Indirect affect of the Fed tax

As the federal government has piled new regulations on the financial system, lower-skilled employees have been forced out of the industry—a tradeoff that hasn't necessarily helped consumers.

"It's just raising the costs," Christos Makridis, a scholar with the Mercatus Center, a free market think tank at George Mason University, tells Reason.

Makridis is one of the authors of a new study, along with Alberto Rossi, that investigates an under-acknowledged effect of federal regulations on the financial services sector imposed since the Great Recession. More regulation has brought increased automation, and lower-skilled workers have been pushed out as firms seek to hire fewer but more highly-specialized science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workers.

The study notes that regulations on the financial services sector have increased significantly more in recent years than regulations on other businesses. The Dodd-Frank bill, which was passed in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse and, among other things, created the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is one of the main culprits.