Los Angeles. -- It looks like an ordinary wall. But it could be a clue to this year's big political mystery: Why are Americans so angry?
The wall is a six-foot-high divider, splitting a single office into two more-or-less private work spaces. Building it and another in the office next door cost $1,100. A few years ago, that would have been the end of it.
But nowadays, you can't do any office construction, at least not legally, without paying tribute to the Americans with Disabilities Act. In this case, the ADA exacted a payment of $5,000 -- the cost of adding a new fire-alarm system so that if there is ever a fire and it occurs when a deaf employee or visitor is present but no hearing person is there to alert the deaf person, blinking lights will flash a warning.
No wonder the contractor offered to bootleg the job.
Dear employees: We spent your raise money on a symbol. That's what it means to be law-abiding in 1994.
If you want to know why voters are angry, look at that wall. Listen to the entrepreneurs whose businesses made this year's Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing private companies. They are the people on whom continued prosperity depends. And in its 1994 survey, Inc. magazine reports, "Regulation was most often identified as the No. 1 enemy. . . . Jittery about health-care reform, feeling bound and nearly gagged by red tape, these entrepreneurs bemoaned the burdens of complying with local, state and federal mandates that often conflict with one another and that always cost money."
Listen to the report of the New Economy Project in Los Angeles County. In this survey of local businesses, mainly privately held companies, respondents listed regulation as their biggest problem. And they weren't calm about it: "Many firms simply wrote in capital letters, 'GOVERNMENT HARASSMENT!' . . . or 'REGULATIONS!!!! . . . In interviews, company executives were frequently so angry about their relations with the government that they would vent their frustration on the project staff for several minutes before apologizing and more calmly responding to questions."
Washington analysts, absorbed in the culture of government, miss the personal side of politics. Americans are sick and tired of being bossed around. Since 1987, according to Times Mirror survey data, the number of people who say the federal government controls too much of our daily lives has jumped from 58 to 69 percent. And 63 percent say that business regulations usually do more harm than good, up from 55 percent.
No wonder. Over the same time period, regulation has increased enormously -- with bipartisan support. George Bush, whom National Journal writer Jonathan Rauch rightly dubbed "the regulatory president," left a burden that includes the 1990 Clean Air Act, the 1991 Civil Rights Act (which for the first time lets plaintiffs seek punitive damages in employment-discrimination suits), and the ADA -- all of which have far-reaching implications.
The Federal Register, which is where new regulations are published, has been growing steadily fatter, from 49,654 pages in 1987 to 69,688 in 1993. Meanwhile, cities and states have added their own contributions to the mounting pile -- new rules governing everything from hot-water faucets in apartment buildings, to smoking in restaurants, to company dress codes.
Government regulations have stretched far beyond General Motors and Exxon to invade just about every family home and every family business. Consider a single area of the law: real-estate ads. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it illegal "to make, print or publish . . . any notice, statement or advertisement, with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation or discrimination" based on the usual protected categories. And regulators take "any" very literally.
It is illegal, therefore, to advertise that a house or apartment is "near the Mormon temple" or "within walking distance of synagogues" (implied religious discrimination); that it has facilities "perfect for runners" (disability); or a "yard great for children" (familial/marital status); or that it is an "executive home" or is in a "prestigious neighborhood" (race, which suggests a certain racism on the part of regulators). It is even illegal for a woman to say in an ad that she's looking for a female roommate. So much for keeping government out of our bedrooms.
Humorist Dave Barry, who knows more about non-Washingtonian sentiments than 20 Beltway commentators, explains it best. In an interview in the December issue of Reason, he talks about getting "a ticket for painting our own living room white" without city permission. After he wrote about the experience, he discovered that some local residents were actually having carpenters and plumbers do their work in the middle of the night, lest their trucks be spotted by the permit police.
"You're not allowed to park a truck in your driveway. You're not allowed to work on your house on Sunday," he says. "The people who enforce these laws are nuts.
"I got I don't know how many letters from Coral Gables homeowners, story after story after story, wonderfully horrible stories. And the venom they feel for their own government! You cannot paint the exterior of your house. You have to take the paint chip down to show the paint-chip Nazis. . . . People are afraid to own their own homes. People are afraid their own government will catch them fixing their houses."
It's infuriating to have government snatch control of your time, money and decision-making power. It's frightening to have uniformed men show up at your door and give you tickets for painting without a permit. It's enraging to have bureaucrats order you not to build on your land, tell you whom you must hire, dictate how you must advertise. It creates the rage of the powerless. Every day Americans grow a little angrier at the government enforcers who constantly invent new ways to order them around.
The property-rights movement, with its increasingly effective attacks on environmental regulations that victimize landowners, is the first expression of the grass-roots regulation revolt. The outcry from religious business owners against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's proposed "religious harassment" guidelines, which led Congress to force the agency to back off, was a second sign. Another was the popular revulsion at the Clinton health-care plan.
So far, however, hardly anyone in Washington has identified the pattern. No one has declared that regulation is a tax burden that never gets lightened, one that Republicans and Democrats alike add to with impunity. No one has figured out that angry voters want a lot more than a contract, an end to gridlock, or even more tax cuts. They want their lives back. A regulation revolt is coming, whether Washington is ready or not.
Virginia I. Postrel is the editor of Reason magazine.