Thomas Sowell again offers his common-sense adage that too much of a good thing is not a Good Thing. Unfortunately for US, politicians and the elites who know better than all of us always insist that we have to spend more and more money to have the Good Things regardless of the cost and with no regard to the eventual negative consequences even when they are foreseen.
Many of our environmental regulations were written based on technology at the time that would find substances in parts per million. Now we have the technology to find substances at levels in parts per billion. That doesn't mean that we have the technology to purify water or air to parts per billion, but environmentalists lobby and file lawsuits to force industry to do so when it is not possible or only possible at costs that would bankrupt industry costing jobs and more tax revenue despite no evidence that removing substances discovered at such minute levels is feasible or even helpful.
And often the truth is hidden to justify bad policies as Sowell points out with the percentage of mortgage applications that resulted in lenders being forced to fund mortgages for those who could in no way ever be expected to repay them. That resulted in the financial crisis that has devastated our economy hurting all of us greatly including those who the relaxed lending requirements were supposed to help in the first place.
Good Things by Thomas Sowell
