He\’s finally noticed that it\’s start up companies that create new jobs, not large established companies.
He then goes on to talk about how we might encourage more start up companies. At which point he fails to even mention tax, regulation or the venture capital industry, all generally considered to be the important things about encouraging the creation of new companies.
But you cannot say this often enough: Good-paying jobs don’t come from bailouts. They come from start-ups. And where do start-ups come from? They come from smart, creative, inspired risk-takers. How do we get more of those? There are only two ways: grow more by improving our schools or import more by recruiting talented immigrants.
No Tom: you encourage those who are marginally dissuaded by tax, regulatory or financing difficulties to become persuaded by removing those tax, regulatory or financing difficulties.
Just as a little example, we\’re still mulling over building a factory for a new extraction method of my favourite metal. There\’s absolutely not one tiniest iota of a chance that that factory will be in the USA….not with the EPA around.
Some peeps I know tried a similar plan (similar but different) a few years back. There\’s a huge mountain of lightly radioactive waste. Bit higher than background levels of radioactivity, perhaps a little less than you\’d get in a granite quarry.
Everyone would rather like that mountain to be cleaned up and that\’s what they were going to do. Extract what\’s worth extracting ….and a side effect would be extracting the radioactive bits from the mountain. You\’re then left with a mountain of dirt that\’s not going to do anyone any harm.
But, also, a few tonnes of radioactive oxides. Which would go into perhaps long terms storage. Note that no radioactivity has been created here, it\’s only been concentrated. But the EPA nixes the whole idea because having the radioactivity concentrated into something easily stored is clearly and obviously far worse than leaving it in the mountain where the winds blow it all around the surroundung county.
Whilst it’s great to have the odd genius invent the latest gadget in their garage and make billions, the vast majority of business people of yesteryear used to build up mundane businesses on shoestring budgets with proven, classic ideas that sold,employed and competed locally.
Most of those folks have been put out of business by cheap globally sourced goods, whose manufacturers don’t have the same regulations and taxes as we do, or by huge businesses who can price them out by economy of scale.
Not all those regulations can or should be lifted (health and safety for example), so unless we have a global tax and regulation equality (in which case globalisation is more expensive than locally produced in many cases) you can forget about restarting business in Europe.
In fact, I suspect that if you do all the sums and tot up all the effort, risk and headache involved in getting your slightly radioactive venture off the ground, your business idea turns out to be little more than a charitable hobby that provides a few jobs and more taxes to the government(and feeds other assorted rent seekers) than what you reap in profit; whilst investing the same sum in a conservative investment strategy would feed you and yours just as well, with much less work and risk.