analyticsbox | Jul 21, 2022
Uncle Sam – Please Let us Be
There is a lot of focus on inflation, but a lot of our problems are much broader and mostly man-made. Or should I say, government made. 188,000. That’s the number of pages in the Code of Federal Regulations. This has increased by 175% since 1975 and the current Administration is piling it on even faster. They are proposing an additional 2673 rules over the next 12 months. Of these, 217 actions are considered ‘major’. That means each major regulation costs over 100 million dollars to implement. And most are extraordinary overreach with little or no benefit. An unaccountable bureaucracy of 454 agencies just makes stuff up to regulate. Cost-benefit analysis, forget it. But you can be sure there are plenty of UNNECESSARY COSTS added to the things you buy. One study done several years ago estimated that if regulations were held at 1980 levels, in 2012 our economy would have been 25% larger, with GDP growing at .8% faster per year. In 2012, incomes would have averaged $13,000 higher per person. The ‘red tape’ and regulations cost many billions of hours of wasted effort and Trillions of dollars in cost. This makes it hard for small businesses to succeed, causing more concentration in big business. All countries overregulate? Not so. For example, the Scandinavian countries who have much higher taxes and social programs than the U S, have much LESS regulation. They are much freer than the U S. The examples are horrendous and ludicrous, so we won’t give all the ridiculous examples. But one area I will mention is the green emphasis. We support trying to go green. But the policies and regulations to discourage fossil fuels are very costly to the economy and do little or nothing to fix the carbon emissions (cost-benefit anyone?). For example, with today’s technology, Electric Vehicles do nothing on average for carbon emissions, yet we subsidize them from our taxes. The push for renewable fuels is costing plenty, especially when we discourage fossil fuel production, resulting in higher gas and energy prices, which ripple through the whole economy. Sounds good, feels bad, doesn't work (and expensive to our whole economy and especially harmful to lower income folks). Reasonable regulation, I'm all for it. But this is ridiculous. Enough already! BOTTOM LINE We are all paying the price for gigantic overregulation. Higher prices, slower growth and a lower standard of living for all. We need to get the bureaucracy under control and stop the nonsense. Let your representatives know how you feel. The ‘market’ is very smart, let it work without all the overregulation.