The federal government has been strangling the economy to death, not just under Joe Biden, but for many years, with onerous and unnecessary regulations. The more government gets involved in any private sector industry, the less efficient it becomes, and the less growth and prosperity there is. That is why the Trump administration needs to take a machete to the bloated federal regulation apparatus.
If research from a few years ago is accurate, every single federal regulator can cost up to 138 jobs yearly, and there are hundreds of thousands of regulators. In fact, it is a testament to American entrepreneurs and workers that we still have as many businesses and as much economic output as we do with the government long trying at every turn to make the country into a socialist basket case without innovation or industry. The Founding Fathers severely restricted the federal government in the Constitution, mostly because they were afraid of tyranny, but also because there are very few areas where government can do better than the private sector. If only modern politicians from both parties would understand that.
Back in 2017, an Auburn University study found the following:
Each $1 million change in the regulatory budget is associated with a change of about four regulator jobs. With our new update, we now find that a 10% cut in the regulatory budget results in a loss of 21,756 regulatory jobs. Given the average jobs impact of 3 million jobs over the five-year horizon, our updated analysis finds that one regulator costs the U.S. economy the equivalent of 138 private sector jobs per year. Each regulator costs the U.S. economy $11 million annually.
In an opinion piece for the Epoch Times Jan. 4, economic expert Peter St. Onge discussed the above study and offered updated numbers. According to him, GDP-adjusted for the present, each federal regulator costs America $16.5 million of economic output annually. The Founding Fathers and the great American entrepreneurs/inventors of a century plus ago would be appalled.
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St. Onge is understandably excited for Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to come in and, one hopes, slash federal regulation to boost the economy.
Regulators prevent businesses from ever getting off the ground, or stunt them, or drive them out of business altogether. Small businesses are particularly hard hit, and those are precisely the businesses America ought to support. In fact, small businesses drive the economy — as of 2019, 44% of U.S. economic activity was attributable to them, and as of 2020, 62% of new jobs were created by small businesses.
St. Onge wrote:
So it’s not the bureaucrat’s hundred thousand salary that matters. It’s the 138 jobs he takes out. Every single year you keep him around.
In fact, you could fire him, keep paying him for life, and still put a hundred families in the middle class.
In recent videos I’ve mentioned research saying one dollar in taxes destroys 3 dollars in GDP. A regulator blows that out of the water—each dollar in regulator salary destory 112 dollars in output.
Given there’s roughly 288,000 full-time federal employees involved in regulatory activities, that implies an annual cost of regulation of around $5 trillion. One-fifth of our entire economy.
America electrified the world (literally) by being the land of unprecedented innovation, industry, and opportunity. It’s high time we stop shipping industry overseas and letting government bureaucrats crush our economy. Make America’s economy great again.
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