Posts Tagged regulation

You’ll Never Get Your Hair Cut in this Town Again

Recently, a colleague of mine was asked to research the impact of professional licensing laws and to report her findings to a legislative study committee. Licensing laws have steadily proliferated—in1970, about 10% of the American workforce required a license of some sort in order to earn a living; by 2000, that percentage had doubled to [...]

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It’s Complicated

It’s election season, and as I’ve watched the various ads, debates and speeches—and grown impatient with the slogans and posturing—it’s occurred to me that the current complexity of our society and world may be outstripping our ability to govern ourselves. Invoking Ronald Reagan or FDR appeals to partisans, and pledging fealty to American values or [...]

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A Seemingly Simple Question

The job of the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, where I teach, is to produce thoughtful public and nonprofit managers—people who can deal with the increasing complexities of public and regulatory policy. That requires spending a good deal of time analyzing what rules government should and should not enact. Rulemaking is an especially important [...]

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Those “Hidden” Taxes

One of the most frequent accusations leveled against government regulatory activity is that such regulation constitutes a “hidden tax” and that regulation is for that reason illegitimate. Dispatches from the Culture Wars has the best explanation of the fallacy of that argument that I’ve seen.

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