by Tina Grazier
Quick, think of an item, any item. You can bet that Americans either own one (or more) or they want oneor more! Back in the eighties we gladly began to pay over eighty dollars a pair for athletic shoes, a scandal by usual standards. Today were doing the same thing, paying big for ipods, flat screen TVs and other items. Theres really no doubting itwe 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 isnt about stuff, the products that corporations and businesses bring to the marketplace. Its 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 withhow 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 doesnt just effect businesses and consumersit 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 doesnt 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 paythey just dont experience it. Unfortunately, a lot of very bad law is written because of this one little thingand the price tag for the control factor just keeps getting bigger.