A Republican U.S. Senator thinks the magic hand of “the market” should determine if restaurant employees should wash theirs.
Right now there are probably about 45,000 North Carolina residents who are wondering if perhaps they should have voted in November. Democratic U.S. Senator Kay Hagan lost to Republican Thom Tillis, and after comments he made on Monday about hand washing, there’s likely a lot of secret hand-wringing going on.
Like most Republicans, Tillis is a big believer in the idea of the secret, magic, invisible hand of “the market.” He believes that capitalism solves most problems, and the people will ultimately choose the best option. You can thank 18th century economist Adam Smith for this concept, which might have worked in the 18th century. (Sony and Betamax lovers tend to disagree.) It’s also predicated on the basic fact that you have a well-informed and well-educated populace, something Republicans for decades have been working to ensure doesn’t happen.
So yesterday, while wrapping up an on-stage interview, Tillis decided to share his wisdom.
“I was having this discussion with someone, and we were at a Starbucks in my district, and we were talking about certain regulations where I felt like maybe you should allow businesses to opt out,” Tillis told the audience. “Let an industry or business opt out as long as they indicate through proper disclosure, through advertising, through employment, literature, whatever else. There’s this level of regulations that maybe they’re on the books, but maybe you can make a market-based decision as to whether or not they should apply to you.”
According to Tillis, as the conversation continued, a Starbucks employee exited the restroom.
“Don’t you believe that this regulation that requires this gentlemen to wash his hands before he serves your food is important?” Tillis says his companion asked.
“I think it’s one I can illustrate the point,” Tillis responded. “I said, I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy as long as the post a sign that says ‘We don’t require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restrooms.’ The market will take care of that.”
Of course, the obvious question would be, why would Starbucks post that sign? The only logical reason would be that they would be forced to – by government regulation.
Tillis himself was forced to admit that “every business” that posted such a sign, ‘we don’t make our employees wash their hands after using the restroom,’ “would go out of business.”
“But I think it’s good,” he insisted, “to illustrate the point that that’s the sort of mentality that we need to have to reduce the regulatory burden on this country.”
“We’re one of the most regulated nations in the history of the planet, and I think if we go about it in a common sense way that that solves a lot of problems. It makes these other big problems that we’re talking about imminently more easy to solve.”
“Common sense” here seems to be lacking.
Congratulations, North Carolina.
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