Grandma Fagin and the Artful Harper

One of the greatest joys of being a grandmother is having, once again, an opportunity to teach small children useful skills.

So I was pretty tickled the last time I visited my grandkids to help them learn a little something about money.

We were at a Mexican restaurant when the kids spied a gumball machine and immediately clamored for quarters. (That's right--25 cents for a gumball--it's 2011. Suck it up.) I only had one quarter, but I did have two dimes and a nickel. I gave Phinn, who's a bit shy, the quarter. Harper's only three, but she's fearless, so I handed her the remaining change.

Pointing to the cashier, I said, "Take these over to that lady and ask her for a quarter."

Clutching the money in her left fist, Harper marched up to the register. She looked up, up, up at the young woman standing behind the register. Some children have voices like the lilting of a flute or fife. Harper's is more like an oboe. Thrusting out her empty right palm, she growled, "I need a quarter."

The cashier looked down at the little sprite frowning up from beneath her blond bob. The child's eyes didn't waver. Her hand remained upthrust in silent demand. Bemused, the cashier opened the drawer and handed her a quarter. Grabbing it, Harper wheeled and headed for the gumball machine.

Which was when I realized I'd just abetted my granddaughter in her first robbery.

Next time Grandma visits, maybe she'll teach you how to knock over a liquor store.

The High Cost of Regulation

I keep hearing how the high cost of government regulation is destroying American businesses. Only, sometimes the number I hear is HUGE ($1.75 trillion) and other times it actually seems pretty reasonable ($73 billion). So, which is it? And why the discrepancy? Let's talk about the smaller number first. For 2008, the annual figure released by the Office of Budget and Management was $73 billion (give or take a few billion, adjusted for inflation, blah, blah, blah). Which, compared against a gross domestic product of $14.64 trillion, didn't seem too outrageous considering what it buys us: clean water, breathable air and no lead in our toothpaste. The problem with this number is that it includes only major regulations and it excludes any regulations enacted more than 10 years previously. Which lets out the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act of 1985 and means that our $73 billion is NOT buying us clean air and water and low-lead dentifrices. Now let's talk about the other number, the big, scary one. $1.75 trillion dollars. That's $15,586 for each and every one of us. Which is, by anyone's accounting, a shitload of money. But where did this number, which represents the full price of having clean water, see-thru air (unlike the kind we saw over Beijing during the Olympics) and lead-free toothpaste, come from? In 2010, the Small Business Administration commissioned a study to come up with a complete estimate based on the regulations in place in 2008. This is where it gets interesting. This number was calculated by taking the regulations and then using polling data from the World Bank to calculate a cost for those regulations. Unfortunately, the World Bank itself said this data was not valid for statistical analysis. It's kind of like your mortgage company calculating the balance of your loan by asking a bunch of people, "Hey, what do you think this guy owes?" God knows I'm not a statistician, but that seems like an iffy methodology. What do their reviewers think? Don't know. Their contract that says the researchers don't have to share their raw data, only their conclusions, which means their results cannot be peer reviewed, can't be challenged, can't be substantiated. So the next time you hear Fox News screeching about the high cost of regulation, take it with a grain of salt. But do it quick, before the FDA starts regulating it.

Thought Food Thursday: Dorothy Neville

The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place but to leave usnaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

You said it, sister.