American Greatness "California’s endless tangle of petty rules shows a state so obsessed with control that even simple daily tasks have become exercises in regulated misery.
Let’s be clear. The time it takes to fulfill all these steps is often greater than the amount of time that it takes to do the actual work. In many cases, the expense for the excessive designs and disclosures and fees also adds up to more than the actual labor and materials.
"The litany of reasons California is broken is well documented. The highest cost of living and the highest taxes. The highest percentages of homeless people and people living in poverty. Unaffordable homes and unaffordable rent. High crime and failing schools. A hostile business climate and record migration out of state as people and businesses flee.
"But not often enough are we reminded of the countless small things that have gone wrong. Small things that add up to a big problem: a state legislature that is out of touch with the people it represents; a state legislature that, for all practical purposes, holds its constituents in contempt; a state legislature that is doing everything in its power to make life difficult.
"Just a few days ago, the latest in this long train of abuses arrived. No more plastic bags. Although 2026 is still a few weeks away, this grocery store has already converted to paper only—heavy, fragile paper bags with handles that tear off under the slightest stress. Everything was double-bagged just to lower the probability of catastrophic failure of the handles.
"The problems with this are more than the inconvenience of having to pay 20 cents for every double-bagged bag full of groceries. With plastic bags, you could loop their handles around your fingers and carry several of them securely in one hand. Try that with a paper bag. And there are no uses after the first use for a paper bag. Shall we use paper bags for cat litter? Trash can liners? Maybe, but they won’t work very well. And storing them uses up space fast.
"So what’s the advantage? Are we saving oil? Certainly not much. And if savings are what we’re after, why did they ever force us in 2014 to stop using ultra-thin plastic bags in favor of “reusable” bags that nobody reuses for groceries, yet have 10-15 times as much plastic in them per bag? Funny how the plastic industry rolled over on that one. “Please don’t regulate us” morphed into “Never mind, we’ll split with the state that dime we’re charging now per bag.” Corporation wins. State wins. Misanthropic regulations abuse the rest of us.
" 'Now the plastic bags are gone. But the dime per paper bag? That stays.
"Does this law reduce the “footprint” of plastic? Yes. Marginally. Meanwhile, it increases the footprint of paper bags, which are actually worse for the environment. And maybe that’s the biggest problem here: California’s corporate special interests, their lobbyists, and their fanatic green marionettes are all too ready to force “solutions” onto the public before the technology has caught up." . . . Full article here.
Edward Ring is a senior fellow of the Center for American Greatness. He is also the director of water and energy policy for the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. Ring is the author of Fixing California: Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism (2021) and The Abundance Choice: Our Fight for More Water in California (2022).
