From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   More regulation yields more profits for large firms while crushing small ones:   
   Study   
   by Timothy P. Carney, May 18, 2023, The Washington Examiner   
      
   The economy of the U.S. has become more consolidated and more regulated over   
   the past generation, and it turns out that regulation is a leading cause of   
   the consolidation.   
      
   So if you ever wonder why Big Business is lobbying for bigger government, just   
   check out this paper from finance scholar Shikhar Singla.   
      
   His study finds “an increase in regulatory costs results in lower sales,   
   employment, markups, and profitability for small firms,” but more   
   importantly, they find that greater regulatory costs result in higher sales,   
   employment, markups, and    
   profitability for large firms.   
      
   That is, Big Government is good for Big Business.   
      
   Singla used “machine learning” technology to force computers to read every   
   single U.S. regulatory filing since 1970 that laid out the costs the   
   regulation imposed on businesses. He found that “regulatory costs have   
   increased by $1 trillion from    
   1970 to 2018.” That’s a lot of money. So how have those massively   
   increased costs affected businesses?   
      
   The federal filings were pretty granular and could show how much regulatory   
   costs increased in each industry. So Singla compared big and small businesses   
   in the affected industry.   
      
   The big finding: “We find that increase in regulatory costs leads to small   
   firms becoming smaller and large firms becoming larger. It also leads to an   
   increase in markups and profitability of very large firms.”   
      
   That second part is key here and bears repeating:   
      
   Increasing regulatory costs increases profits and markups for large firms.   
   That both explains why Big Business regularly calls for more regulation (see   
   the artificial intelligence industry for this week’s example), and it points   
   toward the harm of    
   these regulations. The increased Big Business margins come from decreased   
   competition, which in turn harms consumers and workers.   
      
   For a crystal-clear real-world example of this, go back to 2010 when H&R Block   
   and Jackson Hewitt supported the Obama administration’s (illegal) attempt to   
   regulate tax preparers, requiring lengthy and costly certification for paid   
   preparers.   
      
   "We support this IRS initiative to improve and increase compliance standards,   
   requirements, and expectations for the individual income tax return preparer   
   community," Sheila Cort of Jackson Hewitt said.   
      
   At the time, UBS issued an investment alert, effectively saying that these   
   regulations made H&R Block a better bet: "The new regulations should help   
   Block by: 1) reducing fraudulent preparers (that generate oversize refunds   
   dishonestly), 2) add barriers    
   to entry (or continuation) for small preparers, 3) provide revenue as Block   
   may sell their continuing education and competency tests to others, and 4)   
   perhaps boost paid prepared share."   
      
   What’s more, Big Government is a home game for Big Business. Do you know who   
   was the IRS commissioner when the IRS wrote its rules? Mark Ernst, who a few   
   months before had been the CEO of H&R Block.   
      
   The big guys hire the best lobbyists and lawyers to navigate and tweak the   
   rules — often these lobbyists and lawyers were the lawmakers and bureaucrats   
   who wrote the law and the regulations.   
      
   Big Business lobbies for and profits from Big Government.   
      
   https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/more-regulation-yield   
   -more-profits-for-large-firms-while-crushing-small-ones-study   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)