>> western civilization and humanity. lou: those are collateral benefits again. it's been a great week for america. that's it for us tonight. thanks for being with us ann coulter and byron york join us monday. please be with us and admit they time have a great weekend. good night from new york stossel: it's raining car wrecks. these lawyers want your money. they're parasites. so are these lawyers want your money. they are parasites. so are politicians. >> $34.5 billion has been made in green energy loans. >> we talk about everybody paying their fair share. of mon. stossel: unions are parasites too. this group is mad at me. >> teach john, teach. stossel: america's parasite economy. that's our show tonight

>> and now, john stossel. stossel: one great thing about america and free enterprise is that for the most part, people can only get rich by helping others in some way. that's because capitalism is voluntary. no one is forced to buy from you. and that's great. most of life fortunately happens this way. but on no now in america we have people that can use force. they enrich themselves by using government to force people to give them money. david bows o boaz of the cato institute calls this parasite economy. that's from his libertarian mind. >> there's two ways to get rich in any society. you can make it and trade with others or take it from people who have produced something. and i call making it the economic means of wealth, and taking it,

the political means. and some of the people who take are criminals. they -- they rob you. they embezzle from you. but more importantly are the people who use government to take from you. stossel: and that's growing numbers. and what do you mean parasite economy, what's what's the scam, judge the scam is you're not producing something of value yourself -- stossel: or enough value to get people to voluntarily give you money. >> you might use a tariff to prevent people from buying from your foreign competitors or get the government to give you a subsidy. you might get them to pass a law so that they can't compete with you. you're glomming on to the wealth they produce. when parasites attack us, we have to spend some effort fighting them off. >> and the fighting them off means lobbying.

i mean, some of it is just evil. lobbying to get money. much of it is lobbying just to say, don't crush my business. >> probably a smaller part. you're absolutely right. over the past 15 years, i've watched microsoft, apple, google sit out there in the west coast, making stuff we voluntarily decided to buy, then you have politicians coming to these companies and saying, hey, nice little company you got there. too bad if something happened to it. then they start suggesting that maybe you need to make some campaign contributions. maybe you need to hire some lobbyists. maybe we'll run an antitrust investigation and limit your supply of overseas engineers. all these things drag these companies into washington's lobbying cultures. >> they're less creative than they once were. the ceo can't focus on innovation. he's focusing on

manipulating washington. >> and that's an important impact. the most valuabl thing we have in our economy is brilliant creative people. and if brilliant creative people are making iphones and software and automobiles and new ways of getting around the city. then that's a good thing. and if they are distracted into fighting off people's lobbyists or hiring their own, then that's a net loss for society. it means, fewer innovative products and more lobbyists. stossel: let's go to some examples. you include the military-industrial complex. >> we need a national defense. that requires weapons. even the weapons we need, we have to recognize, they will be sold to the government by lobbyists, and there's going to be a problem in overbuying. we just spent in the latest omnibus spending bill, $470 million on f-35 fighters that the pentagon doesn't want. stossel: you have farmers.

veterans. unions. the ethanol industry. the aerospace industry. trucking. they're all in d.c. trying to get something for nothing. >> well, they ask why do you rob banks? because that's where the money is. for a lot of people, where the money is is in washington. >> thank you david boaz, ththe cato institute. let's focus on green energy. >> think about all the money that was invested in the whole green energy market. billions of dollars to green energy. mostly wind power and solar power. also, bio fuels like algae because certain people in government decided those are better. andrew agrees they are better. becausef extreme weather, companies make a big pivot towards green energy will make money and do good.

david of the heritage foundation says, no, the green energy industry is a parasite. and andrew, aren't green energy companies that get government help really parasites? >> well, it's kind of -- it's kind of an odd word for any industry that gets money from the government. that would cover almost every industry. stossel: i will include any company. fine. >> the amount of subsidies going to fossil fuels dwarfs the renewable -- globally about 500 billion -- up to $2 trillion a year going to fossil fuels. stossel: i have to stop you. because we have this chart that talks about energy subsidies for different fuels. and wind and solar per kilowatt produced dwarfs the fossil fuels. >> well, you're talking about the beginning of certain industries and how much money. i want to take you back a little bit to the

1960s. the government, in particular, the military spent a ton on semiconductors. they drove the cost down. that's part of the role of government. >> first of all, that 500 billion-dollar number is bogus. it includes the subsidies to petroleum that the oil producers like iran and venezuela pay so their citizens can pay gasoline for a quarter of a gallon. we shouldn't pay subsidies for windmills because they're on subsidies for their gas consumers. stossel: there should be no subsidies for anybody. >> we agree. >> i think we can all agree on that. if we price energy the way it needs to, and all