Competitive Enterprise Institute skriver i sin årliga rapport Ten Thousand Commandments:

• An extrapolation from an estimate of the federal regulatory enterprise by economist Mark Crain shows that regulatory compliance costs hit an estimated $1.157 trillion in 2007.

• Given that 2007 government spending stood at $2.73 trillion, the hidden tax of regulation now approaches half the level of federal spending itself.

• Regulation costs more than seven times the $163 billion budget deficit.

• Regulatory costs nearly match 2005 corporate pretax profits of $1.3 trillion.

• Regulatory costs also rival estimated 2007 individual income taxes of $1.17 trillion.

• Regulatory costs dwarf corporate income taxes of $342 billion.

• Regulatory costs of $1.16 trillion absorb 8.5 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), which was $13.67 trillion in 2006.

Detta är ju illa nog. Men hur många kände till följande fakta? ”Thee annual outflow of nearly 4,000 final rules has meant well over 51,000 final rules since 1995—that is, since the Republican takeover and the recent Democratic recapture of Congress.”

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