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Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

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Re: Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

#91

Post by zecho »

arbuge wrote: post #43
netmau5 wrote: post #28

This addresses a larger issue, but the specifics discussed hit home with me. I started my company several months ago and lost my health insurance. After paying into the system for the last 8 years, I feel like I've just been giving my money away. I had always been under the impression that I could never be denied for insurance if I had an existing policy but obviously that was misguided. I'm overweight, I'm a smoker,…

No... Those folks had no income tax. Income tax came later. The 90% bracket was extremely high when it existed and snared very few people.

Could you elaborate? The 16th Amendment was ratified in 1913 and from what I can tell the top marginal rate was in the 90s until 1964...

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Doc...

Re: Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

#92

Post by kdsudac »

stretchwithme wrote: post #44
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…

Entrepreneurs have a tendency to go from where profits are highly taxed to pay for everybody's safety net to countries where they can keep more of their money. A French engineer once explained to me how good the health care coverage is in France. But where is her high paying job? Not in France.

Which is why California is such a startup magnet...cause of those high state taxes in Nevada, Texas, Oregon!

Re: Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

#93

Post by Alex3917 »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #37
Alex3917 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Countries with much broader safety nets for entrepreneurs are not producing the risky innovative companies that America is." I don't think that has any relevance to the question at hand. If we eliminated wasteful medical spending then we could literally insure every uninsured person at least 10x over. (Medical waste is ~700B per year, whereas it would cost about 50B to insure everyone.)

Can you please cite sources for those numbers?

Medical waste: http://iom.edu/Reports/2012/Best-Care-at-Lower-Cost-The-Path...

30 cents of every dollar spent on medical care is wasted. There were roughly $2.7 dollars of spending on medical care in 2011.

The cost of insuring 100% of Americans would be 34 - 69 billion: http://www.amsa.org/AMSA/Libraries/Committee_Docs/CaseForUHC...

Re: Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

#94

Post by jeffool »

arohner wrote: post #31

The US already has the most lenient bankruptcy law in the world. It already has the highest "social tolerance" for entrepreneurial failure. I'm in great health, and young, so I'm not worried about saving for retirement (yet). But starting a company is still really damned hard. It's years of hard work, too much time at the office, too much time away from friends and family. Too much fear that tomorrow no customers wil…

Speaking of bankruptcy laws, I wonder how the ballooning student debt (which cannot be dismissed through bankruptcy) plays into that.

Anecdotal, but, did (m)any people here on HN graduate and then start a business while still in debt with student loans?

Re: Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

#95

Post by viviantan »

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'm totally with you about loving Jon Stewart and I'm all for removing barriers for those inclined towards entrepreneurship.

But the concept of creating safety nets to encourage more entrepreneurship strikes me as paradoxical. To an extent, the inherent risks that come with starting a new business is a good thing -- it forces would-be-entrepreneurs to assess critically what they would gain or lose before taking the plunge. The inextricable dependency on company health insurance, however, should not have to play a role in that risk assessment.

Maybe I'm just being picky over semantics, but instead of creating a "wide safety net for failure," which to me sounds like something that encourages poor business judgment, I would be in favor of reducing the extrinsic risks of starting a new business (e.g. insurance) so entrepreneurs could focus on the risks relevant to the business itself. But like I said, I might be nitpicking over choice of words, so forgive me.

Knowing there's a risk of failure isn't so bad -- it makes me try really hard at, well, not failing.

Re: Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

#96

Post by Evbn »

Nogwater wrote: post #12
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…

In most of the US your public school is fixed by your address, so people have to uproot and move to change schools.

Re: Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

#97

Post by Evbn »

hotpockets wrote: post #25
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…

Facing a potential health crisis without insurance has got to be one of the biggest disincentives to starting a business. Even if that disincentive is irrelevant to most entrepreneurs, you still have potential entrepreneurs with health issues. If X% of potential entrepreneurs have managed but costly health problems, the disincentive to starting a business must be much higher.

I guess, but what about all the he entrepreneurs from the era before health insurance? I wasn't long ago.

Re: Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

#98

Post by Evbn »

suresk wrote: post #27
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…

Countries with much broader safety nets for entrepreneurs are not producing the risky innovative companies that America is. Could this be because countries with broader safety nets also have more regulation and make it hard to fire people? I've always kind of thought a combination of making it easy to hire people and let them go, along with strong safety nets (ie, good unemployment insurance and not having health car…

Could be that countries that aren't America don't have audiences of 300million people with high per capita income and a common language.

Re: Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

#99

Post by Evbn »

kdsudac wrote: post #92
stretchwithme wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entrepreneurs have a tendency to go from where profits are highly taxed to pay for everybody's safety net to countries where they can keep more of their money. A French engineer once explained to me how good the health care coverage is in France. But where is her high paying job? Not in France.

Which is why California is such a startup magnet...cause of those high state taxes in Nevada, Texas, Oregon!

You may have noticed that entrepreneurs leave California before they cash those lottery tickets. See Arrington, Severin...

Re: Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

#100

Post by Evbn »

arbuge wrote: post #40
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 second this. Just went down with appendicitis - doctors call this a "routine" surgery. Well, the bill came to $50,000+...

Was it worth the money?
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