Question

Can you think of any ways that further regulation could actually support smaller businesses?

Answer 1

Many sectors of the business world have long complained about government regulations and their restrictive nature. Often cited as an impediment to corporate and small business profits and a waste of precious time and effort, government statutory requirements have been denounced, side-stepped and violated by many a business since the early twentieth century when the corporate income tax and anti-trust laws were first enacted.

Since then, in an ever-increasing blizzard of regulations and a huge, complex tax code, American business has both prospered and suffered as a consequence of government action - collaborative and complementary, restrictive and adversarial. Concurrently, American consumers have been protected from exploitive business practices by those same government rules and regulations.

Since the enactment of anti-trust laws in the early twentieth century, followed by periodic increases in corporate tax rates and increasingly complex and restrictive regulatory laws governing the conduct of business, the American business community has generally been an opponent of any government law, regulation, compliance obligation or tax levy that it perceives to undermine profitability or impede business operations. If big business could speak with one mouth, it would likely say that regulations hold it back and cost everyone in the long run.

Of course, if big business did speak with one mouth, it would also have a lot to answer for. Over the past decades, particularly leading up to the Global Financial Crisis that unfolded from 2007-2011, too many publicly traded corporations have misstated earnings to maintain or boost the market price of their stock. They've violated immigration laws by hiring undocumented workers. They've broken environmental laws by illegally dumping wastes or emitting pollutants into the atmosphere or into rivers and lakes. So clearly the "no rules" approach has a cost for the general public - which is why our elected bodies are in charge of regulation in the first place.