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I Tried to Open a Lemonade Stand
Topic Started: Feb 26 2012, 12:15 AM (721 Views)
Chris
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Stossel, revealing how government regulation harms people.

I Tried to Open a Lemonade Stand
Quote:
 
Want to open a business in America? It isn't easy.

In Midway, Ga., a 14-year-old girl and her 10-year-old sister sold lemonade from their front yard. Two police officers bought some. But the next day, different officers ordered them to close their stand.

Their father went to city hall to try to find out why. The clerk laughed and said she didn't know. Eventually, Police Chief Kelly Morningstar explained, "We were not aware of how the lemonade was made, who made the lemonade and of what the lemonade was made with."

Give me a break. If she doesn't know, so what? But kids trying their first experiment with entrepreneurship are being shut down all over America. Officials in Hazelwood, IllinoisIll., ordered little girls to stop selling Girl Scout cookies.

It made me want to try to jump through the legal hoops required to open a simple lemonade stand in New York City. Here's some of what one has to do:

-- Register as sole proprietor with the County Clerk's Office (must be done in person)

-- Apply to the IRS for an Employer Identification Number.

-- Complete 15-hr Food Protection Course!

-- After the course, register for an exam that takes 1 hour. You must score 70 percent to pass. (Sample question: "What toxins are associated with the puffer fish?") If you pass, allow three to five weeks for delivery of Food Protection Certificate.

-- Register for sales tax Certificate of Authority

-- Apply for a Temporary Food Service Establishment Permit. Must bring copies of the previous documents and completed forms to the Consumer Affairs Licensing Center.

Then, at least 21 days before opening your establishment, you must

arrange for an inspection with the Health Department's Bureau of Food Safety and Community Sanitation. It takes about three weeks to get your appointment. If you pass, you can set up a business once you:

-- Buy a portable fire extinguisher from a company certified by the New York Fire Department and set up a contract for waste disposal.

-- We couldn't finish the process. Had we been able to schedule our health inspection and open my stand legally, it would have taken us 65 days.

I sold lemonade anyway. I looked dumb hawking it with my giant fire extinguisher on the table.

Tourists told me they couldn't believe that I had to get "all those permits." A Pakistani man said: "That's crazy! You should move to Pakistan!"

But I don't want to move to Pakistan.

Politicians say, "We support entrepreneurs," but the bureaucrats make it hard. The Feds alone add 80,000 pages of new rules every year. Local governments add more. There are so many incomprehensible rules that even the bureaucrats can't tell you what's legal. In the name of public safety, politicians strangle opportunity.


Admittedly we in the US have it better than other countries. As Hernando de Soto, as economist, points out:
Quote:
 
"In Haiti, one way an ordinary person can settle legally on government land is first to lease it from the government for five years and then buy it. Working with associates in Haiti, our researchers found that to obtain such a lease took 65 bureaucratic steps requiring, on average, a little more than two years. All for the privilege of merely leasing the land for five years."

"In Egypt, the person who wants to acquire and legally register a lot on state-owned desert land must wind his way through at least 77 bureaucratic procedures at 31 public and private agencies. This can take anywhere from 5 to 14 years. To build a legal dwelling on former agricultural land would require 6 to 11 years of bureaucratic wrangling."
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Pat
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This ties into the fact that when life itself is examined, the entire venture was absurd, meaningless. :smile:

The FDA and county health inspectors embarrass, embarrass, intimidate, and abuse little kids. Then they allow e-coli at Krogers, fail to inspect the meat and foodstuff at border checkpoints. And when a restaurant does comply with licensing and the regulations, they are rarely inspected for compliance. It's about collecting fees, not public safety.

I remember my kids selling berries they picked out back and lemonade out by the sidewalk. Had some cop came by and told them to cease, I would have told the cop to either arrest us all now or get lost. This entire subject is absurd.
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Chris
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You're suffering the ennui of existentialism. Life is naturally ok, it's ventures into designing or redesigning it politically that are absurd.
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Pat
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Yep, I am suffering, I let my mind get the better of me at times. lol. At my age, you tend to do a lot of self examining and second guessing. It's been a great ride.
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Chris
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From Over-regulated America: "The home of laissez-faire is being suffocated by excessive and badly written regulation"
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AMERICANS love to laugh at ridiculous regulations. A Florida law requires vending-machine labels to urge the public to file a report if the label is not there. The Federal Railroad Administration insists that all trains must be painted with an “F” at the front, so you can tell which end is which. Bureaucratic busybodies in Bethesda, Maryland, have shut down children’s lemonade stands because the enterprising young moppets did not have trading licences. The list goes hilariously on.

But red tape in America is no laughing matter. The problem is not the rules that are self-evidently absurd. It is the ones that sound reasonable on their own but impose a huge burden collectively. America is meant to be the home of laissez-faire. Unlike Europeans, whose lives have long been circumscribed by meddling governments and diktats from Brussels, Americans are supposed to be free to choose, for better or for worse. Yet for some time America has been straying from this ideal....

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Edited by Chris, Feb 26 2012, 01:49 AM.
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Pat
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I love it how when you sign your income tax forms, you do so under perjury of law, and that you believe them to be correct under the law. Yet the IRS law and regulations are misunderstood by even those charged with answering our questions, and nobody, and I mean nobody has time on the hands to read the regulations. A catch 22. I've ran into this in property development. Nobody can tell you how to navigate rules and regulations when many contradict each other. The cartoon of Uncle Sam and the blow torch is sobering if you think about it. I would hope that if questioned in private, not a single mayor, policeman, health inspector, tax collector, or citizen wants to close down a kid's lemonade stand. They have boxed themselves in with laws, rules and absurdity.
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tomdrobin
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So, one incident of lemonade stand overregulation is then used as an excuse to blame all the ills of the country on overregulation. How often does this happen, perhaps one out of a million times? The right wing propoganda machine just won't stop.
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Chris
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tomdrobin
Feb 26 2012, 06:51 AM
So, one incident of lemonade stand overregulation is then used as an excuse to blame all the ills of the country on overregulation. How often does this happen, perhaps one out of a million times? The right wing propoganda machine just won't stop.
Uh, no, Tom, read again, it was an example of overregulation, an example.
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tomdrobin
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Chris
Feb 26 2012, 06:55 AM
tomdrobin
Feb 26 2012, 06:51 AM
So, one incident of lemonade stand overregulation is then used as an excuse to blame all the ills of the country on overregulation. How often does this happen, perhaps one out of a million times? The right wing propoganda machine just won't stop.
Uh, no, Tom, read again, it was an example of overregulation, an example.
One lemonade stand experience to pass judgement on the entire US regulatory system. There is a bit more to it than that. But, if an antidote is all the proof you need................. then you probably need to make a close examination of your ability to think objectively.
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Chris
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tomdrobin
Feb 26 2012, 06:57 AM
Chris
Feb 26 2012, 06:55 AM
tomdrobin
Feb 26 2012, 06:51 AM
So, one incident of lemonade stand overregulation is then used as an excuse to blame all the ills of the country on overregulation. How often does this happen, perhaps one out of a million times? The right wing propoganda machine just won't stop.
Uh, no, Tom, read again, it was an example of overregulation, an example.
One lemonade stand experience to pass judgement on the entire US regulatory system. There is a bit more to it than that. But, if an antidote is all the proof you need................. then you probably need to make a close examination of your ability to think objectively.
Do you know what "example" means?
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