I don't think we are in Kansas anymore, Mark Funkhouser

According to the Kansas City Star, mayor Mark Funkhouser, is holding a conference of editorial writers to devise new ways of pressuring federal policy makers to take an active stance in Creating policy to help and encourage economic growth in urban areas. That is, he wants the central government to take a more active stance on the microcosmic economies of cities. He beleives this would encourage more sustainable.

This sounds like a very bad idea. First of all, situations, people and preferences change from city to city. The idea of federal policies and regulations is that when a law is made on the FEDERAL level, it is a blanket regulation for all of the land. If a regulation is going to help a specific region (and that is a big "if") it would need to be tailored to that specific region. There is no place for federal government here. Not only states have the power to play on their own state-specific strengths, but,by virtue of being localized, they most likely have better information about the region which they are regulating.


Beyond this initial absurdity that leaders in Washington should make better decisions about a region as opposed to the leaders within that region, we have the added concern of greater market regulations. These things are done for the stated purpose of "increasing economic growth" which usually involved governmental subsidies to allow for greater production of selected industries and firms. Not only is this rife with rent-seeking implications, where lobbyists will try to get their specific industry "stimulated" with a subsidy, but there is the looming chance and likelihood of these stimulating the wrong sectors, creating surplus goods that are not demanded by consumers. So, instead of leaving the money in the hands of customers wo can stimulate whichever sector they want by merely buying it, they are taxed and there money is spent on other items they do not want.

The best means for economic growth is less regulations, not more regulations that are misplaced, since they come from the federal government.