Entrepreneurship Dips: The New York Times Admits Small Business is Important

Great post from the Competitive Enterprise Institute Blog.

"Yesterday’s NYT cautions that “jobs are scarce” in small business as American entrepreneurship declines:

Here’s the explanation the NYT includes from the pessimistic chart’s author, Scott Shane:

68,490 more businesses closed in 2009 than in 2007, an 11.6 percent increase in the business closure rate. But in 2009, 115,795 fewer employer businesses were founded than in 2007, a 17.3 percent decline in firm formation.

How ironic; government started growing like crazy and small businesses had to shutter their doors.

In 2007 the bailouts started. Those were an awful lot of taxpayer dollars taken directly from potential-entrepreneurs’ pockets and dumped into flailing — or failing — big businesses’ bloated books.

If big businesses were actually allowed to close when they go underwater, little guys would have a chance. As it stands, not only are small businesses shuttering at precipitous rates, but big business has learned that it makes better financial sense for them to throw resources into lobbying for further bailouts, rather than trying to improve their products.

Entrepreneurship is the backbone of the American economy. Sadly American politicians have been punishing American entrepreneurs for awhile now — first by pushing a minimum wage that stifled natural market directions about hiring new employees and growing a business; then taking their tax dollars to serve their giant competitors, most recently by imposing punitive health care mandates that will sink even the most ambitious renaissance thinkers among us."