‘Compliance’: The Word That Sunk a Million U.S. Jobs
What I call compliance costs add significantly to the cost of a product without adding any value at all to the product itself — it does not improve the product nor increase its value so that a higher price can be obtained. One can argue the social value (except in the case of tort exposure which is mostly predatory), but the simple fact is these costs put U.S. manufacturers at a disadvantage against global competitors that have significantly lower levels of compliance cost. It is a matter of degree.
Businesses must spend vast sums in an attempt to be compliant and to minimize the potential devastation that comes from even minor non-compliance. These non-productive costs were small nuisance items at the outset but have since grown to be major components of business costs. They have contributed to U.S. companies finding it harder and harder, in some cases impossible, to compete domestically against global producers of basic manufactured products. Whole industries are simply gone from American soil because of them. Worse, when contemplating investments that stretch years into the future, a business planner sees no signs of this trend abating anytime soon.
Are Americans as a whole better off for all this effort? Certainly we are to the extent real issues such as health, safety, and non-discrimination are concerned. We have gone well past the point of practicality however, and now the lack of opportunity for basic manufacturing workers to earn the living their fathers and mothers had has damaged us all.
The world has changed and there are now alternatives that didn’t exist before. There are developing countries with modern roads, ports, reliable electrical supplies, and legal systems to secure property and contract rights. There are also educated and motivated workers and governments that are welcoming instead of threatening. These governments promote growth and development of manufacturing as a means to raise the standard of living in their country, just as it did for prior generations here. They are not promoting abuse or exploitation of their own people; rather they are inclined to promote economic growth to better their condition. They offer prospective businesses the opportunity to operate in a responsible manner by their standards while avoiding the extremes imposed at times on American producers.
China, India, and Brazil join a host of smaller countries to vie for productive investment on a global scale. American businesses don’t move or expand offshore without reason. Unfortunately, there is ample reason to avoid the U.S. manufacturing environment — it’s called survival.
Compliance costs alone, if we include the sometimes overlooked costs of environmental thou-shalt-nots, account for virtually all of the U.S.’s capital-flight problems.
It’s no longer morally acceptable for conservatives to forgive left-liberals for ignoring this. Nor is it credible that left-liberals don’t understand it, or can’t figure it out. They must be held to account for the businesses and lives their meddlings have destroyed.
Exactly right!! It is high time we went after the members of this International Global Warming Criminal Conspiracy. These crooks have extorted billions from businesses, people, and governments for decades. All to line their pockets while (think Al Gore), at the same time destroying the American economy. Just two years these criminals were calling for the persecution, and prosecution, and the so called Global Warming “Skeptics”. Now that the scam has been exposed, (and the latest prediction is for a new mini ice age) it is time to put some of their sorry asses in prison.
While I can sympathize with the sentiment, we have no one else to blame as conservatives but ourselves for letting the leftists call the agenda. So afraid to be tarred with any epithet – racist, sexist, unfeeling, not compassionate, or any number of others – we allowed ourselves to be browbeaten into submission and not to protest LOUDLY when business was hamstrung by idiotic regulations. I closed a business seventeen years ago up north when I was told I’d have to retrofit my entire production building – already equipped with sprinkler systems and fire alarms – with newer equipment for no good reason at a cost that would have bankrupted me. I was denied permission to move the business within the state (which I shouldn’t even have needed, this is America after all) and basically to spend money I didn’t have. So, 28 people lost their jobs. Such is the mentality of our benevolent government!
A good example is the current CPSIA regs regarding lead and pthalates content in items manufactured for children 12 and under. The Chinese slip in some toys with lead paint, so now all US manufacturers are under the gun to comply with testing, labeling, and documenting against possible future recalls of their products designed for this demographic, including products manufactured in their entirety right here. It all sounds good, and there’s no doubt the intention is sincere, but Congress enacts a bill so broad and amorphous that the agency tasked with its enforcement cannot always define what comprises compliance except in the broadest sense, and they’ve had to postpone the full compliance specifications once or twice simply to gain time to figure out what it covers on an industry-by-industry basis. Meanwhile, manufacturers are left wondering whether or not they’ll be exposed to litigious “consumers” and their well-heeled liability attorneys in the future for failing to cross a “t” or dot an “i” in product labeling or any other compliance specification “pea” resting under a shell as the government scrambles the three shells on the table. Move manufacturing offshore, and let the suckers who remain deal with the details.
Knee-jerk politicians are the # 1 root cause of all frivolous regulations.
An additional burden is the activist organizations who harass and extort from corporations. Corporations end up setting up foundations as one way to fend off these economic and social parasites, often paying off these reacketeers by installing some of their members in high-paying jobs within the “foundations.” There are also direct payoffs to the activist groups, who are also recipients of federal largesse.
ACORN, Urban League, La Raza, and the NAACP are prime examples of quasi-criminal, parasitic extortion rackets. Surprised to see the venerable NAACP on my little list? Don’t be. It is a common phenomenon for once respectable activist organizations to become corrupt over time. Same with the Urban League. ACORN (or whatever they call themselves now) and La Raza were never respectable.
The most mendacious and eggregious new extortionist is the NCRP (National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy), which preys on major philanthropic organizations. NCRP tries to get philanthropies to stop subsidizing the arts and other intellectual pursuits and divert the money towards “poverty programs,” and directly into the NCRP’s own pockets. The NCRP has demanded enough loot for itself from the likes of Carnegie Mellon and Ford, etc., to finance a major corporation — and all that extorted loot is intended for NCRP’s “operational expenses.” Yea, right.
Never mind the fact that there is zero, repeat zero, credible science that pthalates pose a health hazard.
Government agencies are often required to do an accounting of the economic impact of a given proposed regulation. The problem is that they don’t have to do a *cumulative impact* analysis of *all* the regs that are adopted. And, I believe that they often don’t account for jobs that are likely to be exported.
Wish your article was being published in NYT and/or LAT.
Take a close look at what’s happening in California. If we are not careful, that’s what is in store for the rest of the nation real soon. High taxes and over-regulation is the name of the game in California and it has destroyed their economy. It has also reached a point that it may be impossible to repeal enough laws, especially environmental laws, in California to save it. And, with someone like Jerry Brown now as governor, you will have politicians who are only too eager to grow the welfare state in California. I wouldn’t be surprised if that state really does go bankrupt in the next few months. But, never fear, the Obama administration will simply declare it “Too big to fail” and bail it out, with your money. Merry Christmas!
Since the Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, America has been producing legions that might as well have ‘Born to Regulate’ and ‘Born to Administer’ tatoos on their arms. Just look at all the college degree programs expressly dedicated to this parasitism that have emerged since the cancer of the Great Society took hold.
With this class of professional regulators and their raison d’etre, I really do not see anything other than collapse down the road. We’re at the point where the parasites have overwhelmed the ability of the host to support them. The question is no longer is the USA going to crash or not, the questions now concern how to survive it.
It seems as though the control freak industry is the only one that’s booming in America today.
As one who has lived in an area (San Joaquin Valley of California) where some of the ground water is hazardous to drink because of agricultural chemical dumping, I recognize the benefits of some environmental regulation. That said, we’re way past the point at which costs and benefits are at equilibrium. I’d appreciate more specifics on how to change the balance. Tort reform comes to mind – though that is actually a state issue, and not a federal one. What laws should we repeal specifically? Also, I’d suggest we change a fundamental principal of the regulatory state: namely, that agencies can’t write regulations – the Congress must vote on every one of them. The Congress shouldn’t be able to delegate their responsibility to write our laws, and make no mistake, regulations are laws.
I don’t understand. You live in an area that has possibly had a higher level of regulation imposed on it than virtually any other and yet you see the value of such regulation?
Either I am, or you are, unable to follow a logical progression.
Now… I never made it past highschool so it might be me.
FDR was by far the most business unfriendly President – but he had a lot more time than Obama and no pesky internet. In the 30′s, the states didn’t get into the Compliance act the way the do now.
I’m amazed that anything gets done in the country at all. We are regulating ourselves out of existence.
The problem is that some level of compliance is necessary. I remember when brownout meant smog so thick you couldn’t see clearly in LA, and when Niagara Falls foamed from the phosphates dumped into the lakes.
We have gone too far. Regulators always seek to grow their powers.
My suggestion is sunsetting all regulations. Congress will re-authorize a limited EPA, we all want that. The controversial and overbearing and unnecessary will not be renewed. We should also limit the growth of Federal agencies. You can have n people and a budget not to exceed y by statute. No mission creep – like the FCC’s naked power grab this week. All enforcement must be through the courts. No fines or penalties without a jury trial.
You’re gonna have to repeal, repudiate, eliminate
a whole bunch of leg re unionized or otherwise
protected-from-competition-from-the-guy-or-girl-next-door lobby groups
before you’ll be able to reduce or eliminate the service each of those groups provide.
A 403b account is the equivalent of a 401k, for employees of non-profits like public schools. Each August, I enroll teachers in the 403b plan at a school in my city. It takes me 25 pages of paperwork to enroll each teacher. Each of them must sign three different forms and tell me their date of birth, SS #, driver’s license number or passport number, address, phone number, marital status, name of spouse, citizenship, investment experience and risk tolerance. In most cases they only put in $100 a month, which nets me an annual commission of $12. I offer them a tax sheltered custodial account because it has lower expenses than the alternative, a tax sheltered annuity. That, plus my company’s application for variable annuities is forty pages long instead of twenty five and requires the customer to sign or initial in six places instead of only three. I do most of this rigmarole at the behest of FINRA (formerly NASD), those wonderful folks who can ensure that I have a SIPC sign on prominent display in my office but couldn’t keep Bernard Madoff from swindling people out of FIFTY BILLION DOLLARS.
Does anyone have any books on this subject they have found useful in becoming more knowledgable about the impact of “compliance” on our global competitiveness? Thanks in advance for any help in finding more data.
Its the strategy to crash. Then the “crashers” get to finish making us
a scocialist paradise.
Vote out the establishment Repubs. They are just DemonCrat lite.
A good place to start is with these six RINOS:
Thad Cochran, Mississippi
Bob Corker, Tennessee
Mike Crapo, Idaho
Tom Coburn, Oklahoma
Lamar Alexander, Tennessee
Johnny Isakson, Georgia
Each voted for Obama’s START Treaty. A giveaway if ever there were one. Weaken America – that is Obama’s goal and these clowns helped to enable that goal.
This is the most unconsidered social degradation forcing America’s decline, which has occurred over the last three generations. We have committed economic suicide. However the article only addresses relative short term problems. The fatal problem is career destruction. No young person should go into any career that grows things or makes things. If you made any profit, some regulator ordered you to cease and desist, or some lawyer obtained a judgment against you. Any one with capital, moved it overseas. Entire industries have moved away, the only evidence that they once functioned in America are naked anchor bolts poking above foundations in abandoned buildings.
The result is a schism in authority. A behavior routinely performed by a sovereign government entity, e.g. levee design, is held harmless by society. However, if the action was done by a private party, they were sued out of existence, unless they could fund a train load of compliance attorneys/lobbyists. This organizational Darwinism forces gigantism; only huge corporations, who can contest government power, or demand subsidies, survive. GM, and the Chevy Volt is an example. It is a tiny car that costs $41,000, can only go 40 miles, and then takes hours to refill its “go juice”. Without the heavy thumb of government on the scales of commerce, it would fail in the market place.
However, over time, this process has, and will continue to weaken our nation. At some milestone, perhaps already passed, there is no return. It is not coincidence that the emergence of the litigious-regulatory state tracks the destruction of the middle class’ wealth. Billions transfer overseas with a mouse click, but family wage earners are immobile.
I worked for a company who would prefer I not name them(Their initials are Gulf-Echo). In the 15 years I worked for them, I watched a number of divisions(all staffed by American workers) either move to another country, or simply cease to exist for two reasons: Taxes and environmental regulation.
The government began prohibiting the use of many solvents and materials necessary to manufacture a product. A substitution/replacement would be found, which was always more expensive. Then another would be prohibited, than another (These notices almost always began: “The state of California has concluded that this substance…”) Then the EPA would jump on it, and that would be it.
The people who worked in those divisions would complain that they lost their jobs to cheaper labor; and while cheaper labor found abroad was surely a reality, it was usually not the deciding factor in moving the business. Uneducated, unskilled, third world labor is indeed cheaper, but even this comes at a cost as it requires a reasonable intelligence to perform many of the tasks involved in manufacturing a product. Many times taking YEARS to work out so that the product can be reliably produced at a certain level of quality control.
Other products and services simply went away. I watched several become impossible to do for a price that would simply cover the costs involved.
I know the left, and all of it’s subgroups celebrate every time they create a new regulation or tax, but the truth is that it has cost many working people their jobs. Sure, it hurt the Corporation, which we know are all evil, but they are staffed by people trying to feed their families.
And yes, I could give specific examples to prove my point, but the company who pays for my (early)retirement would surely prefer than I not.
The government is out of control. Overstuffed with agencies that are staffed by personnel who are non-producers trying to justify their own jobs.
I’m sick of it.
Not only do the “evil corporations”, employ Americans.. they are owned by Americans. Corporations are the antithesis of socialism, because they are run at a profit for the shareholder. That shareholder is you!
You want a workers paradise? Buy stock in the company you work for. You own it, you care about it, you take care, and take the profit with pride for a job well done.
You want hell on earth? Let someone cap your income, and feed you.
You will be reduced to either a peice of a machine, or a parasite. This state is not aligned with human nature and has failed every time it has been tried. Yet they keep trying! WTF? I guess someone gets rich, find that guy… and poop on his doorstep.
I actually saw this happen first hand in a manufacturing company in California. We sold good quality products all over North America and provided union jobs with health insurance and a decent pension plan for as many as 400 people. I was lucky enough to retire before the ax fell (actually it was more like a thousand penknives)but at the end 200 people lost their jobs. All the factory buildings have been torn down and now the property sits idle. Funny part was how much more co-operative the regulators became when the end was near. Some of them were even polite. Now they are after the farmers. And with Ag exports being about the last cash flow the state has from selling something real I don’t see a way out of this one.
But wait, there’s more!!!
Unions impose their own bureaucratic, inefficient, self-serving layers of rules on top of the bureaucratic, inefficent and megalomanic layers of government rules.
And don’t forget predatory lawyers lurking behind every corner ready to pounce, even if all the rules are being followed to the nth degree.
And now the entire working population has been taught the culture of entitlement, self-esteem and something-for-nothing. Everybody is a minority of one sort or another, and there are armies of enablers swimming around like remora fish lusting to get a bite of the apple of racism or sexism or homophobia or whatever.
And let’s not get started on fraud, theft and hands in the till.
No more employees. Contract labor in a no-brainer in this environment, and only if the function can’t be outsourced.
Our accounting software updates already include changes for OBAMACARE and we just got hit with a 22% health care premium increase thanks to OBAMACARE so I am definitely not increasing our spending. We are one year ahead on 1099′s on all purchases so we sent Dear John letters to 144 vendors on our purchasing database that we won’t be ordering from again to save on paperwork and indirect labor. Thank you Nancy, Harry, Barack and the entire 2009 Congress and a Merry Christmas, I mean Happy Holidays to be PC, to the 144 vendors we dropped.
Shades of the “anti-do-eat-dog” law from Atlas Shrugged.
Just say “NO” to Directive 10-289.
I am a the owner of small manufacturing company. I do not have a staff to keep me out of trouble with all the government levels and agencies. I have to do it all myself and it is overwhelming to know everything about everything government. Each seperate issue they probe is potentially life threatening and many nearly impossible to resolve once they get hold of you. Almost always it is expensive in one way or another. I could list many that I have encountered that would absolutely shock most as unfair or unreasonable but I have no choice except to resolve it to their satisfaction or die. They simply do not care, it is the law, regulation, or their opinion that matters. I can see why if I could afford to move to Mexico without workers comp, OSHA, Labor laws, excessive isurances for every possibility, taxes, permits, inspections, accountants and record keeping I could be a lot more profitable. I have had products start small and over time developed into large business. At some point when it is large enough, they were lost to overseas competition on price that I can’t match so my customer could make a better margin and we start all over again.
It should be noted that it isn’t just the regulation that increases the cost but the uncertainty in interpretation. If the regs were black and white, then the compliance costs could be contained to some extent. But the regs are never clear and compliance is never certain. Not only are businesses subject to the whims of government inspectors but also the vagaries of litigation. So far more effort must be put in building a credible defense with little ability to judge whether the efforts are compliant. This is especially true for new regs but even old ones can reverse in the random court case.
The really sad part is that even without enough work, the nations legal extortion schools are still turning out hundreds of scavengers each year, each needing to find a new place to chew on the carcass. Lawyers are the only pool of workers where an excess results in increased costs to society.
If the goal was simply to improve working conditions or environmental risks, then someone would look to make compliance simple and straightforward since enforcement could be more effective. But the real goal is to keep the paper on the bureaucrats desk so they can look busy.
One way to fight back is to keep an eye on compliance by government and universities. They generally try and get away with what would result in criminal prosecution for a business. Simply, and this surprises them, compliance eats into their operating funds. Government has no choice but to raise fees on the citizenry to pay for compliance which results in a backlash (which is why they cheat to avoid accountability)
Let’s not forget the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that is costing companies billions of dollars a year. The bill was enacted as a reaction to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals including those affecting Enron, Tyco International, Adelphia, Peregrine Systems and WorldCom. These scandals, which cost investors billions of dollars when the share prices of affected companies collapsed, shook public confidence in the nation’s securities markets. The bill forces a company’s books to be audited by a certified public accounting firm. The law also applies to all manufacturing firms, costing consumers billions, another reason for corporations to consider relocating overseas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act
I can’t even begin to say how much time, effort and money we piss away on Sox compliance. It’s spawned a whole new industry of companies and people who produce nothing except “compliance”.
The cost of which is naturally passed on to the users of the comply-ee’s products and services. All of which makes us far less competitive in global markets.
Who wants to guess who the Sarbanes-Oxley act really benefits? Hint: It isn’t you and me.
What we need in the US is a part time legislature. Congress no longer restricts its activities to addressing truly pressing needs but now spends most of its time seeking ways to social engineer, change the tax code yet again, meddle, or propose new buildings to name after themselves. A part time legislature works well in the states that have it as they only have enough time to address real state needs. The only danger is that the permanent bureaucracy would have more opportunity to meddle.
So accurate it hurts to read it. Another great article, Pope.
There is something even more destructive then regulations.
Regulations that are not enforced.
If I hire a worker, I have to pay workers’ compensation, social security, Medicare, and state and federal unemployment taxes.
I have to file several reports a year to both State and Federal agencies.
All of this of course adds to my costs.
But if my competitor hires an illegal off the street and pays him cash…. there is no enforcement.
Another example, a client of mine is a Auto Body repair shop who paints cars. To prevent pollution, the local government required that all paint shops use a spray booth. One day I was visiting with the Body shop owner when the local environmental officer showed up. Nice young guy who waved a box over the spray booth to see what was coming out of it.
After the inspection, the environmental officer comes into the office and informs the owner that he would have to pay a $1000.00 fine since his spray booth was using a $100.00 filter a week past it’s replacement date. As a result, some parts per million where getting into the environment.
The owner of the body shop thought about this, he then admitted that to save some money, he was using the filters for a time after they were supposed to be replaced. The Body shop owner took the ticket from the officer and said, “follow me”. Going to the front of the shop, the owner pushes open the shades and says “stop that guy”. That guy was a man painting a car with a paint gun, in a vacant lot across the street. This guy was polluting more in an hour that the body shop owner will pollute in his lifetime.
Interesting story, but let me tell you about life. You probably already know, but anyway.
Regarding the paint story, there are two objectives in play: the objective of the regulation, and the objective of the inspector.
The average person would assume that the objective of the regulation is to prevent pollution, and the objective of the inspector is to enforce the regulation.
But here’s the truth. There is an uber objective that sits above the prevention of pollution, which is “power”. The prevention of pollution is incidental; the more important objective is to control the body shop owner’s behaviour. If there were no pollution, there would be something else: size of the shop, work hours, the fertility cycle of the Australian platypus, whatever. Pollution is nice because the rube kiddies watch cartoons about it, but it is hardly central to the regulation.
Now for the inspector; his objective isn’t to enforce the regulation. He got over that the first week on the job. His objective is to follow the rules and collect his pay and gold-plated pension.
Once you understand what is really happening, it’s obvious that the dickoff spraying his car in the empty lot will never be stopped. Stopping him was never the objective of the regulation; people like him can’t be controlled anyway; whereas the shop owner is highly controllable, and through him, many lives are controlled as well. And the inspector would be shooting himself in the foot if he spent a second on the parking lot guy. a) it’s not in his job descrition, b) it would be a pain to do it and he might get hurt, and c) it’s lunchtime.
For reference, see VDH’s recent PJM piece about him biking around California. California is the regulatory heaven of the planet…but not for illegal immigrants. They are free to do whatever they like. Why, regulating them might make them stop voting for the taxes that pay for the bureaucrats’ McMansions.
Similar situation in my town. All the auto dealers used to be located along one road that their adverts called “The Auto Mile”.
When the city implemented draconian business license fees based on total dollar volume of sales (vs. net profit from those sales), the auto dealers started moving their operations out to a main hwy in an unincorporated section of the county.
Today the now vacant former “Auto Mile” has seen diminishing property values, increased crime and deteriorating & unsightly buildings.
At the same time, the city is making moves to annex the unincorporated area where all the car dealers moved.
It’s funny how the “Looters” are chasing “John Galt” across the county while leaving a trail of carnage and diminished land values.
Are you sure it is only a million?? Try multiplying that. And, I am a physician. Don’t even get me started on lawyers, CLIA, HHS, and the FDA!
I generally agree with you here, but I must take issue with this statement:
“Health insurance that used to focus primarily on illness and injury now, by state and federal mandate, covers all manner of other costs such as smoking cessation, obesity counseling, gender counseling, drug abuse treatment, depression, mental health, etc.”
So it sounds like you’re saying that depression is not an “illness,” that mental disorders don’t qualify as “illnesses.”
Sorry to break it to you, but they are. And they need treatment.
Pro Cynic,
You missed the point. His point is that because health care insurance must cover every conceivable malady known to man, even when it’s not needed, the cost of the insurance must therefore increase. I haven’t smoked for over 25 years, so I don’t need a smoking cessation benefit. I never suffered a depression, and I never needed maternity service, but my insurance must still cover me for these, which must come at a cost. If we can pick and choose what we want covered (I’m diabetic so I choose coverage for this), our cost would be commensurate to our coverage. I think our auto insurance is like this.
Good article. The US is increasingly a place where you develop products and sell them here but actually produce them elsewhere. That’s exactly why US unions want to go global.
I was having built some very complicated equipment for an overseas nuclear power plant.
The biggest headache? The touch-up paint. We had to ship it separately at great expense as a hazardous cargo.
My answer has been to suggest that in the future we have the manufacturer give complete specifications for paint that can be procured locally.
Years ago I used to think of these onerous regulations as unintended consequences – now I know how wrong that idea was.
This was a great article. I really learned a lot. Just so the commentors know, I learned even more from their collective comments. Thanks.
Now I understand why the “left” funds trolls. It is to keep the conservatives from freely exchanging knowledge and opening the eyes of the rest of us.
This just in…..The FCC is now in control of all media activity!
It would sound ridiculous if it weren’t true. All of us dumb ass conservatives are to blame, of course. We keep listening to right wing hysteria and worse, we believe what these hysterical tea party radicals are telling us. As we all know, the FCC needed to do something to preserve the collective, now that we have taken the House of Representatives away from them, and while the FCC is still controlled by the collective. Get ready for lots of bureaucratic abuse, folks. It is just now starting. Having a communist President will result in far more damage to the Republic than we have seen, so far.
My, my! What a little socialist progressive indoctrination won’t do to a person…a society!
While the author of this article poses some good points for discussion, the crux of the article is simply erroneous. The dagger in the throat of American capitalism’s competitveness [was] unionism, followed by taxes, followed by the selling of America’s intellectual properties to foreign developing nations to make up for all the domestic lost economies.
All the author need do is a comparative study of the unstainable, arbitrary and circular inflation brought upon America by the labor unions vs. federal and State regulatory mandates….BEFORE the mass exodous of America’s private sector economies and the reduction of the labor unions numbers and economic influences in the private sector….not that they don’t still have the same negative influences in all the large domestic [consolidated] economies of today.
Anybody who follows my writings, knows I’m a one-person evangelist for amending the Constitutions Article I, Section 8 Commerce Clause, to get the government [essentially] out of regulating the private sector commerce, returning such regulating back to the States.
The labor unions have several times over bankrupted America’s private sector economies. From high on the job payrolls and benefits to their lifetime retirement benefits, labor unions have kept America’s economies drained of adequate capital reserves, making even the slightest government regulatory cost unsustainable AND….their cost of production finally non competitive domestically and globally.
Which comes first..the egg or the chicken, is not a matter of subjectivity when discussing who first destroyed America’s economic competitiveness.
I wish the writers of PMJ would appropriately and factually background their writings to give some resemblance of factual investigative writing.
The only industry not suffering under the compliance burden it seems are the lawyers themselves. Ever had a bad lawyer? Good luck trying to get remedy in the courts or aid from other lawyers. They circle the wagons. You are left to hire another one and start the process from scratch & hope for a better result. No rules… no remedy. Might as well just shoot yourself in the foot and have a nice day.
The other problem is….We massively overproduce lawyers & then allow them to run the show and run amok (ie. Elena Kagen with her whole life to mess with us) trying to justify their existence at all levels of government & throughout the economy. It’s a smart game they play…one sues…the other defends and another listens to the argument wearing a black robe. All but the host prosper. Any questions?