{"id":8805,"date":"2010-09-02T17:24:50","date_gmt":"2010-09-02T17:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/e-commerce\/dear_government_please_stop_helping_us.html"},"modified":"2010-09-02T17:24:50","modified_gmt":"2010-09-02T17:24:50","slug":"dear-government-please-stop-helping-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/financial\/dear-government-please-stop-helping-us.html","title":{"rendered":"Dear Government, Please Stop &#8220;Helping&#8221; Us"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have said before that the Obama administration has been the most anti-business of any administration I have ever seen. There is hostility  towards success achieved through legal business means and <span>demonization<\/span> of virtually every profession (except ironically lawyers, professors and community organizers).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Doctors have been accused or removing tonsils and amputating without reason.<\/li>\n<li>Bankers are irresponsible and fat cats.<\/li>\n<li>Oil industry execs &#8211; well you know.<\/li>\n<li>Hedge funds &#8211; are bad people for fighting the White House during the whole <span>autogate<\/span> controversy of last year where GM and Chrysler were bailed out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>One has to imagine these comments are made to somehow help the US population but it is statements like these that are in-part responsible for keeping companies from hiring and well-off consumers from spending. I can&#8217;t imagine this is what our President intended to happen but the rhetoric hasn&#8217;t ceased and neither have the job losses.<\/p>\n<p>While I come into work every single day and promise myself I won&#8217;t  write about politics it is apparent that politics has become a greater  factor in business than one&#8217;s ideas and potential. In other words if the  government continues changing the pieces around, businesses will  continue to hold off on spending and so will consumers. And of course  this makes government policies in the US not only applicable to my US  readers but to those around the globe.<\/p>\n<p>I have come to realize via very-long Facebook conversations with others that many people believe that the US government needs to spend  and spend and spend on stimulus. Let alone the fact that the $<span>780B<\/span> spent on &#8220;shovel -ready&#8221; projects hasn&#8217;t helped the unemployment rate in the construction sector, etc.<\/p>\n<p>It seems the world boils down to people who believe the government  should solve all our problems and those who believe that the citizens  can and should.<\/p>\n<p>What is scary though is our economy desperately needs to put people back to work as many  people who have been out of jobs for two years are considered to be  permanently unemployed as their skills become too old to be hired again.  One wonders how the US competes in a global economy when tens of  millions more people don&#8217;t contribute but instead consume the financial  resources of those with jobs.<\/p>\n<p>Still, I have come to respect <span>Keynesians<\/span> such as Paul <span>Krugman<\/span> who believe the government can solve all problems more efficiently than businessmen. I disagree with them  of course and if I could just meet these people in the Motor Vehicles  Department for a few minutes, at Starbucks going over the thousands of pages in the needlessly complex IRS tax code or at a state construction site, maybe we would see eye to eye.<\/p>\n<p>But until then, Dave Logan over at <span>BNET<\/span> writes an article today which made me stand up and cheer.<\/p>\n<p>It is titled <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bnet.com\/blog\/tribal\/the-two-things-obama-needs-to-say-to-business\/153?promo=713&amp;tag=nl.e713\">The Two Things Obama Needs to Say to Business<\/a> and explains how business owners feel Obama is highly ungrateful for  the people who risk the financial future of their family to create jobs  only to be demonized.<\/p>\n<p>Here is an excerpt:<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: 40px;\">Here&#8217;s what he should say instead: &#8220;You are giving everything you  have to make this company, and this country, recover &#8212; thank you for  your service.&#8221; This is a line normally reserved for men and women in  uniform. With the highest possible respect for our soldiers, it also  applies to business people who give everything they have to help turn  this country around.<\/p>\n<p>And let&#8217;s put this article in perspective&#8230; The government seems to more recently think it knows better than the free markets how to help its citizens. But much of the financial mess  the world is in stems from the fact that our government tried to solve  the problem of what they saw as inequality in home ownership. They subsequently instructed&nbsp; Fannie Mae and Freddie  Mac to give mortgages to sub-prime borrowers with poor credit. And because they tampered with a mortgage system which worked,  millions of people who weren&#8217;t financially qualified to own homes  purchased them and lost them along with all the money they put into  improvements, furniture, etc.<\/p>\n<p>So the people who the government tried to help were the ones who bore the brunt of the housing crash. They went from living in rental units to houses to the street.<\/p>\n<p>This is the law of unintended consequences and it happens whenever  politicians try to help us by giving speeches which demonize the successful or by drastically changing systems which work while &#8220;doing right&#8221; by a group they believe needs their help.<\/p>\n<p>Another example is the Americans With Disabilities Act which was  designed to ensure more disabled people get jobs. It was passed by  President George Bush Senior and virtually all Republicans and Democrats  supported it. Since the law was passed though the number of people with  disabilities who are working has decreased because as John <span>Stossel<\/span> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/opinion\/2010\/09\/02\/john-stossel-americans-disabilities-act-ada-irs-rules-labor-department-exxon\/\">points out<\/a> it made a group of people &#8220;protected&#8221; which means if there is ever a  need to let a person in this group go, the odds of losing a wrongful  termination lawsuit increases.<\/p>\n<p>These are two cases where the very people targeted for assistance  ended up losing homes and jobs because the government thought it knew  better than the free market system which this country used to be based on.<\/p>\n<p>Here is an excerpt from <span>Stossel<\/span>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: 40px;\">Finally, the ADA has led to some truly bizarre results. Exxon gave ship captain Joseph <span>Hazelwood<\/span> a job after he completed alcohol rehab.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: 40px;\"><span>Hazelwood<\/span> then drank too much and let the Exxon <span>Valdez<\/span> run aground in Alaska. Exxon was sued for allowing it to happen. So  Exxon prohibited employees who have had a drug or drinking problem from  holding safety-sensitive jobs. The result? You guessed it &#8212; employees  with a history of alcohol abuse sued under the ADA, demanding their  &#8220;right&#8221; to those jobs. The federal government (Equal Employment  Opportunity Commission) supported the employees. Courts are still trying  to sort it out.<\/p>\n<p>One final bit of news is regarding healthcare as many of my friends  and relatives who are liberals tell me I should be thankful for having  Obama in office because at least healthcare costs are going down. What  they don&#8217;t know is healthcare costs in the US are going to skyrocket  next year and so are the taxes and fees which kick in to pay for it all.<\/p>\n<p>Again, the beneficiaries of the healthcare bill were to be business  and citizens we were told. Unfortunately the law of unintended  consequences strikes again and both groups will see significantly higher  premiums for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n<p>Dear government &#8211; and I am going to  ask nicely this time &#8211; can you <strong>please <\/strong>stop &#8220;helping&#8221; us? I&#8217;m just not sure how much more of your assistance we can take.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have said before that the Obama administration has been the most anti-business of any administration I have ever seen. There is hostility towards success achieved through legal business means and demonization of virtually every profession (except ironically lawyers, professors and community organizers). Doctors have been accused or removing tonsils and amputating without reason. Bankers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[162,1682],"tags":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8805"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}