Bad regulation is our biggest public scam

In the US, the Competitive Enterprise Institute recently surveyed the extent and cost of federal regulations. The Federal Register, a compendium of regulations, has swollen from 2,620 pages in 1936 to 44,812 pages in 1986 and 78,961 pages today. Anybody thinking the US is a land of free enterprise is woefully out-of-date.

The CEI estimates the cost of compliance with these regulations at a whopping $1.8 trillion a year, nearly 12% of GDP. We need similar estimates of the cost of compliance in India. When the costs are sky-high, corruption will surely replace compliance.