Friday
A graph on the growth of the regulatory state, courtesy of the National Review Corner blog.
Indeed.
If anyone wonders what is wrong with the global economy, I guess they need look no further.
Very simply, strangled by the most comprehensive of parasites.
Posted by John B at August 20, 2011 01:26 PM
An interesting graph, to be sure, and I don't question that it is a valid depiction of a disturbing trend. But comparing percentages can be deceptive. I would have preferred to see, at least somewhere in the text of the article, the raw numbers. After all, a 5% increase on a base of, say, 100, pales in significance next to a 1.4% increase on a base of 10,000. (Obviously, I made up those numbers for illustrative purposes.) Is it really meaningful? We can't really tell.
If you drill through the Veronique de Rugy article linked here to the John Merline article which is her source, there actually is a little more data, albeit not much. He states that "employment at these agencies has climbed 13% since Obama took office to more than 281,000." If that's truly an increase of 13% during Obama's term, it still represents only about 32,000 individuals. An unfortunate trend, to be sure (at a time when we need fewer regulations and regulators, not more), but not a huge number in a nation of 300 million people.
Posted by Laird at August 20, 2011 08:21 PM
