There is a good reason regulation makes it more expensive to open factories in the US: our regulations force companies to internalize the negative externalities their businesses create. China effectively subsidizes industry by forcing its citizens to bear the costs of pollution, injuries, etc, inherent in such activities. US regulation forces companies to bear some of these costs (hardly all of them).
In its retrospective study on the 1970 Clean Air Act, the EPA estimated that the benefit of pollution control over the 20 year period was on the order of $22 trillion. Relative to the "so-called 'no-control' case, an additional 205,000 Americans would have died prematurely and millions more would have suffered illnesses ranging from mild respiratory symptoms to heart disease, chronic bronchitis, asthma attacks, and other severe respiratory problems... the lack of Clean Air Act controls on the use of leaded gasoline would have resulted in major increases in child IQ loss and adult hypertension, heart disease, and stroke." Meanwhile, "the actual costs of achieving the pollution reductions observed over the 20 year period were $523 billion, a small fraction of the estimated monetary benefits."
What's good for business isn't necessarily good for the economy. The things that businessmen push for: deregulation, limitations on tort liability, etc, create more in costs to society then they create in benefits to businesses. Indeed, our measurements of things like GDP are so fundamentally flawed that they encourage politicians to adopt such measures. If a factory's poisonous emissions causes you to have lung problems, that doesn't count against GDP, but when you seek medical attention for those problems GDP goes up!
But in practice the EPA is hardly a disinterested party when it comes to publishing studies on its own cost effectiveness. It exists to increase its budget and scope, just like all other agencies, but has no check on its behavior. Its officials are not elected, cannot be fired, and are effectively invisible to the public. Moreover, opposition to EPA malfeasance/corruption is often caricatured as opposition to clean air and clean water itself.
As an example of regulatory pathology, consider that the EPA is giving grants and instruction manuals to NGOs, telling them how to sue the agency into expanding its powers.
m.yahoo.com/w/news_america/epa-funds-greens-sue-221700941.html?orig_host_hdr=news.yahoo.com&.intl=us&.lang=en-us
The EPA even tacitly encourages such suits, going so
far as to pay for and promote a "Citizen's Guide" that,
among other things, explains how to sue the agency
under "citizen suit" provisions in environmental laws.
The guide's author — the Environmental Law Institute —
has received $9.9 million in EPA grants over the past
decade.
And, to top it off, critics say the EPA often ends up
paying the groups' legal fees under the Equal Access to
Justice Act.
What's going on? "The EPA isn't harmed by these suits,"
said Jeffrey Holmstead, who was an EPA official during
the Bush administration. "Often the suits involve things
the EPA wants to do anyway. By inviting a lawsuit and
then signing a consent decree, the agency gets legal
cover from political heat."
This sounds bad in a soundbite, but this is the way the system works.
Consider this loose example: suppose 2 people get into a fight. One guy really beats up another guy, and the cops are called. If the recipient refuses to press charges, the cops can't do anything.
Similarly, a lot of government agencies can't proactively do something, until someone sues them. By getting sued, they get to act on the complaint, and the legal opinion can be used to justify similar action elsewhere.
There is no nefarious purpose here; it is disingenuous to claim so. Yes, government agencies have issues galore; but by conflating the necessary with the rest, we fail to identify the real problems.
$22T/20 years is over $1T/year. US GDP in 1990 was under $6T. US GDP in 1970 was just over $1T.
> the lack of Clean Air Act controls on the use of leaded gasoline would have resulted in major increases in child IQ loss
Oh really? Why would leaded gas in 1980 cause more problems than leaded gas in 1950?
> Meanwhile, "the actual costs of achieving the pollution reductions observed over the 20 year period were $523 billion, a small fraction of the estimated monetary benefits."
Just as the benefits are not limited to the money not spent on medical care, the money spent on pollution controls are not the only costs.
Larger population and rising wages lead to more cars on the roads and hence more pollution?
Externality estimates and valuations are notorious for reflecting the biases of the estimators.
Estimates that are a large fraction of GDP are very suspicious.
Do you seriously believe that the clean air act "saved" 1/6th of the US economy?
While I also have various ideological preconceptions about the source of the economic problems in the US and elsewhere, I would observe that when someone like the CEO of Apple is expressing an opinion about what makes a factory easier to open in China than in the US, someone who has actually been the guy-who-can-say-yes to actual factories for which that decision was actually made, it's probably worth listening to that opinion. Even if you can somehow prove he's objectively wrong on the merits, his perception would still be a useful data point.
On the other hand I wouldn't expect any particular insight into our school problems from him, beyond what any reasonably skilled businessman could present.