Tag Archives: Regulation

This trend tells you everything you need to know about America’s future, by Simon Black

Posted on August 10, 2016 | 1 comment

Atlas is expiring under an ever-increasing mound of regulations. From Simon Black at sovereign man.com:

Long ago in the Land of the Free, if you wanted to start a saloon, you rented a space and started serving booze.

You didn’t have to go through years of petitioning a bunch of bureaucrats for permits and licenses.

If you weren’t qualified or good enough at your job, your reputation would suffer and you’d go out of business.

This is the way it used to be for just about every industry and profession.

It wasn’t until 1889 that the US Supreme Court ruled in Dent v. West Virginia that states had the right to impose “reasonable” certifications or licenses for various professions.

At first, most states only licensed physicians, dentists, and lawyers.

In fact, by 1920, only about 30 occupations in the US required any sort of licensing.

By the 1950s, about 5% of US workers required a license to perform his/her job.

Today that number has risen to 30%, and climbing.

Some of our modern examples are completely insane.

According to the Brookings Institute, the state of Nevada requires 733 days of training and a $1,500 fee for a license… just to become a tour guide.

Over in Michigan, it takes 1,460 days of education to become an athletic trainer.

45 other states have license or certification requirements for athletic trainers. All fifty states have licenses for barbers and cosmetologists.

36 states require licenses for make-up artists. 34 states license milk samplers. And a mere 33 states license auctioneers.

These license requirements continue to grow, along with the overall level of rules and regulations in the Land of the Free.

Just this morning the US government published an extra 227 pages of rules, regulations, and proposals.

This happens every single business day in America.

Last week the government published over 2,000 pages of new rules, many of which border on absurdity.

To give you an idea, USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service proposed a rule about minimum and maximum diameters of potatoes that are sold in the State of Colorado.

Yes I’m serious.

This is the sort of madness that government bureaucrats churn out on a daily basis: more rules, more licenses.

Needless to say, the more of these rules they create, the more difficult it becomes for people and businesses to produce.

So it wasn’t exactly a big surprise when the US Labor Department released statistics a few days ago showing that, for the third straight quarter in a row, productivity in the Land of the Free declined.

In other words, US workers are producing less than they did before.

We haven’t seen this trend since 1979. And it’s the exact opposite of what’s supposed to happen.

As workers get more experienced and technologically advanced, productivity should grow.

But it’s not. US production is buried under countless pages of regulations and licensing requirements. And the trend has been negative for quite some time.

From 2000 through 2007, US productivity was about 2.6%.

Between 2007 and 2015, it shrank by half to about 1.3%, barely keeping up with population growth.

Now productivity is actually shrinking. America is going backward.

But there’s another side to this story.

Because while US economic growth has practically halted and productivity is shrinking, DEBT CONSUMPTION is up. Way up.

Americans are once again indebting themselves, often to buy useless things they don’t really need.

Auto loans and credit card debt are just two categories registering significant upticks.

(Not to be left out, the US government is leading with way with an absolute explosion in federal debt…)

So what we’re basically seeing now in the Land of the Free is people going into debt to consume more, while simultaneously producing less.

This is a pretty dangerous trend.

To continue reading: This trend tells you everything you need to know about America’s future

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Government is the Problem, by Jim Quinn

Posted on August 5, 2016 | Leave a comment

Some people have trouble connecting dots. Jim Quinn helps them with an article on rising costs and rising government involvement and incompetence in the fields of medical care and financing higher education. From Quinn at theburningplatform.com:

Here are two charts that show how successful, government solutions are for the citizens of this country. First off, even according to the manipulated and under-reported CPI figures, you have lost 65% of your purchasing power since 1978. Using a real measure of inflation, its closer to 85%, but why quibble. You are slowly but surely being impoverished by the Federal Reserve (aka Wall Street bankers) and the corrupt politicians you elected to represent your interests.

Doug Short presents the cost of college tuition, medical care and new cars over the last 38 years. One of these things is not like the other. The second chart shows the growth in Federal loans to students since 1995. You may notice that prior to the Federal government getting involved in college education, college tuition rose steeper than overall inflation but only by a moderate amount. My tuition at Drexel University in the mid-1980s was in the mid $5,000 range. I was able to work and pay the majority of my tuition, with only a couple thousand dollars in loans.

If you are perceptive (that leaves out all libs and government employees) you will notice that as the Federal government has doled out more loans, the cost of college tuition has skyrocketed. You see, just like welfare, you get more of what you subsidize. If the federal government is willing to give your tax dollars to every Tom, Muhammed, or Laquesha to go to college, demand will rise. Since the supply is limited, colleges can raise prices dramatically as they know the Feds are supplying the paper.
The truth is that more than 50% of the dolts matriculating into college using government debt are intellectually incapable of college level studies. If the Federal government kept their hands out of higher education and stopped loaning money they don’t have to idiots who can’t add, subtract, or multiply, the fly by night for profit diploma mills would collapse overnight. Without an endless stream of government debt, only kids who really wanted and were capable of getting a college education, would enroll. Tuition costs would plummet as the demand dried up and institutions had to compete on price.

Medical care costs have risen at more than twice the level of general inflation over the last 38 years. Again, the Federal government is the cause. The Great Society Medicare and Medicaid programs are a major factor. The massive level of government regulations, bureaucracy, and corruption does not allow a free market in medical care. Obamacare is a national clusterfuck or rules, regulations, fines, and incentives to drive up costs. The government colludes with mega-insurance companies to destroy any competition based on prices. Prior to 1964 sick people dealt directly with doctors and hospitals. Inserting the government and insurance companies between patients and doctors has destroyed free market competition and driven prices higher.

The proof that industries without major Federal government intervention keep prices low is seen in the new car data since 1978. The cost of a new car has risen at about one-third the rate of overall inflation and far lower than medical care or college tuition. Despite the GM and Chrysler bailouts by the Feds, there has been cut throat competition between automakers from around the world. They must compete on quality and price. Americans have a multitude of choices when buying a new car. They also have a choice to buy a used car. This truly free market keeps prices down.

Despite the fact that competition keeps prices low, the socialists think they can run education, health care, and the entire economy better than the free market. That’s why we’re $20 trillion in debt, with $200 trillion of unfunded liabilities. And the solution is to elect Crooked Hillary? WTF???

http://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/08/05/government-is-the-problem/

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The EPA and the IRS… it’s the Same “Business”, by Eric Peters

Posted on July 20, 2016 | Leave a comment

The biggest scam is government, a fact once again admirably illustrated by Eric Peters, on a guest post at theburningplatform:

This VW business is a lot like the income tax business. And “business” is exactly the right word. It’s a business (albeit a perverted one) in both instances.scam-alert

The victim is compelled to fund his own persecution.

Yes, VW “cheated.” It is like me using a radar detector to “cheat” a cop out of his quota.

In both cases, the underlying law is ridiculous; the “cheating” nothing more than an attempt to evade the ridiculous. No one is harmed by “speeding” unless the car strikes another car or another person, which happens only rarely. Think about it. Almost all of us “speed” virtually every time we drive and yet accidents happen maybe a couple of times in a lifetime if they ever happen at all.

And when it does happen, the cause is more likely to be inattention or some other thing. Not velocity.

In the VW case, no one has been harmed. Not a single flesh-and-blood victim has been produced.

A guy by the name of Daniel Becker with a pompously named outfit called Clean Climate Change says “more pollution means more illness, more premature death.”

Ok, show me one.

Just one.

It shouldn’t be difficult.

The “affected” diesels go back to the 2009 model year, which is almost eight model years ago (the 2009s having been sold in 2008). Surely, if Becker and all the other sky-is-falling-mongers are right, they ought to be able to produce someone who’s been demonstrably afflicted by the “affected” VWs’ fractionally greater output of “harmful” emissions?

Maybe a bad cough that can be attributed to the fractionally higher emissions Becker, et al, are wailing about?

Nope.

Instead we get: “…regulators estimated the cars could emit as much as 40 times the permitted amounts” of the proscribed compounds (chiefly oxides of nitrogen, acronymned “NOx”).

Well, okay. I estimate that I could run a six minute mile. I estimate that you could be a thief.

It ought to be necessary to prove actual rather than estimated damages before being able to collect actual compensation… don’t you think?

It’s not unlike the IRS claiming we “owe” a sum of money for “services” we never asked for and don’t want, but which we’ll nonetheless be made to pay for anyhow.

Thus VW will be forced to fund “pollution reduction projects” – to the tune of $2.7 billion. And “clean energy development” – to the tune of $2 billion.geldscheisser

What is “clean energy development”? It is anything not powered by an internal combustion engine – a Tesla electric car, for instance.

Put precisely, VW will be forced to subsidize Tesla and other “clean” rivals.

Which aren’t really.

Electric cars are not powered by Zero Point energy emanating out of the quantum vortex. They are powered by electricity which is produced by utilities that burn coal and oil to generate it. If VW’s allegedly toxic diesels are such a dire threat to human health, how about the emissions produced by these utilities?

They are of course subject to regulation as well – but it’s less draconian than the company-killing fatwas hurled at VW. Which makes one wonder whether the real object of this exercise isn’t emissions but rather the cars themselves.

Specifically, VW’s affordable, efficient diesel-powered cars.

To continue reading: The EPA and the IRS… it’s the Same “Business”

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“Healthy Choices” by Eric Peters

Posted on July 12, 2016 | Leave a comment

Why can’t safety be a matter of consumer choice and value versus cost, instead of an imposed government diktat? From Eric Peters on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:
People have been trained not to think with precision – to use words sloppily – a necessary bit of groundwork for authoritarian demagogues to succeed.

For example, it is easy – because people don’t think about it precisely – to characterize Libertarians as “selfish” because they (supposedly) don’t want to “help” others.

You know, like Democrats (and Republicans) do.

But hold on. When a Democrat (or a Republican) politician talks about “helping” others, doesn’t he mean taxing others? Is he reaching into his pocket?

Or someone else’s?

Defined with precision, “helping” others in modern political parlance means the use of state power to redistribute wealth – with the politician acting as a middleman. This is a very different thing – morally as well as actually – than one person freely giving of his time or resources to assist another person in need, the precise (and intellectually honest) definition of helping others.

So how about “safety”?

The federal government – the politicians and bureaucrats – claim that anyone (like me) who opposes things like mandatory air bags in cars is opposed to… “safety.”

No, not at all.

I hold that anyone who wants to – and is willing to pay – should be able to purchase a car with as many air bags as they like. Throw in back-up cameras, anti-whiplash head restraints (that make it hard to see anything behind you) a roof that will support the weight off the car if it turns upside down (even if it adds several hundred pounds of weight to the car and so makes it use a lot more gas) and so on.

I am opposed to none of these things.

I am opposed to being force-fed these things.volvo wagon

And to being made to subsidize these things.

If – as we are regularly told – America is a free country, then why on earth are we not free to choose for ourselves how much “safety” we want and are willing to pay for? And why are some of us made to subsidize the “safety” other people want but aren’t willing to pay for themselves?

Isn’t this – forcing everyone to buy (and so, subsidize) the degree of “safety” deemed appropriate according to the arbitrary decrees of unelected, ensconced-for-the-duration apparatchiks within the bowels of the federal regulatory agencies – exactly the same as being required to buy only “nutritious” food?

Well?

And if we can be forced to buy things like air bags because a federal bureaucrat or politician believes they are “good for us” then why couldn’t we also be forced to buy “nutritious” food?

Why not?

The only reason why not is because the politicians and bureaucrats have gotten around to that…. yet.

But, they will. They must. It is inevitable.

To continue reading: “Healthy Choices”

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VW Says: Thank You Sir! May I have Another? by Eric Peters

Posted on April 7, 2016 | Leave a comment

From Eric Peters on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

So why did VW “cheat”? Uncle?

That question hasn’t been asked enough. It ought to be.

Now we have the answer – confirmation of what I suspected and wrote about earlier when this “scandal” broke last year.

VW “cheated” because it had to.

Because “cheating” was the only way to keep on selling diesel engines that delivered the mileage buyers expected at a cost that made economic sense to them.

Satisfying Uncle – passing his Rube Goldberg-esque emissions tests, which among other defects don’t measure the totality of a vehicle’s output – grams per mile – but rather sample parts per million (PPM) with the vehicle in a stationary test rig, would have entailed a noticeable reduction in fuel efficiency and a very noticeable uptick in the cost of the vehicle. Or rather, the cost of the additional hardware necessary to placate Uncle.

Now there’s proof of this.

European Uncles have discovered that diesel-powered VW vehicles “fixed” to comply with the tests use more fuel now – which is a problem over there because European Uncles also regulate carbon dioxide (C02), which is classified as a “pollutant” because Global Warming (whoops, Climate Change).

The more fuel used, the more C02 produced. You see the problem.

Which isn’t the displeasure of the European Uncles.

It’s the fact that you can’t have your affordable/high-mileage diesel cake and eat your making-Uncle-happy, too. There is a reason why there are no modestly priced diesel-powered cars available in the United States … now that VW’s cars are off the market.

VW was the only automaker selling them – and now, they’re not.

And not likely to, ever again.

You can make a diesel that makes Uncle happy. But you can’t make one that makes Uncle happy and which is also affordable to buy and delivers mileage high enough to offset the always-higher price of buying a diesel car vs. the equivalent gas-powered version of the same car.

To continue reading: VW Says: Thank You Sir! May I have Another?

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Morlocks Need Eloi, by Eric Peters

Posted on February 22, 2016 | Leave a comment

From Eric Peters, on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

Automated braking, Lane Keep Assist, Park Assist, Back-Up Cameras, Traction Control, ABS… all this technology is, is idiot-proofing.Eloi lead

It operates at the level of an idiot, too.

A skilled/competent driver not only doesn’t need it, he can often outperform it.

Skill and competence, are, however, not what’s wanted. They are the opposite of what’s wanted.

What’s being engineered, arguably.

You get what you encourage. And less of what’s discouraged.

The automated braking systems soon to be mandated decelerate the car when it’s either not necessary or so prematurely it’s preposterous. Like there’s an old lady (or a Clover) underneath the dashboard somewhere.

Which of course there kinda is. Joan Claybrook’s ghost, perhaps? An eHarpy you can’t kick to the curb – or turn off.
It engages when the car up ahead (way up ahead) is turning off the road and will be long gone by the time you actually get there. The concept of covering the brake pedal is something a computer does not grok. You, a human (and not an idiot) can evaluate changing conditions in real time with more perspicacity than a computer, which is programmed with limited parameters and does not do nuance. It may become necessary to brake and you are prepared to, if need be.

If not, you don’t.

But the computer will.

This is its own “safety” problem, interestingly enough. Abrupt braking when not necessary can trigger a chain reaction accident. The car behind you rear-ends you because your car braked suddenly and for no good reason. Another car passed within a few feet, say. Or, the light up ahead turned yellow but your car was already in the intersection.

You also lose the ability to power out of a potential problem – and avoid an accident – because the computer has cut the throttle. Which it will, when it applies the brakes for no good reason.

How, pray, is this “safer”?

Sometimes, swerving – and flooring the gas pedal – rather than standing on the brakes – is just what the doctor ordered. But the presumption of incompetence denies this option. Acceleration – evil!

Always.saaaafety!

Slowing – good.

Also always.

The programing of all these “safety” systems is at the level of the most over-cautious/fearful (and not-skilled) driver imaginable. The sort of “driver” (air quotes for the proper emphasis) who slows down on a snow-covered uphill grade. Which is just what computer-controlled traction control does. The dumbed down programming seeks to limit wheel slip at all costs, even if that means losing the momentum critical to making it up the got-damned hill. A good human driver can modulate throttle, countersteer and deal with a little sliding, maintaining momentum … and make it up the hill.

To continue reading: Morlocks Need Eloi

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As Madoff Airs on TV, Two Anonymous Whistleblowers Are Pounding on the SEC’s Door Again, by Pam Martens and Russ Martens

Posted on February 6, 2016 | Leave a comment

From Pam Martens and Russ Martens at wallstreetonparade.com:

Last night ABC began its two-part series on the Bernie Madoff fraud. Viewers will be reminded about how investment expert, Harry Markopolos, wrote detailed letters to the SEC for years, raising red flags that Bernie Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme – only to be ignored by the SEC as Madoff fleeced more and more victims out of their life savings.

Today, there are two equally erudite scribes who have jointly been flooding the SEC with explosive evidence that some Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) that trade on U.S. stock exchanges and are sold to a gullible public, may be little more than toxic waste dumped there by Wall Street firms eager to rid themselves of illiquid securities.

The two anonymous authors have one thing going for them that Markopolos did not. They are represented by a former SEC attorney, Peter Chepucavage, who was also previously a managing director in charge of Nomura Securities’ legal, compliance and audit functions. We spoke to Chepucavage by phone yesterday. He confirmed that two of his clients authored the series of letters. Chepucavage said further that these clients have significant experience in trading ETFs and data collection involving ETFs.

Throughout their letters, the whistleblowers use the phrase ETP, for Exchange Traded Product, which includes both ETFs and ETNs, Exchange Traded Notes. In a letter that was logged in at the SEC on January 13, 2016, the whistleblowers compared some of these investments to the subprime mortgage products that fueled the 2008 crash, noting that regulators and economists were mostly blind to that escalating danger as well. The authors wrote:

“The vast majority of ETPs have very low levels of assets under management and illiquid trading volumes. Many of these have illiquid underlying assets and a large group of ETPs are based on derivatives that are not backed by physical assets such as stocks, bonds or commodities, but rather swaps or other types of complex contracts. Many of these products may have been designed to take what were originally illiquid assets from the books of operators, bundle them into an ETP to make them appear liquid and sell them off to unsuspecting investors. The data suggests this is evidenced by ETPs that are formed, have enough volume in the early stage of their existence to sell shares, but then barely trade again while still remaining listed for sale. This is reminiscent of the mortgage-backed securities bundles sold previous to the last financial crisis in 2008.”

The authors also note in this same letter that they have been presenting their evidence of “significant red flags” and “fundamental flaws” to the SEC since March 2015 and that the industry has not disputed the evidence. However, disclosures of these risks in the product offerings has not been forthcoming either.

To underscore to the regulators just how serious they are about cleaning up the ETP market, in a cover letter dated March 24, 2015, Chepucavage copied every member of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (F-SOC), the body created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation to monitor financial stability in the U.S., including Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, and SEC Chair Mary Jo White.

To continue reading: As Madoff Airs on TV, Two Anonymous Whistleblowers Are Pounding on the SEC’s Door Again

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The Death-Spiral of American Entrepreneurism, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on December 10, 2015 | 1 comment

It’s getting tougher and tougher out there on entrepreneurs, a group SLL is part of. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

If American Entrepreneurism is in a death spiral, then so too is the U.S. economy and the state that lives off the surplus generated by American Entrepreneurism.

The self-congratulatory rah-rah about American entrepreneurism rings hollow,as the evidence is conclusive: entrepreneurship, new businesses and the source of new businesses, self-employment, are all declining.

Two recent articles describe the trend: American Entrepreneurship Is Actually Vanishing. Here’s Why (Inc)

American Entrepreneurship: Dead or Alive? (Gallup)

The Inc.com piece is a nuanced look at entrepreneurship that tries to find a silver lining in the abysmal data: perhaps we’re simply not looking at the right metrics. Perhaps entrepreneurship is best measured by self-employment rather than by only counting businesses with employees (which, by the way, includes incorporated self-employed).

This is very sensible, as self-employment is the ground floor of entrepreneurship. If your one-person business takes off, then you hire employees and scale up from there.

Alas, the feedstock of small business–self-employment–has been in structural decline for decades.

To continue reading: The Death-Spiral of American Entrepreneurism

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The C02 Trump Card, by Eric Peters

Posted on November 5, 2015 | Leave a comment

From Eric Peters, on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

It had to happen – and now it has.

VW – and soon, everyone else, inevitably – is under the gun over “emissions” that aren’t even pollutants.

Carbon dioxide.

This inert gas (look it up if you missed it in high school chemistry) doesn’t contribute to smog, cause acid rain, deplete the the ozone layer, irritate the lungs, or harm babies. Plants breathe it and by breathing it, produce the oxygen we need to breathe. If C02 is a “pollutant” then according to the same logic, so is water vapor (oy, don’t give them ideas).

But carbon dioxide is a “greenhouse gas” that contributes to “climate change,” the new (and pope-approved!) catch-all phrase that encompasses warmer and colder weather, neatly pathologizing both of them.

Cows produce it; we produce it and cars produce it.

VW is in the crosshairs because of this.climate change image

A couple of days ago, the company issued another apologia (here) for “understating” the “emissions” of this inert gas by its gasoline-powered (note italics) powered cars. The “affected” vehicles (about 1 million of them, so far) this time aren’t U.S. models but they aren’t diesel models.

In Europe, you see, they already treat carbon dioxide – an inert gas – as a motor vehicle exhaust subject to government regulation. This is not yet the case in the U.S., but it is only a matter of time.

As they used to say in Germany before the war – der tag kommt.

The Europeans have fully embraced the climate change tar baby – which means they’ve accepted the idea that the inert gas, carbon dioxide, is something that must be “controlled.”

And you can’t control C02 without controlling people.

That’s the beauty of it – from the perspective of those who want to “save the planet” from personal mobility via the privately owned car: Carbon dioxide emissions can’t be eliminated or even appreciably “controlled” without eliminating or severely controlling internal combustion. Because C02 is the product of normal combustion whereas the exhaust emissions heretofore considered harmful (and regulated) are the byproducts of imperfect (incomplete) combustion.

To continue reading: The CO2 Trump Card

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Another Car We’re Not Allowed to Buy, by Eric Peters

Posted on October 6, 2015 | Leave a comment

In case you hadn’t noticed, free markets are long dead in the US, because in free markets willing sellers sell to willing buyers who have determined what best fits their needs among the many alternatives. In our no longer free country, bureaucrats get to decide which alternatives buyers even get to consider. From Eric Peters at theburningplatform.com:

Would you be interested in a brand-new, fully warranted, five-door crossover SUV built by a major, name-brand automaker that gave you 50-plus MPG with a gas (not diesel or hybrid) engine, that has a top speed around 125 mph, is capable of getting to 60 in 12 seconds (about the same as a Prius hybrid) that stickered for less than $5,000?Kwid lead

Yeah, me too.

It’s called the Renault Kwid (see here) and it looks kinda-sorta like a Nissan Juke or Kia Soul and is about the same size as those units.

It isn’t a latter-day Yugo either.

The Kwid comes standard with AC, power windows and a digital dashboard, a seven-inch LCD display in the center stack and most of the apps you’d find in a new Soul or Juke.

It also has a modern, fuel-injected engine and a five-speed overdrive transmission.

The difference is the Kwid costs about a third what a new Juke or Soul would cost you to buy: Its base price is just $4,700 (not counting taxes and tags).

Too bad we can’t buy one.

Not because such a vehicle isn’t available.

It’s just not available here.

Neither are other such cars, like the Suzuki Alto 800 (53 MPG and a base price of $3,870; $5,755 loaded) and the Hyundai Eon (50 MPG and $4,856 to start; $6,636 loaded).

To continue reading: Another Car We’re Not Allowed to Buy

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