Bloomberg Unwittingly Vindicates Stigler

In a recent Bloomberg Governmentarticle, Cheryl Bolen pushes back against what she perceives to be two myths of the much-touted Trump deregulatory agenda: that deregulation is in fact occurring, and that repeal of existing regulations actually helps businesses. I shall address these in reverse order, first demonstrating that most regulation is a net drag on the economy, and then mustering evidence to the effect that the Trump administration ’s deregulatory push is real indeed.Do Regulations Hurt Businesses?Celebrating deregulatory efforts concedes the premise that the typical regulation is on net more costly than it is beneficial. Cheryl Bolen makes the argument that such celebrations are mistaken: while businesses do benefit from greater predictability, they benefit hardly at all from the repeal of existing regulations.So, she contends, Trump-boosters are right to “atta-boy” the administration for its relative dribble of new regulations compared to the first two years of the two prior administrations. She cites OMB data which illustrates the comparative paucity of new rules under Trump, data which is corroborated by the Mercatus Center’s RegData project :   It ’s worth noting that merely summing the number of new rules, as well as counting the total words and “restrictive words” therein, are very crude proxies for measuring the economic impact of such regulatory activity. Nixon’s Executive Order 11615, imposing a 90-day freeze on wages and prices, was mass...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs