7 Little Known Reasons You Have Been Secretly Hurt by Government Regulations

Between 2008 and 2016, every year 2,500 to 4,500 new government regulations were being imposed on the American people.

They represented 70-80,000 additional legal-sized pages in the Federal Register – every year!

The number of pages of regulations on the Affordable Care Act alone is 8 times greater than the Bible.

This has been halted by President Trump … and the media, the politicians and the bureaucrats have attacked him for it.

Here are 7 reasons why government regulations are secretly hurting – rather than helping – you and your family:

1. Government regulations waste resources and money.

Last year Americans spent $10.7 trillion…

The regulatory costs passed on to them were $2 trillion – almost 20 cents out of every dollar spent.

Complying with federal regulations costs $160 billion more per year than what the IRS collects in taxes – and that doesn’t include state and local regulations!

2. Government regulations centralize power and remove it from the people.

The genius of the U.S. Constitution is that it is intended to prevent the creation of centralized power that results in coercion and dictatorship.

But career politicians have found a workaround for what is prohibited in the Constitution: they have created regulatory agencies to consolidate and expand their control over you and me.

3. Government regulations impose a top-down approach that distorts the free market.

A free market economy is self-correcting because it responds to the self-interests of both producers and consumers.

Companies that produce inferior products or don’t meet the needs of consumers in other ways are weeded out through competition, not through government regulation.

On the contrary, government regulations favor large corporations over small businesses – and some regulations are even designed to pick winners and losers in specific industries

4. Government regulations discourage entrepreneurship.

Government regulations greatly increase the cost of starting a small business.

One study found that the annual regulatory cost of a small business with fewer than 20 employees was $10,585 per employee.

This was 36% higher than the annual regulatory cost per employee of a company with over 500 employees.

The disadvantages facing an entrepreneur attempting to start a business in competition with large companies is often so overwhelming that the entrepreneur gives up.

5. Government regulations kill innovation and progress.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is an example of a government regulatory agency that hurts – and even kills – innovation and progress.

Many effective drugs and new therapies never get to market because the innovating company can’t afford the exorbitant cost of government approval.

In other cases, the drug is approved, but the recovery costs of the FDA approval process are so high that the drug is priced beyond what the market will bear.

Dendreon, a Seattle-based pharmaceutical company, spent 15 years developing and testing a promising new treatment for prostate cancer.

Because the drug is a cancer treatment, the FDA ruled that it must be administered in a doctor’s office.

The drug is also expensive due to the cost of 15 years of R&D plus FDA regulatory costs – so expensive that doctors’ offices must take out a short-term loan to pay for it.

Many doctors won’t even prescribe the drug because they’re afraid they won’t be reimbursed by the Medicare bureaucracy.

The company had to declare bankruptcy because of poor sales – due to government regulations.

6. Government regulations crush economic growth.

When entrepreneurial opportunities boom, new businesses are formed … jobs are created … incomes rise … the economy expands and grows.

When entrepreneurship is discouraged by government regulation, fewer new businesses are formed … fewer new jobs are created …

And in fact – in the case of Dendreon and many other start-up companies – jobs are lost … companies are forced to declare bankruptcy … and economic growth is halted.

7. Government regulators are virtually free from government oversight.

The President’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is supposed to oversee all regulatory activities in executive agencies.

In 1981 there were about 77 staffers overseeing 115,000 regulators.

By 2012, there were about 50 staffers overseeing nearly 250,000 regulators…

Up until 1983, Congress could exercise a legislative veto over unnecessary or burdensome regulations … but not anymore.

The Supreme Court put a stop to that oversight authority in INS v. Chadha.

Since 2011, Congress has introduced over 200 laws to reform federal government regulatory agencies.

None have been signed into law.

Meanwhile, 430 federal departments, agencies and sub-agencies continue working year-round … producing an average of 10 new regulations every single day … with virtually no oversight from any of the 3 branches of government.

What do you think? Write me at craig@craighuey.com