In Silicon Valley, people start companies to change the world. In the rest of the country, it's out of necessity. That's why new business creation fell in 2013, according the Kauffman Foundation's annual Index of Entrepreneurial Activity. With unemployment at its lowest level since 2010, out-of-work people who might have started their own companies have simply found jobs instead.Things are so good, nobody's starting new businesses.
Let me suggest another possible explanation. New business creation is on a 30-year downslope, but there is one period of upswing on the graph at the first link. The period aligns with Reagan's deregulatory push, such that the cost of starting a new business dropped and the legal hazards shrank. The downturn begins anew about the time Reagan left office, a time when the first Bush administration was run by old money Republicans and the Democratic Congress was running roughshod over them anyway (due to things like the Iran-Contra hearings).
Now compare that reading with this chart that contrasts the Reagan and Obama recoveries (if, indeed, 'recovery' is really the proper term for this mess except in the most narrowly technical way).
The main function of regulation is to keep Big Business happy by suppressing their competitors. A side benefit is that it makes more Americans subject to their rules as employees, rather than free owners of their own means of production. It's the opposite of the Yeoman economy that Jefferson thought was the best guarantee of genuine liberty.
Oh, and by the way CNN, there aren't really all that many jobs available. So if the real push isn't onto company rolls, but onto government transfer payments, that's an even bigger threat to secure liberty for a free people.
10 comments:
Wow. That comment from Kauffman made my head hurt- Smarmy condescension wrapped in idiocy with overtones of thought control.
I'm so very sorry I started my business out of necessity, instead of transcendent vision. Ya know,I would have done it to change the world, but I just was not anointed enough.
The person who wrote that lives in momma's basement in his PJ's.
The reality is, the unemployment rate is dropping because folks are done looking for non-existent jobs. The rate of employment of the population as a whole is bouncing along where it was in 2008- no recovery in actual jobs worked at all.
This "research " is nothing more than manipulative spin.
I'd love to sell my e-books directly from my website. But I'd have to register with the state and city, set up a corporate bank account instead of just the dedicated private one I have now, collect taxes for both entities, and possibly relocate my workspace or pay a fine for violating zoning (commercial in a residential). And that's before income taxes and so on. So tell me again, Ms. Government Helper, about how easy it is to start a new business?
LittleRed1
Now yer talking my language.
Off topic, by the way: I just spoke to my mother-in-law, who's still deliriously happy with her DVD of the priest singing "Hallelujah." She keeps turning up the volume to the max and playing it over and over. She asked me to send her particular thanks to you. I don't know when I've heard her so happy!
Please convey my extreme pleasure at having been able to perform this small service. I am delighted to have made her happy.
"The main function of regulation is to keep Big Business happy by suppressing their competitors. "
Well, now. Regulation also keeps corporations from doing irreparable harm by keeping them from doing things like dumping toxic waste into any handy vacant lot or body of water. Which is the example always used when the left wishes to defend the addition of another regulation, so one needs to be ready to counter the (entirely valid) argument.
The way I'd say it is that there are a lot of motives for regulation, so it behooves us to examine them. There are also inevitable consequences of increasing regulation, even if the proponents are not primarily motivated by them or even particularly aware of them, and those certainly include giving established, large businesses an advantage over small start-ups.
I'm pretty sure there are people who are deeply suspicious of mom-and-pop dairy farms because they genuinely suspect that a small operation may lack the education or capitalization to carry on safe operations in vast nationwide milk markets, where all the milk is dumped into one big vat. They may also feel that it's not practical to expect milk inspectors to ensure that every small dairy farm is really clean. It can be difficult to distinguish those people from others who want to over-regulate in order to drive small competitors out of business.
When we get to the point of ridiculous regulations (like the requirement that a small farm maintain a special bathroom dedicated to the sole use of an annual inspector), I get suspicious. People who resist concluding that such a regulation is silly and intrusive are the ones I suspect of really wanting to drive the small farm out of business, for whatever reason. Of course, I'm also less inclined to assume that a big business is automatically run on smarter, safer lines than a small one.
Deregulation hardly means complete anarchy, down to the level of licensing toxic waste dumps in the water supply. But I think the Left should be easy to counter on this point, because they are more suspicious of big corporations than anyone. Just suggest that -- while some regulations are necessary and proper -- any proposed regulation should be tested to be sure that it does not unfairly advantage big business. In general, I'd expect them to go along with that.
Going to ignore how the Left paid off Democrats first and let everyone else take the hit, are we.
GM
GE and light bulb crushing competition.
Forcing Republican car dealerships to give up client lists to Democrat replacements.
Paying off union stockholders and funders first, leaving the rest of the people to hang in court.
That sounds like somebody's idea of business, all right.
Just the fact that business creation is falling off a cliff suggests to me that we're over-regulating, but I know that what it suggests instead to a lot of people is that we're not spending aggressively enough on "government stimulus," whatever that is.
Democrat businesses aren't regulated at all. Check out Reid or the money New Orleans PD is pulling in.
Assuming you can get past the armed guards before being disappeared.
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