Overview
Did a federal agency make American workplaces safe, or were they already getting safer? Were the robber barons really robbers? And will machines finally take everyone’s job this time? John Stossel and economist Dan Mitchell take on the last three myths in this six-myth series, digging into workplace fatality data from the decades before 1970, revisiting how John D. Rockefeller and Cornelius Vanderbilt actually built their fortunes, and asking where the 90 percent of Americans who once worked on farms ended up.

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Lesson Insights

Grade level and subjects
• Recommended for grades 6-12
• Subjects: Government, Economics
• Works in Classroom, Hybrid, and Homeschool settings

What students will learn
By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:
• restate the three myths about capitalism that this video challenges;
• trace the relationship the video draws between a society’s growing wealth and its improving workplace safety;
• contrast capitalism with corporatism, using Cornelius Vanderbilt’s competitors as an example;
• appraise the claim that automation destroys more jobs than it creates; and
• propose a response for workers whose jobs are eliminated by new technology.

Key concepts and terms covered
Automation, Corporatism, Creative Destruction, Dynamism, Market Share, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Parody, Robber Baron, Standard of Living, and Subsidy.

Sample discussion questions
• What did Dan Mitchell find in workplace safety data from before OSHA?
• How did John D. Rockefeller get rich?
• Does a trend that started before a law prove the law didn’t help? Explain.
• What is the difference between earning money from customers and getting money from government?
• Should government ever slow down a new technology to protect jobs? Explain.

What’s in the free teacher’s guide
This printable 19-page Teacher’s Guide includes a lesson description, learning objectives, key vocabulary, a fill-in viewing guide with answer key, discussion and analysis questions, classroom activities, and the full video transcript.

Standards alignment
Aligned to state standards — use the SITC Standards Tool to match this video to the standards in your state.

Related resources
• Capitalism Myths – Part 1 — John Stossel and Dan Mitchell take on the first three myths in the series, including whether the rich got that way at everyone else’s expense.
• Lessons in Lyrics: Creative Destruction — From horse-drawn carriages to delivery drones, this song puts the video’s central idea to music and gives students a memorable way to hold onto it.
• Both Sides: Artificial Intelligence vs. Jobs — Will AI destroy the job market, or will innovation create new and better jobs? Two videos extend this video’s automation question into the present.
• Both Sides: Self-Driving Cars — Are driverless vehicles the future of transportation or too dangerous for the road? A direct companion to the video’s debate over banning driverless trucks.