A new study by the Phoenix Center for the Advanced Study for Legal and Economic Policy Studies found that federal regulators cost taxpayers more than $200,000 each, but cost the economy over $6 million in jobs and productivity.
“In particular,” the group says, “even a small 5 percent reduction in the regulatory budget (about $2.8 billion) would result in about $75 billion in expanded private-sector GDP each year, with an increase in employment by 1.2 million jobs annually.”
“On average,” the Phoenix Center says, “eliminating the job of a single regulator grows the American economy by $6.2 million and nearly 100 private sector jobs annually. Conversely, each million dollar increase in the regulatory budget costs the economy 420 private sector jobs.”
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Benefit/Cost analysis for the empirically-oriented, focused on the negative impact of interventionism – kudos to the Phoenix Center for the Advanced Study for Legal and Economic Policy Studies!
No one but dweebs like us will hear about this or anything else like it. The vast majority of the American people will never know it. It will be ignored or swept under the table by the intelligentsia with a mocking shrug and a snide reference to “right wing propaganda” and promptly forgotten.
I really hope you’re wrong.
But this is incredible stuff, Mark…thanks for sharing
But surely you realize that for every regulator they fire, another eeeebil business will attempt to poison its customers!
It always amazes me how the regulators are able to come out with new regulations just in time to prevent a huge disaster.
Good point RTB. I hope everyone will Stumble, Digg, and Tweet this and other things that appear on Mises.org. We have a huge audience but it must get bigger.
Oscar Wilde is quoted as saying “A cynic is a person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
What is the value of a government regulator?
(I guess that makes me a cynic, (and an old one to boot!))
Funny thing about all those studies they never consider the number of people saved by regulation. So maybe society is willing to lose some jobs in exchange for lifes.
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