or a theology of the left.’”
Critics of DEI argue that it is often a “Trojan horse” used to smuggle all sorts of radical leftist ideas onto campus. It may still be too much to ask our universities to teach the founding principles of this nation. I don’t expect to hear any time soon that professors have required students to read the Declaration, the Constitution, or the Federalist Papers.
Nevertheless, removing some of the toxic ideas spread on campus through DEI and critical race theory is an important first step in eliminating indoctrination and promoting true education.

Kerby Anderson
You may have noticed that the American Library Association and even your local library has become quite political. Perhaps the best way to illustrate that is to tell the story of Ron Kelley, an ALA member.
In the summer of 2020, the American Library Association encouraged its members to support Black Lives Matter. Ron Kelley expressed his concern in an email that he believed that promoting a political organization was “extremely unwise.” He also wondered why the ALA wasn’t up in arms about the profession’s gender gap since “82 percent of American librarians are women.”
As you can probably imagine, other woke librarians complained about him and filed complaints against his boss. Then he was fired. One article about his situation explained that he was hardly a right-wing culture warrior. He was a mobile librarian who served the Navajo Nation and previously had traveled the world writing about Bedouins, Kurdish refugees, and Native Americans.
He and many other librarians were caught up in what has been called the Critical Librarianship movement. The goal is not merely to educate but to use library resources to change people’s minds. A review of the literature shows the desire to become political actors and participate in the battle for young minds.
The current ALA president said (in a now deleted tweet) that: “I just cannot believe that a Marxist lesbian who believes that collective power is possible to build and can be wielded for a better world is the president-elect of @ALALibrary.”
As I’ve mentioned previously, several states have decided to reevaluate their relationship with American Library Association. My suggestion is for you to check out your local library and the school library. You might be surprised at what you find.

Kerby Anderson
One of the rallying cries during the American Revolution was, “No taxation without representation.” If the founders thought taxation without representation was bad, they should see what taxation with representation looks like.
That is one of the reasons John Stossel wrote about “Taxation Without Reason.” Our income tax forms are due in a few weeks. He says he feels like he must hire an accountant because Congress keeps adding to the tax code. He picks just a few of the bizarre aspects of our tax policy.
“I can get a deduction for feeding feral cats but not for having a watchdog. I can deduct clarinet lessons if I get an orthodontist to say it’ll cure my overbite, but not piano lessons if a psychotherapist prescribes them for relaxation. Even though whaling is mostly banned, owning a whaling boat can get you $10,000 in deductions.”
No wonder so many Americans pay for tax assistance. We spend about $104 billion each year and waste 2 billion hours filling out tax forms. He says the tax code exists “to satisfy the whims of politicians.” Mortgage deductions invite us to buy bigger homes. Solar tax credits entice us to put panels on our roof.
We are told that tax incentives are a good thing and even encourage giving. On the contrary, Steve Forbes explains that “Americans don’t need to be bribed to give.” He reminds us that, “In the 1980s, when the top rate got cut from 70% down to 28% … charitable giving went up. When people have more, they give more.”
We need a simple tax code, but politicians want to use tax incentives to manipulate behavior and control us. During this election season, you need to ask candidates whether they plan to make it easier and simpler to pay our taxes.

Kerby Anderson
An article in Barrons two weeks ago reported that births in Japan dropped to a new low last year. The country recorded more than twice as many deaths as new babies. Marriages are at the lowest level since 1933.
The sobering numbers highlight the dramatic challenges facing the nation of Japan. It may have the world’s fourth-biggest economy in the world, but it is dying a slow death. And there are healthcare shortages for the significant number of elderly Japanese.
Here in America, we can be grateful that we aren’t in this situation, but we are headed there. The US birth rate has been below replacement level for many years. We are now averaging about 1.6 children over a lifetime. In fact, the birth rate has been falling since the Great Recession.
This wasn’t always the case. The average woman had three children in the 1950s. Eventually, the birth rate dropped to the replacement rate of 2.1 children and is currently about 1.6 children.
A below-replacement birth rate affects so many aspects of society. We may not be able to economically support an aging population. Below-replacement fertility means closing schools, shrinking college enrollments, fewer workers, and fewer consumers.
A shrinking population has been used to justify increased immigration. But a tsunami of illegal immigrants crossing the border is not the solution. The right kind of legal immigrants, who have been vetted and assimilated, will forestall a demographic collapse.
Christians understand that the family is the fundamental unit of society. “Children are a heritage from the Lord” (Psalm 127:3). They are like arrows, and we are blessed with a quiver full of them (Psalm 127:4-5). That is why pastors and Christian leaders need to teach about the importance of marriage and family.

Kerby Anderson
We keep hearing that inflation is down, but it doesn’t seem like it when we go to the grocery store or take our family out to eat. You get the bill and wonder if our mental math is correct. The bill can’t be that much.
No, you are not imagining food inflation. Two writers for the Wall Street Journal ran the numbers and concluded that Americans are spending a higher percentage on food than any time in the last three decades. Here’s how they described it:
“The last time Americans spent this much of their money on food, George H.W. Bush was in office, ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’ was in theaters and C+C Music Factory was rocking the Billboard charts.”
They concluded that “eating continues to cost more, even as overall inflation has eased.” They found that prices at restaurants and other eateries were up 5.1 percent last month compared with January 2023. As you would imagine, grocery costs also increased.
What does the future hold? The writers don’t have good news. They don’t believe that relief will arrive anytime soon. “Restaurant and food company executives said they are still grappling with rising labor costs and some ingredients, such as cocoa, that are only getting more expensive. Consumers, they said, will find ways to cope.”
Food producers have found one way to keep prices from rising: shrinkflation. You might remember the message from President Biden during the Super Bowl. He was sitting in the White House theater surrounded by Doritos, Oreos, Gatorade, and ice cream.
After he complained about shrinkflation, many got on social media to suggest he talk to the person in charge of the economy that caused that problem. I would suggest that dumping trillions of dollars in new spending might have something to do with inflation and the problem of shrinkflation.

Kerby Anderson
Immigration is the major problem facing this country according to the most recent Gallup polls. The pollsters asked, “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?” Immigration was the first problem listed, even outdistancing inflation and the economy.
On my radio program, one guest asked me if I could ever remember a time when the issue of immigration rated as high as it does now. I never have seen it rated so high even back when immigration was being debated and immigration reform was being proposed by the “Gang of Eight.” This is significant, since the current administration has tried to assure Americans for this last year that the border is secure, and immigration is under control.
The real question that some might ask is whether this concern is perception or reality. After all, the current administration has been saying that the economy is good, even though Americans feel like it is hard for them to make ends meet. What is the reality at the border?
According to US Customs and Border Protection, about 7.3 million people have unlawfully crossed the southwest border since President Biden came into office. To put that number in perspective, consider that it exceeds the population of 36 US states. If you took those 7.3 million and made them live in a city, that city would be the second largest city in the country.
I might mention one other statistic. The 7.3 million does not include the estimated 1.8 million “gotaways” that did not want to be caught. If you add those two numbers together, you have a city larger than New York City.
The American people accurately see the problem. We have a crisis at the border and have let in nearly 10 million people illegally into this country.

Kerby Anderson
John Stossel says the problem is “bad laws.” Rafael Mangual describes it as the “overcriminalization of America.” Both are talking about the same problem and teamed up to produce a video that highlights an issue that needs to be addressed.
To put it simply, we have too many laws on the books, many of which are outdated and need to be removed. For example, there is a law in South Carolina that bans 18-year-olds from playing pinball. Taking a rake from New York to New Jersey is actually a federal crime.
Stossel pushes back on some of the examples in the video by pointing out that nobody goes to jail for silly or outdated laws. Mangual responds, “That doesn’t mean that it’s not a problem.” Compliance takes time, money, and effort. He then provides an example where people were prosecuted.
A woman was prosecuted for sheltering animals during a hurricane. She said she was just trying to make sure these poor animals weren’t drowning. But North Carolina prosecutors filed criminal charges against her for practicing veterinarian medicine without a license.
In Kentucky, one man was giving eyeglasses to needy people who could not afford eye doctors. But the state officials told him that his act of compassion was a crime.
In these cases, you can see that part of the problem is that established businesses are using existing laws or getting other laws passed so they can push out competition. They have lobbyists and can use laws and bureaucratic regulations to give them a market advantage.
The bigger issue is that we have too many laws on the books. People commit crimes nearly every day without even knowing that they are doing so. State legislators need to focus some of their attention on existing laws that are outdated and unnecessary. Before they pass new laws, they should repeal the laws that we no longer need.