Just to hammer home my point about regulations and the sheer volume of regulations, the sheer size of our bloated, inefficient government, here:
https://regulatorystudies.columbian.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs3306/f/image/Total%20Pages%20in%20CFR.pdf
There are currently 180,000 pages of regulations in the Code of Federal Regulations. And even under Trump, the growth has only stopped not reversed to any significant degree.
And to put it into perspective further:
https://regulatorystudies.columbian.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs3306/f/downloads/Total%20Pages%20in%20Federal%20Register.pdf
This is the Federal Register pages per year. This is the daily journal of the government and tracks all regulatory work done, essentially, in terms of executive orders, regulation work, and agency notices. Now this can increase or decrease pages in the Code of Federal Regulations, but the point is the sheer mass, the inconceivable scale of bureaucracy. Now this only goes back to 1936 but still, compare the amount of busywork even in the "deregulating" Trump era to the height of the FDR presidency and *World War II.* Right now, we're looking at about 60,000 pages a year in the Register. That's hundreds of pages every. single. day.
And this is only the Federal Code.
This is unsustainably bloated. It's almost hard to grasp.
Edit: And btw, these are rules and regs created by bureaucrats, not any kind of elected officials. Legislation is a separate, problematic source of bloat. State level especially legislation can be a crony capitalism magnet. Oh and States have their own mountains of regulations. And so do counties. And cities.
Last edited by Nuvendil - on 12 March 2020
