Yes, I am awre of that. I was using it as an example of destructive regulation, which was a separate issue than the growth of new regulations…
I call you out because the language in your posts often IMHO indicates to the casual reader that you are an American; you are not. If you don’t wish to be called out on it, choose your words carefully.
The Merchant Marine Act of 1920? It’s really sad that there has been no time in the hundred years since it passed when the party of ‘less regulation’ was totally in charge and could do something to end this clearly horrible act.
Over how long? And does it cost more or less than nutrition labeling regulations. And given how obesity is a big problem in the US, costing the economy tons of money, maybe such labeling laws can save money.
Yeah, Sam. That Upton Sinclair, what a pain.
And back then airlines were highly regulated, in routes and pricing. Damn that free enterprise!
Sam’s reliance on Google cites and book learnin’ for a country in which he doesn’t live constantly shows, doesn’t it? Like when he quotes the number of regulations in the Federal Register and thinks it shows some form of evil socialism, blah blah blah.
But what it shows, Sam, is how the United State government is a tool for industry, in how they have learned to use the Federal government to create rules which benefit both the industry and the consumer… and, just by happenstance, drives up the barriers of entry for new competitors.
To your point, there’s a lot of rules. To the other’s points, yeah, the rules protect the consumer. To the capitalists point, however, these rules legally prevent competition.
An obvious example is building a new post-WW2 car company which meets Federal and California standards. This is such a massive undertaking no other US corporation has even come close to dislodging the Big Three since the war - not Kaiser, not Tesla, no one. The closest competitors are other national companies with historically strong government winds blowing their sails (Toyota, Hyundai, etc), those which also have a pre-war history (Volkswagen, Fiat, etc).
Same thing with food. Think you’re going to create a peanut butter brand which competes with Jif? LOL, the rules for making FDA approved peanut butter, at the scales needed to compete with Jif, makes this a losing investment… no one is going to do it, because the government is used to stifle competition by the very companies who use their market power to dictate the regulations.
I’ve brought it up before, but a perfect example of how the US government is used, not as a means to stifle or control industry, but as a means to give industry the legal cover to do what it wants, one should look no further than the Kingsbury Commitment of 1913 (which I know I’ve mentioned before).
Long story short, the big business controversy of 1912 was that ATT had control of both voice and wired (telegraph) communications. Another issue was ATT’s refusal to connect with many local carriers, meaning that entire cities only had local service, not long distance. If ATT didn’t connect, say, Quincy MA to its network, Quincy can’t call NY, LA, Atlanta, Hartford, etc.
Such was the state of telephony in 1912.
Seeing what just happened to Standard Oil (Supreme Court ordered breakup in December 1911), and seeing the amazing positive impact breaking up Standard had on John Rockefellers finances*, ATT slyly decided to meet the controversy head on:
Executive VP Nathan Kinsgbury penned a letter… with the ATT Boards approval… effectively conceding the DOJ’s points, saying ATT will work to improve connectivity, and that it will divest itself of the controversial Western Union telegraphy division. The US government, delighted that the “One Policy, One System” controversy was going to be eliminated, agreed to the commitment, the DOJ releasing a statement declaring the Kingsbury letter gave the US government everything it wanted.
… And with the government signed off, ATT then proceeded to buy out 221 of the 237 independent phone operators then in existence over the next decade, cementing itself into an even more powerful monopoly, all the time pointing to the Kingsbury Commitment as showing that the US government had agreed to this. And a chastened US government did agree to this, spending the next 70 years trying to rectify its mistake.
Anyway, it’s silly to look at, say, food regulations and think “Poor Kellogg’s, how will they ever make it” knowing it was Kellogg’s who negotiated the regulations in the first place, knowing they did this with an eye towards stifling competition.
*When the Supreme Court broke up Standard Oil, they only broke up the management.
They did not touch the ownership.
So Rockefeller… who had 24% of all SO shares… ended up with 24% of Exxon (Standard Oil of New Jersey), 24% of Chevron (SOCal), 24% of Sohio, etc. His fortune shot from $200 million to about $1 billion in less than a decade, all because of the Supreme Court decision. In finance terms, let’s just say the SO breakup unlocked a lot of value.
Anyway, ATT execs saw the Supreme Court decision, realized the implications, and gamed the system so they could participate. And by doing they created a 70 year monopoly by ‘giving up’ their monopoly.
Because that’s how things are done in America. The government is used to funnel tax payer money to large corporations which then create rules and systems to drive away competition. And I feel that if some people had some experiential knowledge of America, as opposed to Google searches and Wiki citations, they would understand this in their bones.
If this were the outgoing Bush 1 administration I wouldn’t have even bothered to note this. If this were the outgoing Nixon administration, I probably would wholeheartedly agree with you. Hell, if it were the outgoing Andrew Jackson administration, I would agree.
But a member of the administration which lied about COVID, which lied about the election, the administration which started out with removing information from federal agency websites about AIDS, climate change, and endangered species…
… by which means have these people earned credibility with you, especially in the areas of data, information, and truth? And why would you think the BLS, or even the Fed, would remain untouched by the Administration of Lies? I’m truly interested in this.
To the above, while I don’t want to derail my thread, I have noticed… oddities… in some of the data series I track at the Federal Reserve. One remarkable one is the total value of all assets in the United States, by quarter, during the year of COVID:
I’m still digging into the above, trying to find a rational explanation of how a country 10,000,000 jobs and 300,000 citizens poorer in Q4 2020 was $10 trillion wealthier than the same country who had those 10,000,000 jobs and 300,000 citizens in 2019. It’s just way outside historical expectations, and my initial review shows that much of this is driven by the equities market… which has been propped up by the Federal Reserve for 10 years, accelerating in the last 3:
Anyway, yes, there is sufficient reason to believe that data coming from the Trump administration, and remaining Trump administration officials, may not be accurate. My cite: the last 5 years.
The problem is that the party of ‘less regulation’ is divided between those who find the status quo more profitable and those who find changing it more profitable. And the status quo tends to have better lobbying groups.
Fun op-ed here, from the Cato Institute/Washington Examiner.
$2.5T of that is US housing stock. $6.8T was equities. I’m missing ~$700M by my count. We avoided both a (long-term) stock selloff and people losing their (owned) homes, although that lags so we’ll see. This is consistent with either aid programs working or only poor people getting screwed.
Can someone explain this graph to me?
The blue line is given as the employment-population ratio for people aged 25-54, the relevance of which to JohnT’s caption confuses me because a Boomer would be at least 57.
~Max
I’m assuming it’s the wrong plot. The labor force participation rates for core age and 55+ are here:
Good catch! I take the blame of course, but the source was… Paul Krugman:
Related:
Various red states have worked hard to crack down on unemployment… by making it harder to get unemployment benefits. This is nothing new, but they really ramped it up during the pandemic.
Well, unless you quit your job because you don’t want to get vaccinated, that is.
Thank you for writing all of that, as it saved me the trouble, and is much better and more thorough than I could have done.
One important point is that the government being a tool for industry is a non-partisan problem. Corporations are happy to lobby and give money to both sides. Both Democrats and Republicans are quick to appease these corporate interest. Sure, sometimes one side or the other upsets some industry, but on the whole they both are beholden to the wealthy.
For an ongoing example of regulation being a tool for monopolies, look right now at the various debates around regulation of the internet, social media, and reform of Section 230. Most of these will just create complex and difficult regulations that only the entrenched players will be able to comply. This is exactly why Facebook has asked congress to please regulate them.
Getting back to the point of this thread, this is just one aspect of the power differential between corporations and workers, which has resulted in workers being exploited and underpaid. People don’t want bad jobs, and for reasons people are not taking bad jobs. We can debate about those reasons, but it seems more productive to take steps to make bad jobs into good jobs, that people are willing to do.
How is that more productive towards the goal of dominating and controlling some aspect/percentage of the economy and labor force/market?
My son’s doctors office is having the same issue. I called twice to schedule a flu shot for him and was told on the first attempt it would be two weeks before a clinic opened. I called back and they said they cancelled the clinic due to lack of staff. It even says when you call that they are short on staff.
There must still be some heirs who qualify under the Mexican Border (1916-17) skirmish, or WWI.
As a young woman, I hung out with a woman (she wasn’t my friend; let’s not go there) whose recently-deceased father was a WWII combat veteran, and her mother, who was about 60 years old at the time, got some kind of widow’s benefit from his service. This was in the mid 1980s.
The same thing is true for nail technicians, and I’ve heard the same thing about hair braiders. There have been some unlicensed salons shut down in my area due to hiring people without formal training and licensure.
What I remember reading about hair braiders was that there are some people who are only braiding hair, not doing anything else to it, and that they thought they shouldn’t have to do the hair stylists’ training.
That’s a pretty blurry memory, though, and I don’t know whether it’s true. Nor do I know whether professional hair braiders do use materials on the hair in addition to just braiding it.
– apparently it’s still a current issue, though; and apparently at least a lot of them don’t. I just looked, and found quite a batch of articles, including this one from earlier this year:
That doesn’t mean, however, that people doing the sort of cosmetology work that does involve potentially hazardous chemicals on other people’s heads – plus their own exposure, and disposal issues for things that shouldn’t just be poured down the drain – don’t need to be trained.