Berk: The folks at BusinessInsider were surprised when they looked at the results of this chart - the only industry that created jobs since the beginning of the recession - Mining. Imagine if the regulatory burden as decribed below from today's WSJ.com disappeared.
Again, we need political leaders with courage to undo and then do nothing. All those construction jobs lost? Those out of work construction workers ought to be working on pipelines, oil fields, gas discovery and coal mines facilitated by the Federal government, not undermined by the Federal government, whose President and Energy Secretary are stalling until their prediction of a 300 mile car battery comes true. Hey, what if it doesn't? Do the genuises in Washingtom every consider the consequences of being wrong? Or are they so used to being unaccountable intellectuals that they would not know how?
This is an outrage.
The Administration has spent three years sitting on the Keystone XL pipeline project that promises to create 13,000 union jobs and 118,000 "spin-off" jobs. A State Department environmental review says the project poses no threat to the environment, but the Administration's eco-friends are screaming lest it go ahead.
Then there are the jobs the Administration and its allies in Congress are actively killing. In June, American Electric Power announced it would have to shutter five coal-fired power plants, at a cost of 600 jobs, in order to comply with new EPA rules. Those same rules may soon force the utility to shutter another 25 plants. Bank of America's decision last month to lay off 30,000 employees is a direct consequence of various Congressional edicts limiting how much the bank can charge merchants or how it can handle delinquent borrowers.
These visible crags of the Obama jobs iceberg are nothing next to the damage done below the waterline by the D.C. regulations factory, which last year added 81,405 pages of new rules to the Federal Register, bringing the total cost to the U.S. economy of regulatory compliance to an estimated $1.7 trillion a year.
Less easy to quantify, but no less harmful, are the long-term uncertainties employers face in trying to price in the costs of ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, the potential expiration next year of the Bush tax cuts, the possible millionaire surcharge, the value of the dollar and so on. No wonder businesses are so reluctant to hire: When you don't know how steep the trail ahead of you is, it's usually better to travel light.
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