Recent cases of disturbing business practices underscore the need for good regulation, which is at stake in next year’s election.
Source, Paul Krugman, New York Times: Dewey, Cheatem & Howe
To me, the key paragraphs are here:
There are, it turns out, people in the corporate world who will do whatever it takes, including fraud that kills people, in order to make a buck. And we need effective regulation to police that kind of bad behavior, not least so that ethical businesspeople aren’t at a disadvantage when competing with less scrupulous types. But we knew that, right?
Well, we used to know it, thanks to the muckrakers and reformers of the Progressive Era. But Ronald Reagan insisted that government is always the problem, never the solution, and this has become dogma on the right.
As a result, an important part of America’s political class has declared war on even the most obviously necessary regulations. Too many important players now argue, in effect, that business can do no wrong and that government has no role to play in limiting misbehavior.
I’ve written about the need for government regulatory agencies and what happens when they’ve been weakened.
So now Paul Krugman writes about it succinctly and better.