BREAKING: Regulations Have Nothing to Do With Job Creation - FDL

[WillyT]

BREAKING: Regulations Have Nothing to Do With Job Creation
By: David Dayen - FDL
Friday September 2, 2011 10:51 am

<snip>

In the wake of the President’s delay of an update to federal ozone regulations, something his own EPA Administrator has described as “legally indefensible” in the recent past, I wonder if the Administration talked to any actual business owners and not trade groups for multinational corporations like the Chamber of Commerce before committing to this. Because if you talk to those actual business owners, like Kevin G. Hall of McClatchy did, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/09/01/122865/regulations-taxes-arent-killing.html you find that they don’t care even a little bit about the regulatory environment in terms of what’s holding back job creation.

“Government regulations are not ‘choking’ our business, the hospitality business,” Bernard Wolfson, the president of Hospitality Operations in Miami, told The Miami Herald. “In order to do business in today’s environment, government regulations are necessary and we must deal with them. The health and safety of our guests depend on regulations. It is the government regulations that help keep things in order.” <...>

McClatchy reached out to owners of small businesses, many of them mom-and-pop operations, to find out whether they indeed were being choked by regulation, whether uncertainty over taxes affected their hiring plans and whether the health care overhaul was helping or hurting their business.

Their response was surprising.

None of the business owners complained about regulation in their particular industries, and most seemed to welcome it. Some pointed to the lack of regulation in mortgage lending as a principal cause of the financial crisis that brought about the Great Recession of 2007-09 and its grim aftermath.

<snip>

More: http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/09/02/breaking-regulations-have-nothing-to-do-with-job-creation/

McClatchy piece: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/09/01/122865/regulations-taxes-arent-killing.html

:kick:

[adhd_what_huh]

1. It's called political inoculation and laying the ground for another

more important debate about new stimulus spending.

[Cool Logic]

2. Indeed, regulations work perfectly for the K-Street special interests that write them...

The problem is for the rest of us.

Many of these anti-free-market regulations have been put in place to protect the interests of those represented by K-Street lobbyists.

Our economy is controlled by means of a 71,684 page tax code and 134,723 pages of fedregs that our Representatives have enacted to to help the rich and the powerful and impede their competition and increase costs for the People.

Do you really believe they wrote these 206,407 pages of fedregs to "help the People?"

[yourout]

3. Not true......many times they actually create jobs.

[quaker bill]

4. Regulations are a constant

in the economic equation. Virtually all the regulations and tax code provisions that currently exist have been present during periods of economic expansion and rapid job growth, as well as the recent recession. That regulations do not constrain job creation is evident in that 22 million jobs were created during the Clinton Administration with virtually all the currently existing regulations in place.

When looking for the reasons that the business climate has changed, it is best to look for factors that have changed. Taxation and regulation have not changed significantly from the period before to the period after the recession, so neither are likely to have any causitive relationship to the current problem.

What has changed?

The private sector vastly under estimated and largely ignored risk before the recession, and the private sector now is extremely risk adverse.


A question, how long to the "job creators" get to continue month after month not "creating jobs" before they lose the title?

[DirkGently]

5. We're certainly not suffering under too much environmental protection.

The only reason to even discuss "postponing" EPA protections at this moment is to appease wealthy polluters for political support. Period.