Freedom Line Blog

Thank goodness for people like Anne Meagher Northup, a commissioner on the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Writing on her blog this week, Commissioner Northup provides an insider’s first-hand perspective on how big government bureaucracy suffocates small businesses unable to satisfy the sheer regulatory costs and testing burdens heaped upon such harmless everyday products as children’s toys.

What’s that you say?  You haven’t heard about the pandemic of American children suddenly dropping like flies after playing with their plastic dolls?

That hasn’t happened, of course.  But what has happened is the CPSC imposing unmanageable costs of testing and compliance upon small businesses.  To illustrate, Commissioner Northup discusses the example of a Kentucky doll maker who suddenly faces testing costs of $1500-$4500 per doll:

Last week we selected several more products to eliminate from our product offerings. The products are safe, do not violate any of the CPSIA standards and have been around for over 50 years, but they are too complicated and have too many different parts. Therefore they are too costly to have tested and retested over and over again to prove they are safe. I hope some small companies and some decent product selection can survive in this new world where all products are presumed to be guilty. The only survivors will be the ones that are safe and can also afford to prove they are safe.

The group of items that we decided to discontinue are several kinds of dolls that have lots of different colors and accessories and some plastic to test for phthalates. We would have an average about $1500/doll each time we had to test due to a batch change. If we order them 3 times per year it would be $4500/doll in testing costs to be certain that nothing had changed from any of the suppliers that provide the raw materials that make up the doll parts and/or colors and accessories. With 26 different types of dolls, that would come out to $117,000 per year we would spend on testing. Based upon our sales volume we would lose money every time we order the doll.”

Big government may not be doing much to reduce unemployment or stop destructive Ponzi schemes, but it’s certainly adept at crippling small businesses and removing harmless children’s toys from store shelves.