Not sure how the top-hat tropes apply here. US workers are highly competitive in terms of productivity/compensation.
>The Cost of Federal Regulation Aug 4, 1999 2 min read
>The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the White House's own budgetary agency, puts the price of existing regulations at approximately $300 billion annually. Others, such as Professor Thomas Hopkins of the Rochester Institute of Technology, say it's closer to $700 billion. This means regulations cost somewhere between $3,000 and $7,000 per household every year.
https://www.heritage.org/government-regulation/commentary/th...
>Regulation is frequently described as one of the drivers of falling entry, rising industry concentration, and underinvestment in the United States...
https://www.cato.org/research-briefs-economic-policy/cost-re...
>$3.079 trillion
Cost of federal regulations to the U.S. economy,
$465 billion
Increase in aggregate regulatory compliance costs since 2012,
$277k
Avg. annual compliance costs for a U.S. firm,
$29,100
Avg. per employee cost of regulations for manufacturers,
$50,100
Avg. per employee cost of regulations for small manufacturers (<50 employees)
https://nam.org/issues/regulatory-and-legal-reform/cost-of-r...