Paying for your own Paperwork

 

The Federal (as well as state, city, county, local) wants to track what is going on. Some is required by the US Constitution (like the US Census), but the vast majority is "make work" paperwork due to some law or requirement passed from 1 to 100 years ago and dutifully carried out each year no matter if it makes sense to do so or not.

 

A USA web site of the Small Business Administration states that it costs US businesses $7,647 per employee to comply with all the paperwork requirements put onto them – just for the FEDERAL regulations. Add in the other paperwork requirements and you can see that the cost to have an employee is even more.

The complete report is within the Office of Advocacy website.  

 

Imagine if just 50% of the paperwork cost could be eliminated. The business could give 50% of the savings to the employee (in cash or in benefits) and keep the rest itself to boost profits for them. Both would win. This wiping out of paperwork would also shrink the government since there would be no need to have people there to read (or more likely just file) all these items away or compile them into reports that no one ever acts upon.

 

Just because a report is created does not mean that anything is done BECAUSE of it.

 

History is replete with examples of thousands of weekly / monthly / yearly reports that are just created because they have to be but NO ONE ever takes action over what they contain. Its not their job to make decisions they only exist to create the report.

 

The levee system around New Orleans is a good example. Everyone knew about the reported problems, but no one was willing to make a decision to DO SOMETHING about it. Funding studies about the problem was more important than doing something about it. In the Pacific NW the same is true of salmon recovery. Studying the problem for 20 to 50 more years is more important than trying something that may or may not work. They worry more about trying something that does not (and hurts the fish) than trying something and it helps them. Thus by studying for 20 to 50 years that it will take to find out what could help them nothing is done.

 

Paralysis by Analysis.

 

Required paperwork is another example where mostly nothing is accomplished since no one is willing to act upon data. If that is the case, then the required paperwork should just be eliminated.