Better, Not Just Less, Government

UPDATE V: "Want to learn about the plight of unemployed workers during the Great Depression? Head to Amazon.com and order John Steinbeck’s Depression-era epic, “The Grapes of Wrath.” Want to learn about the plight of workers during our own Lesser Depression? Head over to Amazon’s warehouse in Lehigh, Pa., and watch them prepare your book for shipping." Read the Washington Post, Amazon.com and the Grapes of Wrath.


UPDATE IV: The future of labor without OSHA -- "working in a convection oven while blow-drying your hair." Read The New York Times, Inside Amazon’s Very Hot Warehouse.


UPDATE III: Still pining for laissez-faire land, move to China, where, "[o]ver the past two and a half years, thousands of workers, villagers and children have been found to be suffering from toxic levels of lead exposure". Read The New York Times, Lead Poisoning in China: The Hidden Scourge.


UPDATE II: Still seeking "a country with low taxes, little regulation and traditional family values, I have the perfect place for them. Body armor suggested." Read The New York Times, Our Fantasy Nation?


UPDATE: For those who doubt the benefit of good government regulation, compare the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan and the tsunamis in the Indian Ocean (2004) and Japan, "Perhaps no country in the world [was] better prepared to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis than Japan." Read The New York Times, Japan’s Strict Building Codes Saved Lives.

Now that the Republi-con ideology has proven false, what next? How about better government? Read The New York Times, Better, Not Just More, Regulation, which argues that the country needs a new regulatory structure that will make the markets function better, not worse.