Figures released from The Libre Institute give us a frightening look at just how much businesses in the United States have to spend in order to keep up with all the red tape government regulations force upon them. As you will see, the cost of keeping up with government intervention is monumental.
Using major U.S. industries as a kick off point, The Libre Institute marked their contribution to America’s GDP, then ads up just how much money these industries spend trying to stay legal in the face of governmental red tape.
Using data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, we compare the size of the construction, health care, and financial and insurance industries with the size of total U.S. regulatory compliance costs as a share of GDP. In 2015, the total burden of regulatory compliance costs in the U.S. exceeded 10 percent of GDP.
To put it in perspective, regulatory upkeep surpassed $1.8 trillion in 2015. This is much larger than Russia’s entire GDP.
“If red tape in the United States were a country,” says the Libre Institute. “It would be larger than all but the world’s 8 largest economies.” READ MORE
