Category: Regulations

Regulations and Bureaucratic Inefficiency May Kill Restaurant

(p. A22) To begin with, although the B&H Dairy Restaurant on Second Avenue in Manhattan now hangs by a thread, no one was hurt there on March 26 [, 2015], the day that three buildings on the same block were leveled by a gas explosion.
. . .
“On the third day after the explosion, people from the building department and Con Edison came together,” Mr. Abdelwahed said. “They inspected the place, upstairs, downstairs, the pipes, the basement. They told me, ‘You are O.K., you should be fine, no problem.’ ”
That changed, he said, in the charged days that followed, as it emerged that apparently illegal alterations to the gas lines had been made in one of the buildings down the street.
The original inspector returned, he said, and told him that another inspection was going to happen in a couple of days. “He said, ‘You’re not going to pass that inspection. Because of what happened next door, I don’t want to be responsible for the future,’ ” Mr. Abdelwahed said.
All of the gas piping in the building has to be replaced, a job the landlord has taken on, though it is not clear what deficiencies it had. The Buildings Department file for 127 Second Avenue shows that there were no open violations on the premises in March, and none now.
After questions were put four times to the city on Thursday about the nature of the problems with B&H’s operation, a spokesman for the mayor said the administration was trying to help small businesses affected by the explosion, including the restaurant.
In B&H, Mr. Abdelwahed said, the inspector noted that his stove had five burners, but the plans on file showed only four. “He required me to correct it on the plan,” Mr. Abdelwahed said. “Originally it was four. I don’t know how it came to be five. It’s not an issue. Where was an inspector before all this? You’re trying to show you’re working?”
. . .
“He told me, ‘You have to change the fire system,’ ” Mr. Abdelwahed said of the inspector. “Of course, I had a fire suppression system all the time, inspected. I told him, ‘I am going to go out of business.’ He said: ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you.’ They don’t want to be responsible for anything.”
Because the fire suppression system was going to jut into the backyard, Mr. Abdelwahed had to apply for permission from the city’s Landmarks Commission as the block is part of a historic landmark district. Only after that approval was granted could his contractor apply for a building permit.
“What’s killing them is the lag time,” said Mr. Reynolds, who is organizing crowdfunding support for the restaurant. Bernadette Nation, an official with the city’s Department of Small Business Services, has cut red tape in getting permits issued, and their story has been covered on New York 1 and by many blogs.

For the full story, see:
JIM DWYER. “About New York; Unharmed by a Gas Explosion, but Choked by the Red Tape That Followed.” The New York Times (Fri., JULY 10, 2015): A22.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added. The quote from Mr. Reynolds in the last passage above, appears in the print version of the article, but not in the online version of the article.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JULY 9, 2015.)

A Rooftop Farm Is “a Foolish Endeavor” Due to High Costs and Government Regulations

(p. B1) BrightFarms Inc. last year pulled the plug on a planned greenhouse in Washington, D.C., 10 months into the process of getting permits, and earlier exited an effort to develop a rooftop farm in Brooklyn, New York. FarmedHere LLC, which operates a farm in a former box factory outside Chicago, shut down for six months last August to revamp its strategy.
Building farms on city rooftops is “a foolish endeavor” because of the higher costs and the additional time for permitting, said Paul Lightfoot, chief executive of BrightFarms.

For the full story, see:
Ruth Simon. “Farming Startups Have Tough Row to Hoe.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., April 14, 2016): B1 & B6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 13, 2016, and has the title “Farming Gets High Tech in Bid to Offer Locally Grown Produce.”)

Tesla Direct Sales Thwarted by Laws that Protect Dealers Instead of Consumers

(p. B3) Tesla Motors Inc. hopes to capture mainstream auto buyers with its Model 3, an electric car it plans to unveil this week at a price about the same as the average gasoline-powered vehicle, but it may need a federal court ruling to succeed.
The Palo Alto, Calif., auto maker’s direct-to-consumer sales are prohibited by law in six states that represent about 18% of the U.S. new-car market. Barring a change of heart by those states, Tesla is preparing to make a federal case out of the direct-sales bans.
The auto maker’s legal staff has been studying a 2013 federal appeals court ruling in New Orleans that determined St. Joseph Abbey could sell monk-made coffins to customers without having a funeral director’s license. The case emerged amid a casket shortage after Hurricane Katrina. The abbey had tried to sell coffins, only to find state laws restricted such sales to those licensed by the Louisiana Board of Funeral Directors.
For now, Tesla is banking on a combination of new legislation, pending dealer applications and other factors to open doors to selling directly in Arizona, Michigan, Texas, Connecticut, Utah and West Virginia. But the company said it is ready to argue in federal court using the coffin case if necessary.
“It is widely accepted that laws that have a protectionist motivation or effect are not proper,” Todd Maron, the auto maker’s chief counsel, said in an interview. “Tesla is committed to not being foreclosed from operating in the states it desires to operate in, and all options are on the table.”
. . .
“There is no legitimate competitive interest in having consumers purchase cars through an independent dealership,” Greg Reed, an attorney with Washington D.C.-based Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning law firm, said. He calls Michigan’s laws “anti-competitive protectionism.”

For the full story, see:
MIKE RAMSEY. “Tesla Weighs Legal Fight.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., March 29, 2016): B3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 28, 2016, and has the title “Tesla Weighs New Challenge to State Direct-Sales Bans.”)

Retail Clinics Provide Convenient Care

(p. A3) My wife and I both work. When one of our children wakes up complaining of a sore throat, we could begin a ritual stare-down to determine which of us is going to have to wait for the doctor’s office to open, make the phone call, wait on hold, schedule an appointment (which will inevitably be in the middle of the day), take off work, pick up the child from school, sit in the waiting room (surrounded by other sick children), get the rapid strep test, find out if the child is infected and then go to the pharmacy or back to school, before returning to work.
Or, one of us could just take the child to a retail clinic on the way to work and be done in 30 minutes. Strep throat is incredibly easy to treat (Penicillin still works great!). There’s a simple and very fast test for it. Moreover, physicians are really bad at diagnosing some of these common illnesses clinically; a study found that a doctor’s guess as to whether a respiratory infection is bacterial or viral is right about 50 percent of the time — no better than flipping a coin. The point is, you need to get the rapid strep test every time regardless, whether at your doctor’s office or at a clinic.
Aimee and I choose the retail clinic every time.
Why? Convenience is the biggest reason. Many doctors’ offices are open only on weekdays and during business hours. This also happens to be when most adults work and when children attend school. A 2010 survey of 11 countries found that Americans seek out after-hours care or care in a hospital’s emergency room more often than citizens of almost any other industrialized nation. More than two-thirds of Americans with a below-average income did so. But this isn’t just a problem for the poor. About 55 percent of those with an above-average income did so as well.
We complain all the time that people use the emergency room for primary care. But that’s not always about lack of insurance. It’s about access. The emergency room is open when people can actually go. Emergency room use has gone up, not down, since the passage of the Affordable Care Act. More people have insurance, and now can afford care when they need it.
That care is also coming from retail clinics, usually found either in stand-alone storefronts or inside pharmacies. Between 2007 and 2009, retail clinic use increased 10-fold. It turns out that my wife and I represent America pretty well. About 35 percent of retail visits for children are for pharyngitis — sore throats. Add in ear infections and upper respiratory infections, and you’ve accounted for more than three-quarters of visits for children. Parents bring their children to retail clinics to take care of quick, acute problems. Swap ear infections for immunizations, and you’ve got the main reasons adults use retail clinics, too.
Researchers for a study published in the American Journal of Medical Quality talked to patients who sought out care at retail clinics. Patients who had a primary care physician, but still went to a retail clinic, did so because their primary care doctors were not available in a timely manner. A quarter of them said that if the retail clinic weren’t available, they’d go to the emergency room.

For the full commentary, see:
Aaron E. Carroll. “The Hidden Cost of Retail Health Clinics.” The New York Times (Thurs., APRIL 14, 2016): A3.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date APRIL 12, 2016, and has the title “The Undeniable Convenience and Reliability of Retail Health Clinics.” Where the two versions differ, the quoted passages above follow the online version.)

The research on patient motivation for using retail clinics, is:
Wang, Margaret C., Gery Ryan, Elizabeth A. McGlynn, and Ateev Mehrotra. “Why Do Patients Seek Care at Retail Clinics, and What Alternatives Did They Consider?” American Journal of Medical Quality 25, no. 2 (March/April 2010): 128-34.

Info Tech Boomed Because It Was Least Regulated Sector

(p. A9) “The regulatory environment has become so onerous in America that it is now easier to start a business in England than in the U.S.,” Mr. Hill says–and he would know.
. . .
In 1973 and only 27 years old, Mr. Hill founded Commerce Bank with one branch in Marlton, N.J. The fledgling company focused on customer service and called itself “America’s most convenient bank.” By the time Mr. Hill left Commerce Bancorp 34 years later, only months before the company announced it would be bought by TD Bank for $8.5 billion, he had grown the business to some 460 branches, with 14,000 employees and combined deposits of about $40 billion.
Now he’s replicating that model in the United Kingdom with Metro Bank, which he founded in 2010. And Mr. Hill says there’s an ocean of difference between doing business in the overregulated U.S. and in the U.K. “When I went to Britain I thought the regulatory environment would be much worse,” he says. “It’s infinitely better there.”
The problem in the U.S. starts with towering federal regulations, such as the voluminous reporting and compliance rules in Dodd-Frank, the financial reform act that recently celebrated its fifth birthday. “Regulators are making it impossible for the medium and small banks to comply with the rules,” he says. “The burdens get so intense that it is destroying the small and medium-size banks in America.”
The result is that Dodd-Frank, a law intended to take on the systemic risk of “too-big-to-fail” banks, is multiplying the problem. “The big banks that are too big to fail are bigger now than ever, but the regulations have trickled down to the smaller banks that didn’t cause the financial crisis” Mr. Hill says. As a result, community banks are disappearing. “When I started my first bank in the 1970s there were 24,000 banks in America,” he says. “There are now 7,000 banks. It may soon be 500 or even fewer.”
But it’s more than Dodd-Frank that leaves him frustrated. “The feds have taken anti-money-laundering rules to the extreme,” Mr. Hill says. “We have to monitor every deposit account every 24 hours. Somebody’s monitoring your account every day.” That’s invasive and expensive.
He laments that the Community Reinvestment Act, a catalyst of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, still hasn’t been repealed. “We are literally required to make loans that we know are going to fail,” he says.
Then there’s the tangle of local regulations that every American small business must cut through. “You don’t need a building permit in Britain. Here [the U.S.] you have to get permits and you have to get inspections,” he says. All that can eat up months and months. “I can build 100 branch banks in Britain before I can get one built in the U.S., thanks to regulators.”
Policy makers and economists in Washington fret about what’s slowing the rate of business startups and entrepreneurial ventures. But Mr. Hill says it’s no wonder, with all this red tape, and it’s no accident that the industry that is really booming, technology, is the one least regulated by government–though the assault against Uber suggests that Silicon Valley might not be immune for long.
. . .
And how much should we be worried about overregulation–or competition from abroad? “Here’s my story in a nutshell and I hope Washington is paying close attention,” Mr. Hill says. “A very successful American business model has been transferred to Britain, where it’s even more successful because it doesn’t have to deal with the same burdens of government.”
He continues: “The politicians keep talking about fairness and helping the little guy. But it’s the little startup businesses that get hurt the most from the heavy hand of excessive government regulation. How is that fair?”

For the full interview, see:
STEPHEN MOORE. “THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW; The Demise of the Small American Bank; The man who put the customer first in retail banking says Dodd-Frank is crushing community banks and Britain is now a better bet.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Aug. 1, 2015): A9.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date July 31, 2015.)

How Health Insurance Slows Medical Innovation

(p. A8) A recent study led by Wendell Evans at the University of Sydney supports growing evidence that early tooth decay, before a cavity forms, can often be arrested and reversed with simple treatments that restore minerals in the teeth, rather than the more typical drill-and-fill approach.
The randomized, controlled trial followed 19 dental practices in Australia for three years, then researchers checked up on the patients again four years later. The result: After seven years, patients receiving remineralization treatment needed on average 30% fewer fillings.
. . .
There is a substantial body of research supporting remineralization as a treatment for early tooth decay, and little opposition in the dental profession, says Margherita Fontana, a professor of cariology at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry. Tradition, however, has been an obstacle to widespread use of the treatment. “For older generations [of dentists], it just feels wrong to leave decay and not remove it,” Dr. Fontana says. “That’s how they were trained.”
Reimbursement is another obstacle. Insurance typically covers application of fluoride varnish in children, but not adults. The cost ranges from $25 to $55, according to the American Dental Association’s Health Policy Institute. Other preventive treatments also generally aren’t covered.

For the full story, see:
DANA WECHSLER LINDEN. “Simple Dental Treatments Can Help Reverse Decay.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., APRIL 12, 2016): D3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 11, 2016, and has the title “Simple Dental Treatments May Reverse Decay.”)

Feds’ Regulatory Delay Supports High-Fare Trans-Atlantic Airline Oligopoly

(p. B1) In the past three years, Norwegian, one of Europe’s biggest low-cost airlines, has quietly established a beachhead in the trans-Atlantic market by offering low-fare, no-frills service on long-haul flights.
Thanks to a small but expanding fleet of fuel-efficient planes combined with deeply discounted ticket prices, Norwegian Air Shuttle has attracted a growing number of leisure travelers looking for cheap flights.
It is all part of the vision of Norwegian’s outspoken chief executive, Bjorn Kjos, who is determined to force the same kind of low-fare competition on international routes that has been so successful in domestic markets for airlines like Southwest and Spirit, and Ryanair in Europe.
. . .
But Norwegian’s expansion has been stymied by vigorous opposition. Legacy airlines on both sides of the Atlantic see a low-cost competitor on their cash-cow routes as a major threat to their long-term profitability. Labor unions object to Norwegian’s plans to hire flight crew from Thailand, a practice they have repeatedly described as “labor dumping.”
The airline has also faced lengthy delays in receiving regulatory approvals in the United States.
. . .
(p. B4) A spokeswoman for the Transportation Department did not give any reasons for the delays that have left Norwegian in bureaucratic limbo in the United States. The airline’s first request was filed more than two years ago. . . .
The long delay in approving the application “does not reflect well on the political independence of the Department of Transportation with respect to the free trade principles behind the E.U.-U.S. open skies agreement,” according to a report by analysts at the CAPA Center for Aviation. “The calculated inaction only serves to restrict competition and to deny consumer choice.”
. . .
“There is still a lot to do,” Mr. Kjos said. “We have to think about how to fly more people more cheaply. There are hundreds of millions of people that don’t have access to cheap flights.”

For the full story, see:
JAD MOUAWAD. “Norwegian Air Flies in the Face of the Trans-Atlantic Establishment.” The New York Times (Tues., FEB. 23, 2016): B1 & B4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date FEB. 22, 2016.)

Government Regulations Protect Health-Care Incumbents Against Innovation

(p. A15) As people age, the main valve controlling the flow of blood out of the heart can narrow, causing heart failure, and sometimes death. In the past the only way to repair the damage was risky open-heart surgery. But an ingenious medical device now allows the heart to be repaired using a catheter that introduces a replacement valve through a main artery in the leg–another miracle of modern medicine.
In 2011, more than four years after they hit the European market, the Food and Drug Administration finally approved aortic heart valves for use in the U.S. The total cost of the new procedure is about the same as open-heart surgery. But government bureaucrats feared that the new replacement valve’s lower risks and easier administration would mean that many more elderly patients would seek to fix their failing heart valves, pushing up Medicare’s total spending. To limit their use, regulators created coverage rules based on a set of strained medical criteria. It was a budget prerogative masquerading as clinical reasoning.
This episode is a vivid example of the government’s increasing practice to regulate medicine and ration care. A series of landmark studies published earlier this month in the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, and presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Chicago, makes clear how contrived the original Medicare guidelines were.
For a patient to be qualified for the aortic valve device, Medicare required two cardiac surgeons to certify first that a patient wasn’t a candidate for the open-heart repair. Also mandated was the presence of a cardiothoracic surgeon and an interventional cardiologist in the operating room during the procedure.

For the full commentary, see:
SCOTT GOTTLIEB. “Warning: Medicare May Be Bad for Your Heart; Aortic valve replacements are superior to open-heart surgery and less risky. So why are they hard to get?” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., April 12, 2016): A15.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 11, 2016.)

The Lancet article mentioned above, is:
Thourani, Vinod H., Susheel Kodali, Raj R. Makkar, Howard C. Herrmann, Mathew Williams, Vasilis Babaliaros, Richard Smalling, Scott Lim, S. Chris Malaisrie, Samir Kapadia, Wilson Y. Szeto, Kevin L. Greason, Dean Kereiakes, Gorav Ailawadi, Brian K. Whisenant, Chandan Devireddy, Jonathon Leipsic, Rebecca T. Hahn, Philippe Pibarot, Neil J. Weissman, Wael A. Jaber, David J. Cohen, Rakesh Suri, E. Murat Tuzcu, Lars G. Svensson, John G. Webb, Jeffrey W. Moses, Michael J. Mack, D. Craig Miller, Craig R. Smith, Maria C. Alu, Rupa Parvataneni, Ralph B. D’Agostino, Jr., and Martin B. Leon. “Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement Versus Surgical Valve Replacement in Intermediate-Risk Patients: A Propensity Score Analysis.” The Lancet (April 3, 2016), DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(16)30073-3.

The New England Journal of Medicine article mentioned above, is:
Leon, Martin B., Craig R. Smith, Michael J. Mack, Raj R. Makkar, Lars G. Svensson, Susheel K. Kodali, Vinod H. Thourani, E. Murat Tuzcu, D. Craig Miller, Howard C. Herrmann, Darshan Doshi, David J. Cohen, Augusto D. Pichard, Samir Kapadia, Todd Dewey, Vasilis Babaliaros, Wilson Y. Szeto, Mathew R. Williams, Dean Kereiakes, Alan Zajarias, Kevin L. Greason, Brian K. Whisenant, Robert W. Hodson, Jeffrey W. Moses, Alfredo Trento, David L. Brown, William F. Fearon, Philippe Pibarot, Rebecca T. Hahn, Wael A. Jaber, William N. Anderson, Maria C. Alu, and John G. Webb. “Transcatheter or Surgical Aortic-Valve Replacement in Intermediate-Risk Patients.” New England Journal of Medicine (April 2, 2016), DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1514616.

Government Limits Hospital Competition

(p. A9) When the 124-bed StoneSprings Hospital Center opened in December, it became the first new hospital in Loudoun County, Va., in more than a century. That’s more remarkable than it might at first seem: In the past two decades, Loudoun County, which abuts the Potomac River and includes growing Washington suburbs, has tripled in population. Yet not a single new hospital had opened. Why? One big reason is that StoneSprings had to fight through years of regulatory reviews and court challenges before laying the first brick.
County officials and the Hospital Corporation of America, or HCA, began talking about building a new hospital in 2001. But Virginia is one of the 36 states with a “certificate of need” law, which requires health-care providers to obtain a state license before opening a new facility. Getting a license is supposed to take about nine months, according to the state Health Department. HCA first submitted an application in July 2002 but didn’t win approval for a new facility until early 2004.
Then the plan faced a series of legal challenges from the Inova Health System, an entrenched, multibillion-dollar competitor. Over decades Inova has become the dominant player in the Virginia suburbs.
. . .
It’s not hard to understand why Inova might fight so hard to keep out challengers: There’s a direct correlation between prices and competition. In a paper released in December, economists with Yale, Carnegie Mellon and the London School of Economics evaluated claims data from Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealth. They found that rates were 15.3% higher, on average, in areas with one hospital, compared with those serviced by four or more. In markets with a two-hospital duopoly, prices were 6.4% higher. Where only three hospitals compete they were 4.8% higher.
Research by Chris Koopman of the free-market Mercatus Center suggests that Virginia could have 10,000 more hospital beds and 40 more hospitals offering MRIs if the certificate of need restrictions did not exist. “In many instances, they create a quasi-monopoly,” he says. “In essence, it’s a government guarantee that no one will compete with you, until you get notice and an opportunity to challenge that person’s entry into that market.”

For the full commentary, see:
ERIC BOEHM. “CROSS COUNTRY; For Hospital Chains, Competition Is a Bitter Pill; Building a new medical center in Virginia can take a decade, because state laws favor entrenched players.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Jan. 30, 2016): A9.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Jan. 29, 2016.)

The academic paper mentioned above that relates hospital charges to the number of hospitals in the area, is:
Cooper, Zack, Stuart V. Craig, Martin Gaynor, and John Van Reenen. “The Price Ain’t Right? Hospital Prices and Health Spending on the Privately Insured.” NBER Working Paper # 21815. National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc., 2015.

Chris Koopman’s research, mentioned above, can be found in:
Koopman, Christopher, and Thomas Stratmann. “Certificate-of-Need Laws: Implications for Virginia.” In Mercatus on Policy: Mercatus Center, George Mason University, 2015.

Owner Wants to Give Up Business Due to Regulations

(p. A11) D. Joy Riley, 59, of Brentwood, Tenn., who went to hear Mr. Rubio speak last weekend in the affluent Nashville suburb of Franklin, said that his story struck a chord with her personally. Her father was a coal miner. She is now a physician with a master’s degree in bioethics. “We’re all one or two generations away from some story like that,” she said, repeating a line Mr. Rubio often uses in his speeches.
. . .
Mr. Rubio’s story is intended to pull at the heartstrings. At his rally in Franklin, he spoke of his mother’s struggles growing up in poverty in rural Cuba.
“My mother was one of seven girls raised by a disabled father,” he said as he looked out on a horde of gingham shirts, khaki, fine Sunday dresses and derby hats.
He recalled how she left him with a strong understanding of selflessness and sacrifice. “My mother says her and her sisters never went to bed hungry,” he continued. “But she’s sure her parents did many nights.”
As he tells these personal stories, Mr. Rubio weaves in the policy prescriptions he would act on as president, making his case for a smaller, more conservative government.
When he talks of the need for lower taxes, he cites the work his parents found in hospitality. The only reason the hotel where his father worked could exist, he insists, was because the business climate in Miami Beach was friendly enough that someone wanted to invest. And had it not been for taxes that were low enough to allow people the disposable income to vacation in Las Vegas, he says, his mother would not have had any hotel rooms to clean.
. . .
Nancy Conklin, 52, a business owner from North Hampton, N.H., was nodding along as Mr. Rubio spoke near Portsmouth last month. “You get older, have a family, employ people, and you start to realize how difficult all these regulations are,” she said. “You don’t want to have a business because you can’t afford it.”

For the full story, see:
JEREMY W. PETERS. “Rubio’s Bootstraps Entice a Receptive Constituency: The Well-to-Do.” The New York Times (Sat., FEB. 27, 2016): A11.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date FEB. 26, 2016, and has the title “Marco Rubio Entices a Receptive Constituency: The Well-to-Do.”)

Arbitrary Regulatory Waivers Undermine Rule of Law

(p. A11) Who cares about the swelling power of bureaucratic discretion in Washington over big business, since it doesn’t threaten your personal freedom and prosperity. Or does it? That question lurked in the background of a Hoover Institution discussion on June 25, hosted by economist and podcaster extraordinaire Russ Roberts. The occasion was the 800th anniversary of Britain’s Magna Carta, a landmark in the struggle for a rule of law.
One of the participants, Hoover economist John Cochrane, spoke of fears that America is drifting toward a “corporatist system” with diminished political freedom. Are rules knowable in advance so businesses can avoid becoming targets of enforcement actions? Is there meaningful appeal? Are permissions received in a timely fashion or can bureaucrats arbitrarily decide your case simply by sitting on it?
The answer to these questions increasingly is “no.” Whatever the merits of 1,231 individual waivers issued under ObamaCare, a law implemented largely through waivers and exemptions is not law-like. In such a system, where even hairdressers and tour guides are subjected to arbitrary licensing requirements, all the advantages accrue to established, politically-connected businesses.
Another participant, Lee Ohanian, a UCLA economist affiliated with Hoover, drew the connection between the regulatory state and today’s depressed growth in labor productivity. From a long-term average of 2.5% a year, the rate has dropped to 0.7% in the current recovery. Labor productivity is what allows rising incomes. A related factor is a decline in business start-ups. New businesses are the ones that bring new techniques to bear and create new jobs. Big, established companies, in contrast, tend to be net job-shrinkers over time.

For the full commentary, see:
HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR. “BUSINESS WORLD; The New Slow-Growth Normal and Where It Leads; On the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, an unhinged regulatory state is our doomsday machine.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Aug. 1, 2015): A11.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 31, 2015.)