Bureaucrats, busted
Yet the most important explanation for the proliferation of rules concerns the habits of Washington’s bureaucracy. It has for decades been bad at rubbing out old ones. 

busted：壊す・やっつける
rubbing：消す

When a government agency writes a significant regulation—mostly defined as one costing more than $100m—it must usually prove that the rule’s benefits justify its costs. Its analysis goes through the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), a nerdy outpost of the White House. The process is meticulous. The OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, finds that America’s analysis of regulations is among the most rigorous anywhere. 

defined：特徴付ける
nerdy：間抜けな
outpost：出先機関
meticulous：細心の注意を払って
rigorous：厳格な

But once a rule has cleared the hurdle, there is little incentive for agencies ever to take a second look at it. So it is scrutinised only in advance, when regulators know the least about its effects, complains Michael Greenstone, of the University of Chicago. The OECD ranks America only 16th for “systematic” review of old red tape. (The leading country, Australia, has an independent body tasked with dredging up old rules for review.) 

scrutinised：詳しく調べる
the least：全く知らない
dredging：河川を浚渫する

Politicians of all stripes realise that America has fallen behind. Mr Obama ordered agencies to trawl for anachronistic regulations and report on their progress twice a year. This produced some results. For example, in 2014 the Department of Transportation scrapped a rule requiring truck drivers to file a report on condition of their vehicle before and after every trip, even when they found no faults. The change supposedly saved the industry $1.7bn. But the deregulatory charge lost some momentum in Mr Obama’s second term, after Cass Sunstein, its champion, left his post as head of OIRA. Critics contend that agencies ended up using the clear-out as another excuse to write new rules. 

stripes：あらゆるタイプの政治家
fallen：遅れをとる
trawl：トロール網を引く
anachronistic：時代遅れの
contend：強く主張する
clear-out：とりのぞく

The endless pile-up of regulation enrages businessmen. One in five small firms say it is their biggest problem, according to the National Federation of Independent Business, a lobby group. (Many businessmen grumble in private about the Obama administration’s zealous regulatory enforcement). Based on its own survey of businessmen, the World Economic Forum ranks America 29th for the ease of complying with its regulations, sandwiched between Saudi Arabia and Taiwan. 

enrages：ひどく腹をたてる
enforcement：法律の施行
complying：法令に従う

Regulators retort that firms’ complaints reflect only one side of the ledger—costs—and ignore the benefits that flow from, say, greater protection for consumers. For example, Mr Sunstein has argued that the Obama administration was an unusually good regulator, because the estimated net benefits of new regulations in his first term were more than twice what either George W. Bush or Bill Clinton achieved in theirs. 

retort：言い返す

But totting up costs and benefits is hardly straightforward. An agency which supports a regulation can obviously nudge the numbers in a favourable direction. Bureaucrats must sometimes make value judgments. For instance, the Obama administration counted benefits to foreign countries when weighing up rules to reduce carbon emissions. 

totting：合計する
straightforward：わかりやすい
nudge：そっと肘でつく
value judgment：価値判断

In any case, cost-benefit analysis ages badly. Without updating it, it is difficult to know how much old regulations weigh on the economy. One Mercatus working paper plugs the number of rules in each industry into a complex model of the economy. It finds that rules written since 1980 have dampened growth by about 0.8 percentage points a year. 

ages：古くなる
weigh：重要性を持つ
plugs：熱心い取り組む
dampened：弱める

Republicans like to put about that sort of figure, but it strikes many economists as implausibly large. Even those sympathetic to deregulation, like Glenn Hubbard, who worked in Mr Bush’s White House, are hesitant to forecast the growth effects of a regulatory bonfire, preferring to stress the benefits of tax cuts. Democrats, meanwhile, are scathing about the idea that rolling back regulations would pep up the economy much. Jason Furman, who advised Mr Obama, adds up the costs of Obama-era rules and says it is “impossible” to see how you would add even a tenth of a percentage point to growth by undoing them. (The Trump administration promises growth of 3.5-4%, up from 1.6% in 2016, partly on the back of deregulation.) 

implausibly：信じがたいほどに
bonfire：焚き火
stress：を強調する
scathing：批判的な
rolling：やめる
pep：活気付ける

アメリカの規則の多さを批判している。例えばトラックの運行でそのトラックの状況を事前と事後報告しなければならない規則がある。そのためその業界に１７億ドルもの費用がかかっている。結局まだやめていない。政府はこうした様々な規制には費用と効果を見ながら判定していると言うが、いい加減なものだ。トランプ政権はそうした規制を廃止して、今の経済成長が1.6%だがそれを3.5-4%にしようとしている。そうした意見に対して批判する人もいる。

減税政策ははっきりした効果が期待できるが、こうした規制緩和がどこまで、その効果を生み出すのかはわからないが、やり方次第だろう。Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)がその担当部門だが、トランプがどこまで手を突っ込むことができるのだろうか。FBIに対して反目しているが、同様に思うようにできない。そうしたことが彼の足かせになってしまうように思う。規則を作らないと言うことは彼らが失業すると言うことだ。同様のことがEUにも当てはまる。EUも規則ばかりだ。それは彼らの５万人の組織の雇用を確保するためだ。実に馬鹿げた話だが、誰もどうすることもできない。

水曜日。今日は海野塾がある。ではまた明日。