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a few hundred dollars a month? minimalized numbers aren't a logical arguemnt, though I am sure it helps you win some with people who don't actually know what things actually cost.

FYI, here is the best resource on how much it costs https://www.thebalance.com/how...

Unless you're going for virtually "no coverage" (aka "Bronze"), it gets expensive, really quickly. I hope you don't get sick.

And for "There certainly are more resources available to help a budding entrepreneur." I am sure you're ignoring the licenses, fees and all the regulations (some quite stupid) you'll have to follow too.

For all the left's talk about "big business" and targeting them for abusive taxation and regulation policies, those also affect the smallest of mom n pop corporations. And all of that builds up barriers to entry to market. Here is a good article explaining how that hurts small businesses.

https://smallbiztrends.com/201...

Not that facts matter to most people, vain emotionalism is the ruling factor in decision making these days.

The typical statistic for small businesses is that 9 out of 10 fail in the first two years.

The number I've often heard is 6/10 in two years, and it's more like 35%.

Most software that returns results from/sends queries to an outside source is opt-in. You're asked on installation if you want to send anonymous usage statistics to improve later versions of <software_package> You're asked if you want to send a crash report to <software_vendor>.

Even Microsoft is asking you what search providers you want to use when you first run IE. How difficult would it be during the ubuntu installation to ask "Do you want to include results from Amazon in dash searches?" and only install the package if the box is ticket? Like Debian does with popcon?

Why Opt-in Marketing Matters. Point 1.b in the comparison in this short article seems to apply perfectly to what RMS is saying.

If Obama wants to "punish millionaires" or "level the playing field", he shouldn't draw the line in the sand at ~200-250k income. There's a good chunk of people who are raging because they're struggling to reach the upper echelons and Obama is making it even harder

http://smallbiztrends.com/2010/11/how-much-money-do-small-business-owners-make.html [smallbiztrends.com]

"In fact, in four industry sectors - utilities, manufacturing, mining and management of companies - the average Sub Chapter S Corporation is making its owner rich by President Obama's standards, generating more than $250,000 in income in 2007."

Do you understand how tax brackets work? If the cut off is $250k, that doesn't mean at $251k you're now paying the higher rate on all of your income.

Everybody pays the same on the first bracket. You, me, and your boss. If you make $251k, your taxes, under Obama's tax plan will stay exactly the same for the $250k, and you will pay (sit down now) an additional 3% of the additional $1k. So you'll pay an extra $300 on your income of $251,000.00. And let's not forget the difference between "income" and "adjusted income", please. Mitt Romney doesn't forget it for a second.

"In fact, in four industry sectors - utilities, manufacturing, mining and management of companies - the average Sub Chapter S Corporation is making its owner rich by President Obama's standards, generating more than $250,000 in income in 2007."

If it's a sub-chapter S corp then they're not paying personal income tax, they're paying corporate income tax, and taxes going up "on the rich" will not affect them.

If, as your citation says, a subchapter S corp is "generating more than $250,000 in income" that's not the same as "paying it's owner and CEO more than $250,000". In fact, if a corporation is generating $251,000 and its CEO is making "more than $250,000" then there's some shenanigans going on.

When you cite something, read it carefully. And you need to find the name of whoever wrote that quote, and you need to never, ever believe anything he writes again, because he's trying to fool you.

Do you know how big a portion corporations pay? As a share of total revenues, it's about 1/3 of what it was in 1950, about 7%. And that's with record corporate profits. You think they're paying their share? When you look at distribution of wealth in this country, having the bottom half of earners paying 2% of all revenues is actually really high.

Using the uber rich as an excuse to tax the upper middle class / small-biz segment of society is one of two things: Sleazy or naive/stupid.

If Obama wants to "punish millionaires" or "level the playing field", he shouldn't draw the line in the sand at ~200-250k income. There's a good chunk of people who are raging because they're struggling to reach the upper echelons and Obama is making it even harder

http://smallbiztrends.com/2010/11/how-much-money-do-small-business-owners-make.html

"In fact, in four industry sectors - utilities, manufacturing, mining and management of companies - the average Sub Chapter S Corporation is making its owner rich by President Obama's standards, generating more than $250,000 in income in 2007."

The laws were put into place to discourage fraud. If you want to get people to invest in your project, you need to go through a formal prospectus.

In most start-ups, the risk of business failure is thousands of times greater than the risk of fraud!

The most gloomy projections for new business survival are around 10%, and then it's a matter of semantics (in other words, business not making as much money as projected constitutes "failure"). Analysis of the 10-year survival rate of businesses shows about 30%.

On the other hand, I personally receive 1 or more NEW fraudulent investment "opportunities" every day. Whoopee!

The point is that the regulations are there to keep the legitimate investments from looking like the fraudulent ones. You can still lose everything (and more) in the stock market, but you can be more confident that you are dealing with real businesses than when you jump on unvetted "Internet opportunities".

I hear variations on this claim quite frequently.
Here are several links that dispute your recollection.
http://smallbiztrends.com/2008/04/startup-failure-rates.html
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/news/coladvice/ask/sa990930.htm
http://blog.globalbx.com/2008/10/06/small-business-statistics-and-failure-rates/
A collection of results that span from your estimation to the inverse, http://www.moyak.com/papers/small-business-statistics.html
There also seems to be many discussions on the myth of high failure rates. for example, http://www.bnet.com/blog/business-myths/why-the-small-business-failure-rate-is-90-percent-smoke-and-mirrors/117

This certainly isn't rigorous, but my 3 minute Internet estimation is that you are broadly incorrect. Apparently, the notion of failure is complicated. Failures appear to be inversely proportional to seed capital. It varies substantially with race and industry. And the definition of failure may include businesses that close for reasons other than financial inviability.

The data is old, but the rate was roughly equal then:

Companies founded in 1992 still active in 1997: 45%
Students entering four-year degree programs in 1997 with a degree within 6 years: 54%

http://smallbiztrends.com/2008/04/startup-failure-rates.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10053859/ns/us_news-education/t/us-college-drop-out-rate-sparks-concern/

I'm talking about owning and operating your own business.

Very well, 3 billion presidents, or owners or whatever you wish to title yourself. Either way, even with all the productivity and efficiency improvements of the past millenia, a single person alone doesn't get very far. My own company consists of an office manager, a salesperson, me and an assistant coder. If I had to stop everything and make angry calls every time a client forgot to pay their bill or dress up in a suit and drive around town for daily product demos, nothing would get done. I provide my employees with value commensurate with the value they provide to me. 'Round these parts we call this Capitalism.

I don't laugh at my employees for failing to start their own business, having done it myself I'm solidly convinced it's not something that everyone is capable of doing, nor is it some kind of failure on their part for not doing so. Numbers back me up on this: 55% of small businesses close in 5 years. I doubt that those who failed didn't work "efficient" enough, no matter how efficiently one might produce rat oilers, if there's no market for your product you're going to fail.

The problem in Brave New World is that the work-place was evolved from employees to CEOs

In Brave New World, people were created "CEO"s: the Alphas. And people were created to be employees: the Deltas and Epsilons. Thus my admonition: a Delta or Epsilon are incapable of advancing beyond what they were created to be. Within the book, Alphas and Betas are taught to be grateful that the Deltas and Epsilons are there to do all the hard work, just as the Deltas and Epsilons are grateful that Alphas and Betas are there to make the hard decisions.

And that's how my companies have grown. With me becoming way more efficient.

Great, glad you've achieved that. All I ask is that you recognize that you're atypical. You were able to find something that you can sell to others, something that very few people ever achieve beyond the old standby of selling their time and labor. Not only that, you've apparently been blessed with sufficient talent to produce, market and sell it yourself without assistance.