According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 18.7 million Americans have government jobs, while it only takes 18.1 million to produce our manufactured products. Only a small fraction of the 18.7 million government jobs are held by policemen, firemen, and sanitary engineers. The vast bulk of government employment is accounted for by unionized school teachers and regulatory bureaucrats, claims Roberts. Mandated fuel efficiency standards for cars result in lighter weight autos and up to 3,900 more deaths and 19,500 more serious injuries over the lifetime of each model year. Economist Richard Rahn has estimated that 80 percent of the inflation rate is due to government-mandated cost increases.
Regulation is so out of hand that it is now killing employment and the tax base in major cities.
Anyone who wants to start a light industry in Los Angeles has to first acquire as many as 200 approvals from city, county, regional, state, and federal regulatory agencies. Roberts' column in the Brockton, MA, Enterprise, July 15, 1993. Once a safety net for U.S. workers, Social Security is now a middle-class welfare program in which bloated benefit payments threaten to bankrupt the system. According to the Congressional Research Center, the average person drawing Social Security . . . After that, it's all gravy.