If I were not traveling, I would likely write a lengthier piece on this topic, but did a kind of double-take when I read the first paragraph in this Wall Street Journal editorial:
Among the core assumptions of modern liberalism is that future regulations have no more effect on the economy than future taxes, as if expectations don’t matter and businesses don’t prepare now for their costs tomorrow. President Obama’s letter to John Boehner yesterday is a classic of the genre.
Emphasis added. When talking about the economy with liberal friends and acquaintances, I have often noticed how oblivious these interlocutors are to the cost regulations impose on businesses, particularly small ones.
Since the regulations serve a genuine societal interest (as defined by them), entrepreneurs would be eager to comply. And any burdens created by government rules would be all but inconsequential. Some liberals seem incapable of comprehending the costs of compliance.
UPDATE: Sonicfrog looks into one recent example of federal regulation run amok:
. . . lets look at something very close to my heart….. Guitars! The recent raid by the Feds on Gibson Guitars is kind of mind boggling! It’s not due to smuggling cocaine in guitar bodies or anything like that… It’s about WOOD!!!!
Read the whole thing. According to WSJ.com’s Political Diary (available by subscription), Gibson Guitars tend to conservative causes while rival Martin “leans Democratic.” Latter uses “same sources of wood”, but wasn’t raided. Wonder if we’ll see any coverage of these facts in the MSM.
You should be ashamed…You Bash your own
Another sign on their collective forehead that indicates their utter stupidity.
The business climate is so bad these days that we are losing many quality small business on an almost daily basis. So many business owners that I have formed relationships with over the past decades are deciding to sell out/retire early if they can. It’s just not worth it anymore. The future is bleek.
This is another example of progressives claiming something must be true because it is the only way their Utopian socialist model works. In the real world, heavy regulation carries heavy costs. But progressives deny this, and claim either the costs are negligible or exaggerrate the value of the benefit.
The objective is regulatory Socialism. The state need not nationalize businesses, the state need only issue so many rules and regulations that the business is de facto under state control.
Kommissarr Maxine Waters explains the New Marxism: “”If (banks) don’t come up with loan modifications and keep people in their homes that they’ve worked so hard for, we’re going to tax them out of business.”
I think their thought process is more along the lines of if you’re a “socially conscious” business owner*, you’re already doing what they’re imposing so there would be no additional cost.
*Like they would be if they ran businesses.
Nice use of the conditional (tense) if your “footnote”, BigJ. 🙂
This has stuck with me since the 1950’s when it was published in Harper’s and it comes to me often when I am awed by elitist solutions to problems the elitists do not comprehend:
Probable, possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the probable when.
She doesn’t lay eggs in the positive now,
Because she’s unable to postulate how.
Liberalism is all about tomorrow and the wonder of it all without regard to how one gets there from here. So, lets tax ourselves back to prosperity and regulate our way to perfection and, for Heaven’s sake, lets have complete and total social justice and live happily ever after.
In a word, Dan: yes.
Regards,
Peter H.
Indeed, Heliotrope. And to make this utopian future happen, let us do away with this “big, messy democracy” that so offends the SCOAMF and Thom Friedman. Instead, let the enlightened elite simply dictate what ought to be without all of this “consent of the governed” nonsense. The proletariat just needs to shut up and eat our peas.
Yes, regulations kill private businesses; this is Obama’s goal.
The economic parable of the two cows…
(Safe for work, but I’m not liable for your keyboard.)
Check out the deal with Gibson Guitars!!!!! And they’ve filed over 80,000 legal documents trying to deal with this!
Apparently, The DoJ told the CEO of Gibson guitars his problems would go away if he shipped his jobs to Madagascar.
Sonic and V, if I had more time, I’d blog on the Gibson guitar case, but other conservative and libertarian bloggers have been on top of that one.
Do hope Issa subpoenas DoJ documents to get information on why they’re pursuing this one–apparently the Indian government was unaware of this, that is, they hadn’t asked DoJ to look into this.
Do wonder if this is getting coverage in MSM. It might if GOP administration had done something so silly.
The MFM isn’t even covering Fast and Furious. They won’t cover Gibson Guitars until they can craft a story around the administration’s talking points that DoJ was perfectly justified and Gibson was raping the Rainforests.
Also note that Gibson supports the Republicans while his competitor (who hasn’t been raided or investigated) gave to the Democrats.
“How ironic it is that some of the same people who conclude that the earth is fragile as a spider’s web, that the human body is a sitting duck for anything synthesized by man, nevertheless see the American economy’s capacity for absorbing ever-higher taxes and regulations as being boundless as the universe.”
–-Science Under Siege, by Michael Fumento
Speaking of “boundless as the universe”:
“There is no limit to stupidity. Space itself is said to be bounded by its own curvature, but stupidity continues beyond infinity.”
–Gene Wolfe