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Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

boss.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

#11

Post by thaumaturgy »

dmix wrote: post #4

We'll the USA already has the highest corporate tax rate in the world. Maybe if they were paying less in taxes, startups would have more money for health insurance for their employees? All entrepreneurs know that they can get better employee retention with health care policy. If companies could afford it, then would there not be a higher incentive to provide it? That being said, I believe national health insurance is…

Every business owner I've discussed this with -- and at this point I do have a statistically significant sample to work from -- isn't bothered by taxes nearly as much as they're bothered by not enough paying customers.

High taxes really only seems to be a problem for a certain class of businesses which are at the high end of the SME spectrum, and are already making good profit, and want to make more, but can't yet afford a creative accountant to exploit the kind of loopholes that our country's biggest businesses take advantage of.

Re: Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

#12

Post by Nogwater »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #5

OK, so, I am ardently socially liberal, and I've had a man-crush on Jon Stewart that hasn't waned ever since his appearance on Crossfire. But. I don't think that decreasing risk will result in more entrepreneurship. I would support a wider social safety net for entrepreneurs -- er, business owners -- on principle alone, because I think what we should be saying is that these people are vitally important to our economy…

I agree that starting a business isn't for everyone. I'm doubtful that I would enjoy it, but I would like to be an early employee at a company. If that company can't afford health coverage, then I can't take that risk for my family.

It just baffles me that health coverage is so tied to where you work. What if you could only send your kids to the schools that your employer selected, or eat at the restaurants the your company had a deal with? It's just weird. I don't know if government provided insurance is the solution, but employer provided just doesn't make sense as the only solution.

Re: Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

#13

Post by jspaur »

dmix wrote: post #4

We'll the USA already has the highest corporate tax rate in the world. Maybe if they were paying less in taxes, startups would have more money for health insurance for their employees? All entrepreneurs know that they can get better employee retention with health care policy. If companies could afford it, then would there not be a higher incentive to provide it? That being said, I believe national health insurance is…

We have a high corporate tax rate if you have terrible accountants. Almost EVERYTHING you do as a business drops your effective tax rate.

Then there is the whole S corp, I'm going to tax 3million in revenue at the 80k rate thing.... it isn't nearly as bad as that top number - take a look at effective rates and it isn't nearly as high as one would think

Re: Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

#14

Post by Anechoic »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #5

OK, so, I am ardently socially liberal, and I've had a man-crush on Jon Stewart that hasn't waned ever since his appearance on Crossfire. But. I don't think that decreasing risk will result in more entrepreneurship. I would support a wider social safety net for entrepreneurs -- er, business owners -- on principle alone, because I think what we should be saying is that these people are vitally important to our economy…

But the thing is, most people don't want to run their own business no matter how safe you make it.

In the aggregate you may be right. Just from my own personally experience, I can think of at least a dozen folks (extremely well-regarded in their field) who have all expressed to me a desire to strike out on their own, but it's the company-provided healthcare that keeps them from doing that.

And (for the most part) these are folks in Massachusetts.

Re: Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

#15

Post by [deleted] »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #5

OK, so, I am ardently socially liberal, and I've had a man-crush on Jon Stewart that hasn't waned ever since his appearance on Crossfire. But. I don't think that decreasing risk will result in more entrepreneurship. I would support a wider social safety net for entrepreneurs -- er, business owners -- on principle alone, because I think what we should be saying is that these people are vitally important to our economy…

[deleted]

Re: Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

#16

Post by cmcbride »

or we could remove the tax break for employers that provide health insurance. If health insurance was tied to the individual it would stay with them in between jobs. You could also find plans with lower premiums and higher deductibles/less coverage if there was a market for insurance.

Re: Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

#17

Post by digisth »

This is the essence of the Peltzman Effect (http://www.angrybearblog.com/2012/01/peltzman-effect-why-eco... and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation)

"Risk compensation (also Peltzman effect, risk homeostasis) is an observed effect in ethology whereby people tend to adjust their behavior in response to perceived level of risk, behaving less cautiously where they feel more protected and more cautiously where they feel a higher level of risk. The theory emerged out of road safety research after it was observed that many interventions failed to achieve the expected level of benefits but has since found application in many other fields."

Re: Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

#18

Post by _delirium »

jcromartie wrote: post #9

Countries with much broader safety nets for entrepreneurs are not producing the risky innovative companies that America is. But, as far as I can tell, health insurance really is the biggest factor keeping people from starting new companies. For myself and my peers, with new families and houses and student debt, etc., it's the one thing that scares us more than anything else. The prospect of a business going under is…

I think I agree with where you're going, but it doesn't seem like a huge paradox to me. As I understand it, it may be that all else being equal, a better social safety net (such as healthcare available outside of a corporate group plan) encourages more entrepreneurship, but all else isn't really equal: we don't have a version of the USA that is mostly the same except that it has a national healthcare system. Instead, we have countries that differ on dozens of axes, ranging from governmental policy to culture to physical land to history to language, and are trying to assign blame/credit to each of those axes. You could even do that within the USA: why are there no big tech companies out of Alabama or Ohio, despite their governmental systems being generally American-style?

I do agree that the American healthcare situation is a major problem, speaking as an American expat in Denmark who hopes to move back to the US someday, and sees healthcare as one of the major barriers. I'm cautiously hopeful that PPACA will solve the worst of the problems, enabling me to buy individual health insurance. But I think it's hard to prove that either way based on cross-country comparisons.

Re: Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

#19

Post by kristiandupont »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #5

OK, so, I am ardently socially liberal, and I've had a man-crush on Jon Stewart that hasn't waned ever since his appearance on Crossfire. But. I don't think that decreasing risk will result in more entrepreneurship. I would support a wider social safety net for entrepreneurs -- er, business owners -- on principle alone, because I think what we should be saying is that these people are vitally important to our economy…

I can easily imagine a class of people who would become entrepreneurs if they didn't feel like the risk was too big. Especially people families -- not only might you be risking something on their behalf, you might also have a spouse that's difficult to convince (http://www.inc.com/magazine/201209/meg-cadoux-hirshberg/livi...).
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