Estimated regulatory costs, while “off budget,” are equivalent to over 48 percent of the level of federal spending itself.
The 2011 Federal Register finished at 81,247 pages, just shy of 2010’s all-time record-high 81,405 pages.
Regulatory compliance costs dwarf corporate-income taxes of $198 billion, and exceed individual income taxes and even pre-tax corporate profits.
Agencies issued 3,807 final rules in 2011, a 6.5 percent increase over 3,573 in 2010.
Of the 4,128 regulations in the works at year-end 2011, 212 were “economically significant,” meaning they generally wield at least $100 million in economic impact.
822 of those 4,128 regulations in the works would affect small businesses.
The total number of economically significant rules finalized in 2011 was 79, down slightly from 2010 but up 92.7 percent over five years, and 108 percent over ten years.
Recent costly federal agency initiatives include the Environmental Protection Agency’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards Rule and the Department of Transportation’s Fuel Economy Standards.
Actually, what I think is immoral is some third party (e.g., the government) telling someone what they are allowed to earn in a freely negotiated contract (that is, the minimum wage is immoral, and empirically destructive of the lives of minorities, as Sowell has documented). It seems a little strange that you can pay someone nothing, but you can’t pay them four bucks an hour, even if they’re a teenager who needs some spending money and is willing to take that wage.
I agree, that’s exactly what they are. And their irrational beliefs are much more destructive and a crime against humanity than being a skeptic on AGW.
Rather than Obama destroying the economy, there is a sense emerging that he is merely restraining it. Should Obama lose in November, there will be the greatest collective sigh of relief since 1980 and a yell that all hell will break lose, in the good sense of business activity, commerce, investment, hiring, and resource utilization being unleashed.
Look at it this way: for four years Obama has poked and jabbed at the corralled stallion, and when the gate goes up he will roar out as never before. Or if you are a Greek, try this: for 30 years we have been lectured to death about global warming, the brilliant Ivy League technocrats, the genius of Keynesian borrowing, the need for multiculturalism in the White House, if only we had open borders, why lawyers and academics need to be in charge—all on the “what if” presumption that no one in his right mind would let any of the above become gospel. And so we had the constant liberal whine, “if only.…” Now we have it in the flesh, and in cathartic fashion Obama is going to purge us of that unhinged temptation for another generation.
Plus a bonus discussion of the current state of the no-longer-so-golden state.
Lileks has some thoughts on sports stadia (with bonus mystery guests), but the phrase he uses (the title of this post) would apply as well to job creation.