The most recent Economist has extensive treatment of the way regulation is strangling the American economy. A briefing paper gives extended treatment of how Dodd-Frank continues to grow through regulatory actions fleshing out vague Congressional mandates, for example.
My major quibble is that the various articles lay the blame at the feet of Congress and regulators. The role courts play in gumming up the works gets only brief mention in an article on nuclear power. Any realistic assessment of how the US is over regulated would have to take into account the role of activist judges and so-called "public interest" litigants using environmental and other statutes to throttle growth.
The role of the trial lawyers as so-called private attorneys general also needs to be considered when assessing the impact of law and regulation on the economy. As the Trial Lawyers Inc. project demonstrated, tort suits (and lawsuits in related fields like securities regulation) devour at least 2% of GDP per year. It found that "Over the last 30 years, tort costs grew at a compound annual rate of 9.1%; by comparison, the U.S. population grew 1.1% annually, the consumer price index grew 5.0% annually, and the gross domestic product grew 7.6% annually during the same period."
Anyway, you need to read this compelling critique.
