Think tanks Quotes

The complexity of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act and the added state provisions can be costly to employers of any size. The administrative burden and potential for overlap with other benefits can have a serious impact on workforce productivity.

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CORE Inc., “the largest independent provider of absence reporting and clinical management services” in the U.S..
331201/01/2000 | Full Details | Law(s): Family Medical Leave Act

The ordinance would cost the city [Chicago] nearly $20 million per year. The city would spend more than 20% of this amount ($4.2 million) on the administrative costs of certification, monitoring, and enforcement of the ordinance. This $20 million cost would require a permanent tax increase on citizens of Chicago.

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George Tolley, Peter Bernstein, and Michael Lesage.
319407/01/1999 | Full Details | Law(s): Living Wage

By mandating an even higher minimum, the living wage prices even more people out of work. The people who push these cockamamie ideas never seem to ask why any employer would hire someone at $8.23 if that person's services are only valued in the marketplace at, say, $5.00.

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Lawrence W. Reed. Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
319305/03/1999 | Full Details | Law(s): Living Wage

The problem is raising the minimum wage actually hurts, not helps, low-income workers. Minimum wage laws make it illegal to have a job that pays below the government mandated limit. If that wage is more than a job provider will pay for a certain job, then no worker can get—or keep—that job.

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Martin, Catherine, Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
03/01/1999 | Full Details | Law(s): Minimum Wage

Minimum wage laws may very well be the most anti-poor laws envisioned by modern government policymakers.

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LaFaive, Michael D., Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
11/01/1997 | Full Details | Law(s): Minimum Wage

The Community Reinvestment Act should be repealed--not reformed or restricted but repealed! For no conceivable set of regulations on a bank is consistent with the objective of the Act to meet ‘the credit needs of its entire community, including low and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with safe and sound operation of such institution.’ The Community Reinvestment Act was the wrong solution to a genuine problem, for the most part created by other government regulations. Until recently, federal restrictions on interstate banking and state restrictions on intrastate branching severely restricted bank competition in local markets and the potential for geographic diversity of loan portfolios. These restrictions have been substantially reduced, promising a more competitive banking system that is more responsive to the interests of both depositors and borrowers and less vulnerable to adverse economic conditions in specific regions...Don't try to fix the Community Reinvestment Act. It can't be done. Repeal it.

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William A. Niskanen, Chairman, Cato Institute. Testimony, Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, House Committee on Banking and Financial Services

When it comes to FDA regulation, one encounters claims…that are virtually identical to the claims now recognized as discredited in relation to socialist central planning of the whole economy.

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Robert Higgs, then-Research Director for the Independent Institute.
333502/01/1995 | Full Details | Law(s): Abolish the FDA

Mandatory recycling creates waste and destroys wealth without solving any "problems." It is the equivalent of Soviet planning: the state first micromanages an economic activity and then builds an elaborate system of controls and subsidies to sustain it. Resources are wasted to generate recyclables, and then resources are wasted to encourage their use.

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Cato Institute

[Recycling] neither conserve[s] scarce resources nor help[s] to protect the environment.

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Cato Institute

If a murderer kills you, it’s homicide. If a drunk driver kills you, it’s manslaughter. If the FDA kills you, it’s just being cautious…Our own federal government’s bureaucratic and apparently unaccountable Food and Drug Administration [blocked drug approvals while Americans] died in agony from a disease other nations controlled for years.

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The Washington Legal Foundation (WLF) newspaper ads in publications, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
06/21/1993 | Full Details | Law(s): Abolish the FDA

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