

White House initiative to encourage entrepreneurship - raleec
http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/startup-america

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hinathan
Number one thing the federal government could do to spur entrepreneurship and
innovation:

Simple, single-payer (sure, self-paid in cash until my company can foot the
bill) health coverage that I don't have to think about. Without this, it's a
huge waste of time, money, and cognitive effort to apply for and maintain
COBRA and related coverage until your venture can afford it. And you're boned
if you can't get to that stage and your COBRA ages out.

How many otherwise ambitious, eager tech and business people are locked into
their current work situation (or stuck working for big-cap companies) due to
pre-existing conditions or the threat of a family health emergency? This
applies to all kinds of people, not just the Silicon Valley startup crowd. The
health care 'leap of faith' is a huge elephant in the room and a real drag on
the growth areas of the economy.

~~~
jacoblyles
I know I'll never change Hacker News's mind on this issue considering the
preexisting bias here, but there are ways to sever health insurance from
employment other than single payer national health care. For example, the
government could equalize the tax treatment of the employer health care market
and the individual market. Or the world's 8th largest economy, California,
could pass its own universal health care and prove to the rest of the nation
that such services are indeed a boon to innovation, and not an anchor as some
of us suspect.

There are a few of us who have valid concerns about what would be the world's
second largest bureaucracy, taking the title from Medicare whose price
controls and regulations wreak havoc on the US health system as is (The
largest in terms of spending is the US military. But a national US health
service could surpass that too).

Given the US federal budget deficit, the day is fast approaching where the
order of the day will be triaging the old social entitlements of FDR and
Johnson, not adding new ones.

Now back to your regular-scheduled Democratic Socialism.

~~~
orangecat
_here are ways to sever health insurance from employment other than single
payer national health care_

That's just silly. Next you'll be trying to tell us that people should buy
their own food and housing rather than having it provided by governments or
employers.

~~~
veidr
Your analogy is flimsy and borderline stupid. Insurance is a _fundamentally_
different thing than food and housing, because of the nature of resource-
pooling. That's why there isn't a single country on earth with a working
healthcare system that relies solely on people selecting and paying for health
insurance on a strictly individual basis.

Moreover, without health insurance, many people die slow, agonizing, and
utterly avoidable deaths. (In the US, the emergency room will fix your broken
femur without insurance, but nobody will treat your long-term cancer or
multiple sclerosis without insurance.) For many people, perhaps most, this
adds an additional moral dimension to the issue.

I hate hearing people make this flimsy-ass argument about health care. "Should
the government pay for your clothes too? How about your lawn service?" Health
care is a FUNDAMENTALLY different kind of issue.

I too have misgivings about the federal government being competent to
administer such a program effectively, but pretending this problem can be
solved without some form of (fairly massive) collective policy doesn't
contribute any value to the discussion.

~~~
ChristianMarks
The parent post was modded down (it was zero when I read it) due to a
disgraceful lack of mathematical ability in the hacker community. I see no
other explanation. Insurance has to do with the law of large numbers. Without
it, the most elementary business transactions become inconceivable. For
competent programmers not to understand the trivial mathematics of risk pools
is a cringe-inducing embarrassment. Of course insurance is not like housing.
Suggesting that the government act like the insurer of last resort--which is
one of its functions--and manage risk to enable markets to function is
anything like asking the government to provide universal free housing is
ignorant. Some kind of minimal assistance in the form of food, clothing and
shelter to the most deprived persons (or the unemployed) is a kind of
insurance against misfortunes that could affect anyone, but again this has to
do with the law of large numbers. Beyond that minimal level of insurance the
government might provide, universal free housing and food has absolutely
nothing to do with insurance.

What is preposterous is the implicit idea that because insurance encourages
risk-taking, the benefits of insurance must be ignored. That's the
conservative fallacy of personal responsibility: that the possibility of the
slightest cost (in the form of the riskier behavior enabled by insurance)
outweighs any conceivable benefit, and that no cost-benefit analysis is
possible. The cost of not understanding risk pools includes reduced economic
growth, fewer startups and inflated insurance premiums. The lack of
mathematical sophistication among hackers on this point should be humiliating.

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patrickgzill
First year of income tax code - max. rate is 7% . Tax code is >400 pages.

Now - max rate is ~40%. Tax code is 13,000+ dense pages.

Not to mention the red tape at the state level.

Reducing the complexity of business formation would by itself, encourage
entrepreneurship.

~~~
bryanh
Absolutely, these "initiatives" simply give lip service to the idea of
fostering true entrepreneurship. Too bad they are passed off as legitimate
actions in most media outlets.

~~~
moultano
He did mention simplifying the tax code in the state of the union address.

~~~
jerf
Talk is cheap.

I don't mean that as a criticism of Obama specifically. There is a long
history of people promising tax simplification. Very little has ever happened,
quickly erased by further complexification.

(Broadly speaking, they're doing it wrong. The solution to a too-complicated
tax code is to fix the incentives Congress has to make a complicated tax code,
then let the problem address itself incrementally over several years. Simply
burning straight for simplication without addressing the underlying problems
is doomed to failure. Of course, trying to address the underlying problems is
also mostly doomed to failure, so _shrug_.)

~~~
Natsu
> Broadly speaking, they're doing it wrong. The solution to a too-complicated
> tax code is to fix the incentives Congress has to make a complicated tax
> code

Controlling people's purse strings is a main source of congressional power. I
don't see them giving much of that up any time soon...

~~~
jerf
It would take a very-well-thought out Constitutional amendment through a
State-powered Constitutional Convention (since Congress isn't going to trim
its own wings) at a minimum, I fear. Any one of "very-well-thought out",
"Constitutional amendment", and "Constitutional Convention" seems pretty
unlikely anytime soon; the combination of all even more so. Still, these are
crazy times politically, who knows?

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rmason
Am I the only one who thinks Steve Case is about the worst person they could
have gotten to be a cheerleader for entrepreneurism?

~~~
adammichaelc
Not sure what connection you're making. Steve Case created a billion-dollar
company from scratch... What have you done lately?

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raleec
more substantial info (thus far) <http://www.startupamericapartnership.org/>

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ReadyNSet
Where can I line up to collect the cash :) seriously the proposals from
fairtax.org will go a long way towards encouraging entrepreneurship along with
single payer health care but both are politically too risky for any govt.

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gcb
Government plan is still publishing intentions and not actionable items?

I'd expect that to be limited to campaign only

