When Donald Trump promised during the campaign to drain the “swamp,” he was talking about the regulatory state—the morass of regulations and rulings by the administrative agencies that almost constitute a fourth branch of government. Measuring the economic cost of the swamp is hard, but the labor-force participation rate provides a clue. Only 62.9% of the prime-age U.S. labor force is at work, the second-lowest level among countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Canada is at 65.5%.
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