This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, April 29th, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Home-based businesses number in the tens of millions in the United States,

but local restrictions make it harder to both start and maintain those

businesses. The implications for the economy of freeing up home-based work,

including food production, could be substantial.ato's Chris Edwards comments.

Home-based businesses are usually important to the U.S. economy.

America has about 30 million businesses,

and remarkably about half of them,

about 15 million are based in the home.

Everyone from accountants to wedding planners to contractors to yoga teachers to daycare

providers and home food producers operate their businesses out of their homes.

So this is usually important to the economy.

There's many lifestyle and really advantages to home businesses.

The problem is that a lot of local governments impose excessive zoning rules

that restrict home-based businesses

and I think this really undercuts the economy.

If you go to Google Maps and start searching for things in your neighborhood,

inevitably at least in my experience you will find one of those little pin drops in a house in a neighborhood and

it will be listed as a business.

How do local governments stand in the way of that or how do they make it harder?

Well if you wind the clock back to the mid-20th century many local governments

...