Oh, those government regulations! They are stifling the dynamism of the country. If it weren't for government regulations, the Golden Age would already have dawned. So say the banksters, and now President Obama as well.
The Clinton administration had a similar effort, led by Vice President Al Gore. The difference is that the Gore Commission based its work in "good government liberalism." The arguments from the Obama administration, on the other hand, could just as well have been written, as well as printed, by the Wall Street Journal. Says David Dayen at FDL:
And so, this looks to be more of a PR strategy than anything else, a way to claim to Big Business that their needs are being met on regulations. Of course, the problem is their needs can never be met, since their desired end-state is no regulation for their core business.
In any case, there's not a lot of evidence that onerous government regulations stifle growth or lower employment. This is one of those truisms by which we order our lives, even though there is less evidence for it than you'd think.
What we know for sure is that the policies of the people peddling this line, the "anti-regulators," have caused the loss of millions of jobs.
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