From an email today from the National Center for Policy Analysis:
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A MORATORIUM WE NEED
We need House Minority Leader John Boehner's (R-Ohio) proposal for a one year moratorium on new regulations affecting business, says Iain Murray, vice president for strategy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).
According to a report by Wayne Crews, vice president for policy and director of technology studies at CEI:
- Regulation now costs the U.S. economy over $1 trillion a year.
- Regulation eats up 8.3 percent of the U.S. economy and its cost is equal to 63 percent of corporate pretax profits.
- The burden of regulation on business dwarfs the burden of the corporate income tax.
So the one year moratorium is probably a good idea, slowing if not halting the regulatory juggernaut. However, we can go further and provide the stimulus the economy provides at zero cost by getting rid of some of this burden, says Murray. We should:
- Allow freer trade in skilled labor: Bright foreign workers want to stay and create U.S. jobs after graduating here; to address global competition, allow them to stay.
- Avoid safety regulations that make us less safe: Many frontier technologies like nanotech can make our environment cleaner; exaggerating risks overlooks the hazards of stagnation.
- Liberalize capital markets: Capitalism ranks among the world's great democratizing forces, but post-Enron Sarbanes-Oxley regulation has severely distressed smaller companies.
- Privatize: During the 1990s, it was proposed that commercial aspects of federal labs be offered to the industries they benefit, or to allow research employee buyouts; do that.
- Relax predatory and anti-consumer antitrust activism: Constraining productive firms in ways the market never intended hobbles entire industry sectors and undermines the wealth creation process itself.
- Reduce overregulation generally: More than 60 agencies issue 4,000 regulations a year within some 70,000 Federal Register pages.
If we're going to get America back on the road to recovery we need to free up business, not set further roadblocks in its way. The time has come to liberate to stimulate, says Murray.
Source: Iain Murray, "A moratorium we need," Washington Examiner, July 22, 2010.
For text:
For report:
For more on Regulatory Issues:
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=38
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I agree. What today's politicians have done is to tie the hands of every business after one or two have acted wrongly. We never liked having the entire family punished when one child acted up and wouldn't own up to it. We never liked it when an entire class was rebuked and had privileges taken away because one classmate acted up. Why do we think that controls are necessary for every business because a few are corrupt? There are many fine businesses and fine business owners, and there would be many more if there were not so many unnecessary regulations.
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Repeating from above: More than 60 agencies issue 4,000 regulations a year within some 70,000 Federal Register pages.
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That is absurd.
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It's time that we allowed free markets to work again. Consumers can regulate businesses, especially now that we have the internet at our fingertips to give reviews of businesses and products.
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Comments: 32
But, we can still dream! : )
Government wants us dependent on them and crony businesses wants to be protected from free market competition.
Right up there with monarchy and theocracy.
In this country we've had the paradox of an economy where government has largely bent over backward to help business while business screams that government has stifled it.
Over regulation stifles business and costs a business a lot of money. That money could be used to pay their people more and stimulate the economy.
More than 60 agencies issue 4,000 regulations a year within some 70,000 Federal Register pages.
I worked in a family owned small business for quite a while. My dad looked at government regulation as a necessary evil. He was a tiny bit more conservative than I am, but we agreed almost all of the time on economic issues. He was reasonably successful in the dime store business. He never wanted to own a large chain, but he operated as many as three stores at once. He put three kids through college and lived very comfortably all his life.
He died in 2003. He thought Bush was horrible. He thought Reagan was the worst president of the post WWII era. He laughed at the Laffer Curve.
My dad grew up in the Depression and saw the positives of the regulation of finance that the New Deal brought. He believed that government needed to counterbalance business. He figured that regulation was a cost of doing business and people who couldn't make money because of it were probably incapable of running a business in the first place.
You have to be a wealthy, politically connected business to thrive in an environment of excessive regulations. Ironic Democrats are so supportive of big business like this, with small business and consumers suffering the most from it.
I see small businesses all around me doing fine. The owners are willing to put in long hours and pay attention to customer service. Most people who fail in business are undercapitalized and run into an expense they didn't plan on in the first year or two that they can't handle. Of course some are incompetent, but that's by no means all. Blaming regulation is a cop-out.
You have radicals and liberals mixed up. Liberals are on the center left of the political spectrum. Radicals can be from either side of the political spectrum but they're quite a bit farther from the center. Left wing radicals are way to the left of liberals.
In case you haven't noticed, the economy collapsed in 2008. Small businesses generally go before larger ones. A lot of large businesses have gone under too. I worked for Sharper Image for 15 years. Quite a few medium sized retail chains are gone. Of course there were Bear-Stearns and Lehmann Brothers among the really big boys.
Exactly. That is how it is supposed to work.
Also government regulations end up benefiting the special interests and not the people.
We need more than a moratorium its past time to start repealing.
I have read several books on the economic problems we have experienced the last decade or so. I have listened to the testimony of Greenspan about the errors he made. I have done my homework. I understand the economy quite well from several perspectives. (Yes and from the Austrian School of economics and libertarian theory as well.) I would put my understanding of economic reality against anyone's on Gather. So your telling me I don't know what I am writing about is ironic.
Neither was the fault of a lack of regulation but rather one of government policy. All the noise about "renewed" regulation has not touched either point but instead has ignored the housing problems actually continuing to float inflated housing prices and encourage even more building for an oversupplied market. Also we now have formal regulation in place to reinforce what was unofficial expediency ie too big to fail/government deciding when a firm needs breaking up. Never mind the government now becoming the agent of that breakup rather then letting creditors do it as in the past.
Too little regulation while the scapegoat for all is far too small a reason for the last 3 plus years.
The last 30 years has seen a retreat from regulation. The financial institutions have seen a great reduction in rstrictions. They have been playing with "house money." They have behaved in a completely rational manner given their situation and collectively they have been insane. They knew exactly what they were doing, the risks they were taking, the fraud they were committing. They did it anyway. They controlled the government, not the other way round.
The natural inclination of government is to grow and for control to increase. You simply cannot get those who believe otherwise to realize that until it is too late. Witness Europe's sudden (but only partial) wake up to the disaster they have been building for decades...hell they are telling us we're on the wrong path!
No, until those who want the increased controls collapse or near collapse the system we won't be able to change much but around the edges. Of course when it does fall apart everyone will blame the market rather than the government meddling.
http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/the-role-of-insider-trading-and-hedge-funds-with-congress.html/