(Editor's note: This commentary originally appeared in the
Spring 2010 issue of Impact, the Mackinac Center's quarterly
newsletter.)  Every election year we're barraged with rhetoric
about "getting the country moving again," "creating jobs, jobs,
jobs," and "stimulating the economy."  Politicians love to
promise the future and ignore their own handiwork of the past.
They typically spend much more time concocting new schemes for
intervention than they spend searching for old ones that deserve
to be repealed.  What really deserves our attention are those
barriers to economic opportunity erected by government —
regulations, taxes, licensure laws, unfunded mandates, building
and zoning codes, special privileges for organized labor,
subsidies to business, eminent domain abuse, chronic budget
deficits that consume needed capital, and an education monopoly
that fails to teach children as it vacuums their parents'
wallets, just to name a few.  Studies show that excessively
restrictive zoning laws, building codes and