Blue-Collar Impact Statements

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s an idea I’ve had for many years. The idea is that, since environmental groups wield an awful lot of power by their use of environmental impact statements, and since the use of these statements, as well as environmentalism in general, can adversely affect the poor, we need blue-collar impact statements to counter the environmental impact statements. (See here, and a tip of the hat to Mark Spahn for this link.) The idea would be that environmentalists would be forced to assess the costs for the poor of any of their proposed rules and regulations.

Let the environmentalists be challenged for a change.

And for anyone new to this blog, let me note a time when my wife and I were poor and we were adversely affected by the environmentalists. We were lucky enough to have a car, but one year the car failed its annual inspection and needed to be “fixed,” even though from our standpoint it was working fine. Let me count the ways that poor people are hurt by this nonsense. (1) Poor people are vastly more likely than rich people to have cars that fail the inspection. (2) The cost of the repair will take a bigger bite out of the poor person’s money than it will out of the rich person’s. We desperately needed that money, but of course the environmentalists didn’t care. (3) The poor are unlikely to have a second vehicle to use while the first is in the shop.

For this and various other reasons, I say that environmentalists are Enemies of the People.

Comments

[seo training in multan]

Thanks for sharing this information.

[Peg]

John; I am not an anti all regulation person. Some of it is, however, nuts.

Take a home that I've sold that needed to be lender mediated (short sale). It's a nice home, but with a mid 120's price tag and more than 110 years old, that everything inside and out isn't pristine is not shocking.

We just received an appraisal and "work orders" from HUD. Some of the items are reasonable; safety issues. Yet, other items that must be "repaired" prior to closing seem ridiculous.

When the bathtub and sink water is turned on, the pressure is low. They both function, just without strong pressure. The buyers are OK with this... After all, how often in a small bathroom does a person run both the sink and the bath at the same time? The HUD appraiser, however, is demanding that this be "repaired." Due to the age of the house, the only way to fix it is to do very expensive redos of the plumbing throughout.

If the buyers don't mind the low pressure, and it surely is not a safety issue - then why should the government give two whits about it?

Answer: it should not.

We need to be saved from these "do-gooders" who actually create far more problems with their regulation and demands than without them!

[John Pepple]

Thanks for that contribution of nuttiness. It's hard to imagine what they're thinking. Maybe they think the next buyers won't like it, even if the current ones don't mind, but that's a future problem for the current buyers, and not HUD's business. Or so I would think.

I, too, don't mind some regulation, but often it gets too far out of hand.

[Andrea Harris]

You'd think HUD would be approving of the low water pressure in the bathroom. After all, low water pressure uses less water, doesn't it?

[John Pepple]

Good point, Andrea. I certainly can't think why they'd care about the low water pressure, if the buyers don't care.