Posted by
Playful Walrus on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 1:31:24 PM
California regulations are costing 493,000,000,000 dollars and 3,800,000 jobs, according to this interesting entry from Jan Norman that I found on her Orange County Register blog.
That’s an average of $134,122 per California business, $13,801 per household and $4,685 per resident each year.
Scary.
The study parallels a 2005 federal report on business regulations commissioned by the Office of Advocacy within the U.S. Small Business Administration.That report concluded that federal regulations cost $7,647 per employee for businesses with fewer than 20 employees.
This state report is based on data used by Forbes magazine’s annual ranking of state for business friendliness. It does not single out specific regulations that drive up costs.
I'm sure there are plenty of people who have counters to this. But if you've ever tried to start or move a business to California - especially one that employs others, you'll be able to decide for yourself.
Among the California conclusions:
The total cost ($493 billion) is almost 5 times the state’s general fund budget and a third of the state’s gross product.
The 3.8 million jobs lost equals 1/10th of California’s population. California has about 14 million jobs, down 1 million from the peak in July 2007.
The total cost breakdown is $266.5 billion in direct costs of various regulations, $210.5 billion lost labor income and $16 billion in business taxes the state would get without the regulations
Beautiful.
One producer of construction aggregates in the state, Vulcan Materials, testified in an Assembly Jobs Committee hearing in June that it 'is not uncommon for the permitting process to involve millions of dollars and in some cases to take as long as 10 years to secure the necessary permits, many of which address duplicative regulatory aspects.'
You can read the entire report here. I don’t know if it takes into account local regulations, too.