Free is very, very expensive
Read this at PL and this at JOM. Now imagine how many tens or hundreds of thousands of man-hours were spent at taxpayer expense for the government employees and their various consultants and lawyers to figure out how to give something costing $100-600 a year away for free (and who should pay for the free stuff). Now think about how many hours were spent in the private sector figuring out (a) what the regulations meant; (b) what they could do about them; and (c) how to increase prices on x in order to pay for the now-free services to y. Question: how could anyone build a plant or start a business in this country when free is so expensive? Answer: for the most part, they don’t.
February 13th, 2012 at 11:01 am
Off topic but in case you missed it. From Mish:
China Instructs Banks to Roll Over $1.7 Trillion in Debt to Avoid Mass Default
A few years ago local Chinese municipalities had little debt. Today they have a $1.7 trillion mountain of it, nearly all of it financing economically non-viable projects in the name of “stimulus”.
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/02/china-instructs-banks-to-roll-over-17.html
February 14th, 2012 at 11:33 am
Weekly Standard nails the larger issue here:
Since when can the Government order a company to give a product away for free? And why stop there? Why not give away prescription drugs? Or bread? Or gasoline?
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/no-precedent-government-ordering-private-companies-offer-product-free_626689.html