I asked my 95 year old mother how they had survived the depression. They raised their own food. No food crops allowed in my subdivision; likewise no farm animals. They didn’t have property taxes so they could stay in the home they owned without any income. My property taxes have gone up several hundred percent since 1994. My grandfather took big jobs from constructing buildings to moving safes to second floors, to installing windows. Each of those jobs today requires permits, insurance, safety inspections; money, money, money before you can even attempt to bid a job. My grandfather hired employees as needed to help him. Today he’d have to pay unemployment insurance.
If you want to make money the government is going to be your noisy, intrusive partner who takes, but gives nothing.
Exactly. The more we try to regulate economic activity, the more we choke it off. I was thinking precisely about how our grandfathers made it through the depression, and how I've seen people survive in third-world economies. They become very entrepreneurial. Where that spirit has been regulated out or bred out or choked out, you have social explosions because people are expecting the government to provide something it isn't providing. Where people are free to do for themselves, and their efforts are protected, they don't lash out. They survive and then thrive.
Where they are taught not to do for themselves, and the regulators punish them for doing for themselves, you have social explosions. In a world where freedom is illegal, only pirates are free, I think. I think we're further down that road than most people realize. You have to have permission to sell lemonade in front of your house. I mean, really.
It’s worse than that!
They’ve added SS taxes, workman’s comp and mandatory wage garnishment if the worker owes back taxes or child support. You have to have a license to do almost any kind of work...and this involves kissing a union’s ass, taking a rigged test, and taking worthless classes every year that literally amount to “protection money” paid to goddam union pricks. You have to be a registered contractor in every state you work in which requires special bonds and insurance. health insurance is a massive expense. If you do a job for the government, you have Bacon-Davis to contend with. The DOT does spot inspection of company vehicles and they have all sorts of stupid rules they can’t wait to issue fines for. OSHA and the EPA are always threatening you.
Until the downtrodden peasants with pitchforks storm the Bastille. Then events tend to go too far in the other direction. The Tea Party is a feeble harbinger of much worse to come unless the government comes to its senses. We all know it won't.