Trego's Mountain Ear

I read in the Economist that Americans spend 12 billion hours per year complying with federal regulations.  Since a billion is a thousand million, and the US population is somewhere around 330 million – call it a third of a billion, the math is pretty easy – we cancel a mess of zeros and are left with 12,000 over 330.  At this point, my ancient calculator tells me we’re talking 36 hours per year for every man, woman and child.  And that doesn’t include complying with state and local regulations.

So the next thing is to call up a population pyramid – it’s a safe bet that folks under 14 don’t worry a whole lot about complying with federal regulations.

It shows that my population estimate was off by 4 percent – but about 9% of the population is under 14 – so that cuts down on the folks actively working at regulation compliance.  Another 8% are over 65 – but I’m not real sure that being retired keeps people from spending time complying with government regulations.  I produce just enough hay to qualify to spend time each year answering questions for the census of agriculture.  Haying isn’t so much farming for me as it is keeping the fire conditions down.

I suspect some people are full-time working with government regulations – lawyers and accountants for example.  When you stop to think about it, we have people working at jobs (I’m thinking of civil rights data collectors) that fundamentally consist of emailing people to get data that someone else has already collected.  And we have a bunch of government employees hired for the purpose of forcing the citizens to comply with regulations – ranging from decent folks like the highway trolls to some barely concealed tyrants whose mission creep has gone beyond the imaginations of the legislators who established their departments.

Some folks have a vested interest in government regulations – income taxes come to mind.  Enough income is reported to the IRS that (with minor tweaking of the regulations) they could just send each of us a bill on April 15.  The tax preparation industry – ranging from the local CPA through the software corporations – exists because there is a perverse incentive not to simplify the tax codes.  Making it simpler would break a lot of rice bowls.

As I look at Argentina under Milei’s libertarian leadership, I have to admit that the idea of prosperity through reduced regulations seems like a great idea.