>>Government has no right to dictate who I can hire and fire in my private business. I have no problem with laws that say I can not discriminate on irrelevant qualities. However, business must have the right to discriminate based on qualification. My wife and I purposely keep our business small because of the burden of government laws and regulations would bankrupt in less than a year. We know this for a fact as we tried this by hiring administrative help. We ditched that experiment in less than 6 months. Almost a year later, we are just now back to where we were 18 months ago. IMO, the have not only leveled the playing field, that field has been tilted against the owners of small and mid-sized businesses.
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>What laws and regulations do you specifically object to, and how has the playing field been titlted against you?

Not necessarily tilted against me, but against the very small businesses as a whole. What I do know, is without employees, our gov't burden is far less proportionally than with a non-family employee. By adding that 1 employee, our costs more than doubled with just a 33% increase in staff. The burden to overcome that initial hurdle of expanding is much higher for the very small business than it is for a mid-size business. The cost curve is much steeper adding the first few employees versus hiring the 10th, 20th, etc. employee.

My analogy is taking the cost of a single-user application and making it multi-user. The initial cost is significantly higher to add the second computer than just the cost of the second computer. You have server software to add and probably a server [3rd computer] because I hate peer-to-peer. You also have network cards and cabling, possibly a hub as well. However, once that is done and absorbed, the cost of adding the 3rd workstation and beyond approaches just the cost of the computer. You only have the additional cabling and network card [very low add on cost].

>I am not disputing what you are saying, so far as Clinton raising taxes his first term, but that was at least over 4 years ago. And when you consider the Republican victories in the 1994 mid-term elections, I would find it hard to believe that taxes increased after that point. So, I am not seeing a lot of support for your statement that their is a "current trend toward higher taxation". That was your statement, not mine.

Ahh, sorry. Thank goodness for the 1994 elections that stopped the madness and saved Clinton from himself. yes, I agree the last 6 years have flat lined with respect to tax increase pressures at the federal level.

>We tax the hard working and successful, as well as the not so hard working and not terribly successful. And I don't think of welfare as a reward. I certainly don't like the idea of anyone not carrying their weight, but when I drive by the projects, I don't see what I call any rewards.

Those projects are the result of federal housing projects to centralize the poor and destitute. This is a typical government program full of good intentions gone terribly wrong. Of course most of this disaster has been abandoned by the federal gov't and left to the local communities to deal with. I fully support providing vouchers instead of public housing so these people may CHOOSE where they want to live.

I also have no sympathy for someone who destroys what they have been given. I believe the saying is you don't burn what you own which goes back to one of the underpinnings of our society - the right to own and acquire private property, but I digress.

However, in defense of those stuck in these projects who truly try to better themselves, the government is a lousy slum lord and lacks the ability to maintain what they create. There is also NO incentive for any gov't agency to totally solve the problem they are supposed to fix. The benefits are good, the pay is usually good, the hours are good, etc. Who wants to eliminate the need for their agency?

Here's an example for you. The EPA has created another environmental disaster by forcing the petroleum industry to put MTBE in gasoline. A formulation they knew full well did not work based on pilot testing in Phoenix and other cities in the early 90s but proceded anyway. Not only does it not reduce exhaust emissions, it has polluted much of our drinking water sources [surface and ground] with a chemical that is water soluble and not biodegradable. What has EPA done? Assembled a panel to investigate what is already known. Carol Browner does not want to admit EPA made a horrendous mistake. She will leave that to the next administration.

BTW, with respect to gov't irresponsibility I mentioned above, some of the worst superfund sites are federal facilities [e.g., military bases, etc.]. Why? Because the US Government does not take enforcement actions against itself. Conflict of interest. < g >