This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.

Chart Of The Day: The Rise Of The Regulatory Leviathan, 1936-2011

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/11/2015 14:15 -0400

From the Land of The Free... to do as you're told!

Chart: Acting-Man.com

Source: David Stockman's Contra Corner

- advertisements -

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:17 | 6414794 BullyBearish

Desperation to retain power breeds more laws...but not for them

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:26 | 6414885 KnuckleDragger-X

Slavery by regulation is the cool thing to do.....

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 15:07 | 6415096 froze25

All of this started with the civil war and then the Bankruptcy of America and the Emergency War Powers Act. That is when the last facade of America was wiped away and replaced with the upside down UNITED STATES OF AMERICA corp. The Feds said hey we can do what we want since the Constitution is suspended due to the Bankruptcy and is the emergency is re-declared in congress every year.

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 15:40 | 6415252 Billy the Poet

And yet we continue to hear that the current malaise is a result of the failure of free markets.

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:26 | 6414891 BandGap

Gosh, what happened in 1971?

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:31 | 6414925 hungrydweller

The Nixon administration

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:33 | 6414930 junction

The USA went off the gold standard on June 5, 1973. Less hard money, more regulations.

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 17:08 | 6415618 lordkoos

I think that spike had little to do with gold, and more to do with the creation of the EPA.

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:37 | 6414945 Pactyas

Partially, at least: "a flurry of environmental legislation in the early 1970s."

Per Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_and_state_environmental_relations

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:37 | 6414950 Mike Honcho

Disco

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:50 | 6415011 BandGap

No, that didn't really kick in till ~1973-4 as an offshoot of R&B. It should have been tightly regulated.

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:56 | 6415049 11b40

Not sure what was happening in the U.S. I was out of the country on a 13 month sabbatical most of that year, courtesy of Uncle Sam.

I do recall that when I got home, all kinds of crazy shit started happening. We sucked up to Red China (and you might understand my confusion, having just come home from the soft underbelly of China myself), there was this thing about paper money being worth more than gold or silver, and we soon found out the our President was busy trying to sabotage an election. Hell, the NY times even published the Pentagon Papers, and the govt tried to send Daniel Elsberg to prison for blowing the whistle on what was really going down with the MIC. Oh, and we had wage & price controls, too. That was just such a cool idea.

Nixon/Kissinger were truly a disastrous combination for America.

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 15:09 | 6415106 froze25

You need to go back further than that, the bankrupcy that happenend in about 1933. The recall of the Gold Certs. The rise of the Federal Gov't.

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:30 | 6414923 junction

Next, have a chart showing the average prison sentence for persons convicted of crimes in federal courts. No Reagan dip there, for sure.

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:17 | 6414799 kaiserhoff

Cut the government in half at all levels, and keep cutting.

The essence of government in force.

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:17 | 6414804 ml8ml8

New rule: Let's cap the Federal Register. For every sentence that is added, somewhere a sentence must be deleted.

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:20 | 6414829 rcintc

How about for every 1 added, 10 lines are deleted??

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:25 | 6414882 ml8ml8

If we could just hold the line, I'd be happy. Same rule would apply to the U.S. Code, too.

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:27 | 6414897 ml8ml8

Remember, that chart above is the lines ADDED EACH YEAR. I'd like to see the chart of total lines of regulation, it'd be even more shocking. Law schools can't churn out lawyers fast enough to keep up.

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 15:13 | 6415123 Milestones

Yea Gawd, this country is strangling on its own spit. Milestones

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 15:57 | 6415317 Urban Redneck

The Federal Register is a "daily diary" and includes proposals and notices. It would be more accurate and enlightening to examine the growth of pages in the United States Code (statutory law) and Code of Federal Regulations (administrative law) over the years (as well as an even uglier hockey stick chart).

One reason why people remain unenlightened is because the GPO doesn't make it easy- the USC is 51 volumes each year so even with PDFs and a coffee/research bitch it's a headache, the CFR is even worse (over 200 much larger volumes each year...

... and the Obama Administration quota monkey are even moar notorious tha the prior bunch for not publishing the legally required updates to both the USC and CFR by their legally required publishing dates... and since something like a simple page count isn't in their mandate, you'll never get one without doing some work...

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:19 | 6414805 ml8ml8

It's the ultimate libertarian dream.

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:22 | 6414852 Mr. Bones

Not an uncommon sentiment, they call it regulatory economy. Some seem to suffer under the delusion that Congress exists to legislate, this is incorrect - they exist to legislate effectively.

Also,
http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:20 | 6414831 Dr. Engali

I see the problem here. We don't have a regulation Czar yet. If we had a regulation Czar he would see to it that all these rules were enforced and all would be fair in equitable in the land of lady just us.

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:21 | 6414840 arbwhore

FEED ME!!!!

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:24 | 6414863 logicalman

Once a bureaucrat makes up a new rule, he's out of a job, unless he can come up with another rule.

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:25 | 6414875 madcows

that must be a log chart. it gets harder and harder to do anything in this country.

we do site plans for developers and land owners. the rules and regs have become so onerous that they do the work without filing and hope they don't get caught. The people may not be revolting as yet, but they are certainly not complying.

government run amok

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:25 | 6414881 Dr. Engali

The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.

Tacitus

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:34 | 6414933 firstdivision

Glass-Steagall Act = 37 pages (stabilised banks until it started to get erroded at in the late 70's)

Dodd-Frank = 2300 pages (doing nothing but keeping business as usual since '08)

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:39 | 6414959 Glass Seagull

because, you know...why not?

USA!!! USA!!! USA!!!

pg 2

USA!!! USA!!! USA!!!

pg 3...

USA!!! USA!!! USA!!!

...pg N

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 14:44 | 6414981 Rock and Hard Space

Would be interesting to see how the state and locals have added to that.

You can't dig a hole for a firepit without paying for licensing, inspection and taxes/fees.

THIS is why small business creation is in a death spiral with no signs of stopping.

THIS is why we house a larger percentage of our population in our criminal divisions that any other.

THIS is why small business went from supplying 75% of non-government jobs to less than 40%.

THIS is why there is no freaking fixing us.

Pull out 10,000 laws and go forth to your fellow citizens. Find out that 95% of your neighbors are 100% fine with the 95% of the laws that only apply to "someone else." Like the "rich" business guys that own small factories and retail outlets.

We want to be bubble-wrapped in legislation. It's for the freakin' children, don't ya' know.

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 15:03 | 6415073 spooz

The problem with regulations is that high paid lawyers work to find loopholes, which then need to be plugged, creating a neverending cycle.

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/250771-warren-new-wall-street-chat-sys...

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 15:08 | 6415099 gdiamond22

The more numerous the laws the more corrupt the state

Wed, 08/12/2015 - 12:18 | 6418665 Slomotrainwreck

Only law breakers break laws.

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 15:19 | 6415147 aardvarkk

I was watching a series called "The 100" on netflix, which is about a bunch of people who survived a nuclear war by the happy chance that they were all on space stations when it happened, so they brought all the stations together (a dozen of 'em) and made a society. They were constantly on the verge of extinction, and so they were rather draconian in their law enforcement...ALL crimes were capital crimes. Presumably they had a lot fewer laws on the books than we have.

And that's what I propose for us. Damn few laws, but then the ones that are there (don't steal, keep your hands to yourself, etc) should be enforced mercilessly. And new laws should take AT LEAST a 90% majority to actually pass, and maybe 40% to repeal. I'm still trying to figure out how we could outlaw government period, but it seems we're stuck with those leeches for a while yet....

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 15:33 | 6415231 starman

Each state should have its own centralized "state and fed gov"!

Meet in white house every quarter!

No governing in DC only quarterly evaluations!

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 18:10 | 6415894 RMolineaux

The 2008 crisis was the result of massive regulatory failure. Yet all sorts of folks on this board continue to beat the drum for more de-regulation. Can the obvious be more obvious? Of course, no amount of regulation is going to defeat the efforts of the unscrupulous to deal fraudulently. When the unscrupulous outnumber the honest dealers, organized markets are not possible.

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 18:56 | 6416038 numapepi

Milton Friedman said it all in 1980 here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yg14cdcLoo

Here is my modest proposal...

http://incapp.org/blog/?p=2590

Tue, 08/11/2015 - 20:48 | 6416414 fowlerja

Federal Law...the job is not done until the paperwork is completed...

Chart Of The Day: The Rise Of The Regulatory Leviathan, 1936-2011

Comment viewing options