Data Point - are we losing that entrepreneurial edge? - Granite Grok

Data Point – are we losing that entrepreneurial edge?

brookings-dynamism“Behold, the power of Obamanomics. More businesses are failing now than are being created, a first for the American economy since the Carter era, according to a new study by the Brookings Institution. That has become even more true during the Obama “recovery” than during the Great Recession:”

…While the reasons explaining this decline are still unknown, if it persists, it implies a continuation of slow growth for the indefinite future, unless for equally unknown reasons or by virtue of entrepreneurship enhancing policies (such as liberalized entry of high-skilled immigrants), these trends are reversed.

“The reasons can’t be that unknown.  Since the 1970s, the federal regulatory environment has grown exponentially, with its power amplified by the federal courts. Even short eras of regulatory reduction resulted in only moderate reversals of that decline, which quickly disappeared. Look, for instance, at the period between 1983-88 during the heyday of Reaganomics and deregulation, and the shallower gains during the George W. Bush administration.

Note too that this isn’t so much of a sharp increase in business failures but a lack of business creation.”

Exactly.  I’ve owned a business.  I’d like to do so again, but I will tell you, when I weigh all of the actual costs of doing so, and then the artificial (but no less real) costs simply because of Government interference (some, perhaps, worthwhile but a ton not), against the ROI of all that work and the percentage success, well, it can be daunting.  Daunting enough that a lot of people are saying “No, the cost is too high and the risk of failure is pushed to high as well”.  And given how the Government is becoming more and more adversarial (I saw it when we owned our daycare center), the uncertainly makes it unworthwhile.

(H/T: Hot Air)

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