James Madison predicted it: regulatory and tax instability benefits the rich and well connected

In Federalist Paper #62 James Madison explains one of the drivers of our 'rich get richer' culture:  regulatory and legal instability.  If you have literally hundreds of thousands of rules and are changing thousands of them every year, you give those who sit at the center and have the expertise and money to exploit them massive advantages. You know who they are:  lawyers, investment bankers, large corporations, large pressure groups and unions.

Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uninformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few, not for the many.

Madison also predicted the capital strike brought on by the current administration's cyclone of 'hope and change'.

In another point of view, great injury results from an unstable government. The want of confidence in the public councils damps every useful undertaking, the success and profit of which may depend on a continuance of existing arrangements. What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed? What farmer or manufacturer will lay himself out for the encouragement given to any particular cultivation or establishment, when he can have no assurance that his preparatory labors and advances will not render him a victim to an inconstant government? In a word, no great improvement or laudable enterprise can go forward which requires the auspices of a steady system of national policy.

Presumably Obama read Federalist #62 - after all he is a constitutional 'scholar'.  I guess he didn't understand it.  Or perhaps he understood it too well.  Back in Madison's day we had the Federalists and the anti-Federalist.  Perhaps the Obami with their penchant for the hyper-state and ultra-centralization should be called the 'super-Federalists'.

Whatever you call them, they have been remarkably destructive.

Glenn Reynolds argues that our problem isn't 'too many lawyers' it is 'too many laws'.  Although I suspect that the one goes with the other.  His column is worth a read, though.