I believe regulation of business is important because it impacts
everyone, some regulations protect employees' and prospective
employees' rights such as equal opportunity employment and
minimum wage, environmental protections such as the Clean Water
Act, and regulations to avoid monopolies and ensure copyright and
trademark laws are followed. However, I feel that there could
certainly be additional regulations put in place to ensure that
businesses are running properly and fairly and the current regulations
could be better enforced. As we have seen over the past few years
there have been many businesses taking advantage of their
workforce while underpaying them and subjecting them to long
hours and dangerous workplaces. There are many regulations in
place to ensure safe workplaces for employees such as OSHA,
however, when business leaders are not held accountable to those
standards then those regulations, in essence, mean nothing. We
have seen recently that employees are taking regulations into their
own hands by striking or working to unionize. Unionization is an
incredibly important tool for workers and helps to ensure that they
have safe work environments, benefits, proper pay, and time off.
While all of these are great steps to proper regulation of business,
more still needs to be done. Leaders in business such as CEOs,
should not be making astronomically more than the people who work
for them. According to Economic Policy Institute in 2020, CEOs on
average were paid 351 times more than the average worker, not the
lowest paid. This needs to be regulated so there is a cap on how
much CEOs can make compared to the average worker while
understanding that they are taking on more risk as a CEO. Also,
businesses need to pay their fair share of taxes, this needs to be
regulated, businesses that make billions of dollars should not be
paying less in taxes than average Americans. Overall, the regulations
in place need to be kept in place and enforced, but there needs to be
additional focus on ensuring employees are treated fairly and can live
a life outside of work, otherwise what are we working for?
References:
Davis, M. (2022). Government Regulations: Do They Help
Businesses? Investopedia.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/11/government-
regulations.asp
