Slashdot Mirror
The US Startup Is Disappearing (qz.com)
Dan Kopf, writing for Quartz: Historically, startups have been the engine of US economy. By creating new jobs and surfacing new ideas, startups play an outsized role in making the economy grow. It's too bad they are a dying breed. While companies that were less than two years old made up about 13% of all companies in 1985, they only accounted for 8% in 2014. From around 1998 to 2010, the share of private sector workers in companies that were less than two years old plummeted from more than 9% to less than 5%. A new report from the Brookings Institution, finds that in nearly every industry, from agriculture to finance, the share of new companies is falling.
There's always a history of new comers becoming incumbent giants and eventually being supplanted in turn. Look at Sears which once revolutionized the way that people shopped and is now a tiny bit player this is closing down its stores. Perhaps there's some cycle in the rate of new startups within that greater cycle of corporate birth and death, but I'm willing to bet that the bigger culprit is an increasing amount of hoops that a new startup must jump through. Government is always eager to put new hoops in place, while seldom bothering to remove old ones that may not be relevant. The existing companies love this as even though it costs them additional money in order to comply with those rules, it's much harder on the little guys. Look at the recent GDPR laws in Europe as an example and ask yourself how much of a pain that would be to deal with if you're a small one or two person company. Or consider companies like Uber, Lyft, etc. that are successful precisely because they're doing their best to skirt the draconian regulations surrounding Taxi services in most cities.
Is it? Last time I checked unemployment was down, but wages are still stagnant.
The "economy" is booming if you have millions of dollars, if you are middle class or under, "the economy" being in a "boom" or a "bust" doesn't really matter since you are still treading water with far less buying power than your parent's generation.
https://hbr.org/2017/10/why-wages-arent-growing-in-america
You'll also note a line in that article that links the two ideas you flippantly disregarded: one factor that encourages large wage growth is young companies. High numbers of start-ups and younger companies tend to drive wages up. Without this competition, larger / older companies don't pay as well.
The "economy" isn't really booming-- the people at the top have simply found new ways to siphon more money off the lower and middle classes. Welcome to the end game of capitalism, we've managed to stay here a lot longer this time without the lower classed players breaking out the guillotine. I'm not really keen on seeing the end of this round, but I feel like we aren't as far away as I thought we were.