Jeb Bush vs. Paul Krugman: What Do Economists Know About Regulation?
October 5, 2015
News Article
I believe the time has come for the Nobel Prize committee to consider rescinding Paul Krugman’s award. His columns in the New York Times are supposed to give us insights into public policy issues based on economics. But increasingly they ignore everything economists know. All too often they present viewpoints that are the opposite of what economists know.
Take government regulation of business. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Jeb Bush had this to say:
The increased cost of new regulations, in time and money, has been phenomenal.
According to the American Action Forum, since Mr. Obama took office, new regulations have resulted in an additional 443 million hours of paperwork each year for Americans. All told, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s 2015 report on the federal regulatory state, regulations impose a $1.88 trillion silent tax on the U.S. economy each year—that’s nearly $15,000 per family. For every second of his presidency, Mr. Obama has added roughly $3,100 in regulatory burdens to the economy.
It’s time we did a better job regulating the regulators.
Who could quibble with that? Krugman for one. He begins last Friday’s column with this nugget:
The former president of a peanut company has been sentenced to 28 years in prison for knowingly shipping tainted products that later killed nine people and sickened 700.
