The key word their is "environmental," so I'm not sure what the point is there. Most environmental regulations are federal (EPA), so corporations hopping around states for more relaxed regulations isn't my worry.
My worry is that Americans are grading their politicians on how many new jobs they create, so politicians are falling over themselves to offer larger and larger tax breaks to corporations for them to move or stay. It's common sense, if a corporation moves from Ohio to Indiana because Ohio offered a package of X and Indiana offered 2X....how in the hell does the overall American economy benefit? This happens all of the time. Owens-Illinois moved from Toledo, OH to Perrysburg, OH (mere miles down the interstate) for a better tax break package.
It doesn't just happen with tax breaks either, it's directly responsible for an increase in energy rates for people. Industrial usage dwarfs residential usage (at least here in Ohio), ensuring cheap energy for people because the factory will use such a huge sum of energy. But when GM factories threatened to move out of states for packages of cheaper energy rates, Ohio turned around and offered these factories a lower rate to stay put. It worked, but the side effect was drastically higher rates for residential usage to make up the difference... So who benefited there?
Go ahead and do that until you're labeled as an anti-business potted up commie. It'll take about two seconds. It's all about being as business-friendly as possible in this country, regardless of how much the middle class loses--because they have a job and should shut up and be thankful for it!
The sheer lack of recognizing the problems, not even assigning the blame on corporation vs government, keeps us at square zero. We can't even get to square one and go from there unless we are cognizant of what is going on. That's just the way they want it.
