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March 22, 2008
Will You Continue to Pay for the Control Factor?
by Tina Grazier
Quick, think of an item, any item. You can bet that Americans either own one (or more) or they want one…or more! Back in the eighties we gladly began to pay over eighty dollars a pair for athletic shoes, a scandal by usual standards. Today we’re doing the same thing, paying big for ipods, flat screen TV’s and other items. There’s really no doubting it…we live in the land of plenty! Plenty of stuff for plenty of bucks.
These were my thoughts as I read an article, “Red Tape Rising,” in the Wall Street Journal today. But this article isn’t about stuff, the products that corporations and businesses bring to the marketplace. It’s about the hidden costs, many of them unnecessary, which drive prices higher than they would naturally be.
If current popular trends continue, we are about to enter a time when these hidden costs will soar. How much will Americans put up with…how much more will we pay for the “control factor” in the price of goods (and goodies) we buy? Keep in mind that the red tape industry doesn’t just effect businesses and consumers…it also raises the cost of government. A few items of interest from the article:
The Small Business Administration calculates that the total cost in 2005 of complying with 145,000 pages of federal rules and procedures was $1.1 trillion. This is the rough economic equivalent of imposing a second federal income tax on the economy.
Just last week, the Environmental Protection Agency announced new ozone rules for the first time in 10 years. ** (the new rule) is 0.075 parts per million instead of the old 0.080 ppm. The cost in lost economic output from this new more stringent rule is estimated at $6 billion a year, and many communities are still struggling to meet the demands of the old rule. Whether the health benefits of the new rule will exceed these costs is unknown because Congress refuses to allow a cost-benefit analysis for air quality regulations.
George Mason University's Mercatus Center reveals in a soon-to-be released study that every measure of regulatory activity is up in recent years -- agency staffing, budgets, pages of rule making and compliance costs. Those numbers contradict the stream of attacks against this Administration for "weakening" federal consumer and environmental protections. ** Excluding homeland security regulations, the budgets of Uncle Sam's 50 largest agencies, such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Consumer Products Safety Commission, are up almost one-third since 2001. There are now some 200,000 full-time government employees writing and enforcing federal commandments.
Many Americans roll their eyes when they hear such figures. It doesn’t bother them, they say. Somehow I think that if they actually had to write out checks for these things every month it would suddenly become a very big deal. People pay…they just don’t experience it. Unfortunately, a lot of very bad law is written because of this one little thing…and the price tag for the control factor just keeps getting bigger.
Posted by Post Scripts at March 22, 2008 12:16 AM
Comments
Some people just have more money than brains.
Your average run of the mill American does not care until they do have to pay for it as if nothing effects them it effects the other person. Then they turn on the boob tube and and for some reason they think that if it made it on TV or the news then it must be OK. The media would never lie to us would they?
Myself and other people I know or bloggers I have read seem to get more and more upset each year as this spirals out of control. While many Americans don't see the problem others can't see how the first group could be so blind.
Posted by: Jim - Just a Guy at March 22, 2008 11:02 AM
I guess in many cases you're right. It's the people with less money that are hurt most. You don't have to be in a high income bracket to be hit by these hidden fees.
I believe in most cases Americans are pretty smart...when given the facts. The biggest problem in America is that we are fed pablum and biased fluff and we're treated like infants by newsmakers and politicians alike.
The "blind," as you've dubbed them, have not experienced a good enough reason to open their eyes. It's warm and cozy in that cacoon.
I blog with the goal of shaking that cacoon...grabbing the attention of others. If eyes are opened in the process, all the better. We cannot expect people to make wise decisions if they do not have good information.
Posted by: Tina at March 22, 2008 12:59 PM