Oh come on this will create jobs. Didnt you hear? It will create an army of paper pushers!
Regardless of the estimates of the cost of this one regulation, this is JUST ONE REGULATION. With how many hundreds or thousands of regulations must any given company comply? The cost of doing business in this country keeps going up and up, and there doesn't appear to be any movement to bring it down. Any talk of streamlining or removing onerous regulations results in Democrats screaming "Corporations want to dump toxic waste in my childs mouth!!!!!"
There must be a middle ground, but we have no intention of finding it. Democrats will keep implementing bad regulation, Republicans will keep repealing good regulation and in the end we will end up a shitty has-been country.
Carry on, good soldiers.
I wouldnt trust compliance cost estimates period.
don't ever fucking trust those estimates. they are never right and they're usually short by a significant amount because the accountants forget about some shit or think they're capable of predicting the future better than a 900 number. i remember one refinery i was at, EPA was on their SHIT to build this new facility because it would make their refined products "cleaner". so they spend a ton of money building this unit and right before it's about to get thrown on line, tear it down, the EPA was wrong, that shit is actually WORSE. So thousands and thousands of man hours wasted, millions and millions of dollars wasted and for what? nothing.
We see many claims here that govt regulation is burdening our businesses/economy, many argue it isn't so.
We see claims that companies are hoarding money and just being greedy, others have said they are holding off because of uncertainty.
Below is an example of burdensome and expensive new regulation that is contributing to the uncertainty. This new regulatory provision, not expected to be finalized until later this year, was stuck into the Dodd Frank bill which ostensibly about domestic banking reform. Why/how does stuff about the Congo and rebel groups belong in there?
For some reason it's hard to find this stuff in the mainstream media, it's been pretty mush ignored (except a few reports here and there about the unintended humanitarian problems this is causing - some will just stop doing business with them.)
Fern
We see many claims here that govt regulation is burdening our businesses/economy, many argue it isn't so.
We see claims that companies are hoarding money and just being greedy, others have said they are holding off because of uncertainty.
Below is an example of burdensome and expensive new regulation that is contributing to the uncertainty. This new regulatory provision, not expected to be finalized until later this year, was stuck into the Dodd Frank bill which ostensibly about domestic banking reform. Why/how does stuff about the Congo and rebel groups belong in there?
For some reason it's hard to find this stuff in the mainstream media, it's been pretty mush ignored (except a few reports here and there about the unintended humanitarian problems this is causing - some will just stop doing business with them.)
It's a fairly long article, so I've only quoted part below.
http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/14586443?f=search
So, we're running expensive foreign policy initiatives off the backs of our companies and we wonder why none want to come here, and those that are here keep leaving.
But never mind this stuff, let's keep painting schools and filing potholes' that'll fix our economy.
And nah, companies don't need to keep funds in reserve for complying with this new stuff, they can just blow their money now and borrow more if needed next year like the fed govt.
Fern
No he seems to be arguing that banning conflict materials in they way it was done creates an onerous burden on those who are not using said materials, and still fails to protect them from random impositions on their lives due to the impossibility of documenting every grain of sand on the planet.Are you seriously advocating against banning conflict minerals because it costs money to use ethically sourced materials?
What is a right and wrong? The wrong of happening to have used a mineral that is also being sold by a warlord in some god-awful shithole? Where is the "wrong"? You do realize that even if there were a global system for tracking every shipment of every mineral in the world from mine to retail shelf that the system would still be subject to counterfeiting and fraud, right? In your binary world, any objection to such a system is "wrong" because there happens to be a war somewhere. That's reasonable.It's not a "foreign policy initiative". It's fucking right and wrong. The newly moral relativist right wing makes me sick.
Seems like you might have a point on this one Fern. Might be worth someone finding the actual relevant text in Dodd-Frank.
I will say one thing here. I do not trust estimates of regulatory cost from the National Association of Manufacturers, a lobby group whose sole purpose is to oppose any and all regulations. They are known to provide estimates which are 2 to 10 fold what CBO and other independent groups have estimated. Just recently there was a 10 to 1 discrepancy between their estimates of the cost of new emission regulations and the administration's estimate. While I wouldn't trust the administration's estimate outright either, I'm certainly not going to take the word of a lobbyist group, especially not one with that purpose and history.
-snip-
No he seems to be arguing that banning conflict materials in they way it was done creates an onerous burden on those who are not using said materials, and still fails to protect them from random impositions on their lives due to the impossibility of documenting every grain of sand on the planet.
What is a right and wrong? The wrong of happening to have used a mineral that is also being sold by a warlord in some god-awful shithole? Where is the "wrong"? You do realize that even if there were a global system for tracking every shipment of every mineral in the world from mine to retail shelf that the system would still be subject to counterfeiting and fraud, right? In your binary world, any objection to such a system is "wrong" because there happens to be a war somewhere. That's reasonable.
You've got a pretty naive idea of how federal regulations work.You're acting like you have to hire an army of private investigators rather than just call the suppliers and make sure they aren't funding genocide.
Please provide a link with some evidence as to why should we believe their estimates are unreliable.
TIA
Fern
Please provide a link with some evidence as to why should we believe their estimates are unreliable.
TIA
Fern
lmao.
Are you seriously advocating against banning conflict minerals because it costs money to use ethically sourced materials?
It's not a "foreign policy initiative". It's fucking right and wrong. The newly moral relativist right wing makes me sick.
Thanks, you're (likely) unknowingly proving my point.
Fern
The main point of my creating this thread is to show that regulations, many of which unknown to the 'experts' here who nevertheless pontificate endless about their harmlessness, are real and burdensome.
The point isn't whether you believe that they are warranted or not, the point is that they do in fact exist and are costly.
No one can reasonably believe that excessive regulations in the USA doesn't discourage foreign businesses from locating here, or encourage local businesses to move elsewhere (abroad).
Fern
The main point of my creating this thread is to show that regulations, many of which unknown to the 'experts' here who nevertheless pontificate endless about their harmlessness, are real and burdensome.
The point isn't whether you believe that they are warranted or not, the point is that they do in fact exist and are costly.
No one can reasonably believe that excessive regulations in the USA doesn't discourage foreign businesses from locating here, or encourage local businesses to move elsewhere (abroad).
Fern
Right, because a business lobby group has an incentive to accurately estimate regulatory costs and no disincentive to overestimate. Good call.
Right, because a business lobby group has an incentive to accurately estimate regulatory costs and no disincentive to overestimate. Good call.
It makes it hard if one side is honest.
Dishonest side makes its case - some believe, some call foul.
Honest side makes its case - "they're just lying too, both sides are biased and special interests you can't trust!"
Happens a lot in political issues. The liars tend to benefit, unfortunately.
Very few people have argued they discourage both of those things. Difference is we don't believe your magnitudes are anywhere near worrisome, hence the reason this discussion is pointless without corroboration of your clearly biasedly sourced numbers.
No matter which side you are on, you do have an incentive to get it right - credibility. And of course, you also have an incentive to err on whichever side you hold.
To hold the position that each side has some huge incentive to lie, and will do so, merely means no one can be trusted until we bring in a totally objective party and those are difficult to find.
Fern
Except you didn't really make the argument that the regulations are excessive,
you made the argument that they exist and cost some amount of money. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have them, right?
No, I won't really make that argument based on one regulation. But no one can reasonably argue that regulations are not burdensome if they're unaware of what regulations actually exist.
Right. Just because they cost money doesn't mean they shouldn't exist. If that were the case then we'd have no regulations because they all cost at least some amount of money.
Again, my point was that we have regulations the vast majority of people are unaware of. Businesses know of them because they are dealing with them. To discount their complaints completely out of hand while at the same time being unaware of those regulations is unreasonable.
While I do personally object to this regulation, it is not why have chosen it. I have chosen it because the information about it was recently published and so it was handy as an illustration of relatively unknown burdensome regulations that exist.
There are more that I will posting. I don't believe the average person has any decent idea of the regulations that exist.
Fern
That's an ideological argument that's full of crap. You know how propagandists protect credibility while lying? With propaganda, not honesty. It's what they do.
But you're right that it's also wrong to assume 'both sides lie', as I suggested above. Some do, some don't.
The problem is that the ones who don't have a hard time getting credit.
It's much simpler to say 'they all do it' - denying any reward for doing the right thing, which as I said above, tends to help the liars.