'Net Neutrality' - Don't Buy the Con

If you love smooth-streaming music and HD movies or videos over the internet, chances are you will hate 'Net Neutrality' — a government internet regulation proposal that is as big a con in packaging as 'The Affordable Care Act'.

As explained here and here, the proposed Federal Communications Commission's Net Neutrality regulations will force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to treat all internet traffic equally, giving the same priority and speed to text, video, audio, and interactive content, whether consumers like it or not. 

• Net Neutrality is a bad deal for consumers.  Because internet bandwidth space is finite, ISPs must pay for every megabyte of bandwidth their consumers use. ISPs currently pays those bandwidth costs by offering higher-priced product differentiation packages to on-demand video services such as Amazon and Netflex so that the end users (you and me) can enjoy fast lane, smooth movie streaming at a relatively low cost without slowing down their neighbours' internet connections. 
  
  If Net Neutrality becomes law, ISPs won't be allowed to do that, and movie viewing is likely to become a choppy, unhappy experience. Worse, if ISPs can't charge big user companies like Amazon and Netflex for bandwidth use, ISPs will likely begin charging consumers (you and me) for the bandwidth they actually use, just as cell phone carriers charge consumers for data they use.   

• Net Neutrality is a bad deal for web companies.  ISPs shouldn't be forced to treat all web companies equally. Currently the bigger, established companies are paying a greater share of the cost because they use far more bandwidth than smaller, less established companies. However, "Net Neutrality effectively forces startups to subsidize the bandwidth requirements of established companies, by equally distributing the cost of service to everyone, even those who do not benefit from faster speeds."  

For more, read:

Here's What 'Net Neutrality' is ... and What to Think About It
Rebutting the President on Net Neutrality

Millennials' Employment Prospects

"Our economic struggles," writes Millennial Evan Feinberg, president of the non-partisan Generation Opportunity, "are a direct result of years of an ever-growing regulatory regime, in which reams of red tape are making steady, full-time employment for young people harder to find and more difficult to keep. ... Millennials’ unemployment crisis exists precisely because the opportunity we need and crave is being stifled by the government."

Among the job-killing regulatory examples, Feinberg cites:

• Obamacare — "a frontal assault on young adults' chances of securing a full-time job. ...  The law’s new definition of a full-time work week, at 30 hours per week rather than 40, will make part-time employment more widespread as businesses seeks to avoid financial penalties associated with the law—a process that’s already underway across the country."
• "Growing taxation on businesses—and the uncertainty about where it will stop—has left employers unable to estimate future revenue, thus limiting how much they can hire"
• Environmental Protection Agency's "regulations on coal are killing good middle-class jobs across the country."
• "Government licensing requirements [that] are keeping Millennials from starting businesses or pursuing certain careers."

The regulatory consequences for 18- to 29-year-olds:

• unemployment rate in the last four months averaged 12% -- over 16% if those who are no longer looking are included;
• only 43.6% held a full-time job in June; and fewer college-educated Millennials are holding full time jobs as well; 
• overall 53% are either jobless or underemployed relative to their education; and
• 36% are still living at home with their parents.

How Government Regulations Hurt You

"Soap doesn't work. Toilets don't flush. Clothes washers don't clean. Light bulbs don't illuminate. Refrigerators break too soon. Paint discolors. Lawnmowers have to be hacked," writes Jeff Tucker. "It’s all caused by idiotic government regulations that are wrecking our lives one consumer product at a time, all in ways we hardly notice. It’s like the barbarian invasions that wrecked Rome, taking away the gains we’ve made in bettering our lives."

When his car ran out of gas, Tucker discovered one more government screw-up: newly regulated gas cans have no vent.

The whole trend began in (wait for it) California. Regulations began in 2000, with the idea of preventing spillage. The notion spread and was picked up by the EPA, which is always looking for new and innovative ways to spread as much human misery as possible.

An ominous regulatory announcement from the EPA came in 2007: “Starting with containers manufactured in 2009… it is expected that the new cans will be built with a simple and inexpensive permeation barrier and new spouts that close automatically.”

The government never said “no vents.” It abolished them de facto with new standards that every state had to adopt by 2009. So for the last three years, you have not been able to buy gas cans that work properly. They are not permitted to have a separate vent. The top has to close automatically. There are other silly things now, too, but the biggest problem is that they do not do well what cans are supposed to do.

[snip]

Ask yourself this: If they can wreck such a normal and traditional item like this, and do it largely under the radar screen, what else have they mandatorily malfunctioned? How many other things in our daily lives have been distorted, deformed and destroyed by government regulations?

If some product annoys you in surprising ways, there’s a good chance that it is not the invisible hand at work, but rather the regulatory grip that is squeezing the life out of civilization itself.

Washington's Insane Regulatory Burden

Deficits, taxes, and spending are the defining issues of 2012, write Ryan Young and Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, but "regulation deserves a seat at the table, too." Consider the following from CEI's annual Ten Thousand Commandments report:

• Federal regulations listed in the Code of Federal Regulations is more than 169,000 pages long and growing.
• The annual cost of complying with federal regulations has exceeded $1 trillion since around 2005, and none of those costs appears in the federal budget.
• Small businesses bear an outsized share of the burden: small businesses with fewer than 20 employees pay $10,585 per employee per year to comply with federal rules.
• Big businesses, with more than 500 employees, pay about $7,755 per employee per year to comply, giving them a built-in competitive advantage of nearly $3,000 per employee, courtesy of Washington.

Those price tags will only grow as big government agencies and their regulations expand.

Congress passed 81 new laws last year, but agencies issued 3,870 new regulations. ... Of those rules, 212 are classified "economically significant," which means they cost more than $100 million per year. 

The authors argue that regulations-without-representation, i.e., regulations and rules written by bureaucrats requiring no approval by Congress, needs to be stopped.

Just as Congress is supposed to pass a budget every year for what it spends, it should pass a regulatory budget. If it caps regulatory burdens at, say, $1 trillion, it would then have to prioritize which rules it believes provide the most bang for the buck. Voters would also know when Congress votes to increase regulatory costs, giving members at least some incentive to keep regulation in check.

The fight for real regulatory reform is a long one, not least because neither party has shown the seriousness needed to see it through. But the only way to win is to fight.

Human Events: Top 10 Washington Sins

If Washington DC were the American Heartland's lover, he would be on his way out the door. "Anger against congress, federal bureaucrats, lobbyists and all that is Washington has been boiling over in America's Heartland," writes Human Events, "with good reason. ... Here's the proof: The Top Ten Ways Washington Annoys the Heartland."

Private Family Matters

President Obama's statement that "government should not intrude on private family matters," delivered on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, is a "brazen bit of Obama BS," writes John Hinderaker in Obama's Government Vs. Your Family at Powerlineblog.com. "If that doesn't provoke hollow laughter, you haven't been paying attention." Hinderaker counts the ways this president and his party have injected government into the most ordinary private family matters, from food choices to electrical use to garbage collection.