What are the relationships that we can draw here? That is, what is the relationship to the level of regulation in a state and other things that we value? Yeah,

there's a lot from this. The fact that we have numbers, that we have data now for multiple years across all these states lets us do the kind of research that lets us then say, okay, what economic outcomes come from either leaving your state on autopilot and letting regulations grow or from trying to cut red tape. So there's the growth effect. I already mentioned that one, right? Starting with that British Columbia study. We've also got some studies on things like poverty rates. You see higher poverty rates in more regulated states, higher income inequality in more regulated states. You see better job creation in less regulated states. You see small firms perform relatively better compared to large firms in less regulated states. So I think it just, these are all intuitive findings. I mean, I think probably most of your listeners aren't surprised to hear any of these results. But now we've got hard numbers for them. Right now we can we can say what's the percentage effects on the job creation rate from cutting red tape by 10% that kind of thing. So that's one of the big goals of this whole project to enable that sort of research and then get that the hands of policymakers maybe to motivate further reform or starting reform.

Now, before we started recording, you mentioned my home state and careful listeners will know what that state is. And before looking at your list, I said, my state, middle of the pack, because my state is in the middle of the pack almost all the time for any kind of ranking that you might do. So Kentucky had some effort at cutting red tape, and it's not that surprising to imagine a new leader coming into a governor's office or a high-ranking position in a state and saying, what can I do that doesn't raise taxes? What can I do that doesn't sacrifice the basic welfare of people in my state to actually enhance their ability to secure their own happiness? That has to always be the push for a deregulatory agenda, right? Because it doesn't necessarily cost, and in fact, it could save you a lot of money to engage in cutting red tape.

Yeah, the budget you have to allocate to this, it can be close to zero if you're just using your existing regulators and telling them, all right, it's your job now. You're sure you want to make new regulations. I get it. We gave you that mission a long time ago. We said, protect the environment or whatever the mission is. But now another part of your job as a government employee is to find red tape and cut it. Find those regulations that aren't working, that aren't giving you any benefits, but they are creating costs and eliminate those as part of the whole British Columbia success story. That was exactly how they did it. They just made it part of the regulator's job to not just create new rules, but look back and manage the portfolio of existing rules to optimize, if you will, across that. And I want to point out another one, Caleb. Virginia right now, they've been running this phenomenal, phenomenal approach to cutting red tape. This is under Governor Yunkin. They established an office to do it. So there is some cost there, like two FTEs to run this office. They're overseeing the whole regulatory system there, though. They're making sure that every new regulation has a cost-benefit analysis done and done well. They're making sure that all of the regulators achieve the goal of the governor, which is to cut red tape by 25% before the end of his term. And they're checking in on him. It does require some oversight. So that would be the one cost you might want to think about if you are trying to pull this off

in your state, but the benefits are tremendous. Patrick McLaughlin directs policy analytics at the Mercatus Center we spoke last week in Phoenix. Subscribe to and rate The Cato Daily Podcast anywhere you like, and thank you for listening.