http://wrights2012.com/2011/11/president-obama-calls-over-regulated-american-business-lazy/
QuotePresident Obama has found something else to blame for the recession, adding to a list that includes his Republican predecessors, the weather, and fortune. He thinks that American business people are "lazy" because they haven't focused more on attracting foreign investment. The president told a group of CEOs at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hawaii recently that they've "been a little bit lazy ... over the last couple of decades" because they had "taken for granted" that "people will want to come here" and were not "out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new business into America."
I don't know if it is more appalling that President Obama once again used a foreign trip to criticize America or that he is so very, very out of touch with reality. He obviously has not read, probably has not even seen, the Code of Federal Regulations, which clutters more than 25 feet and ten shelves in the Library of Congress. The CFR is a compilation of all the rules and regulations written by all federal executive departments and agencies, under the statutory authority Congress gives them. It's considered administrative law, written by lawyers for lawyers (and judges), and interpreted by bureaucrats.
In 2000, reporter John Stossel showed just how America's licensing laws, government regulation and taxation stifle business. He did a report for ABC news on his attempt to open a Frisbee store that met all legal and regulatory requirements in Hong Kong, New York City and India. ("Is America Number One?" ABC News Special, Sept. 1, 2000) In Hong Kong the entire process took hours. In NYC it took weeks. In India it would have taken years! In another ABC program, Stossel took one title of the CFR, dealing with federal election laws, removed the pages from the binding, taped them together and rolled them out over the length of a football field, and halfway back again.
The CFR is so big that if you read 100 pages a day, every day, it would take you more than two years to complete it ... but you probably never could finish reading because bureaucrats add more pages with every new piece of federal legislation. In a recent video posted on the website EconomicFreedom.org, the Charles Koch Institute noted that regulatory compliance costs U.S. businesses $1.75 trillion. That would be enough to hire 43 million workers, a quarter of the nation's work force.
After chastising the business leaders for being "lazy," the president said the solution to their indolence was to create — you guessed it — another federal bureaucracy to help foreigners cut the Gordian Knot of local, state and federal regulations. This is the classic technique used by politicians to increase their power. It's the one thing government is good at. As Harry Browne said, "Government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, hand you a crutch and say, 'See, if it weren't for the government you couldn't walk.'"
The average federal regulator destroys 150 private sector jobs per year. State regulators do even more damage. Several states have attempted to drive African-Americans out of the hair-braiding business by requiring them to get a $5,000 cosmetology license — taking a year-long course from schools that don't even teach braiding. Texas regulators force computer repair technicians to get a costly private investigator license that requires a three-year apprenticeship. Louisiana even force florists to pass a rigorous licensing exam, even though experts can't tell which floral arrangements were created by "licensed" professionals.
Why then should any foreign investor want to spend money in the United States when our own local and federal governments treat productive and prosperous entrepreneurs as mere "sources of revenue," to be regulated, controlled, and taxed to support the "less fortunate" or to serve the "common good." Why should foreign businesses, banks and governments invest in America when they can simply lend money to an American government run by politicians who cannot control their spending addiction?
The problem is not that American business is lazy, it is that our ruling elites have bankrupted our country and continue to drive us deeper into debt. The problem is that our political leaders lack the moral and intellectual courage to make the hard choices needed to turn the economy around. Only by stopping the spending, and lifting the regulatory loads that burden-down entrepreneurs and stifles the creative and productive spirit of America, will we see our nation's economy improve.
Great read. The final paragraph easily is the most important thing to take out of it.
Quote from: D on November 20, 2011, 09:10:45 AM
Great read. The final paragraph easily is the most important thing to take out of it.
I agree: it was great. But I think though that Mr. Wrights is giving Obama too little "credit". allow me to explain first with a more...small scale example:
to me, Obama's address to the Companies of this country is just like that presumptuous prick of a professor I had, who told me I was lazy because I was sure that I should have been making an A when I was in fact making a B, while at the same time unfairly docking points off for all my assignments, for the most absurd and unreasonable things imaginable.
seriously, I did everything I was instructed to do, and ended up with the same answer a friend of mine did-we checked later, but he made an A, and I made an F. f***ing bastard (the professor). and his excuse? I left out something I was not even required to do (and while we're at it, the other guy didn't do it either). his class was the first time I failed to make an A in a geology class for this kind of bullshit. And like Obama, he'll of course reap what he sowed; if not from me, than future students will call him out on it.
ok, I'm detouring here, but you get the idea. the point is, There is no way Obama couldn't have known about the regulations (even in gist form). I really cannot see how he didn't even have an inkling that he might be a bit out of touch with reality: after-all, he did introduce some more regulations himself (in 2010 of course). it would be like the professor feigning ignorance about the fact that he preferentially and overwhelmingly favored one student over another.
hence of course, why I think he's giving Obama too little "credit". just like some people I know give that bastard too little "credit" when they tell me it was a "bad luck" when I got that F in the assignment, and a B in class. (by and by, the guy who got an A also thinks the same as I do).
it's just my opinion though (one I also hold about Bush and Clinton and everyone else).
"He thinks that American business people are "lazy" because they haven't focused more on attracting foreign investment. "
Maybe they don't get a lot of foreign investment because the deficit soaks so much of it up.
Something else I thought of: those of you familiar with basic economics will know that the greater the amount of foreign investment, the greater the trade deficit, which the economically-ignorant keep spouting off is a bad thing!
Also in the 1970's and 80's everyone was paranoid that foreign investment would lead to foreigners ultimately controlling Americans by buying up all of our corporations. Just look at Back to the Future 2 with Marty McFly working for that Japanese Conglomerate or Peter Linch in Network complaining about Saudi Arabians buying up all of our media and forcing them to change his programming.
Quote from: Goaticus on November 20, 2011, 06:52:11 PM
Also in the 1970's and 80's everyone was paranoid that foreign investment would lead to foreigners ultimately controlling Americans by buying up all of our corporations. Just look at Back to the Future 2 with Marty McFly working for that Japanese Conglomerate or Peter Linch in Network complaining about Saudi Arabians buying up all of our media and forcing them to change his programming.
IIRC, the Japanese investment community did manage to buy of rather a lot of stuff in the US in the early to mid 90's...and then sold it off at firesale prices when they needed cash to replace what decades of crooked accounting had pretended hadn't been stolen. (That wouild be the '97 Asian Meltdown. That one really ticked me off, I was going to go and teach English in Korea for a year or two. When that came down, they started sending teachers home as the private schools shut down.)