Federal Regulations: Wait for When It Starts to Collapse on Top of Him.
Massive.
Gargantuan.
Unreadable.
There are plenty of words to describe the enormous expanse of federal red tape, but Patrick McLaughlin, a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, took the maxim “a picture is worth a thousand words” to heart when he set out to visualize the growth in federal regulations between 1950 and 2013.
In 1950, federal regulations were nothing to sneeze — in the neighborhood of 10,000 pages, according to McLaughlin — but maybe a smart person with plenty of time on their hands could get through it.
How much regulation has been added between then and now?
Watch the video to see (spoiler: it’s a lot) and witness the immense stack nearly crush McLaughlin, helping to prove his point about red tape: