Why is the U.S. economy so stagnant?

by Don Keith

Veering just a bit from the usual rapid-technological-change motif for this post, but not very far if you think about it.  Here's the question:

Why is the U.S. economy so stagnant, so slow to rebound from the last recession?

I think I can give a reason for much of the sluggishness by presenting a single chart:

You don't even have to be able to read the labels to understand the impact of the data that this graph presents.  It shows the page count for the Federal Register, generally considered to be a proxy for the amount of federal regulation being inflicted on the country.

Would it surprise you to know that the country's Gross Domestic Product tracks almost perfectly counter to this particular graph.  The ups and downs of the page count in the Federal Register track almost the opposite of GDP.

Makes perfect sense to me!