CNET reports that Intel chief executive Paul Otellini offered a depressing set of observations about the economy and the Obama administration (much like those of Intel founder Andy Grove):

“I can tell you definitively that it costs $1 billion more per factory for me to build, equip, and operate a semiconductor manufacturing facility in the United States,” Otellini said. The rub: Ninety percent of that additional cost of a $4 billion factory is not labor but the cost to comply with taxes and regulations that other nations don’t impose.

(Cypress Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rodgers elaborated on this in an interview with CNET, saying the problem is not higher U.S. wages but anti-business laws: “The killer factor in California for a manufacturer to create, say, a thousand blue-collar jobs is a hostile government that doesn’t want you there and demonstrates it in thousands of ways.”)

“If our tax rate approached that of the rest of the world, corporations would have an incentive to invest here,” Otellini said. But instead, it’s the second highest in the industrialized world, making the United States a less attractive place to invest — and create jobs — than places in Europe and Asia that are “clamoring” for Intel’s business.

Fixing the economy is a hard slog, but it’s not rocket science. But if you’ve chosen advisors who know nothing about the business of America, as Obama has……well, it’s just too depressing to think about.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 26th, 2010 at 1:06 pm and is filed under business, China, Democrats, EU, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.