Inquirer Editorial: Federal regulations aren't job-killers

If you follow the news in Washington, you've heard a lot about "job-killing government regulations." It must be a powerful, poll-tested talking point, because Republicans are well-programmed to spout it when talking about today's tough economy.

But where is the evidence?

The Pro Publica journalism project has found some answers in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' reports on mass layoffs. In the first half of 2011, employers blamed government regulations for no more than a minuscule 0.3 percent of the jobs they cut - three of every 1,000 jobs lost.

Even those job losses are only half the picture, as Pro Publica noted. Money spent to meet regulations, such as stopping pollution and protecting worker safety, creates jobs in other areas. Somebody gets paid to manufacture, install, and run newly required pollution-control equipment, for example.

After speaking with several experts, including one at a free-market think tank, Pro Publica concluded: "While there is relatively little scholarship on the issue, the evidence so far is that the overall effect on jobs is minimal. Regulations do destroy some jobs, but they also create others. Mostly, they just shift jobs within the economy."

And frankly, there are some jobs that should go away.

Thanks to the financial-reform bill, for example, Wall Street won't be hiring traders to create high-risk, poorly understood securities that are sold to investors at the same time that the traders' company is betting against its own financial product, cleverly arranging things to make money when the toxic investment fails.

No doubt, some regulations are just too much hassle for too little benefit. The real question about regulations is whether the social benefits that the rules produce - such as clean air, safer workplaces, more honest financial markets - are worth the costs.

Regulations to police the excesses of the marketplace work best when government sets relatively simple and clear performance standards, and lets businesses decide exactly how best to comply, rather than imposing command-and-control rules.

But designing intelligent, effective regulations is not the conversation some Republicans want to have. They prefer to dupe Americans into believing that the economy would be booming again if government would just get out of the way of the private sector.

By harping on regulations, and constantly talking about getting government out of the way, what they are really talking about is giving their patrons in powerful industries more freedom to pollute, injure workers, and gouge consumers.