Are you aware than the Consumer Product Safety Commission is capable of ruining a business through a mere editorial oversight—and it has.
Did you know that agents of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration can raid a place of business any time they want?
Senator Ervin calls the CPA [Consumer Protection Agency] bill ‘the most dangerous piece of legislation ever presented to the Congress.’ He warns that the head of CPA would have ‘the most tremendous powers ever granted to any many in the history of the United States.’… And he reminds everyone that ‘government is a parasite.’
This country was built by men who used American ingenuity and know-how to meet the shortages and the needs of the people through the profit motive. It would be unwise to set a precedent of government control of profits when conditions of shortage arise. We believe this would not be in the best interests of the public and a free economy.
Such a tax inevitably discourages capital investment that is so important for the development of new energy resources. There is a definite psychological effect on investors who know that any success will be subject to a tax that could consume almost the entire profit.
Experience with a wartime excess profits tax indicates that it tends to encourage needless and wasteful expenditures. With government bearing 80 to 90 per cent of the cost of business operations, there is little incentive for a corporation to increase the efficiency of its organization.
An excess profits tax is not in keeping with our competitive enterprise system. It suggests that government can decide how much profits should be, which profits are excessive, and which are not excessive. If this is possible with the energy producing segment of the economy, then is it not possible with other segments of the economy? Where do we stop? What will be the shortages next year and the next, and which businesses will be subjected to government regulation and control of their profits?
‘Consumer interest’ is an amorphous concept, made up of many competing elements, and the CPA [Consumer Protection Agency], time and again, will be called upon to make paternalistic judgments as to what is best for 200 million American consumers.
It is unreasonable to assume that existing bureaucratic lassitude will be corrected by establishing another layer of bureaucracy.
This approach assumes that all consumers want the same thing. As others have pointed out, the ‘consumer interest’ is not a monolithic interest which is easily identified. While some consumers may want safe, high quality products, other consumers may wish to sacrifice these qualities for a lower price tag.