Let me ask a simple question…Is there a single activity or thing that is not regulated, taxed or both?

The answer is, no. That leads to the second question…If every single activity is regulated or taxed already, do we really need more regulation.

When do reach reach ‘enough’..You are aware that these things have a cost? Hundreds of billions a year.

1. Too much regulation

2. Corporate taxes too high

3. Labor unions to blame for everything, including high manufacturing costs

C’mon. We’ve all been guilty of buying into these simplistic, election year bromides to some extent over the years.

But bromide #1 seems increasingly illogical: After all, does any sane individual still believe that “too much regulation” in the investment banking sector caused a devastating $8 trillion dollar housing bubble to expand artificially and then… finally… burst? Too much regulation? Or not enough? Some interesting insights might be gained by a casual viewing of the documentary “Inside Job” here:

http://www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/

Meanwhile, bromide #2 also seems suspiciously illogical when one reads the content of the New York Times article at the following link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/economy/25tax.html?pagewanted=all

As the preceding 2011 New York Times story reveals, America’s largest corporation, General Electric, paid no 2010 tax!

And how about bromide #3? That theory seems especially popular in Idaho, but I’m afraid the story is somewhat more complex. Take, for instance, the relative value of our U.S. currency. Those of us who call ourselves United States citizens seem to have an obvious trade deficit problem whether we want to admit it or not. Isn’t $550 billion per year too expensive for us to finance each year into perpetuity??? That’s the huge U.S. trade deficit number on which most economists seem to agree and you’d think we’d start to talk about our trade deficit problem on the news a little bit more than we do now. I mean, let’s face it, a gaping trade deficit of that magnitude seems to relate directly to the value of our dollar vs. other currencies. Think about that. That equates to about 4% of U.S. GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT! We buy more from them (China and other countries) than they buy from us, forcing us to *borrow* the difference. Right? See economist Dean Baker’s article here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/apr/22/economics-economy

I’m talking about the trade deficit and not the U.S. budget deficit.

But next time you talk to your elected official, ask him why he seems to believe savage cuts to your Social Security and your Medicare and how imposing “austerity” will do anything to reduce our trade deficit, which really seems to be at the heart of our problems.

The Chinese are shrewd from a business standpoint and certainly smart enough to know it is in their interest for their currency to remain artificially low relative to our dollar precisely because it’s a highly-valued dollar that puts U.S. based manufacturing at a cost disadvantage and favors Chinese-made products! Labor union concessions won’t change that. Doesn’t an over-valued dollar clearly make American-made products more expensive than comparable products made in China? Isn’t that the key reason our U.S. manufacturing is being vacuumed away?

(Remember Perot’s famous line? “That giant sucking sound…”)

Therefore, doesn’t that lead to an obvious policy suggestion?

Rather than waste our time complaining about the few labor unions that still exist, and rather than waste our time cutting taxes on corporations that already do not pay any taxes, and rather than further weaken regulations in ways that might tempt the Wall Street barons to devise even more nefarious “heads-I-win-tails-you-lose” shenanigans, let’s do something that might make a positive difference: Let’s consider a dollar with a slightly lower value. Economist Dean Baker estimates the U.S. dollar may be approximately 20% over-valued as he stated in this April interview with Bloomberg:

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/69078850/

Isn’t it possible our traditional strong dollar policy may be wrong-headed? In my view, Baker makes a decent argument (in FLASH or PDF format) here:

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/7-things-debt

Dave Frazier wrote:

“Simply put: Government can’t CREATE JOBS shy of massive depression-era public works projects.”

Quite true. I agree, Dave. But as I’m sure you are aware: that’s precisely what the most recent “stimulus” wasn’t. Anybody can do the arithmetic: The collapse of the housing bubble translated into a loss of $1.2 trillion in annual demand. The stimulus only amounted to around $800 billion. Not big enough to close the gap. And only about two-thirds of this “stimulus” was for public spending anyway. The rest was tax cuts. Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman famously and publicly warned the stimulus was too small in 2009:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/opinion/09krugman.html

But, unfortunately, too much ideology and not enough bold action by both parties led to the inadequate stimulus that the country got.

Sadly, many unemployed who want to work still can’t find a job. Maybe if we fix this trade deficit issue, our unemployed might have better prospects. I’d like to see our country lead the world in things like light rail manufacturing and the manufacture of solar and wind energy technology.

EDITOR NOTE–Any more comments this long and I will have to purchase more band width just for storage! Glad we got you to thinking, however.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/12/regulation-nation-drowning-in-rules-businesses-brace-for-cost-and-time-for/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904583204576544712358583844.html?mod=rss_com_mostcommentart