Oh Look, Turns Out A Strong Welfare State Produces More Entrepreneurs

[applegrove]

Oh Look, Turns Out A Strong Welfare State Produces More Entrepreneurs

By Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars

http://crooksandliars.com/2015/03/oh-look-turns-out-strong-welfare-state

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Entrepreneurs are actually more likely than other Americans to receive public benefits, after accounting for income, as Harvard Business School’s Gareth Olds has documented.

And in many cases, expanding benefit programs helps spur new business creation.Take food stamps. Conservatives have long argued that they breed dependence on government. In a 2014 paper, Olds examined the link between entrepreneurship and food stamps, and found that the expansion of the program in some states in the early 2000s increased the chance that newly eligible households would own an incorporated business by 16 percent. (Incorporated firms are a better proxy for job-creating startups than unincorporated ones.)

Interestingly, most of these new entrepreneurs didn’t actually enroll in the food stamp program. It seems that expanding the availability of food stamps increased business formation by making it less risky for entrepreneurs to strike out on their own. Simply knowing that they could fall back on food stamps if their venture failed was enough to make them more likely to take risks.

And of course we've seen that entrepreneurship is picking up since the advent of Obamacare. It's not rocket science: Give people a guarantee that they'll eat and get to take their kids to the doctor no matter what, and chances will be taken.



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[Scootaloo]

1. because people who have more financial security are better-able to flex their minds

[ND-Dem]

2. +100

[applegrove]

3. People who have never lived amid crime have no idea the

toll it takes. You just want to lock your door and decompress. Your dreams stop.

[Marr]

4. 1%ers accept this idea when it's about themselves.

How many times did we hear them offer some variety of 'the banks must be bailed out with tax money, so investors have confidence'? They can understand why a safety net makes sense when we're talking about trillions of dollars for their yacht-buying friends, but they don't get it when it comes to everyone else.

[applegrove]

5. So true. +100