Posted on 11/27/2010 11:49:35 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Even with all of the massive economic problems that the United States is facing, if the government would just get off our backs most of us would do okay. In America today, it is rapidly getting to the point where it is nearly impossible to start or to operate a small business. The federal government, the state governments and local governments are cramming thousands upon thousands of new ridiculous regulations down our throats each year. It would take a full team of lawyers just to even try to stay informed about all of these new regulations. Small business in the United States is literally being suffocated by red tape. We like to think that we live in "the land of the free", but the truth is that our lives and our businesses are actually tightly constrained by millions of rules and regulations. Today there is a "license" for just about every business activity. In fact, in some areas of the country today you need a "degree" and multiple "licenses" before you can even submit an application for permission to start certain businesses. And if you want to actually hire some people for your business, the paperwork nightmare gets far worse. It is a wonder that anyone in America is still willing to start a business from scratch and hire employees. The truth is that the business environment in the United States is now so incredibly toxic that millions of Americans have simply given up and don't even try to work within the system anymore.
Today, the U.S. government has an "alphabet agency" for just about everything. The nanny state feels like it has to watch, track and tightly control virtually everything that we do. The Federal Register is the main source of regulations for U.S. government agencies. In 1936, the number of pages in the Federal Register was about 2,600. Today, the Federal Register is over 80,000 pages long. That is just one example of how bad things have gotten.
But it is not just the federal government that is ramming thousands of ridiculous regulations down our throats. The truth is that in many cases state and local governments are far worse. We have become a nation that is run and dominated by bureaucrats. Yes, there always must be rules in a society, but we have gotten to the point where there are so many millions of rules that the game has become unplayable.
The following are 12 examples of ridiculous regulations that are almost too bizarre to believe....
#1 The state of Louisiana says that monks must be fully licensed as funeral directors and actually convert their monasteries into licensed funeral homes before they will be allowed to sell their handmade wooden caskets.
#2 The city of Philadelphia now requires all bloggers to purchase a $300 business privilege license. The city even went after one poor woman who had earned only $11 from her blog over the past two years.
#3 In the state of Massachusetts, all children in daycare centers are mandated by state law to brush their teeth after lunch. In fact, the state even provides the fluoride toothpaste for the children.
#4 If you attempt to give a tour of our nation's capital without a license, you could be put in prison for 90 days.
#5 A reader named Gene recently shared his regulatory horror story with us....
Started a new business this year in AZ. Paid over $10,000 in fees for permitting, $10,000 in fee for elec hookup, $10,000 in fees for gas hook up and an extra $200 fee per month just for the “privilige” of having gas. Adding up all the fees to start our business, I don’t think we would do it again. We are now just getting to the point that we are making our bills each month, and so we are not taking a paycheck, and don’t anticipate one for at least another year. Our family has been in business for ourselves for decades,and we know what we are doing, but the rising fees caught us off guard. Cities, municipalities, counties and states are raising all fees at astronomical rates to help offset the slump in their real estate income (since banks apparently don’t have to pay real estate taxes)…I’m telling you every business person I know is on their last leg. In a few more years, if things don’t turn out better for the BUSINESS PEOPLE THAT SUPPORT THE GOV, then the last ones standing will go down, and the GOV with it. Not counting the other bubbles that could blow, this one is just common sense. People talk about TAXES. This has nothing to do with taxes, or the blatent disregard for taking my money and giving it to someone else. This is just about the issue of actually getting a business started and keeping a business going. The fees are feeing us all out of business.
#6 Federal agents recently raided an Amish farm at 5 A.M. in the morning because they were selling "unauthorized" raw milk.
#7 In Lake Elmo, Minnesota farmers can be fined $1,000 and put in jail for 90 days for selling pumpkins or Christmas trees that are grown outside city limits.
#8 A U.S. District Court judge slapped a 500 dollar fine on Massachusetts fisherman Robert J. Eldridge for untangling a giant whale from his nets and setting it free. So what was his crime? Well, according to the court, Eldridge was supposed to call state authorities and wait for them do it.
#9 In the state of Texas, it doesn't matter how much formal interior design education you have - only individuals with government licenses may refer to themselves as "interior designers" or use the term "interior design" to describe their work.
#10 Deeply hidden in the 2,409-page health reform bill passed by Congress was a new regulation that will require U.S. businesses to file millions more 1099s each year. In fact, it is estimated that the average small business will now have to file 200 additional 1099s every single year. Talk about a nightmare of red tape! But don't try to avoid this rule - it is being reported that the IRS has hired approximately 2,000 new auditors to audit as many of these 1099s as possible.
#11 The city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin makes it incredibly difficult to go out of business. In order to close down a business, Milwaukee requires you to purchase an expensive license, you must submit a huge pile of paperwork to the city regarding the inventory you wish to sell off, and you must pay a fee based on the length of your "going out of business sale" plus a two dollar charge for every $1,000 worth of inventory that you are attempting to sell off.
#12 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is projecting that the food service industry will have to spend an additional 14 million hours every single year just to comply with new federal regulations that mandate that all vending machine operators and chain restaurants must label all products that they sell with a calorie count in a location visible to the consumer.
The following short video produced by the Institute for Justice examines some more examples of completely ridiculous regulations across the United States. The video is very funny, but please keep in mind that all of this red tape is absolutely killing many very real businesses....
(VIDEO AT LINK)
So is this what "free enterprise" is supposed to look like?
Over and over again I have written about the dangers of globalization, but no matter what changes are made a lot of companies will still not want to set up shop in the United States until something is done about all of these ridiculous regulations.
As mentioned earlier, the U.S. economy is facing a vast array of incredibly serious problems, but if government would just get off our backs at least we would have a fighting chance.
Instead, it gets worse every single year. Each new wave of bureaucrats just seems to get worse than the wave before it. They always seem to think that if they just write more regulations and impose more fees and require more licenses and raise more revenue that they will be able to "fix" things.
But the truth is that they always make things worse. Our economy is literally being suffocated by red tape. A "total control grid" is being erected all around us and most Americans are so numb that they don't even realize that it is happening.
Most small businessmen, in those times they allow themselves to do so, get cold sweats wondering what law they have broken today that is going to kill their business, leave them debt ridden for life and put them in jail.
Small business has to comply with all the regulations, laws and crap that Exxon does. Exxon has buildings full of people that don’t do much but read the Federal Register and figure our how to comply. A small businessman may never see a Federal Register.
Some people with small businesses make a fair amount of money, most don’t. Almost all of them wonder why they are doing it and wonder who is really working for whom. They take all the risk and all the losses but when they make money somebody else is always there with their hand out to take a part of the spoils. It pretty much just sucks most of the time.
When do we all get our own personal attorneys? Why aren’t they assigned to us at birth?
When I started my own private business back in the 1980s and foolishly incorporated, I quickly learned that I could not do the local, state and federal filing and tax requirements without employing a lawyer and CPA which I had no money to pay for. Bureaucratic forms and requirements suitable to established companies were absolute gobbly-gook to my untrained eyes. These things drove me quickly out of business and it took me years to get those agencies convinced that I was no longer in business! I remain convinced that I am still in violation of some obscure law somewhere under the government maxim that “Ignorance is no excuse”.
In my generation, the business growth has come from the high technology sector and I feel that there is a GOVERNMENT FACTOR in this fact. Established businesses actively seek to create barriers, like licenses & minimal requirements, to competition in order to maintain their competitive edge. A new business sector does not have this built-in disadvantage and thus can grow while seeking to close that door behind them. An excellent example IMHO was the OS/2 versus Windows competition between IBM and Microsoft in the 1980s when IBM was constrained by the anti-trust settlements dating from a case brought by the LBJ Administration. It was the next decade that Microsoft found itself similarly under fire for its efforts to prevent competition (Ironic)!
The founder of Home Depot has frequently stated that because of the limits to financial risk and labor laws, his company’s success could not now be repeated! Yet our current Administration is happy to be passing multi-thousand page bills written by dedicated lobbyists whose interest and intent is to benefit their various interest groups and yet they cannot understand why small business with the largest sector employment percentage fails to grow their employment! Can we say EPIC DISCONNECT!
I believe our republican form of gov’t is fatally flawed. We allow our representatives to go to Washington and state capitols every year & pass more & more laws & regulations.
It's like a Monopoly game, where every time a player passes GO, he gets to create a new rule in the game. After several passes, the game is unplayable because you can't navigate thru the rules.
I realize that as society & technology progresses, new laws & regs are required. But many of the new laws & regs deal with “old subjects”. What has changed with raw milk recently that it is newly made illegal to sell by dairy farms to consumers? What is the difference between a pumpkin grown in Milwaukee and one grown elsewhere? Why can't I buy health insurance from any insurer in the country?
I believe that much of today's legislation & regulation is politically motivated to favor some citizens - friends, relatives, cronies, & fellow elites - over others. This is contrary to Constitution & what I believe the Founders intended. It is completely unnecessary & only stifles freedom & prosperity.
Somehow, we must change the legislative system to minimize the amount of new legislation, especially on "old subjects". "been there, done that" should have serious consideration. We must make some things settled in law & immune from further legislation & regulation. Milk & pumpkins are examples of things that don't need further regulation. They are over-regulated now! The “right to keep & bear arms” should be settled once & for all, & then it will need no further regulation. Freedom of speech is another.
The logical conclusion to unlimited legislation is complete tyranny. Congress is now accelerating that process by passing multi-thousand page bills that nobody has read. Given 100 more years of this, every minute aspect of individual lives & commerce will be tightly controlled. "Every breath you take, every move you make, I'll be watching you". This is surely the direction we are heading.
Just imagine if we had no income tax. Most of your Lawyer/CPA requirements would disappear. After the liberal interpretation if the interstate commerce clause, the income tax has been the most intrusive & burdensome part of gov’t.
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,” - 4th amendment.
I guess full disclosure of your entire financial status is NOT unreasonable search.
“... of the lawyers, by the lawyers, for the lawyers ...”. Isn’t that what Lincoln, a lawyer, said? Sure seems that way.
16 years ago, my then employer was faced with changing solvents for cleaning circuit boards. My boss asked me to call the NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation to find out which chemicals would be approved. During the call, their agent said, “You know, we’ve never visited your site”. The NYS-DEC officer came the following week. They found 5 exhaust vents that we did not have permits for. 2 on bathrooms, 2 in the machine shop for metal chips and one in out paint booth. The electronics cleaning, they weren’t concerned with. They told us that our 5 vents would each need a $1500/year license. And because we’d been operating without te licenses, there’d be be a fine equivalent to ten years of licensing. Bottom line, (5 x $1500 license) + $75000 fine = $82,500.
These people are criminals. They rob small businesses at the point of a citation pad.
It's like a Monopoly game, where every time a player passes GO, he gets to create a new rule in the game. After several passes, the game is unplayable because you can't navigate thru the rules.
Well put. In the "Land of the Free" the number of laws on the books that we have to follow would fill a public library.
And every year we get more. One reason I'm a huge fan of gridlock. When nothing gets done in Washington, the country benefits.
Twenty some years ago I thought it was worth defending against tyranny. So I enlisted in the army. Today if a tyrannical foreign government wanted to come and take control from our tyrannical government... Well I would have to figure out which side was more tyrannical. Our government or the invader. I will always side with freedom.
My 3 yr old business was ticketed for an expired permit. We must go to court and pay a $500. fine plus whatever the judge decides is appropriate punishment. Have not made a profit ever. This will come out of our hides.
I don’t believe it’s a “disconnect” as you put it, I bthink it is 100% intentional.
If you want some real insight into what this “war on the middle class” is all about, I suggest you take a look at the Communist Manifesto. This was the blueprint that the socialists used for overthrowing what was then czarist Russia. It was written about a decade before being executed with precision on the unwitting Russian citizenry. It states that the destruction of the middle class is essential to such a takeover and this remains a central point throughout the document. There are many ties that can be found between members of Obama’s cabinet and communist/socialist organizations (including Obama himself). We should also recognize that a coupe of America looks different than a coupe of any other nation in the world because of how the power is structured. In other counries where the government has legal authority over the people, the people uprise and overthrow the government. In America, where the people are the legitimate authority, the government overthrows the people. Another signifigant tactic the Manifesto suggests is the erosion of a societies morals via mass media (television, music, etc.). SOUND FAMILIAR?!
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