Forget Washington, look at your local city hall. Local bureaucrats work daily to make everything more complex for one reason only. To create more local government jobs.
I submitted a permit request to replace a fence. This is the third replacement for this fence in the 34 years we have lived in this house. I took two copies of a property plot and the proposal from the fence company to city hall. The young man told me there were new rules for a six foot fence and he wasn’t sure it would be approved. But, he drew the lines on the plot plans and said they would get back to me that day. Three working days later I called. The lady who answered said the young man had drawn the lines on the plot plan in the wrong place. I would need to come down and redraw the one line. I went back and watched while she redrew the line. She gave me the permit with two pages of instructions and requirements. Contractor can work only between the hours of thus and so, materials can only be placed on thus and so, etc, etc. This is for a fence replacement, mind you. I told my wife it’s no wonder most people just skip the permit crap and replace the fence. If they had denied me a permit for any reason, I would have just had the fence replaced section by section over the summer.
I have a major renovation going on in Arizona. Well, trying to go on. The architect is in with the plans for the fourth interaction. Each time a new question arises and a new calculation is requested. Someone told him I may need to submit an updated title insurance policy. Eventually we will get the permit. But, in a staff in a building department that once handled twenty times the permits they now handle, they have a lot of time on their hands. You see, they never cut back when the work stopped.
It’s all about jobs. Jobs in building departments that should have gone away when the building stopped, but didn’t.
Who pays the price. The citizens who pay the freight for those who struggle to find busy work and choose to use that time to delay work that creates jobs in the private sector.
It’s no different on Main Street than it is in Washington. The more government jobs you have leads to less work getting done in the private sector, hence fewer jobs and a poorer economy. Want to see more jobs in the private sector, double down on the Sequestration and watch. Liberty and freedom are the greatest job creators.
