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. a 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. a 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? a Investopedia. a
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/11/government-
regulations.asp
