The stupidity of government do-gooder regulators was highlighted for Eric Falkenstein last weekend:
My wife doesn’t work, staying home with our 2 year-old Izzie. She would often go to our health club after our boys are at school, around 9 AM, where there is a childcare facility and she can have a leisurely workout. She found they needed help, and she knows people there, so she works there part time, around 4-hour shifts, while Izzie is in childcare. She enjoys the break from the kids, the adult comaraderie, and Izzie has fun playing with other kids in a room just down the hall from my wife. Yet last weekend OSHA, the US agency that ‘regulates workplace safety’ determined that this could not stand, because the health club’s child care center was not licensed for such service (greater than 2 hours). Supposedly, they would need some extra-special licensed childcare, which would then be too expensive to the club. So, because some bureaucrat decided they would save workers from the evils of firm childcare, the health club loses out on my wife’s cheap labor, my wife loses out on some quality no-kid/adult time, and Izzie loses out on playing with her snot-nosed buddies. Lose-lose-lose.