As an economist with a boring personality (sorry to be redundant), I sometimes focus on numbers. And when contemplating the cost of regulation and red tape, there are some numbers that should frighten all of us. Americans spend 8.8 billion hours every year filling out government forms. The economy-wide cost of regulation is now $1.75 […]

I’ve written before about the heavy costs of regulation, including these rather sobering statistics. Or, to be more accurate, here are some staggering numbers. Americans spend 8.8 billion hours every year filling out government forms. The economy-wide cost of regulation is now $1.75 trillion. For every bureaucrat at a regulatory agency, 100 jobs are destroyed […]

President Obama recently got himself in a bit of hot water with his “you didn’t build that” remark, which trivialized the hard work of entrepreneurs. But he is right – in a perverse way – about government playing a big role in the life of small businesses. Thanks to a maze of regulations, the government […]

Regulation is a hidden tax that in many cases raises the cost of creating jobs and generating wealth. Here are some staggering numbers. Americans spend 8.8 billion hours every year filling out government forms. The economy-wide cost of regulation is now $1.75 trillion. For every bureaucrat at a regulatory agency, 100 jobs are destroyed in […]

Even when the results coincide with my views, I have a jaundiced view of polling data. In large part, this is because the answers often depend on how a question is framed. That being said, I periodically link to polling data about economic policy if I think we can glean some insight from the data. […]

Have you ever tried to run in waist-high water? It’s not easy, but it’s a useful exercise if you want to experience what it’s like to comply with government rules, regulation, paperwork, and red tape. Especially if you want to understand why it’s getting harder for American companies to compete against firms from other nations. […]

The President garnered some attention for his January 18 column in the Wall Street Journal, in which he said we need to control the regulatory burden. Let’s start with the insincere part. He praised capitalism. America’s free market has not only been the source of dazzling ideas and path-breaking products, it has also been the […]

A new study from the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy concludes that annual regulatory costs jumped by nearly $600 billion between 2005 and 2008. Thanks to the Obama Administration’s big-government agenda, the burden of red tape today doubtlessly is much higher, but the 2008 estimate is enough to generate some very sobering numbers. A $1.75 […]

When all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. That old saying makes a lot of sense. As a tax economist, I’m sometimes guilty of looking at all sorts of issues based on their relationship with the tax code. In my defense, however, the tentacles of the IRS now reach […]