- Trade restrictions
- Government regulation of industries which prevent low-cost new entrants. Finance, Education, Law, and Medicine are especially bad here.
- Intellectual property law.
Historically, I've also included a couple other things
Just now, Scott Sumner throws down a different, larger list, not that far away from mine:
1. The huge rise in occupational licensing.
2. The huge rise in people incarcerated in the war on drugs, and also the scandalous reluctance of doctors to prescribe adequate pain medication (also due to the war on drugs.)
3. The need for more legal immigration.
4. The need to replace taxes on capital with progressive consumption taxes.
5. Local zoning rules that prevent dense development.
6. Tax exemptions for mortgage interest and health insurance
In this larger context, I think that his #1 should include the FDA, financial regulation and such. Not just occupational licensing, but the HUGE mass of regulation that prevents folks (in medicine, finance, law, education, etc.) from trying new things.
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Bah, except in specialized markets such as CA and NY, all the mortgage interest deduction does is encourage people to buy too much house, at current market rates, I would have to borrow over $300,000 to even break even with the standard deduction.
I'm going to go with eliminate the tax on capitol AND consumption and replace it with a 10% across the board import tariff. Note even at 10% most countries will still easily out-compete us since our regulatory burden is far greater than that.
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