I Tried to Open a Lemonade Stand

Townhall.com ^ | February 24, 2012 | John Stossel

[Kaslin]

Want to open a business in America? It isn't easy.

In Midway, Ga., a 14-year-old girl and her 10-year-old sister sold lemonade from their front yard. Two police officers bought some. But the next day, different officers ordered them to close their stand.

Their father went to city hall to try to find out why. The clerk laughed and said she didn't know. Eventually, Police Chief Kelly Morningstar explained, "We were not aware of how the lemonade was made, who made the lemonade and of what the lemonade was made with."

Give me a break. If she doesn't know, so what? But kids trying their first experiment with entrepreneurship are being shut down all over America. Officials in Hazelwood, IllinoisIll., ordered little girls to stop selling Girl Scout cookies.

It made me want to try to jump through the legal hoops required to open a simple lemonade stand in New York City. Here's some of what one has to do:

-- Register as sole proprietor with the County Clerk's Office (must be done in person)

-- Apply to the IRS for an Employer Identification Number.

-- Complete 15-hr Food Protection Course!

-- After the course, register for an exam that takes 1 hour. You must score 70 percent to pass. (Sample question: "What toxins are associated with the puffer fish?") If you pass, allow three to five weeks for delivery of Food Protection Certificate.

-- Register for sales tax Certificate of Authority

-- Apply for a Temporary Food Service Establishment Permit. Must bring copies of the previous documents and completed forms to the Consumer Affairs Licensing Center.

Then, at least 21 days before opening your establishment, you must

arrange for an inspection with the Health Department's Bureau of Food Safety and Community Sanitation. It takes about three weeks to get your appointment. If you pass, you can set up a business once you:

-- Buy a portable fire extinguisher from a company certified by the New York Fire Department and set up a contract for waste disposal.

-- We couldn't finish the process. Had we been able to schedule our health inspection and open my stand legally, it would have taken us 65 days.

I sold lemonade anyway. I looked dumb hawking it with my giant fire extinguisher on the table.

Tourists told me they couldn't believe that I had to get "all those permits." A Pakistani man said: "That's crazy! You should move to Pakistan!"

But I don't want to move to Pakistan.

Politicians say, "We support entrepreneurs," but the bureaucrats make it hard. The Feds alone add 80,000 pages of new rules every year. Local governments add more. There are so many incomprehensible rules that even the bureaucrats can't tell you what's legal. In the name of public safety, politicians strangle opportunity.

[duckman]

You are correct, thanks for the tutorial. Next time I will try not to use any dangling modifiers or end any sentences with a preposition. /sarc

[Dead Corpse]

Stossel is a modern day Diogenes.

[Diamond]

Next time I will try not to use any dangling modifiers or end any sentences with a preposition. /sarc

Uh...yeah, right. </sarcasm>:^)

[Smokin' Joe]

The people who write these excessive rules and regulations need to be hanging from lamp posts.

They'd probably want you to get a permit, approval of your suspension equipment from the city engineer, make sure your OSHA courses were up to date (especially fall protection), etc.,...etc,...etc.

[JudgemAll]

I know illegals who sell dog hearts in Ga during St Patty’s day and who tell everyone it’s beef, and they get away with it... but you see, they’re illegals.

[katana]

I had my daughters put up their stand on the sidewalk right next to the main north south drag through out town, about two blocks from our house and always jammed at rush hour due to the narrowing of the street through the "quaint and historic" downtown. Their sign read: "Free Lemonade (Donations Accepted)". They were never bothered by local LEO and ended up "giving away" cups of lemonade for about $2.75 apiece. Some people just thanked them and drove on without paying but most threw in $3.00 a shot, or more.

Location and marketing, my friend, location and marketing.

[GeronL]

Insanity!

Meanwhile these same people would hand the same kids condoms and say they are mature enough for sex.

Insanity

[khelus]

Even so, some Freepers believe we’ve lost jobs to China because our import tariffs are not high enough.

Hmm ... Could be because they have read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations where Smith who stated Tariffs are acceptable when a nation to whom one exports, imposes a tariff on one’s exports."

"Revenge, in this case, naturally dictates retaliation, and that we should impose the like duties and prohibitions upon the importation of some or all of their manufactures into ours. Nations, accordingly, seldom fail to retaliate in this manner ... "

China Celebrates Outwitting Us

Also could be because they are aware that no elimination of regulation will make even the most productive Americans competitive with neo-slaves making $ .32 per hour [after deduction for room and board], i.e. unless American standard of living declines to third world status.

[W. W. SMITH]

“” The people who write these excessive rules and regulations need to be hanging from lamp posts. “

You’d have to get a permit for that, of course...”

And a study to determine if the lamp posts can handle the weight.
And a silk scarf so that the skin is not abraded by the rope.

[TexasRepublic]

“And a study to determine if the lamp posts can handle the weight.”

But first, those doing the study would have to be certified as Engineers having the proper educational accreditation for the state and township in question. And of course, the certifiers would have to be certified. You just can’t act like a bunch of drunk cowboys and launch into these things willy-nilly; there are procedures, you know.

[redpoll]

>>>>It’s much easier to use sell weed down in da ‘hood.<<<

As Milton Friedman would say, capitalism is the natural economy of human beings. People want weed; people therefore grow weed and sell weed. The reason it’s easier to sell is that the regulations are far less stringent - except for that ultimate sanction of making it illegal. However, there are no regulators and bureaucrats between the buyer and seller.

I’ve been reading “Free To Choose” and “The Road to Serfdom,” and it is sad to consider how far we’ve fallen.

[Clintonfatigued]

This is amazing. They won’t protect the border but they’ll shut down a lemonade stand.

[ALPAPilot]

Could be because they have read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations where Smith who stated Tariffs are acceptable

Is that the same Chapter that he writes:

BY restraining, either by high duties, or by absolute prohibitions, the importation of such goods from foreign countries as can be produced at home, the monopoly of the home market is more or less secured to the domestic industry employed in producing them. . . .

To give the monopoly of the home-market to the produce of domestic industry, in any particular art or manufacture, is in some measure to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, and must, in almost all cases, be either a useless or a hurtful regulation. If the produce of domestic can be brought there as cheap as that of foreign industry, the regulation is evidently useless. If it cannot, it must generally be hurtful. It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy. The taylor does not attempt to make his own shoes, but buys them of the shoemaker. The shoemaker does not attempt to make his own clothes, but employs a taylor. The farmer attempts to make neither the one nor the other, but employs those different artificers. All of them find it for their interest to employ their whole industry in a way in which they have some advantage over their neighbours, and to purchase with a part of its produce, or what is the same thing, with the price of a part of it, whatever else they have occasion for.

What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage. The general industry of the country, being always in proportion to the capital which employs it, will not thereby be diminished, no more than that of the above-mentioned artificers; but only left to find out the way in which it can be employed with the greatest advantage. It is certainly not employed to the greatest advantage, when it is thus directed towards an object which it can buy cheaper than it can make. The value of its annual produce is certainly more or less diminished, when it is thus turned away from producing commodities evidently of more value than the commodity which it is directed to produce. According to the supposition, that commodity could be purchased from foreign countries cheaper than it can be made at home. It could, therefore, have been purchased with a part only of the commodities, or, what is the same thing, with a part only of the price of the commodities, which the industry employed by an equal capital would have produced at home, had it been left to follow its natural course. The industry of the country, therefore, is thus turned away from a more, to a less advantageous employment, and the exchangeable value of its annual produce, instead of being increased, according to the intention of the lawgiver, must necessarily be diminished by every such regulation.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Impy.

[SunkenCiv]

There are community standards to consider.

[Varsity Flight]

____ Agency , Bureau of ____, _____Policy Board, Centers For ___, Department of ____ ___ _____, ____ Services Administration, _____ ______, _______Service, U.S ____ ____, _____ Department, Office of _____, _____ Center, ______ Foundation, Dept. of ___ Dept. For ____etc., ,etc.,

As I’ve said before, bypassing the foundation of our country, speedy trial by a jury of 12. See The Declaration of Independence:

.....”has erected a multitude of new offices....

.....imposing taxes on us, without our consent....

.....For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury....

.... and altering fundamentally the forms of our government....

.....”

[khelus]

Did you read the link describing China's WTO "accession agreement" which "gave it status as a "nonmarket economy" and spelled out thousands of details about special preferences for China. China was allowed to impose higher tariffs than other countries, and ever since has protected its auto industry by a prohibitive tariff on imported cars. By contrast, South Korea's tariff on imported cars is 8 percent, and the European Union's is 10 percent."

Or:
"As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can, both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce maybe of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain; and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention" Adam Smith

Or
Ricardo's admission that comparative advantage only works if capital and labor do not move offshore. Or:
"Experience, however, shews, that the fancied or real insecurity of capital, when not under the immediate control of its owner, together with the natural disinclination which every man has to quit the country of his birth and connexions, and intrust himself with all his habits fixed, to a strange government and new laws, check the emigration of capital. These feelings, which I should be sorry to see weakened, induce most men of property to be satisfied with a low rate of profits in their own country, rather than seek a more advantageous employment for their wealth in foreign nations." David Ricardo

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Pepsi pays it's danegeld. Which is what it is all about.

Every wonder why they went after Microsoft tooth and nail and left other computer companies alone? Microsoft had a reputation of ignoring politics and politicians. They saw the error of their ways and now pay danegeld like good little serfs.

If these little girls had been willing to shell out for permits and grease a few palms they not only could have had their stand but the police would have prevented any of the neighbors from opening a competing business.

[ALPAPilot]

By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security;

"Experience, however, shews, that the fancied or real insecurity of capital, when not under the immediate control of its owner, together with the natural disinclination which every man has to quit the country of his birth and connexions, and intrust himself with all his habits fixed, to a strange government and new laws, check the emigration of capital. These feelings, which I should be sorry to see weakened, induce most men of property to be satisfied with a low rate of profits in their own country, rather than seek a more advantageous employment for their wealth in foreign nations."

Both of your quotes buoy my argument. Adam Smith is giving the reasons that people naturally prefer domestic industry. The reason is less risk:

In the home-trade his capital is never so long out of his sight as it frequently is in the foreign trade of consumption. He can know better the character and situation of the person whom he trusts, and if he should happen to be deceived, he knows better the laws of the country from which he must seek redress.

Those things check the emigration of capital. All the regulations cited in the article are what push that capital overseas; when government creates those stumbling blocks, what choice to people have. It is the reduction of the bureaucracy, not the imposition of high tariffs that is the solution. Adam Smith makes that quite clear in the section I quoted. Those tariffs are either neutral or harmful.

It's rather like the old medical procedure of bleeding. Just when an illness strikes the Doctor is there to make matters worse.

[bigheadfred]

Right. The operation was a complete success. But the patient DIED.