In only took 4 years for my daughter to enter into a life of crime.
Like many parents, we would like to teach our daughter about money, business, and the value of hard work. What better way to teach such values than with an old fashioned roadside lemonade stand. So that is what we set out to do.
About 30 mins after setting up her lemonade stand on the corner, an officer approached and shut down the stand. In all fairness, the officer was very nice and apologetic and said, “I really don’t want to do this, but my chief sent me over to shut you down.”
I’ve occasionally heard stories of officers or other city’s officials shutting down children’s lemonade stands in other towns, but it always seems so far away. I always thought to myself, ‘wow, don’t they have better things to do? I’m glad my town isn’t like that.’ But I guess I was wrong, Coralville Iowa, home of the nanny state.
This comes on the heels of another nanny state news article from Des Moines Iowa. Earlier this month a family’s garage sale was shut down for lacking a sales tax permit. City and to some extent state code indicates that you can only have 2 garage sales in a year, to have a third requires a sales tax permit, and evidently someone is keeping track.
Similar stories have made Reason TV’s nanny of the month reports in the last few years:
Aug 2010
June 2011
Coralville and Des Moines, do you really have nothing better to do than bust lemonade stands and garage sales? Give me a break!