Hemi Truck Club banner

This trend tells you everything you need to know about America’s future...

922 views 7 replies 4 participants last post by  MANual_puller 
#1 ·
August 10, 2016
En route to the United States

Long ago in the Land of the Free, if you wanted to start a saloon, you rented a space and started serving booze.

You didn’t have to go through years of petitioning a bunch of bureaucrats for permits and licenses.

If you weren’t qualified or good enough at your job, your reputation would suffer and you’d go out of business.

This is the way it used to be for just about every industry and profession.

It wasn’t until 1889 that the US Supreme Court ruled in Dent v. West Virginia that states had the right to impose “reasonable” certifications or licenses for various professions.

At first, most states only licensed physicians, dentists, and lawyers.

In fact, by 1920, only about 30 occupations in the US required any sort of licensing.

By the 1950s, about 5% of US workers required a license to perform his/her job.

Today that number has risen to 30%, and climbing.

Some of our modern examples are completely insane.

According to the Brookings Institute, the state of Nevada requires 733 days of training and a $1,500 fee for a license... just to become a tour guide.

Over in Michigan, it takes 1,460 days of education to become an athletic trainer.

45 other states have license or certification requirements for athletic trainers. All fifty states have licenses for barbers and cosmetologists.

36 states require licenses for make-up artists. 34 states license milk samplers. And a mere 33 states license auctioneers.

These license requirements continue to grow, along with the overall level of rules and regulations in the Land of the Free.

Just this morning the US government published an extra 227 pages of rules, regulations, and proposals.

This happens every single business day in America.

Last week the government published over 2,000 pages of new rules, many of which border on absurdity.

To give you an idea, USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service proposed a rule about minimum and maximum diameters of potatoes that are sold in the State of Colorado.

Yes I’m serious.

This is the sort of madness that government bureaucrats churn out on a daily basis: more rules, more licenses.

Needless to say, the more of these rules they create, the more difficult it becomes for people and businesses to produce.

So it wasn’t exactly a big surprise when the US Labor Department released statistics a few days ago showing that, for the third straight quarter in a row, productivity in the Land of the Free declined.

In other words, US workers are producing less than they did before.

We haven’t seen this trend since 1979. And it’s the exact opposite of what’s supposed to happen.

As workers get more experienced and technologically advanced, productivity should grow.

But it’s not. US production is buried under countless pages of regulations and licensing requirements. And the trend has been negative for quite some time.

From 2000 through 2007, US productivity was about 2.6%.

Between 2007 and 2015, it shrank by half to about 1.3%, barely keeping up with population growth.

Now productivity is actually shrinking. America is going backward.

But there’s another side to this story.

Because while US economic growth has practically halted and productivity is shrinking, DEBT CONSUMPTION is up. Way up.

Americans are once again indebting themselves, often to buy useless things they don’t really need.

Auto loans and credit card debt are just two categories registering significant upticks.

(Not to be left out, the US government is leading with way with an absolute explosion in federal debt…)

So what we’re basically seeing now in the Land of the Free is people going into debt to consume more, while simultaneously producing less.

This is a pretty dangerous trend.

Human beings realized 10,000 years ago that if they wanted to survive, they had to produce more than they consumed.

During the Agricultural Revolution our early ancestors learned that, instead of constantly hunting for game, they could plant seeds in the ground and produce more food than they could possibly eat.

You and I wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t figured out this simple principle.

I call it the Universal Law of Prosperity, and it applies to governments, businesses, and individuals alike.

Any nation that fails to produce more than it consumes is in for serious trouble. And the government’s own data is showing that this is happening.

They create countless rules, regulations, and licensing requirements to make it more difficult to produce… and we can already see the results with (lack of) GDP growth.

Meanwhile they’ve slashed interest rates down to zero to incentivize people to consume.

It’s not hard to see where this trend is going.

Until tomorrow,

Simon Black
Founder, SovereignMan.com
 
See less See more
  • Like
Reactions: morgancal
#2 ·
Nothing new, it's been going this direction for sometime. Sad....
 
#3 ·
...American production HAS increased in one area as you've briefly mentioned: Federal Bureaucrats have markedly increased the production of more stifling regulation, more useless politicians, more parasitic government employees and vastly increased piles of BS.

My 2 cents,

:banghead:
 
#4 ·
Storytime: there's a small town named Drakes Branch. It was a very prosperous town at one time. A nice hotel, car dealership, a couple of banks, general merchandising, ice cream shop, gas station on either end, a good size grocery store and a ABC store. It was taken over by a retired group of town fathers. They had a game of whomever passed the most regulations was the leader. Well, game on in a matter of 10 years there was only empty buildings on the 5 block long main street. Everything is closed with only a bank branch and Stop and Go gas station on the end of town leading out of town. The town father's have all since died off. But to this day the town is dead and won't be coming back. This sad tale started 35 years ago. Interesting, one of the last ordinance passed was to reduce the speed limit to 25mph and hire a retired cop empowered to enforce traffic laws. But there was so little traffic in town that he would rome the surrounding County setting up speed traps. Finally he was run off. Good riddance.... Does this seem familiar?
 
#5 ·
A license is nothing more than a tax to exercise a right that was stolen from citizens by the government.
 
#6 ·
Agreed,, although some services should require certification to preform. You wouldn't want have someone decide to be a dentist just because he picked up a chair at a swap meet. A few years back we had a doctor setup practise and not much later found out he was a fraud. My wife went to a beauty salon that looked modern and we'll equipped. Turned out it had no certified technicians and she ended up with chemical burns. These are extremes, but I had to pay a large fine for not having a building permit, it was pure extortion as I also needed a permit to tear it down. There are simply too many regulations. As a joke I saw a sign posted saying Caution! This sign has sharp edges.
 
#8 ·
A certificate is a lot different from a license/permit. Licensing does 2 things for the government: it makes revenue and it tracks people.
 
#7 ·
...as a side note: This is why we have required CME (Continuing Medical Education) requirements and Board Certifications in my field. I too want to keep the Federal Government OUT as much as possible...when it makes sense ;).

My 2 Cents :D
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top