On several occasions on this board I have argued that a strong safety net would improve our economy because it would encourage entrepreneurship. Basically, when people know that starting a new business won’t leave them and their loved ones homeless/starving, they’re more likely to do it. To me, this just seems common sense, but I have found some on the board who argue the point. Their position is that unless people are drive to innovate by the prospect of homelessness/starvation, they won’t bother to innovate.
A recent article in the Atlantic Onlineadvances my claims: it cites studies showing that when social safety net elements like food stamps and health insurance are present or strengthened, people will be more likely to innovate. Where they are absent or weakened, they are less likely to innovate.
Well, I always know I was right, it just made common sense. When the wolf is at your door, you don’t build a better mousetrap, all your time and attention is spent dealing with the wolf.
Once Obamacare has enough takers that it’ll be political suicide for a future Congress to consider killing it, millions of upper-middle class folks who work for corporations solely for the medical insurance will be freed to start their own businesses.
I am not at all sure about this: it is well known that most Western European countries have a substantially better safety net than the United States. Conversely the United States is accepted as having more entrepreneurship.
Are the previous posters here disagreeing with this?
I’m disagreeing with the correlation you rightly point out being assumed to be the only significant factor in the causation of the difference.
IOW, there’s more drunk driving after dark, so clearly darkness causes drunkenness. Not really.
This is just half the argument. You haven’t proved that more entrepreneurship is good for the economy, or that the benefits outweigh the cost of a social safety net.
Well the article I cited i the OP does describe the way France reformed it’s unemployment program to make it more friendly to entrepreneurs, and the positive results it got:
What other parts of the United States do?There are a few places with tech, but the many attempts to transplant Silicon Valley (I have a Silicon Bayou poster) have all failed.
Silicon Valley existed because of a confluence of a good environment, top universities, and luck that a number of companies decided to start there, and now it has reached critical mass.
And, btw, the people who started the first companies didn’t have to worry about a social safety net. Mass entrepreneurship is about little stores and restaurants, and there it matters. And there seem to be fewer chains and more individually owned stores in much of Europe than here. But I don’t have numbers either.
I think it’s a cliche that behind every small business owner there’s a spouse with a regular job and benefits. That’s a reflection of the same phenomenon the OP is talking about.
Is this article saying that WIC and SNAP recipients are the leading pool of entrepreneurs in the US right now?
I think that post hoc does not ergo propter hoc, and correlation does not equal causation. Call me crazy.
It didn’t, it just said that when poor people have access to those programs, their rate of entrepreneurship tends to go up. Are you against poor people being entrepreneurs?
It’s evidence. It’s not proof. A smart man considers evidence when he makes decisions, even if it’s not proof, especially if the evidence is in line with common sense. In the real world, you don’t always get proof.
The opponents of the social safety net have argued at length that it creates a “hammock of dependency” that stifles initiative.
This rebuts (and IMHO, refutes) that argument.
Re your first point, the safety net’s critics generally regard entrepreneurship as an unalloyed Good Thing, so defenders of the safety net don’t exactly need to make the pro-entrepreneurship case.
I’d need to see their definition of entering self-employment. The first thing that a person in tech does when laid off is to print a card saying that he is now a consultant. Very few ever make any money out of it, but it is something to put on the affiliation line. And of course they give it up when they have a job.
Can you tell me, or anybody, for that matter, just where under 20 suns you could possibly have come up with this idea?
To perhaps make it easier on you, I won’t even limit my question to this post…any of my posts will do. On any forums…On any webpage…On any internet…