Fred Smith, the venerable founder and CEO of FedEx spoke at a CTUP dinner this week in New York and warned about the disappearing American corporation. He showed us the chart below revealing the trend. Why? A spate of new regulations and laws starting with Sarbaned-Oxley, which notoriously added billions of dollars of new costs, stringent civil and even criminal liabilities, and voluminous reporting requirements on American corporations discouraged companies from going public.

That was all child’s play compared to the new 300-page SEC regulations regarding the environment and social justice (ESG) requirements that would be one of the most expensive regulations ever implemented. The cost of going public would triple. Companies will move out of the U.S. to avoid these costs.

Smith advises that the tax code should treat all businesses the same and suggests that the Steve Forbes flat tax might be a huge stimulus to the economy.

He’ll get no argument here.