In a separate column I discuss the origin and nature of the National Debt.  Well, if you're looking for excessive, pointless, and destructive spending (aka debt creation) by the federal government you don't have to look much further than the latest administration maneuver in the Labor Department.

According to the Associated Press, the Labor Department's new regulations governing the payment of overtime to American workers become active the fourth week of August 2004.  These rules:

1. Provide overtime pay eligibility for workers who earn less than $23,660/year and work more than 40 hours/week.  (The threshold has been $8,660 since 1975.)
2. Allow companies to exempt more white collar workers who make more than $23,660/year from overtime pay.  Since 1954 these exempt workers used to have to spend most of their time doing "managerial/administrative/professional" work; the new rules only require they spend some time in such capacity.
3. Generally exempt people making $100,000 or more from overtime, even if they are hourly workers.  (Bush-Cheney initially wanted this level of exemption to be $65,000.)

It doesn't take a genius to figure out what Bush and Co. are doing here.  Nearly every business group in the American cartelocracy backs the change—National Association of Manufacturers, the US Chamber of Commerce, even the National Federation of Independent Business—no doubt some having put libertarian window-dressing on their arguments.

By yielding to paying overtime to the lower-rung hourlies of a), business by the new rules is relieved of compulsion to pay overtime to the larger-cost category of workers of b) who make more than that.  Estimates are that 6.7 million low income workers will become eligible for overtime while 6 million higher income workers could become classified as ineligible.

The state giveth and the state taketh away.

If you're a productive-class mid-range white collar worker employed by one of the cartel corporations (and you work overtime), your clique of elite managerial milch cows just received another downsizing opportunity, courtesy of the US government, to interrupt the deposit cycle to your family's cookie jar.  Euphemistically, you are "exempt!"  It's enough to make you dust off your college CliffsNotes® for Das Kapital.

But before pushing the panic button, realize the following:

• Congress likely will vote to block enforcement of the new rules.
• Many companies are indicating they won't reclassify people to deny eligibility for overtime.
• Lawsuits will abound, especially from labor unions, to the extent management makes attempts made to reclassify positions.
• Applicability of federal labor law varies from state to state depending on state labor statutes.

Add this to the fact very few labor law experts agree on what the new rules mean and require, it becomes clear Georgie and the Blowhards have pointlessly stirred up a hornet's nest by throwing a pricey can of worms straight at the bulls eye (please forgive the amalgamated wildlife metaphors).

"What were they thinking?!!"  Bush (or whoever's pulling his strings in labor) once again makes your ordinary village idiot look like a SAT-busting genius.

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Let's back up a minute and consider the proper libertarian reaction—meaning the reaction of any normal, honest human being with decent values and an intellect functioning at a 9^th grade private-school level—to the news of imposition new overtime rules:

"WHAAA??!!"

Seriously, when I read the headline, I immediately thought, "Why the heck are the federales defining how a business pays its employees or contractors?  Don't businessmen and workers have the right to bargain on the free market to get the best deal they can?  Why does government make overtime rules or any other rules for people in the marketplace?  When did the US become a communist country?"

Apparently, in 1938, with enactment of the so-called Fair Labor Standards Act.

Another smashing hit from Mr. Roosevelt and the Leftbent-Collective Junkband, enabled by acquiescence of the Blind Obedience to Authority (BOA) generation.  [Dear BOA generation, I know you were distracted and your elected fuhrers controlled all critical information; still it's hard to excuse an ancestry who bequeathed to us the income tax, Social Security, the fait accompli of compulsory government schooling, and the welfare/warfare state.]

There is no acceptable reason for the Fair Labor Standards Act or for any statute on any level that dictates policies and practices of business and labor.  The acts and the Labor Department(s) itself should never have come into existence; rather, a body of law should have been allowed to naturally develop through common-law cases to define and protect the personal and property rights of the various parties in commercial contracts.  Simple.

But, NO!!  Instead, we got a costly protectionist racket to enable favored businesses and their political-class buddies to keep on truckin'—keep their economic privileges, remain unproductive, and thwart any meaningful competition to their wretchedly excessive (because fundamentally unearned) lifestyles.

The sacred cow of labor law has always been publicly justified by altruistic, socialistic appeals—posturing for civilized treatment of downtrodden workers of the world.  Gabriel Kolko in The Triumph of Conservatism(1) demonstrates that the historical motive force behind American business and labor law is, in fact, big-business entitlement.

Combined with state aggrandizement:

The Labor Department is one of the most expensive operations in DC, currently eating up ~$70 billion annually.  Can any of you honestly suggest anything (worthwhile) it does?

Thus the primary effect and purpose of the labor laws is to sequester the Fat Cat Social Citadel from the volatile and leveling forces of market capitalism.  Better-mousetrap builders who don't follow the rules don't get into the club.  And because it takes a fleet of lawyers, "human-resources" leeches, and a mountain of paperwork to follow the rules, the creative class generally stays away.

The irony is the Bushocrats reportedly wanted to go after the 1938 law.

The fact is if they really wanted to go after the law, they'd have repealed the law and abolished the Labor Department.  That's the only action consistent with the free market or with the free market rhetoric that invariably, nauseatingly, accompanies any vaunted plan by this right-wing, big-government, crony-capitalist administration.

Perhaps this overtime thing will see Dubya and Friends hoisted on their own petard, outed as enemies of economic freedom while posturing as friends.  The issue sure has generated a maelstrom of productive-class resentment.

Like the Democrats, the last thing in the world the Republicans want is your freedom.

A major question, at least at the presidential level, becomes which party are you least fond of: the Dems, who pretty much openly tell you they're going to take away your freedom, or the Reps, who actually take even more freedom from you than the Dems but tell you they're 100% for freedom.

Reminds me of that old Missouri saying, "Don't piss down my back and tell me it's rainin'."