Number of entrepreneurs is way down in the USA? Are they all attracted

[applegrove]

to big bonuses on wallstreet instead of innovating and creating jobs across the country as business owners? I'd like to know.

[Shagbark Hickory]

1. Banks aren't loaning money to start businesses.

[midnight]

3. That was suppose to be the thrust behind the TARP funds....

Or at least that is how the deal was marketed....

[Mr Deltoid]

7. Oops

Forgot to attach strings...

[truedelphi]

8. And the winning candidate in the Presidential race of 2008

Pledged that if Wall Street did not see to it that the money was distributed back to Main Street, he would make putting regulations in place a huge priority during his first year.

Whether he forgot that pledge or Geithner and other close associates talked him out of it, we probably will never know.

[taught_me_patience]

9. There's plenty of money for small business

I know a friend who closed 10MM in venture cap funding.
My brother got a 30k loan for his small biz.
I'm closing on a 500k loan to purchase a business.

[JDPriestly]

21. Thanks. That is encouraging, and we wish all of you good luck

in your endeavors. Please provide jobs for Americans when you can. Keep the jobs in the US.

[BadgerKid]

35. Or to expand stable, successful businesses?

Two degrees of freedom away: A booming business needing more square footage was denied the loan.

[mmonk]

2. It has been in steady decline since Reagan.

The shift in priorities legislatively have been to the big corporate club on Wall Street, not Main street.

[Ikonoklast]

4. Big Business is squashing smaller companies in this country.

In my business, they actually write the regulations that are used by the Federal Government...all in their favor, all against the survival of smaller companies.

I laugh when I hear them cry and whine about 'regulations' killing their businesses; some of those very companies LOVE them some regulations, as they help keep out the competition.

I do get more than a little pissed off at both parties when they profess their undying love for small businesses and entrepreneurs, then do, at best, nothing to help them grow, or, at worst, do the bidding of Big Business and squash them flat.

[applegrove]

5. Yeah and deregulation of an industry destroys all the mid sized businesses. It leaves just the tiny

guys and the huge corporations(they don't compete with each other so much).

[madville]

6. Who in their right mind would start a business in this economy?

I can't think of many businesses that it would be smart to risk one's life savings, reputation and credit to create right now. Maybe a repo company or collection agency would work, they are probably booming industries.

Even if one has the capital to create or buy an inventory of xxxxx or offer xxxxx as a service, you have to have whatever combination of inventory, location, insurance, licenses, employees, healthcare coverage, workmans comp, etc, etc and have enough capital because a profit probably won't be made for the first few years.

Even if you have all that, the most important part of the equation will still be missing, customers.

[lumberjack_jeff]

11. As if to prove madville's point, Jeff raises his hand. n/t

[Odin2005]

14. A lot of companies had their start during the Great Depression.

:shrug:

[JDPriestly]

23. During the Great Depression, prices were low.

People had no money, but inequality in income was being controlled a little. The Great Depression ushered in the 1940s -- the WWII era with rationing and everyone buying US savings bonds.

The 1950s and 1960s were times of relative financial equality and healthy purchasing power for working people (relatively high wages compared to costs).

Businesses could flourish because their potential clients/customers were flourishing.

The banks went broke in the aftermath of the Great Crash. So did average Americans, but that was a healthier time to start a business than now because the social philosophy and economic theory that emerged and captured the imaginations of Americans was somewhat egalitarian. It was "We are in this together and we will survive," and not so much survival of the fittest.

For all Bernanke's expertise on the Great Depression, for all his emphasis on dealing with perception, he seems to have missed that key point -- that economic recovery is possible only when people feel that "We are all in this together" and pull together.

When a particular group -- such as the financial elite in the country is given all the authority, all the financial assistance it wants and given huge bonuses while working people are left to fend for themselves, the key components of national unity and common sense of mutual sacrifice are missing.

There will be no recovery until we start caring about each other. And the rich just haven't reached the point at which they care about anyone but themselves.

[JDPriestly]

22. Yes. I tested the waters a few years ago and decided that in my field

it was not the right time and at my age, it will never be the right time for me.

I found that the clients who needed my services were impoverished and simply could not afford to pay me enough to cover my costs. I had to do everything for myself -- file, type, copy, mail letters, buy stamps, every single thing because I could not demand enough pay to cover even a few staff hours a week or invest in new technology or equipment.

I knew that my clients really did not have the money to pay me because my work involved reviewing their financial statements -- assets and debts.

If more businessmen/women could look at the financial statements of their potential customers as I did, they would demand changes to rectify the imbalance between rich and poor in our society.

Loving what you do, wanting to help others, wanting to offer valuable products, enjoying exchange and sales are of no use if you cannot make ends meet.

A business cannot prosper unless its customers are prospering.

[On the Road]

10. Very Few People

who are interested in starting a company have an option of working on Wall Street. They are pretty much mutually exclusive.

People who might want to start a company are generally employed right now. But a startup requires confidence in the future and in your own prospects if it fails. That class of people likely has neither one at the moment.

[scentopine]

12. As an inventor with a number of significant patents...

I had to put my consulting business on hold, can't afford the health insurance (chronic illness in family) and investment money is near zero. MBAs are in charge of engineering now. You know - the ones who spent their business school education at Frat house beer benders while engineers where working their asses off?

Yep - those MBAs. And anything that involves math or science? They shit in fear. Like tea baggers.

If you can't explain it to an MBA in 5 words in GIANT FONT on a power point, project is good as dead. Oh - and has to have big return on investment in 3 months.

Instead engineers in USA are chained down to corporate hell, just repackaging the same shit over and over and over while MBAs outsource new projects to China and India because, you know, they are so much smarter. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot, they'll work for $7 an hour. Then the same MBA douche bags will order you to train the $7 hr engineer in India to take your job.

Wall Street CEOs and their MBA chambermaids think everything is a cold, dead commodity. These fuckers are enabled by the neo-libs/neo-con centrists who think CEO profit incentive is the third way.

To Wall Street and MBA sociopaths and their enablers in both parties who are destroying USA industry - fuck you.

FDR said it best (I realize many new democrats hate FDR and liberals, no apologies from me for getting under your skin, we need some of FDR's proven remedies right now)

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live. Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.

Read more at the American Presidency Project: Franklin D. Roosevelt: Inaugural Address http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=14473#ixzz1YMqf37xy

[applegrove]

15. Wow. Thanks for making it real.

[scentopine]

17. You are welcome - engineering is dying in USA...

dept of defense is about it. It is so bad that H1Bs are worrying about being outsourced.

Every hard core R&D engineering organization has been down sizing mode for last 10 years. It's all going away, like every other fucking industry.

We'll all be selling pills, insurance and burgers to each other.

[applegrove]

18. That is just devastating.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

19. Meanwhile, many of the top government officials in China ARE engineers

We are reaping what we have sown with our anti-intellectualism and our worship of the high school athlete over the high school science fair winner, the high school Putnam exam high scorer, the high school musical prodigy, the high school writer, the high school humanitarian, and all the other kids who could actually contribute to society.

[Odin2005]

20. And German Chancellor Angela Merkel is a physicist by training, IIRC.

Margret Thatcher was a Chemist.

[DrunkenBoat]

33. Heh. A lot of the pills are out-sourced too.

[Skittles]

24. OMG the India, China, Brazil "talent" - I hear you

they suck so fucking bad

[JDPriestly]

25. +1 scentopine. Beautiful. I will bookmark that website.

I especially loved these quotes form Roosevelt's speech:

Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

. . . .

Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own national house in order and making income balance outgo. Our international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy. I favor as a practical policy the putting of first things first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment, but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment.

. . . .

If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we cannot merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.

Read more at the American Presidency Project: Franklin D. Roosevelt: Inaugural Address http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=14473#ixzz1YNILxANG

[Skittles]

26. scentopine, this post is worthy of its own thread

yes INDEED

[scentopine]

27. LOL! I don't like to feed the unnrec fairies ... -nt

[Skittles]

29. oh, fuck the unrec cowards

for the record, I have never used unrec :D

[scentopine]

28. ack - I forgot to say thank you!

[provis99]

32. yes, I dealt with MBA students in grad school.

Everyone of them I dealt with was stupid and vicious.

[DrunkenBoat]

34. But the amazing thing is that they all think they're brilliant -- and everyone *else* is stupid.

Because they've got their mutual admiration society going.

And from their POV, money = genius.

I have a relative whose business is selling real estate to rich people.

He's the most arrogant son of a bitch I know & he's an idiot.

Brown-noses those above him, looks down on those below.

He thinks he makes so much money because he's smart.

Nah, it's because he sells expensive real estate to rich people.

The closer you are to money, the more money you make.

Another one sells expensive cars. Nearly as bad.

They're fucking *salespeople* and they don't get it, service workers & they think they're tycoons.

[Odin2005]

13. Big business hates entrepreneurs because they hate competition.

That's why the system is rigged against small businesses and in favor of the giant corporations.

[scentopine]

16. You are correct - CEOs hate public health plans because 100,000

engineers would suddenly realize they could walk out the door and start their own businesses without worrying about putting family at risk because of $20k a year health care costs with $5k deductibles.

[saras]

30. You can start all the business you want, but without customers they won't succeed...

In a different environment I'd start another business. But right now, in this economy and this culture, it's a utopian fantasy.

[DrunkenBoat]

31. If by "entrepreneurs" you mean owner-operated businesses or self-employed,

that fraction of the population has been on the decline since WW2.

As you can verify by looking at tax data.

Marx was right; the majority of people sink into the proletariat.

On edit, since the Civil War, in fact. Mostly attributable to agriculture.

In 1940 the % self-employed was 22%.

In 1970, less than 9%.

In 2005, about 10%.

I doubt the slight uptick is a permanent trend -- except for tax avoidance purposes. The small business ventures with low entry requirements simply don't generally provide enough income to live on anymore.

When I was young you could get a meager living running a bookstore. I wanted to do that. Not much chance now.

http://books.google.com/books?id=XsGdBReOQSgC&pg=PA324&dq=irs+self-employed+declined&hl=en&ei=Q_B2Tt3CMKnSiAKXs8xs&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CEYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false

[trotsky]

36. If we want more entrepeneurs, we should have universal health care.

Think of all the people out there with great ideas for a business who are currently working for someone else because the job provides health insurance. While a lot of them might be willing to risk some savings or time on a business, their family's health is not a poker chip they want to put on the table.

[PassingFair]

37. +4 (for my family members!)

Health Care is the main reason I'm working a "normal job".

My husband and I worked together for 15 years before the
economy wouldn't allow us to afford a house payment AND
health insurance.

We were paying $850/month for health care 8 years ago.

[applegrove]

38. Yup. Universal health care would create lots of creativity. Just think of the people

who are stiffled and dying a little bit every day because they are tied to a health plan.