02 Jun 2004 Government Wastes Our Money; Government Wastes Our Time

Captain Ed at Captain’s Quarters has a post today about the state of Minnesota fining gas station operators for not charging enough for gasoline.

I’m sure the citizens of Minnesota are very grateful to their government for protecting them from lower prices.

Reminds me of some paperwork I had to fill out for The National Center last week. A California tax return. The National Center is based in DC, incorporated in Delaware, and has never had an office in California. We’re a non-profit and we don’t operate side businesses that generate income. Nonetheless, we received a notice from California asking why we had not submitted a tax return. The notice warned that, if we ignored them, they would not go away. So we filled one out. Zero zero zero zero etc. No taxes owed. But what good did this effort do anyone, including the good citizens of California? Just wasted my time and their time.

In my perfect world, everyone would have to run a business for at least a year, preferably in their younger years, just to inform their perspective.