

Ease of Doing Business Rank - known
http://www.doingbusiness.org/economyrankings/

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russell
If you are wondering why your country is not at the top of the innovation
heap, take a look at these rankings. Of particular importance for software
startups are Starting a Business, Employing Workers, Getting Credit, and
Enforcing Contracts. High numbers imply to me bureaucracy and/or corruption.
There is a thread about getting rich in China. At 151, 111, 59, 18 it's
difficult for the average, but bright, Joe.

I remember reading elsewhere about how long and how much it takes to get a
business license. In California it took me 2 hours and $124. In Germany it was
months and $20k (mostly band deposit requirements). In some African countries
it was years.

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lionhearted
Some of these numbers aren't quite right - USA scores at "best possible" for
employing workers, when hiring foreigners is a dreadful pain in the neck, you
have to deal with withholding/payroll taxes/unemployment insurance, and
there's differences in 50 states' employment codes you need to be aware of and
get in line with. Then you have union codes, labor codes that are sometimes
arbitrary (x person has a legally mandated break every y hours, even if they
don't want it, and the company is fined if the employee isn't forced to take
it - yet a virtually equivalent job might have no such codes/requirements).

America's a nice place to live, and certainly there's a lot of liberty here,
but however they defined their criteria of how easy it is to employ people, it
doesn't accurately reflect that America is not, in fact, the easiest place in
the world to employ people.

