Townhall

Government Gone Bad

by John Stossel

Dec 12, 2012

Politicians claim they make our lives better by passing laws. But laws rarely improve life. They go wrong. Unintended consequences are inevitable.

Most voters don't pay enough attention to notice. They read headlines. They watch the Rose Garden signing ceremonies and hear the pundits declare that progress was made. Bipartisanship! Something got done. We assume a problem was solved.

Intuition tells us that government is in the problem-solving business, and so the more laws passed, the better off we are. The possibility that fewer laws could leave us better off is hard to grasp. Kids visiting Washington don't ask their congressmen, "What laws did you repeal?" It's always, "What did you pass?"

And so they pass and pass -- a thousand pages of proposed new rules each week -- and for every rule, there's an unintended consequence, or several.

It's one reason America has been unusually slow to recover from the Great Recession. After previous recessions, employers quickly resumed hiring. Not this time. The unemployment rate is still near 8 percent. It only fell last month because people stopped looking for jobs.

Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute understands what's happening.

"Add up all the regulations and red tape, all the government spending, all the tax increases we're about to get -- you can understand why entrepreneurs think: "Maybe I don't want to hire people. ... I want to keep my company small. I don't want to give health insurance, because then I'm stuck with all the Obamacare mandates." We can see our future in Europe -- unless we change. Ann Jolis, who covers European labor issues for The Wall Street Journal, watches how government-imposed work rules sabotage economies.

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