Wednesday, October 5, 2016

How Obama's Regulatory Siege Has Killed U.S. Growth

Investors Business Daily ^ | Oct 4, 2016 5:42 PM ET | TERRY JONES 

Economists on the left routinely appear mystified by the ongoing slow growth in jobs, investment and business startups under President Obama. But a new report from America's largest manufacturers' group suggests a big reason for our current slowdown can be found in one word: regulation.
The study by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) shows new regulations over just the past year amount to a huge hidden tax on U.S. businesses...
...In the last year, federal agencies and departments imposed rules that will cost U.S. businesses $81.6 billion...
...don't expect a sympathetic hearing from Hillary Clinton and other Democrats on this issue...
...progressives don't care about all this, because many of the 155,700 who will lose jobs in coming years will be counted among the "deplorables" that Clinton says support Donald Trump.
The point is, because of excessive regulation, it's a tough time to make things in America...
...the four administrations before Obama averaged about 1.6 major new rules per year. Under Obama, that's jumped to three. No wonder the economy's still crawling at a less than 2% growth rate, instead of the robust 3%-plus rate of earlier administrations...
...the regulatory boom in recent decades has cut GDP growth by roughly 0.8% per year. That might not sound like much, but Mercatus estimates that if regulation had been held to the 1980 level, the U.S. economy would have been $4 trillion larger by 2012 than it actually was. So, yes, regulation matters.
This is yet another reason why all of us need to pay close attention to what the presidential candidates, vice presidential candidates and their surrogates, have to say about the economy between now and the election. The next job the poison of excessive regulation kills might be yours.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...

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