Quote:
Originally Posted by tater
Again, I see this as a needless interference in business.
Want to encourage something? Don't ban the opposite, encourage what you want. Offer a corporate tax break to companies for offering low-sodium alternatives to some % of their menu or product line.
If a company choses not to, so be it.
|
That's also a needless interference in business. How about not taxing or subsidizing corporations at all and letting the market work? If you give a tax-break to one industry, it's not only morally wrong (favoritism) but it also messes with the mechanisms of supply and demand, making the economy less efficient.
Prices and consumption are as-close-to-perfect-as-you're-ever-gonna-get mechanisms for transmitting information. They automatically identify what a good is worth and reconcile it with what people are willing to pay because multitudes of individuals are capable of making effective cost-benefit analysis decisions, even if they don't know what that means.
Corn-ethanol is one of my favorite examples of government interference completely ruining part of the economy, with widespread ramifications. Corn-ethanol is an expensive and land-intensive fuel to produce. The industry exists solely because legislation encouraged it. Now we all have to pay more for gas than we would otherwise have to to support a garbage industry that has been shown to do more harm than good. We also have to pay the taxes (or borrow the money) to subsidize it so it can keep not working. The auto industry has had to completely revamp its entire business strategy to produce flex-fuel vehicles, and we also pay more for those. There is no other choice, you have to pay more.
So what are we left with? A massive fleet of vehicles that squander the agricultural wealth of the US for something utterly worthless. That's actually not so bad, considering that countries with starving people are suffering severe food shortages since they can no longer afford the artificially-inflated price of US agricultural products, and charities cannot afford to give them away.
It's good for the corn lobby, though. Eco-tards, lobbyists, and politicians can rest assured that their actions have secured their own welfare for the time being. I'm sure they're also lining up to provide aid to those they have disadvantaged.
In all fairness, I should probably use one of my least-favorite examples of legislation damaging the economy. There are several, but I think I'll use the textile industry example. There was a time when the US textile industry was vibrant and powerful. It provided many jobs, but most of them were crappy by today's standards. Capitalism worked its magic, and the industry became far more efficient as workers were replaced by machines, and workers who built those machines, and engineers who designed those machines, and so on and so forth. This whole process caused a lot of people to lose their jobs, so they banded together to protest "unfair" trade practices. I don't see anything unfair about providing a job to some impoverished girl in China working in a textile mill with hopes of attaining a better life through her efforts, but the US textile industry does. They try to control every freaking aspect of garment production you can possibly imagine through legislation by usage of import limits and regulation. The rules for importing a simple T-shirt into the US are simply mind-boggling. You'd have to be a very expensive attorney to even understand them.
It isn't a matter of encouraging an industry, it's a matter of giving an easy-out to those who can't compete, and who should not compete. The US has long since surpassed the need for a textile industry, just as it has the need for a steel industry, or an automotive industry, and soon, an electronics industry. There's no problem with having a cost-efficient industry, but there is a huge problem with trying to maintain an industry that doesn't pull its weight.
A healthy economy needs to be able to shed dead-weight and grow into new sectors. It needs entrepeneurship and innovative creativity to fuel that growth. Is there not already ample evidence of the free-market creating more jobs than it destroys? Does it not better the standards of living for every nation that embraces it?