Yeah, it's true, the big stuff was all pretty much done by the end of the last century. I'm aware, and I'm not worried about that. I assume no big regulatory change is going to have immediate effects - companies take time to re-align, especially ones in the kinds of mature industries that get to be heavily regulated in the first place. So for my purposes it's good that this is the case, since it means we've had enough time to sit back and observe what happens.

So, on that front: We have this hypothesis that regulation is a huge drag on the economy, and that we should therefore deregulate in order to stimulate greater economic growth. If this is true, then you would expect that we'd see the US economy to take off during or shortly after the bulk of the deregulation. With that prediction in mind, go back and look at the graph of GDP growth by year. In the three economies shown, de-regulation instead coincides with periods of consistently declining or perennially weak growth.

Which, to me, suggests that it's not reasonable to be so confident about the idea that regulation will have this or that profound effect on the overall economy. The idea that regulation is a horrible drag doesn't seem to have much of an empirical leg to stand on. I don't see much evidence that the opposite is true, either. The two regions that entered the graph with higher growth were also just exiting a period of rebuilding and recovery following a very destructive war, for example, so it's tough to say the pattern you see for them isn't a reflection of outside factors.