Law of Diminishing Returns rules


My unified theory of the universe is the Law of Diminishing Returns. In other words, each additional widget or re-invention of the wheel yields smaller and smaller benefit. Let’s take the universal subset of government. In our country, we started with the Constitution. A couple of centuries later, we’ve got intrusive, regulatory and confiscatory layers of governmental bureaucracy that render the Constitution some flyspeck off in the distance.

Let’s see what the legislators closer to home in Hartford are up to. Obviously, there are some situations that cry out for legislative attention and how circuses handle elephants is not one of them. Those folks out in Stonington must be mighty proud of their representative who’s bound and determined to bring about pachyderm justice. And of course, the media presents it all with a straight face. I wonder if the rep in question is a Democrat or a Republican?


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In the interest of fairness, there is bipartisan support for new laws limiting public schools in terms of suspending students and sending them home for a while. It seems that the sage lawmakers think suspendees enjoy their vacations. Perhaps that’s correct, but burdening school staff with supervising "in-school suspensions" of incorrigibles is dumping another duty of parents on educators that are already way out of bounds in terms of what they think they’re supposed to "teach."

Back in the day when I was an incorrigible, it wasn’t the suspension that concerned me, it was the hell to pay at home.

If Johnny is playing video games and text-messaging during his suspension, one of those brave legislators ought to stand up and indict the parents. They hold the ultimate responsibility for disciplining Johnny. (By the way, are there any more "Johnny"s, or is every boy named "Josh" now?) Jeesh!

Together with our fine governor, whose party is indeterminate, the Hartford bunch is deciding when and how much to increase our taxes. If there was ever a case of additional taxes yielding negative returns, it’s Connecticut. You want to attract, not repel commerce, entrepreneurs and jobs. Connecticut is like Ford ... way overextended and in need of downsizing. Only Ford is doing it. Taking someone else’s money, and loading it in to a bureaucracy, is a sure fire way of wasting the money you took.

Speaking of taxes, everybody wants to increase the cigarette tax ... again. Where’s the outrage? What you’re going to end up with is a black market and another bureaucratic layer to deal with it. So the money generated goes to enforcement, and commerce takes a hit ... again. And it’s the definition of regressive. (I smoke, don’t you?)

And while we’re on the subject of returns, the idiotic new bottle bill just won’t die. Schlepping stuff you bought at the store back to the store was always a bad idea. Curbside or centralized recycling is the way to go. Why burden the grocer whose margin is so tiny to begin with? It’s the nanny state gumming things up, as usual.

 


Peter Chiesa is a working stiff living in Kent who used to be a red-meat conservative.

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