Nailed it.
Japan was communist and taxed their firms 90%? Reagan got tough on trade and made Japan produce their cars in the U.S.. You conveniently forgot that didn't you?
"My guess, and its just a guess, is that you have never operated a real business in this country and have no idea what it costs to comply with all the regulations/taxes."
Well that's the worst guess ever. Yes, I owned and operated a Medical firm for 3 years with over $1 million in revenues. And I was acting CFO for another firm. We had a lot more regulations that most firms.
The truth about most regulations is that while they are a pain, and everyone complains about them. They aren't that costly. And most of them aren't going away no matter what.
Once you have a procedure in place, software takes care of a lot of them.
Again, you could eliminate them all and eliminate all taxes and you aren't going to compete with $2/day labor.
How long ago did you operate this firm?
Nailed it.