When I opened my copy of today's "The Morning Call" (Allentown, PA) I found that the lead article was a piece about Sen (R) Pat Toomey's recent meeting with local business people in Pottsville, PA. Toomey asked the loaded question of who felt that government regulations had worsened their businesses in recent years. Obviously, what followed was a litany of woes cited by the business people. They attacked labor laws and environmental laws as being costly and burdensome. What they did not address was who would pay the costs of the damages caused by the absence of the rules they criticized.Shortly after reading this I heard that Toomey has been appointed to the Super Debt Commission which is designed to create policies to reduce the Federal Deficit.
The problem ignored by Toomey is that businesses generate costs that are not included as cost of production because the consequences are external to the production process. Polluted water means that drinking water facilities have to be more robust to reduce the industrial pollution. Air pollution increases the incidence of lung diseases and subsequent medical costs. The costs of mitigating these problems are put on people who may not even be consumers of the products. Regulation puts the cost of the damages into the cost of the goods or services produced. This way, consumers pay the true cost of the products they use.
I have often heard business people state that they would not pollute because they and their families also live in this world. It may sound like a good argument until you begin to question specific actions. Several years ago a Vice-President for Manufacturing (at an unnamed company) was complaining to me that a certain state's (also unnamed) water rules were unreasonable. He said that the water his company used had come from the ground and, after being used and treated, what went back in was completely potable. I asked him if I could go to the water return system, get a glass of water, and serve it to him. His response was: "...you mean you want me to drink it?" When I said yes, his reply was: "no way in hell will I drink that stuff!" I then asked how he could state that the water was potable if he wouldn't drink? He sputtered and asked me to leave his office.
Toomey, and the rest of his Regressive cohorts play on a well known problem in the realm of public choice. The problem is that governments must create programs that come out somewhere in the middle of the public wants. This means that everybody is unhappy. Lets face it, when you want a cell phone there is a wide variety of models available. You can pick what you want. When the government tries to set policies regarding the parts per million that of a pollutant that are acceptable nobody is happy because some people think the level is too low and some think it is too high. The same applies to average classroom sizes in schools. In elementary schools I have seen studies indicating that 15 - 18 pupils would be optimal.However, I went to school in an era when our average class size was between 35 and 40. Most of my classmates went on to college and have entered fairly high level professions. If a school district sets a class size at 23, the only people who will be happy are those that think 23 is appropriate.
The right wing in this country, including Toomey, play up on this dissatisfaction with government decisions in an attempt to convince people that government can't do anything right. If Toomey and his cadre of conservatives continue to pander to this discontent and they only accept spending reductions, I expect that the commission is predestined to failure.
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