That doesn't explain the difference in time/cost between current-day USA and current-day France or Japan. All three have modern safety and environmental regulations, yet two can complete jobs faster and for less money.
Maybe you don't understand the real incentives at work? In the US, it is jobs, jobs, jobs. Long, drawn out projects keep hardhats working for years. It's not about outcomes, which is a big part of the problem.
Possibly true, but the parent to my comment suggested the problem was safety/environmental regulation, which is unlikely to be the main contributor to the problem.
Sort of. That other developed countries do it cheaper suggests that having sufficient safety/environmental regulation is not the problem, but our particular implementation of such could still be the problem (if it was particularly redundant or cumbersome).
I can't explain the difference, but I bet that infrastructure costs have gone up drastically there as well.