Last week reported that entrepreneurial activity in Minnesota was the worst in the entire US.
But the whole country is reeling.
Usually the “recovery” from a recession is a great time to start a business; in the “creative destruction” cycle, it’s the time when creativity happens; as money starts to flow again, people start businesses.
Glenn Reynolds:
So what’s to blame for this change? A lot of things, probably. One reason, I suspect, for a job market that looks more like Europe is a regulatory and legal environment that looks more like Europe’s. High regulatory loads — the product of ObamaCare and numerous other laws — systematically harm small businesses, which can’t afford the personnel needed for compliance, to the benefit of large corporations, which can.
Likewise, higher taxes reduce the rewards for success, making people less likely to invest their money (or time) into new businesses. And local regulatory bodies, too, make starting new businesses harder.
But I wonder if the biggest problem isn’t cultural. Since 2008, this country hasn’t celebrated achievement or entrepreneurialism. Instead, we’ve heard talk about the evils of the “1%” ” about the rapaciousness of capitalism, and the importance of spreading the wealth around. We’ve even heard that work in the public sector is somehow nobler than work in the private sector.
Countries where those attitudes prevail tend not to produce as much entrepreneurialism, so it’s perhaps no surprise that as those attitudes have gained ascendance among America’s political class and media elite, we’ve seen less entrepreneurialism here.
The process of changing this nation from a culture of building and innovating into one of consuming and demanding has taken decades. But Obama seems to be close to closing the circle, creating the first nation to go from benign tyranny to freedom and all the way back.
So the usual answer I get when I point out to folks on the left how Obama and his crony capitalism works is: “But what about the stock market? It’s doing great!”. Uh yeah. That’s my point. His cronies – the large businesses that gave his campaign lots of dough are doing great.
Large businessess, those that can afford the regulatory burden because it’s a single digit percentage point in their overhead, are doing great – profits are up, relatively speaking (also helps to have dollars that are worth less). But the innovators, the start-ups and the 30-40 something old folks who would take equity from their house and start a niche business in the industry they just got laid off from or left when they were fed up with the bureaucracy of the large company they came from aren’t there. First – there isn’t a lot of equity in houses since the bubble popped. Second – Why should I bust my hump for 90+ hours a week for 3-5 years just to learn that my office’s bathroom isn’t appropriately accessible and I’ll need to drop 20K (5% of sales) into a reno? Or I have to put an HR specialist on retainer to deal with my assistant because my assistant wants to go on maternity/paternity leave and I’m not quite sure what my obligations are? I just wanted to make and sell a better mousetrap, and now Barry wants me, ahem, is ordering me to buy insurance (20% of sales) for everyone on the payroll.
PS: Please protest the Keystone Pipeline. Warren Buffet and I are making big money with BNSF transporting that oil from the Bakken.
We need to start efficiently doing what needs to be done for each other, at non-inflated asset prices, or we are doomed. Every strata of business and entrepreneurialism . http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2013/05/07/interview-kevin-williamson/2/
seflores, my neighbor down the street just got hit with a citation and fine for not having the appropriate amenities in her public restrooms for transgender customers.
I chatted with my brother yesterday. He does carpentry in Western WI, Eastern MN. He said construction jobs are paying 13-15 $/hr.
This is what they were paying 25 years ago — but 25 years ago, you got health insurance with that. Now you don’t. Stock market is doing great, though.
Stocks doing great – check out the stock performance for the last year of the people who wrote Obamacare – UNH, CI, WLP, AET, and HUM
So almost every liquor store in St Paul has the yellow signs and handouts asking us to work to stop the HUGE proposed tax increase on booze.
My first reaction was “FU. You, your employees and 75% of your customers voted for Dayton and the Democrats. Yet now you want me to help you stop Democrat laws? I didn’t see a Tom Emmer sign in you window. You asked for Democrat control, now you can live with it”.
But you would think that many of these owners are closet Republicans or libertarians. If they would have publically supported Tom Emmer, the left would try to destroy them directly. But instead they get killed via Big Government.