The Huge, Hidden Tax You Pay for Government

This is one of the problems creating unemployment. We don't need more government programs, we just need the government to "GET OUT OF THE WAY".

You've heard this before but now it has new meaning: "Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem." Ronald Reagan

Excerpt: Although Americans paid more than $900 billion in income taxes last year, there's a far larger tax bill hidden from view. That tax is regulation.

According to the just-released 2010 edition of "Ten Thousand Commandments," an annual study published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, businesses and individuals paid $1.187 trillion last year to comply with federal rules. Factor in the $54.3 billion that the federal government spends on administration and enforcement, and the full cost of the regulatory state comes to $1.24 trillion. By comparison, Canada's entire GDP last year was $1.32 trillion.

The Code of Federal Regulations is now over 157,000 pages long. Last year alone, 3,503 new rules went into effect -- that's a new regulation every 2 1/2 hours, day and night, seven days a week.

What we do know with certainty is that an overly burdensome regulatory system can stifle small businesses and make the market less competitive than it would be otherwise. Read the AOL News article here.