A “study” called Cost of State Regulations on California Small Business Study makes some wild, wild claims! From the summary,
The study finds that the total cost of [business]regulation to the
State of California is $492.994 billion which is almost five times the
State’s general fund budget, and almost a third of the State’s gross
product. The cost of regulation results in an employment loss of 3.8
million jobs which is a tenth of the State’s population.
Scary. Wild. Mostly, though, just unbelievable. I wonder who paid for the study?
KQED’s Capital Notes blog tracked down some of the sources of the wild, wild claims.
The authors previously released a study wildly, wildly claiming that California’s AB32 climate change legislation will cost California’s small businesses $182 billion a year and cost 1.1 million jobs. I wonder who paid for that study?
For this “regulations” report they relied data from on a Forbes Magazine report listing California as a bad state in which to do business. The Forbes report relies on data from the Pacific Research Institute.
This reminded me that the Pacific Research Institute released a 2007 “study” making the wild, wild claim that allowing people to sue companies that harm them costs $865 billion per year. I wonder who paid for this study?
David Dayen writes about this at Calitics,
Basically, regulations take your wives, enslave your children, throw
your ice cream on the ground, and write “loser” on your chest in sun
tan lotion when you fall asleep at the beach. It’s amazing how in line
this study is with standard conservative tropes about onerous
regulations and big government. I wonder why that is?
I think I’ll do a “study” that makes a claim that conservative “studies” cost us more than $12 trillion a year. The trouble is, who would pay me to write it?
I’m sure the environmental legislation requiring 90% reduction in water to the farmers in the San Joaquin valley totally destroying many industries supplies has nothing to do with it? come on, it may be hard to quantify, but there are plenty of hostile laws against California business’.
While there is no doubt that maintaining family farms today has become more and more challenging, one thing is clear: farmers can’t and won’t pick up their business and move. The land is going to stay where it is, so any argument that farming will just pick up and move elsewhere is foolishness.
Farmers are among the heartiest and most innovative people. They deal with the unpredictability of nature all the time. They’re willing to be flexible, creative and industrious in order to survive. It’s not the economy, it’s mother nature they battle. They’ve been incredibly resilient and open to new forms of irrigation and technology. With the right incentives, they can and do survive and sometimes even flourish.
What we do know is that the huge agri-businesses that are truly running the anti-environment campaigns have done more to ruin California’s family-based farms than anyone else. Family farms just can’t compete with the high volume and price manipulations big companies create.
And, ironically, it’s the anti-tax,right-wingers who are putting family farms at risk, especially by squeezing the budget of the state so that we’re cutting back (and out)incentives like the Williamson Act funding which gives farmers significant tax credits to encourage them to farm rather than sell their land to developers or giant chemical/agri=business conglomerates.