Concierge Bureaucracy

For John, BLUF:  What is your milage?  Nothing to see here; just move along.

---

"Cartels and Concierge Bureaucracy Management".

The blog is Ricochet and the author is Skipsul.♠

I have been arguing for some time that the ever increasing petty rules and regulations are squeezing out the little guy, while empowering the big operators.  It is the big companies that can afford the lawyers and accountants needed to sift through the myriad of rules and regulations to ensure their company is not in violation of this or that.♥

But, Skipsul does a much better job of describing the situation.  Here are his first three paragraphs:

Several years ago I heard an amusing story on NPR’s Planet Money program. The story described an Indian entrepreneur who, frustrated with India’s local political corruption and red tape, started a new business:  Concierge Bribery.  For a fee, he would seek out and pay off all of the sundry local officials whenever a local business needed something done.  I thought how lucky we were that America had not yet descended to that level.  I was deeply wrong.  We, in fact, have had concierge bureaucracy managers for some time.

While it is generally a good maxim to never ascribe to mendacity that which can be explained by incompetence, normal logic seems rarely to apply to any of the corruption and rot stemming from Obamacare (and for the record, I refuse to call it “The Affordable Care Act”, or ACA).  The act seems explicitly designed, among other things, as a tool to force a cartelization of the entire medical industry.  We see this in the rapid demise of independent practices, as they close up shop and merge into large provider networks — effectively regional medical cartels.  What we are not yet seeing, or rather noticing, on any scale is the very similar effect Obamacare (when coupled with the many other business strictures in place) is having on general employment itself.

The complexities of complying with the myriad kludges of federal, state, and local income taxes, payroll taxes, workers’ comp systems, and unemployment taxes have already driven most employers to contract with specialized firms for handling payroll.  Only larger corporations have the budget to acquire and maintain the complicated accounting packages for running payrolls internally, so most smaller companies have, for years, offloaded this work on companies such as ADP or Paychex.  With every added employee comes a new set of filings, and more potential for error.  Just within my own company, we have have employees from two states and seven different local taxing jurisdictions, each of which has its own income tax, to be submitted on its own form, and by its own arbitrary deadlines.  Say what you will about the virtues of federalism, each of those various towns, cities, and counties is a petty fiefdom unto itself, and all must be paid whether I actually do business there or not.  Payroll services are effectively already the concierge bureaucracy managers.  Now they are also changing into employment cartels.

Hat tip to the Day-by-Day.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Skipsul describes himself as a Midwestern owner of a small manufacturer of automotive electronics.  He also claims to be an Erstwhile history teacher and Gun Nut.
♥  This, in fact, is how the Democrats actually favor big business.  It is the Republicans who are trying to help small business.  Former SecState Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Standers (and dark horse Senator E Warren) only promise more of the same.