Regulations Cost Workers $13,000 Per Year in Lost Income

A new study out of George Mason University shows that Federal regulations create a substantial drag on economi growth estimated at 0.8% of GDP per year. This might not sound like a lot, but:

• If regulation had been held constant at levels observed in 1980, the US economy would have been about 25 percent larger than it actually was as of 2012.
• This means that in 2012, the economy was $4 trillion smaller than it would have been in the absence of regulatory growth since 1980.
• This amounts to a loss of approximately $13,000 per capita, a significant amount of money for most American workers.

I wonder if the workers currently complaining about stagnant wages would like to have gotten a $13,000 raise? They could have.