Many good things have happened both in the United States and worldwide this century. In the U.S., we have the lowest unemployment rate in half a century. Worldwide prosperity is growing so fast that the rate of extreme poverty fell by half between 1990 and 2015, five years ahead of the World Bank’s optimistic goal.

The bad news is that along with great economic performance has come a good bit of silly, one might even call it stupid, regulation and proposals for regulation. Here are my top seven for the United States, although I’m open to hearing about other, even stupider ones.

These are the opening 2 paragraphs in my article “The 7 Worst Ideas for Regulation This Century,” published today by the American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington, MA. Thanks to Jeffrey Tucker for a quick turnaround.

Here’s the last paragraph, in which I speculate briefly about the reason for such regulations:

In introductory economics, you learn the concept of a normal good. A normal good is one that people buy more of when their income rises. Could stupid policies be a normal good?