Losers Magazine (tm) Article No. 11 (10/6/95) by Carl E. Person

An Incomplete Checklist of Problems Which If Solved Would Permit a Fair Division of the Economic Pie

I find that while writing about what's wrong with the economy I wind up with too much discussion and not enough specific listing of the troublesome areas or hit list of components which need correction.

I'm going to try to list my major concerns without any unnecessary discussion to be able to pull together a list of problems which persons can use as a checklist, although incomplete I must hasten to add.

Without any specific order of priority (such as dollar impact, or ease or difficulty in solving), let me offer the following list of economic problems which collectively, if solved, would turn around the entire economy without question.

• Federal and state laws regulating the raising of capital by small and new businesses.
• State laws regulating for-profit vocational and career schools more strenuously than the regulation of the competing educational offerings of the nation's non-profit colleges and universities.
• Federal and state laws relating to student loans for post-secondary education.
• Medallion licensing of taxicabs in the nation's cities.
• Underfinancing of the nation's federal and state court systems.
• Collection of tolls on the nation's highways while vehicles are waiting in line to pay tolls.
• Federal fair labor standard laws which require government contractors to pay union scale on government jobs.
• Requirement of performance bonds from small business.
• Rule of the National Association of Securities Dealers 2191.02 (if I remember correctly) which prohibits an NASD member (other than Merrill Lynch) from underwriting its own public offering of securities.
• Excessive requirements for the establishment and operation of day-care centers.
• Financing of elections.
• Seniority system in legislative bodies.
• Committee system in legislative bodies.
• Lack of voucher system in public K-12 education.
• Excessive compensation, pensions, healthcare, vacations, job protection and waste in public sector in relation to the declining economic position of the public served.
• Excessive, arbitrary and discriminatory rules and regulations which an insurgent must overcome to go up against an incumbent elected official.
• Lack of enforcement of the nation's antitrust laws.
• All types of licensing requirements which create costs in excess of benefits
• Use of parking tickets to raise money for cities and towns.
• Use of towing by cities and towns to raise additional revenues.
• Allowing federal (and any state) judges who are appointed for life to have the opportunity to be elevated to a higher level.
• Revision of the copyright laws which since 1/1/78 have eliminated substantial state-law protections (under the preemption provision) for the creations of writers of all types.
• Excessive filing and maintenance fees for U.S. patents.
• Lack of any state agency to pay for patent applications for residents of the state who cannot afford to file for protection of their inventions.
• Lack of any opportunity of residents of a city or state to compete for government jobs on the basis of price (i.e., amount of salary) if everything else is equal.
• Failure to eliminate all rules and regulations (including payroll taxes and payroll reports) for the first three employees of any business.
• Tax incentives offered and/or given by one city or state to attract a business from another, and the offering and/or giving of tax incentives to one business in a city or state which are not made available to all businesses in the city or state.
• Awarding sanctions (generally the legal fees incurred by a company such as General Motors or even O.J.) against the plaintiff or his/her lawyer when the plaintiff loses the case.
• Failure of a city or state government to have its financial dealings on line to enable an interested reporter, competitor or other person to trace each dollar from recipient back through the governmental officials or employees who approved the payment or budgetary item.
• Holding of parades every week which have the effect of creating traffic jams and waiting time (often of 15-60 minutes) for disinterested victims.
• Tearing up of roadways for repairs without performing the repairs quickly (i.e., within several days or a week at most).
• Lack of laws which would enable citizens to issue valid summonses against incompetent or abusive public officials.
• Use of building or other inspectors when the government knows that inspections are merely an excuse for demanding bribes.
• Failure to privatize government functions, including motor vehicle bureaus, schools, garbage collection, and many other areas in which waste, abuse and political corruption are rampant.
• Failure of government to break down government bidding opportunities to enable small businesses to compete in the bidding process.
• Lack of legal standards by which American businesses can go into court and exclude goods and services which unfairly compete against them and cause the loss of jobs for Americans.
• Failure to eliminate laws, rules and regulations which interfere with competition.

The problems referred to above are not all of the problems which should be addressed. In fact, the problem of excessive licensing covers thousands of different types of licenses many of which can hardly be justified on a cost/benefit analysis, and serve i nstead to protect the businesses which are granted the original licenses.

Copyright © 1995 by Carl E. Person. Permission is given for non-commercial users to send a copy of the data processing file for this work by electronic means to a specific individual for his or her own use, and then only if the entire file is sent, including this copyright notice, but no permission is given for anyone to copy or transmit this file for or to any person for public viewing or downloading. It is intended by the author of this work that the work shall be made available in electronic fo rm only through LawMall (tm).