Dear Ruler believes that America’s greatness comes from government spending.  Not only does he believe it … he actually SAID it!  A bigger, more onerous government is considered a success to Barack Obama.  Along with big government comes a lot of employees to make sure that people are complying with big government policies.  From 2008 (when Obama was elected) through 2011 (the last year for which we have figures), the number of federal government regulators has exploded.  With that increase in regulators comes an increase in their budgets.  We now have over a quarter of a million people in this country employed by the federal government to make sure that you are complying with government regulations.  That is a 13% increase in government regulatory bureaucrats since 2008, with a 16% increase in their budget since 2008.  And there is no end in sight for this expansion of bureaucratic hacks whose sole job is to make sure that you are a good little government subject, complying with some of the most asinine and unnecessary of regulations.

So while Obama may be “creating jobs” by hiring more federal government regulators, that’s not the entire story.  I stumbled upon an amazing and frightening statistic from the Cato Institute.  Dan Mitchell referenced a study by the Phoenix Center, which found that for every one federal regulator that is hired, than translates into 100 fewer jobs in the private sector.  Hire one mindless bureaucrat and lose 100 productive jobs!  Here are more of the details …

…we use fifty years of data and modern econometric methods to provide an estimate of the relationship between government spending on regulatory activity and economic growth and job recovery. We estimate that reducing the size of the regulatory bureaucracy may grow the economy and invigorate the labor market. Even a small 5% reduction in the regulatory budget (about $2.8 billion) is estimated to result in about $75 billion in expanded private-sector GDP each year, with an increase in employment by 1.2 million jobs annually. On average, eliminating the job of a single regulator grows the American economy by $6.2 million and nearly 100 private sector jobs annually. Conversely, each million dollar increase in the regulatory budget costs the economy 420 private sector jobs.

The ranks of faceless Myrmidons will continue to swell, so long as we have Barack Obama in the White House.