Remember the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, whereby our legislators protected our children from lead by requiring expensive lead testing? You know, the act that made tons of books and toys into expensive landfill because they can't be resold, and raised costs for small businesses because every product they produce has to be tested by an independent lab?
I wonder who supported that legislation?
Mattel—whose leaded toys kicked off this whole scare—beefed up its lobbying effort when the legislation appeared. The company’s lobbying budget, which had been steady at $120,000 per year from 2002 through 2006 ballooned to $540,000 in 2007 and $650,000 in 2008—a 442% increase from two years earlier.
(Yes, that money was spent lobbying IN FAVOR of the new regulations.)
And how's that working out for them?
The Consumer Product Safety Commission recently, and quietly, granted Mattel’s request to use its own labs for testing that is required under a law Congress passed last summer in the wake of a rash of recalls of toys contaminated by lead. Six of those toys were produced by Fisher-Price.
Are there any lessons worth noting here?
Supporters of a massive regulatory state are often the same people who lament the ubiquity of big corporate chains—what you might call the Gap-ification of America. I've written a bit about this before, but what they don’t seem to realize is that not only are big corporations more likely than smaller businesses to be able to afford to comply with new regulations, they’re well aware of this fact, and so they’re often the ones pushing the regulations behind the scenes.
Whole article
here.
