Dear George

Soros

I write to explain 'regulatory reform' because from a financier or arbitrage perspective you may not quite appreciate what the folks who are involved in manufacturing industries deal with.
This is prompted by your comments on GPS wherein you attribute the Tea Party manipulation to selfish people who want to reform regulation (and taxes.) Lets talk regulatory reform.

For the sector of the economy who make their living off making things- manufacturing, regulatory reform is seen as key to being able to create enterprises that make jobs that feed people and keep roofs over their heads and pay college tuitions. So those people harping about regulatory reform are not any more selfish than people making money off other people's money. Are they organized through places like the Chamber of Commerce and plugged into Dick Armey's Tea Party Freedom Works lobbying hooplah? Sure- but they don't come from a place of pure selfishness. They have an economic perspective they think is responsible and rational.

Regulations, or government overreach has been seen as a stranglehold preventing the establishment of new innovation because it becomes so cost prohibitive to set up new industries that it provides barriers to entry that block entire industries. This was not the case when for example the computer industry first launched in the 50s- if we had
the same regulatory climate as we do now then it is unlikely we would even have companies now like Apple and Microsoft. Regulations affect every aspect of industry- government requirements pertaining to everything, not just taxation, can create untenable barriers to entry that completely
discourage or prevent even new innovative industry from being born.
Not that each of these regulations were not well conceived, and not that they each don't make some sense. I am particularly fond of all the statutory employment laws that make people behave better toward a workforce or vulnerable 'protected class' citizens. But on the whole, if you look at the whole regulatory climate, you have to assess how friendly it is for people to create new business opportunities for others by creating new industries. How easy is it now to launch a Green Apollo type initiative- because we have been waiting and it has not happend yet. Why not?? Have you tried it?

Hence, I submit those people championing regulatory reform are not out of their minds, and they are not motivated by selfishness necessarily any more than anyone else. It is a rational assessment of economic opportunity. They are looking at how best to spur on job growth. Jobs exist in companies. So you cannot ignore the fiscal health of companies if you want to create job growth, and the fiscal health of companies are impacted by regulations. It is important thus to look at potential over-reach responsibly.
Jobs are part of a system that requires looking at structural issues. At root, you have to look at the whole system. Very good decent unselfish people are trying to do that. Those aren't the ones with Lipton tags hanging from their fishing hats.

Lets do lunch. I will explain.