Certain Unalienable Rights (Craig Douglass On Consumers)

Job killers! No, not highly visible tattoos the Urban Dictionary lists as “job-killer ink.” What we’re talking about are federal and state regulations often singled out by business and industry. These disdained policies usually range from mandatory increases in minimum wage and more liberal employee leave policies to workplace safety and environmental protections. Or, more recently, increased unemployment payments.

Each year the California Chamber of Commerce (CalChamber) publishes a list of state legislation it deems “job killers,” legislation identified as harmful to employers and the economy. This year, CalChamber lobbied to kill at least 25 bills, including those regarding employment mandates, taxes, housing, workplace safety and workers’ compensation. As a chamber of commerce, it’s doing its job and its members’ bidding. Nothing wrong with that.

There is debate, however, on the actual effect regulations have on private-sector job losses or the lack of new-job creation. Business and general news media, depending on where they are on the left-to-right spectrum, can be very precise about what is otherwise imprecise research on the matter.

Agreement is generally reached on the advantages and disadvantages of regulations, and how regulations affect consumers and producers.

Regulatory advantages include better working conditions, protection of rights, prevention of monopolies, public health and safety, cleaner air and water, and ensuring tax revenue for programs benefiting the public good.

Disadvantages, too, are well cited. They include retarding innovation, increasing administrative work and consuming time, disproportionately affecting small business, and raising business costs and consumer prices.

Now, any smart business or industry wants to do more with less. And the “less” usually means fewer employees and the payroll and benefit costs that go along with them. It’s simply called productivity. And you can increase that with streamlined best practices, technology and automation.

Our belief is that the process by which government regulations are promulgated should be accompanied by not necessarily an economic impact statement, but a value-added statement — the value a regulation will add to the product or service. And value can be measured at the consumer level, at least, by such metrics as confidence in the performance of the product, the safety with which it was produced and the fairness with which it is marketed.

We’ll let the debate over regulation and private-sector job creation and retention go, praying only for balance.

We’re worried, though, about something else that may be a little more esoteric, but no less important: social legislation and regulations that affect individual rights, personal behavior and professional services.

There may be a paradoxical dilemma in certain legislative efforts around the country. That dilemma has to do with a notion that government should be limited in its involvement in our daily lives. “Live Free or Die.” “Don’t Tread on Me.” “Give me liberty, or give me death!” And the like.

But then we see rules and regulations that interpose government in the bedroom, the locker room, the doctor’s office and the voting booth. These are contradictory propositions.

Are these regulatory expressions of societal constraints job killers? Do they create pause among progressive business and industry leaders who are expanding their consumer service companies or relocating industries that manufacture and distribute consumer products? Do economic development efforts, so highly competitive among states (and nations, for that matter), suffer at the incongruity between ideology and policy? Chambers of commerce, no less, have opined in the affirmative.

It was once thought progressives (nee liberals) preferred government intervention to ensure social and economic equality, while conservatives opposed government intervention to protect social and economic equality.

Said another way, progressives would initiate a regulation to level the playing field. Conservatives, on the other hand, would eschew a regulation so the marketplace could provide equanimity. Whose rights are ensured; whose rights are protected?

We know this: The notion of protecting responsible and independent individuals from themselves has seldom worked to the benefit of our society or the social order maintained by our economic and political traditions.

Job killers? Perhaps. A slap at certain unalienable rights? Most assuredly.

Craig Douglass serves as executive director of the Regional Recycling & Waste Reduction District in Pulaski County.