Embrace Your Inner Underfunded Pension!

According to RI Future contributor Pat Crowley, if your pension plan is underfunded don't think of it as a bug, think of it as a feature…

An unfunded liability may in fact enhance the security of the plan because it requires more caution, therefore, more long term thinking.

I wonder if progressives will apply this line of reasoning to universal health care too -- sure there's no way we can pay for our proposals, but that's a good thing, because it means the government will plan them better! (The version of this kind of thinking often joked about amongst salespeople is "we lose a bit on every sale, but we make it up in volume.")

Anyway, back in the reality-based community, understanding why pension underfunding is a bad thing is straightforward. A pension plan is underfunded if, according to reasonable actuarial and design assumptions, it will run out of money before all obligations owed can be paid out. This situation should be avoided not only in pension plans but anywhere else in life. Claims from defined-benefit advocates that the current underfunding of Rhode Island's public pension system does not present a serious problem severely undercut the notion that defined benefit plans can be as cost-effective as defined contribution plans, if decades of total annual contributions equal to at least 25% of employee payroll are considered par-for-the-course for keeping a defined benefit system afloat.

In terms of present specifics, the underfunding of Rhode Island's state employee pension plan means that the state is required to contribute over 20% of employee payroll next year, to help get the pension plan to point where it will be self-sustaining by 2027, while still meeting all obligations until then. If the pension plan had been fully-funded (and never raided), the required state contribution would be much smaller, probably somewhere in the vicinity of 3% to 4% of total payroll per year. Given the current size of the state workforce, the difference between 4% and 20% of payroll is about $120 million, meaning that, if the state employee pension plan had been funded in accordance with its obligations assumed, $120 million more would be available to pay for existing programs or to reduce the deficit next year.

Finally, the pension study cited in Mr. Crowley's post takes a curious approach to the concept of "moral hazard". Here is the study's explanation of the concept…

If [pension plans’] investment decisions are being distorted by moral hazard, then we would expect to see less well-funded plans adopting more risky asset allocations.

But this formulation is incomplete. Moral hazard could also manifest itself in pension managers who don't believe they need to pursue a high-return (and associated high-risk) strategy because, hey, no matter how poor the investment returns are, as much money as is needed can be taken from future taxpayers – or should I say from current taxpayers, at a future time.

Isn't This Just Social Security on Steroids?

Possibly hoping to tap disenchantment with the recent performance of the stock market, Workforce Management reports that

Powerful House Democrats are eyeing proposals to overhaul the nation’s $3 trillion 401(k) system, including the elimination of most of the $80 billion in annual tax breaks that 401(k) investors receive.

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-California, and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, are looking at redirecting those tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all workers would be obliged to contribute.

A plan by Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic-policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, contains elements that are being considered. She testified last week before Miller’s Education and Labor Committee on her proposal.

At that hearing, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Peter Orszag, testified that some $2 trillion in retirement savings has been lost over the past 15 months.

Under Ghilarducci’s plan, all workers would receive a $600 annual inflation-adjusted subsidy from the U.S. government but would be required to invest 5 percent of their pay into a guaranteed retirement account administered by the Social Security Administration. The money in turn would be invested in special government bonds that would pay 3 percent a year, adjusted for inflation.

Firstly, as with social security, is this not simply a pyramid scheme, where it becomes impossible for contributors at a certain point, probably fairly soon, to receive promised retirement funds because the kitty has been distributed to people ahead of them on the list? Or do these Congressional Democrats propose to augment this revenue by reinvesting it, say, in the stock market ...?

More importantly, given the ease with which any future Congress can switch the flow of that new, 5% tax from those "special government bonds" to general revenue, it is not possible to create a secure, credible lockbox for this proposed program. In addition to all the perfectly valid drawbacks of efficacy and logistics which will be cited, this is perhaps the most significant flaw of the proposal. No matter how loudly and sincerely current members of Congress proclaim the sancity of that revenue, "Guaranteed Retirement Accounts" will never be viewed as "guaranteed" or as an "account" by anyone even slightly familiar with Congress' track record of keeping promises in the area of taxpayer funds and other important matters.

Incompatibility and a lack of shared goals should also fuel this scepticism and resistance. With this program, millions of people would be placing their retirement funds in the hands of officials who, too often, are not guided by considerations of the long term or what may be best for their constituents but by what they think they need to do legislatively to get reelected in a couple of years.

This is not necessarily a defense of the stock market. The bursting of the bubble created by the Community Reinvestment Act (oh, look, another unnecessary crisis covered with the federal government's fingerprints) has pretty much trashed our retirement accounts. But subjecting retirement funds to our government's whim, i.e., to values and actions which are the antithesis of good retirement fund management, and then expecting to receive retirement income when we hit sixty five strikes me as untenable and ill-advised from the get-go.

[Thanks to commenter Anthony for the prodding on this subject.]

Mitigating Circumstances?

I don't know anything other than what's reported below, but this strikes me as heavy-handed, no?

A 20-year-old woman pleaded not guilty to animal cruelty charges this morning after authorities accused her of muzzling her two pit bulls and abandoning them in an apartment before she went to a hospital to give birth.

Judge Jeanne E. LaFazia in District Court, Warwick, ordered Diana Tetrault to have a mental-health screening and released her on $2,000 personal recognizance, according to a clerk.

Tetrault is scheduled to return to District Court on Oct. 24 for a pretrial conference.

Johnston’s animal control officer found one of the pit bulls leashed to a closet door in Tetrault’s second-floor apartment on Sept. 26, according to police Maj. Ralph Bubar III. At the time Tetrault was in Women & Infants Hospital after having given birth.

The other pit bull was caged in the kitchen at 28 Osgood Ave., he said. Neither animal had food or water, he said.

At the time, residents in the apartment house said they hadn’t seen anyone visit the second-floor apartment since the morning of Sept. 23.

The two dogs remain in the custody of the Johnston Police Department, which placed them at the Providence Animal Rescue League.

The Department of Children Youth and Families received notification of Tetrault’s arrest and the alleged abuse. {emphasis added}

Gee, where were her priorities?

Comparative Welfare

The Providence Journal, as represented by Steve Peoples, still isn't giving the whole story when it comes to Rhode Island's Family Independence Program:

Lawmakers spent yesterday afternoon poring through Governor Carcieri’s 101-page plan that would dramatically cut benefits to the poor, while encouraging a "work-first" model and promoting "healthy marriages."

The governor's sweeping proposal, if adopted by the legislature in the coming months, would constitute the most significant shift in the state's Family Independence Program, often referred to as welfare, in more than a decade. Carcieri has even created a new name: the Rhode Island Work First Program. ...

Carcieri wants to push low-income Rhode Islanders into the work force immediately, while the current system allows for training and education first. He also wants to cut eligibility for cash assistance from 60 months to 24 months for new recipients beginning July 1. ...

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that 28 states and the District of Columbia have 60-month time limits for cash assistance, which is the maximum benefit allowed under federal Medicaid rules. Massachusetts is one of two states that have no lifetime limit, but intermittent caps allowing 24 months of cash benefits during each 60-month period.

For one thing, Rhode Island is one of seven states that continue to give support in some form after that limit (cash for children is one example). For another, Rhode Island doesn't count time spent on similar programs in other states. And although I can't find the mention of it, just now, I'm pretty sure we're unique among those seven states in offer our 60-month lifetime limit in consecutive years.

If the General Assembly were to tweak the governor's proposal to address these considerations, that'd be a good start. But the people of Rhode Island can't rally on behalf of reforms when they don't know the specifics of what they're reforming.

Facing Reality on RI Poverty

The point's a little bit of a tangent from poverty advocates' request for more workers to make food stamps easier to claim and disperse (which always raises questions about the responsibility of the government to promote its handouts), but this closing quotation illuminates one of the indistinct areas in which liberals and conservatives move toward different solutions:

"The governor is not facing reality. We have a major hunger problem in Rhode Island" and the state is not serving enough people, [Henry Shelton, director of the George A. Wiley Center,] said.

Liberals look at increasing numbers of "hungry" Rhode Islanders and say "make it not so," meaning "give them food." This being an endemic problem, not a temporary crisis in food production, one must also offer suggestions for solving the underlying issue of poverty, and the liberal solution is, again, "make it not so," meaning "give them money," whether that directive takes the form of direct welfare payments, supplemental resources to increase the ease of working or the earnings that may be treated as discretionary income, government jobs, union organization to muscle for jobs, or legislated minimum wages and benefits.

The problem is that, eventually, the society finds itself saying "make it not so" to an avalanche in progress. Dependency becomes a habit, rather than an uncomfortable temporary necessity. Those inclined toward it will migrate in search of it. Those overburdened in its provision will migrate away. Meanwhile, the system's demands drive away businesses and generally drag the society down. The question avoided via imperative at the beginning was "what's the best way to make it not so given our circumstances," and that question quickly transforms into "how can we continue to afford this?"

Rhode Island no longer has the resources to deal with the increasing demand. That is the reality that we must face, and denying it will only increase the amount of need. Those who do the work of angels for the poor certainly have admirable priorities, but at least in degree, those priorities are shared by too few of their fellow citizens. Keep requiring, by government fiat, that average citizens contribute more than they believe reasonable, and they'll continue to leave, even as those whom the policies benefit continue to arrive.

The conservative would suggest that Rhode Island should fortify itself first. As aesthetically unpleasing and morally uncomfortable as it may be, we must get our house in order before we invite others in. That will mean giving the needy incentive to seek out states with the resources to address their needs. It will mean making the state an attractive place to live and do business for those who already have some advantages and wish to build more. Then let those in need return for the opportunity to climb, not to tread water.

I do not believe, as I may be accused of believing, that success proves value. Rather, I believe that people, as a matter of human nature, will work much more assiduously toward their own success than toward the subsidization of others' subsistence, and that they are therefore more advisably treated as an engine than a pool.

Thus, presented the prison of poverty and disadvantage, the liberal seeks to adorn the cell with such things as will make it more tolerable until freedom arrives, while the conservative wishes merely to open the door and make the society outside more apparently worth joining.

What's "Financial Aid" in Spanish?

Consider this vignette from Katherine Gregg's Projo story on Rhode Island's misuse of federal healthcare funds:

Emma Villa told the lawmakers what would happen to her, as the operator of a small day-care business in her Laban Street, Providence, home, where she looks after two children in addition to her own.

With the help of a translator, the Spanish-speaking Villa, 40, said: "It is very important that we have health care," she said, "because we are the ones that hold the entire welfare-to-work system up. If parents, children and those of us who care for them lose our health care, we could face the spread of disease without treatment — maybe even an epidemic...Is that what we really want?"

Without health insurance, Villa said she will have to look for another job and if she is unable to find one with health insurance, she will be forced to seek financial aid from the state for the first time in her 20 years in this country.

The tale of Rhode Island's woes couldn't be told with much more concision. Here's a woman who watches two children as a job (the minimum she can take and receive healthcare), who apparently can't speak English well enough to be much help to those kids in that regard, and who sees the substantial money that the state pays toward her health insurance as something other than financial aid.

Online details of state financed health insurance are spotty, as far as I've been able to see, but assuming that she's married (which perhaps can't be assumed), Villa's entire family could be eligible for RIte Care at a cost to her of $61 per month if their income is up to around $39,000 per year, or free if it is less than around $32,000. At the high end, her family could make over $70,000 per year, and she and her children would still be eligible for the Child Care Provider Rite Care (CCPRC) Program for a monthly cost of $130.

I don't know what's standard, out there, but based on the little bit of information I've found online (PDF, PDF2, and this), I wouldn't be surprised if there are Rhode Island taxpayers who make nowhere near that amount and pay $130 per week for a comparable plan.

Villa throws up the specter of an "epidemic" if the healthcare gravy train were to stop, but the real epidemic lies down the path of continued state overspending, increasing taxes, and exodus of its victims.

Well, It's a Start

Representative Kenneth Carter (D, North Kingstown/Exeter) deserves credit for putting forward one piece of the solution:

"... a humane society is concerned about all its members, including those who must pay the bill for the needier," he said. "We cannot continue to drain others dry so that individuals on public assistance are able to do nothing for five years but hold out their hand and pick up a check. We are supporting a non-working class of people for too long, and driving many of our taxpayers to the brink."

Representative Carter's solution is to put a time limit on public assistance, shorter than the five years now allowed. His legislation, (2008 - H7021), would limit public assistance to 24 months in a continuous five-year period. The initial continuous five-year period would begin on January 1, 2009, for those receiving assistance on that date, or the date that a family unit first becomes eligible for assistance.

We'll see whither this goes, but even its passage is insufficient. As any public-dime activist in the state will tell you, the cash assistance program doesn't represent the bulk of social services spending in the state.

Watch for the General Assembly to either let this one die in committee or pass some version of Carter's bill with a compensatory increase somewhere else on the government hand-out menu.

Bakst's Worthy Question

Charles Bakst presents a question that he thinks the governor ought to ask himself, and although my way of answering it mightn't be what Bakst expects, I think it's a worthy consideration:

I said Carcieri would say he wasn't calling them bad people, only that they'd made bad decisions. [URI Feinstein hunger center director Kathleen Gorman] said, "Point to me the first person who never made a bad decision in their life. I think he is calling them bad people." She termed him "very mean spirited."

I prefer not to think of Carcieri that way. He certainly doesn't think of himself that way. But if I were he, I'd ask myself: "What am I saying that's coming across wrong? How can I demonstrate I really do care?"

Bakst's first question is both silly and a bit of a trap. It's not Carcieri's presentation so much as his conclusions and beliefs that are branding him. My suggestion is that he could both prove his sincerity and highlight the inadequacy of the expected "I really do care" answer from the usual suspects by making room in his schedule for explaining his beliefs directly to the kids and adults most dramatically affected by his conclusions.

How does he demonstrate that he really cares? By speaking truth to powerless, thereby giving them more power — in the form of confidence — to make better decisions.

The Way Jerzyk's World Works

I'd like to, if I may, correct a couple of misconceptions on Matt Jerzyk's part without thereby lending credence to the parts of his post to which I don't think response merited:

... please provide me one woman in the entire state of Rhode Island who, when confronted with the reality of having a child and whether to have that child and the status of her relationship with the child's father, stops and thinks, "Why am I worried?? I can get on Welfare and life will be alllll good!" That's not how life works, folks. And I guess if Don Carcieri ever left his cushy East Greenwich neighborhood and visited the low-income areas of his state he would realize this!

The key flaw of Jerzyk's rhetoric (or its key ploy, if you prefer) is the moment that he picks in the series of decisions that leads to out-of-wedlock children. Indeed, although I don't wish to make presumptions as to his actual familiarity with such people, it seems to me that Jerzyk, despite his "visit[s] to low-income areas," has a far too belittling view of their decision-making capabilities. Can't low-income women, to wit, consider the possibility of children when they elevate their relationships with men such that they become potential fathers of their children? In the progressive world, it seems, low-income women can't do otherwise than have sex first and ask questions later, the poor, dear, disadvantaged savages Others.

Here's how the world has appeared to work for the human beings (of all races and classes) whom I've known in every setting from an Ivy-League-in-all-but-name campus to the navy-blue-collar commercial fishing docks: Having frequent and direct contact with similarly situated people whose poor decisions have proven dramatically detrimental discourages like behavior. Observing that those people receive increased benefits — not to mention increased creds toward the coveted victim status — enables poor decisions, especially when the detriments are still hypothetical, and tangential to the action under scrutiny (as conception is, in the hyper-sexed modern mind, a tangential consequence to the perceived benefit of casual sex).

Generally speaking, women don't expect to become pregnant from one-night stands or otherwise promiscuous behavior. When the consequences of that outcome are more dire, however, the pre-fling calculation is more likely to be made in terms of risk than of hypothetical possibility.

It is without a doubt a difficult balance to strike — that between raising up children who've had the misfortune to be born into such circumstances and easing the burden of adults' loose behavior. I'm still haunted, however, by this article out of England a few years ago:

In Britain, surveys indicate that for many teenagers becoming pregnant is an aspiration: the benefits and cheap local authority housing available is seen by some as a reason to become pregnant - especially for teenagers from impoverished or broken homes. A recent poll by the Family Education Trust indicated that 45 per cent of single pregnant teenagers had either wanted to conceive or "didn't mind" that they had. The introduction of £5,000 worth of free nursery care to enable pregnant teenagers to return to school is seen by many as a "perverse incentive" to attract young girls into parenthood.

As Robert Whelan, the director of the Family Education Trust, points out: "The scale of state help directed at young single parents is such that girls who do not have babies are losing out."

Jerzyk's fallacious reasoning with respect to the way the world actually works twists that very concern on its head with his notion of familial advantages:

Ask teenagers in Barrington what two parents got them. Two parents does not equal a nurturing family environment. Two parents can be working high-stress jobs as lawyers and doctors in Barrington and never be home for their kids. Or two parents can be working long-hours jobs as janitors and CNAs in Pawtucket and never be home for their kids.

Or two parents can construct a not-uncommon household (such as mine) in which one parent earns the predominant income, and the other stays home with the kids or takes on a decreased workload. It would seem that progressive families are all overworked and miserable, with two parents being hardly preferable to one. But a child with only one parent around, whether he or she is working as a janitor or a lawyer, has next to no chance of such a living arrangement. (And that's letting Jerzyk slide on his assumptions that Barrington households are not nurturing and that they're all two-parent.)

Between the progressive ideology of and the excessive "safety net" preferred by those who are driving this state into the ground, it becomes a moralist's question to ask whether young women ought to be having sex with men whom their children would be better off without. It becomes a sign of an oppressor to expect too much of the poor things.

Negotiating Our Own Demise

A comment from the "stunned" Senate Majority Leader Teresa Paiva Weed in yesterday's Projo article raises a couple of beguiling questions:

As a tradeoff for the new work requirements and time limits the state adopted in 1996, she said, Rhode Island made subsidized health care and childcare available so, she told the luncheon audience, talk today about "cutting welfare" to save any significant money would have to mean significant cuts in health and childcare.

First of all, with whom was the state "trading off" for work requirements? Is this another instance of Rhode Island's negotiating with the recipients of its largesse?

Second, if the health- and child-care benefits were a substitute for cash, anyway, why should the state treat them any differently as far as cuts are concerned? Of course, we'd probably be right to suspect that the "trade off" was actually a transfer to a give-away made more secure by the infamous "what can we do" factor. "What can we do? Let the children suffer?"

It's one thing to take away the money for somebody's cable bill. It's another to take away the extra food money that we gave him so that he could afford to pay his cable bill himself.

But Do We Want to be Protected?

New York City has tweaked and reissued proposed regulations requiring chain restaurants to put calorie information next to prices on their menus and menu boards.

Many chains, including McDonald’s, Burger King and Starbucks, already provide calorie information on their Web sites or on posters or tray liners.

But health officials say customers rarely see this information before deciding what to order. The regulation would require the calorie counts to be posted as prominently as the price of each menu item. For many fast food outlets, that means the information would be added to the big signs behind the cash registers that list food items and prices.

The regulations will be subject to public comment on November 27 and then a vote by the Board of Health, which is expected to approve them. Naturally, intrinsic to these regulations is the assumption that if caloric information is readily available to customers, they will make different - more healthy - choices from the menu.

“The big picture is that New Yorkers don’t have access to calorie information,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city’s health commissioner. “They overwhelmingly want it. Not everyone will use it, but many people will, and when they use it, it changes what they order, and that should reduce obesity and, with it, diabetes.”

Subway restaurant has proven to be a bit of a testing ground for at least the first part of this theory.

A health department survey this spring found that only 3 percent of customers at Domino’s, Papa John’s, Taco Bell and other popular restaurants saw the calorie information provided by those chains on their Web sites or other locations before ordering.

By contrast, about 31 percent of Subway customers reported seeing the calorie information, which was posted prominently next to the cash register at the time of the survey. Those who said they did consumed about 634 calories, about 50 calories less than those who did not, the study found.

So it appears that about an eight percent reduction in calorie consumption can be credited to more prominent signage.

This new regulation will follow upon New York's widely publicized ban last year of trans fats in all city restaurants. Both regulations were applauded by the Center for Science in the Public Interest last year.

Congratulations to the New York City Board of Health, Health Commissioner Tom Frieden and Mayor Michael Bloomberg for adopting these bold new measures to promote the public’s health. When New York City's major chain restaurants comply with these sensible new regulations, I hope they make the changes nationwide. ...

The calorie-labeling regulation approved by the board today will be of enormous help to weight-conscious New Yorkers. ... Most of the industry's arguments against calorie labeling are simply red herrings. ... Calorie labeling will put consumers back in the driver's seat and let them exercise personal responsibility for themselves and their children.

CSPI will be encouraging other cities and states, as well as Congress, to ensure that the rest of the country receives the same kind of protection from trans fat and information about calories as New Yorkers will soon have.

Some questions arise.

Aren't the menu boards of New York City chain restaurants going to be awfully cluttered with this new regulation?

Will the 8% calorie reduction experienced by Subway customers carry over to all chain restaurants? If it does, will there be a corresponding reduction in obesity and diabetes?

Do we dare to ask: is it worth it? Worth the bigger government? The expense to modify menu boards? The inconvenience of the extra time to sort through an information-packed menu board?

And finally, at what point does regulation cross the line from protection to intrusion?

Too Appropriate to Make Up

Periodically, one comes across coincidences that are so appropriately rife with subtext that only a heavy-handed author would layer them in a fictional story. Putting aside the RI-welfare-state practice in question, there's an example of reality's too-obvious plot line in Elizabeth Gudrais's Projo piece, "R.I. is ripe for welfare abuse, critics say":

Last spring during General Assembly hearings on bills aimed at thwarting illegal immigration, some lawmakers asked whether the state was doing enough to limit social-service programs to people who are legally eligible for them.

The lawmakers’ questions focused on the practice of entering a standard code number — 666 — into the state computer system when someone seeking benefits such as welfare or childcare assistance can’t provide a valid Social Security number, generally available only to U.S. citizens and those with legal immigration status. ...

Compared with other states, Rhode Island’s numbers are easy to track because all programs use the same code number. Back in the late 1980s, the developers of the computer system used by the social-services programs chose 666 because they needed a number that was not in use by the federal government as a prefix for Social Security numbers. Edward P. Sneesby, who was a policy officer with DHS at the time and is now the department’s associate director for program operations, says there were “only a handful of options” and that other states used the same number.

Taking our Social Security numbers as a form of identification, from the government's perspective, how appropriate that those drawn under the government's wing with no SSN identity of their own would be branded with 666! Woonsocket's Rep. Jon Brien (a Democrat, incidentally)...

... finds it hard to believe that the law is being enforced without exception. "There exist actual guidebooks that are given to illegal aliens, once they get here, by social organizations in this state, telling them how to go about getting State of Rhode Island benefits," he says.

"We're talking about people who have just arrived here illegally, children in tow."

What are the odds, I wonder, that the person to call for copies of the guidebooks would be Lucy Devlin (or some such), at extension 13? Perhaps when she hands one to you, she'll say, "All these benefits the state of Rhode Island will give to you."

A Movable Sob Story

My heartless campaign to explain to Rhode Island that there are alternative, more comprehensively beneficial ways of helping families than maintaining our state's structural deficit and driving out businesses and our most promising citizens continues in today's Providence Journal.

Problems Overcome

My Projo piece from last Friday is now up. I mention it for those who haven't read it, for those who wish to read it in Projo html, for those who'd like to help me create the illusion that I can drive readership, for those who have the time and inclination to play "find the edits," and for those who disbelieved me.

Assurances of Unscrupulousness

PROEM:

First published in the August 17 edition of the Providence Journal.

---

It's a suspicious thing for a legislature's press release to use the word "unscrupulous."

"Unscrupulous" is a word for activists and marketers. When a representative body uses it to describe some of its constituents --- in this case, building contractors --- one suspects that it bubbled up as a talking point from the dark places of the statehouse, where laws are sold and bought. It's an adjective that novelists use to label minor businessman-type characters as "very bad."

This is not to say that there are no unscrupulous contractors in Rhode Island, but the specificity with which the General Assembly has targeted those in the construction industry and its notions about what actions will remedy the supposed problem give the impression that somebody behind the scenes stands to gain from the measures taken. It is telling that the 2007 anti-unscrupulosity bill (H6511Aaa) creates, as one of its provisions, seats for two builders' associations on the Contractors' Registration and Licensing Board. And it is not surprising that the law's matron in the House of Representatives, Charlene Lima, is the very same woman who tagged an after-your-bedtime amendment onto the state's budget seeking to thwart privatization of government jobs.

Call her the Champion of the Established Player.

Suppose that a carpenter discerns several ways in which to meet clients' needs more efficiently and inexpensively --- and with more scruples--- than contractors for whom he's worked. After years of the legislature's "protecting consumers," if he intends to undertake projects costing above the piddling amount of $1,000 (labor and materials), that well-meaning carpenter will have to register as a contractor (for $200), take up the lawyerly art of contract writing (including research of the various items that must be included in the language of each contract), acquire insurance for half a million dollars, and figure out what, exactly, will fulfill the requirement for "continuing education" (followed by paying for and participating in applicable courses). All of this before so much as handing out business cards, under threat of a devastating $5,000 fine ($10,000 for subsequent offenses, although one would hope that the first batch of cards counts only as one).

It would be exaggerating to call any of these requirements barriers, but even hurdles create disincentive, particularly in an industry populated by workers who picture concrete, not cursive, when they hear of "forms." An obstacle course of regulatory hoops would seem less apt to trip up schemers who require just the sort of advantage that paper shields can provide in the marketplace than craftsmen who merely wish to ply their trade.

This dynamic applies more broadly than just to the trades, of course. For all the astonishment at the disproportionate remuneration of CEOs, the lack of consequences for such mammoth waste is too often treated as inexplicable. That a national CEO for UnitedHealthcare, for example, could in one year earn 150% of the combined salaries of the 2,000 employees of RI's St. Joseph Health Services (including two hospitals and an assisted-living facility) suggests that something more than mutual insider backwashing is thwarting competition.

Healthcare is a heavily regulated industry, to be sure, but regulations and restrictions provide a safety cushion for incumbents generally. Registration/licensure, continuing education, industry-specific, and even minimum wage requirements all dam the flow of competition, while doing little more than adding administrative costs for corporations, category killers, and Big Box stores. Established players can pass on those costs to customers with an ease of inverse proportion to the difficulty that upstarts and up-and-comers have addressing the same necessities. Moreover, in a world of rapid transportation and instantaneous communication, the capability of moving facilities overseas makes larger companies the ones that benefit from the possibility of excising regulatory baggage.

Notwithstanding the good intentions of those who would wield the law to protect the little guy, nothing is so much to his advantage as freedom. That includes the freedom to make bad choices, as well as the freedom to profit from others'. Immoral and unfair business practices can be prosecuted; complaints can be filed and posted for the public. More importantly, businesses can leverage the poor behavior of their competition. If the goal is to stop wrongdoers, their deeds can be judged when done. Instead, the General Assembly has sought to "give consumers some assurance" in advance and encourage potential contractors to hedge, rather than strive, lest they stumble on "a rule or regulation promulgated by the board."

Just as one cannot deny that some contractors are crooks, one must acknowledged that not all of those who would wield the law have good intentions. Who will protect Rhode Islanders from unscrupulous legislators, and what assurance is available that those we elect are aware of their own responsibilities to us?

Assistance to the Established Player

Although programming problems (as I've been given to understand) have kept it in print-only limbo, I've got an op-ed in today's Providence Journal about the ways in which, under the headline of protecting the "consumer" from "unscrupulous" free agents (including construction contractors), government generally (and the General Assembly in particular) creates a regulatory regime that ends up protecting established players from the anti-corruptive of competition.

I'm particularly satisfied that the piece gave the Projo reason to add the fact that I'm a "non-union carpenter" to my biographical line.

So go on out and put down the fifty cents for a Friday edition of the Providence Journal, and if you're so inclined, it couldn't hurt to send the suits a note explaining that you did so out of interest in the opinions and writing of the Anchor Rising gang.

Putting Out the Litigatory Fire

These two items aren't directly related, but reading them in close proximity to each other, I discerned some dots that could be connected. First is RI Senate Majority Leader Teresa Paiva Weed's defense of the General Assembly's failure to reform our state's fire code:

Following enactment of the new code in 2003, the Senate has responded when necessary with legislation to address concerns that were expressed to us about the code by the business community. Clarifying the code’s flexibility in 2005 is one example. Additionally, Sen. V. Susan Sosnowski championed the effort to create more flexible options for fire safety in churches and houses of worship. Using the flexibility of the existing code, I worked to ensure that consideration was given for bed-and-breakfast establishments. The Senate provided substantial staff support to the Council of Churches and the Bed and Breakfast Association in these successful efforts to find workable and practical interpretations of the code.

I'm not sure what "concerns" the "business community" has "expressed" to the legislature, but I've heard tales from electricians on various jobsites, and seen evidence, of ridiculous requirements that cost much more money than they appear to be worth. I've also discovered that the school next to my house is being rebuilt in part so that the younger children can actually enter the cafeteria, which the current code forbids.

On to the next, which is a bit of autobiography from Eric of Classical Values (who is not speaking of Rhode Island, specifically):

After spending years running a very popular but commercially unsuccessful nightclub, I was advised (by some attorneys who meant well) that the ideal career change for me would be to sue business owners for non-compliance with the ADA.

"Attorneys fees are there by statute!" I was told.

Great. Now that I was out of business, I could be born again as a despicable parasite and help ensure that other business owners would be put out of business. It struck me that if I became a homeless derelict, I'd be doing more for the world than if I helped ruin other people's businesses. (It didn't help much that one of the many reasons my business failed was that the building was cited by the fire marshall for inadequate handicapped access, and there was no way to remedy this without major alterations to the building, which I did not own, for patrons in wheelchairs who never came.)

Senator Paiva Weed makes much of the fire code's flexibility, but there's flexibility, and then there's flexibility. I'd suggest that the flexibility of business owners and taxpayers to switch jobs and rebuild buildings should not count.

A Word from a Neighbor

I can't imagine what I would do — or, more to the point, demand — if my little square of land turned out to be contaminated. My family would probably be moving into somebody's basement while we tried to figure out how to either save the property or extricate ourselves from ownership of it. Folks right down the hill from me have been facing just this situation for several years, now, so it's not merely hypothetical, but as the legal bills flow out of the attempt to force a company to pay for the clean up, the efficacy, as well as the principle, of doing so is becoming a serious question:

The battle over a contaminated Tiverton neighborhood and the cost of cleaning it up moved to the Rhode Island State House last night, where it was revealed that the tab for a Washington, D.C., law firm representing the state has risen to $777,000 — and climbing. ...

The Rhode Island Department of Environmental has traced the contamination to the former Fall River Gas Co., which allegedly dumped waste material in the area in the early 1900s. The company later became part of New England Gas, which was in turn purchased by Southern Union, a big utility company based in Houston, Texas. ...

Sutherland Asbill, which billed $355,000 in January and February, as previously reported, billed the state another $322,000 for March and April. Noting that the state has yet to receive the firm’s bills for May and June, Alves noted that the bills have been piling up at the rate of $200,000 a month and have likely already reached the $1 million range — with no clear end in sight.

Each month's bill is, by itself, over three times the $60,000 that the DEM was authorized to spend. Clearly, somebody in the line of command is under the impression that victory is certain, but American governmental types' recent transformation into big-wallet-seeking plaintiffs may be crossing into poorly considered territory.

Scarcely a Rhode Islander, no doubt, is not sympathetic to the plight of the affected families, and calls for some sort of well-defined fund to help them would likely draw impressive response; I'd probably contribute to a rattled cup, and if the state weren't on the verge of financial collapse, some of its resources would more readily be available to help. Attempting to enforce modern environmental standards on a company that bought a company that bought a company that violated those standards one hundred years ago, however, may be a no-victory endeavor.

If the state loses the legal battle, nobody has benefited but the lawyers; if it wins, a dubious precedent would have been set. Perhaps we'd be better off ensuring that all environmental regulations are updated to account for our more advanced scientific understanding and then turning our attention to lightening the burden of our darker past, rather than seeking live people in another part of the country to pay for the mistakes of our deceased neighbors.

I Laughed When My Mother Warned Me About DWC in NJ

By DWC, I mean "driving while conversing." In New Jersey, you see, talking on a non-hands-free cell phone while driving an automobile is a ticketable offense. Apparently, South Kingstown Senator V. Susan Sosnowski thinks that's a swell idea:

Citing the many dangers associated with talking on a cell phone while driving, Senator V. Susan Sosnowski has again introduced legislation that would prohibit drivers from using a non-hands-free cell phone while operating a motor vehicle.

“Talking on a cell phone while driving is just plain dangerous, and is the cause of thousands of car accidents a year,” said Senator Sosnowski (D-Dist. 37, New Shoreham, South Kingstown). “Unless we prohibit this practice, innocent people will continue to be injured or killed on our roadways.”

The bill (2007 - S0094) would make exceptions for public safety personnel, such as firefighters, police officers and ambulance operators. Also, any motorist who needs to make an emergency phone call to a 911 operator, hospital, physician’s office or health clinic, fire department, police department or ambulance company would be allowed to do so under Senator Sosnowski’s legislation.

Any individual charged with using a cell phone while operating a motor vehicle could be fined up to $100. However, the fine will be waived for a first time violator if he or she obtains a hands-free accessory for the phone.

I haven't time to look into the vaguely referenced "recent University of Utah study" that represents the sole evidence that such a law is needed, but I wonder: How much have accidents increased since the widespread use of cell phones? And how much will forbidding actual conversations help when such things as dialing are not covered by the law?

I also wonder whether I'll have to go to the Supreme Court to find out whether I can check my email on the phone. On the one hand, the legislation (PDF) provides:

An operator of a motor vehicle who holds a hand-held mobile telephone to, or in the immediate proximity of, his or her ear while such vehicle is in motion is presumed to be engaging in a call within the meaning of this section.

On the other hand, the proposed language includes this catch-all:

Except as otherwise provided in this section, no person shall engage in any activity not related to the actual operation of a motor vehicle in a manner that interferes with the safe operation of such vehicle on any highway.

So much for disciplining the kids to "pipe down back there."

ADDENDUM:
Readers may notice that this post is the first under the brand new topic "Under the Government's Wing," which I've increasingly desired, now that I'm receiving RI state legislature press releases.