

Significant Drops in Small Businesses in 2009 (US down 24%) - cwan
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2010/01/small_business_takes_hit

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nickpleis
I wonder if this takes into account the new micro tech startups? I doubt it.

What this is really indicative of is just how bad the credit situation was in
early 2009. I know that restaurants and other capital intensive 'start-ups'
really suffered.

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grellas
I don't think so, as I deal with such startups every day and they are going
very strong right now.

Startups can be viewed from what I call an "MBA perspective" or from an
"independent founder" perspective, and these views are fundamentally
different. The Economist sees the world from the MBA perspective and is not at
all focused on what might be called the street level where independent launch
and grow their ventures.

This is now actually a very promising time for early-stage ventures that do
not have immediate capital-intensive needs.

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drawkbox
This is bad. Over 66% of job creation comes from small business, up to 50% GPD
and 33% of exports. Small business never gets the support it needs in America
today. There just isn't enough money to pay for the lobbyists.

Healthcare is also a huge contributing factor to people not starting
businesses today.

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potatolicious
Reduced personal wealth, no easy access to credit, reduced consumer demand...
but that isn't the whole story.

IMHO the health care problem has a huge impact on this. I'm a Canadian expat
in the US right now, and I unfortunately had to pay a visit to an American ER
last night. I'm insured, so my out of pocket costs are manageable, but imagine
a startup founder struggling to get to ramen profitability doing the same.

Oh, unrelated note: the whole "private health care works better" thing is
total hogwash. ER wait times here are as bad as they are in Canada, main
difference is that in one place you're not paying through the nose for it.

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hga
Ummm, was their any change in the provision of health care in the US in 2009?
If not, how is health care relevant to a change specific to 2009?

~~~
potatolicious
I wasn't thinking about the 2009 dip per se, but rather how large the US's
entrepreneurial drop was in comparison to other countries in the same time
frame. I imagine places where health care is a significant unknown, and
potentially catastrophic financially, would experience a larger loss of
interest in economically turbulent times.

~~~
hga
I suppose so, but one point here (that I'm sure many delude themselves above)
is that there is no safety. Working for a startup and e.g. paying for minimal
catastrophic coverage is not necessarily more dangerous than working for the
established companies who have laid off millions (???) of workers in the US
this recession (many many if not "millions"; heck, 600K+ workers dropped out
of the US job market in December 2009 alone).

And ... hmmm, if you're in a country with nationalized health care and
resultant higher price levels, aren't your expenses and therefore ramen
profitability just that much higher? I.e. you pay one way or another ... and
if you're young, you're subsidizing the older (and in the US, the elderly in
Medicare as well).

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potatolicious
Actually, because tax time is coming up, and I'm a citizen of Canada who has
to file taxes in both the US and Canada, I've been doing the math on this, the
"nationalized health care is more expensive" thing is really quite the myth
(that I believed myself).

Firstly, there's the commonly known factoid that the US spends more per capita
for health care than any other industrialized nation - in fact you guys pay
more than 2x what Canada pays for each of its citizens. So health care, on an
aggregate basis anyhow, is actually _much_ more expensive in the USA than
Canada.

Secondly is the burden on the individual - I did the taxes for what I would
have to pay in taxes in Canada (if I had earned the income there), and the
total comes out to about $2K more than my tax burden in the USA. Considering
my insurance (employer-subsidized) is still some $100 a month, the difference
becomes even less pronounced. Not to mention there's no such thing as a co-pay
in Canada (my US insurance plan has mediocre co-pays). Put it all together and
suddenly you wonder why America just can't take the money it's _already
paying_ and just create a public system where everyone gets care.

~~~
hga
As cwan points out, access to a waiting list is not access to health care.

When you ignore easily gamed statistics like life expectancy and look at
things like cancer survival rates, you see that we seem to be getting
something for the extra money we're spending. And we're a rich nation, it
would hardly be odd for us to choose to spend a lot there.

And for now, there are choices. At times I've had minimal health insurance,
e.g. catastrophic illness or injury was covered but not my occasional sinus
infection.

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potatolicious
I don't really see the point in continuing this: you've already made up your
mind about the validity of public vs. private health care. If any claims are
made without numbers, you will demand numbers; when numbers are provided, you
will claim they are gamed, skewed, or otherwise misinterpreted.

The relevant information is there - and from my experiences and wait time in
the ER yesterday I cannot say I'm terribly impressed by the availability of
your medical system. It wasn't a particularly busy night, but wait times were
about equal to what I'd expect in Canada.

I've met many other expats from nationalized-healthcare countries who have
lived in the US (some for well over a decade), and I've yet to meet a single
one that doesn't regard America's health care system as some kind of
barbarism.

~~~
abstractbill
I lived in the UK for 27 years, and then moved to California and have lived
here for 7 years.

I agree. The American health care system is barbaric, and is just about the
only reason my wife and I occasionally think about moving back to Europe.

