Death of American Entrepreneur?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"David Goldman reports that \u201cFrom 1977 t0 2005, business startups accounted for almost all economic growth and all net job creation. Established firms\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/03\/death-of-american-entrepreneur\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Death of American Entrepreneur?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"David Goldman reports that \u201cFrom 1977 t0 2005, business startups accounted for almost all economic growth and all net job creation. Established firms\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/03\/death-of-american-entrepreneur\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Leithart\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Leithart\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-03-07T00:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter Leithart\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@PLeithart\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Peter Leithart\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/03\/death-of-american-entrepreneur\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/03\/death-of-american-entrepreneur\/\",\"name\":\"Death of American Entrepreneur?\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-03-07T00:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-03-07T00:00:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#\/schema\/person\/6bb7113e4dd45fe26045622aa56f891d\"},\"description\":\"David Goldman reports that \u201cFrom 1977 t0 2005, business startups accounted for almost all economic growth and all net job creation. Established firms\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/03\/death-of-american-entrepreneur\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/03\/death-of-american-entrepreneur\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/03\/death-of-american-entrepreneur\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Death of American Entrepreneur?\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/\",\"name\":\"Leithart\",\"description\":\"My blog is a public notebook, featuring essays, notes, and explorations on Scripture, theology, literature, politics, culture.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#\/schema\/person\/6bb7113e4dd45fe26045622aa56f891d\",\"name\":\"Peter Leithart\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f1033df9cd7263d2e0408cf9ee92ee4d?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f1033df9cd7263d2e0408cf9ee92ee4d?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Peter Leithart\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Leithart\/\",\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PLeithart\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/author\/pleithart\/\"}]}<\/script>\n","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Death of American Entrepreneur?","description":"David Goldman reports that \u201cFrom 1977 t0 2005, business startups accounted for almost all economic growth and all net job creation. Established firms","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/03\/death-of-american-entrepreneur\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Death of American Entrepreneur?","og_description":"David Goldman reports that \u201cFrom 1977 t0 2005, business startups accounted for almost all economic growth and all net job creation. Established firms","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/03\/death-of-american-entrepreneur\/","og_site_name":"Leithart","article_author":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Leithart\/","article_published_time":"2016-03-07T00:00:00+00:00","author":"Peter Leithart","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@PLeithart","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Peter Leithart","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/03\/death-of-american-entrepreneur\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/03\/death-of-american-entrepreneur\/","name":"Death of American Entrepreneur?","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#website"},"datePublished":"2016-03-07T00:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2016-03-07T00:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#\/schema\/person\/6bb7113e4dd45fe26045622aa56f891d"},"description":"David Goldman reports that \u201cFrom 1977 t0 2005, business startups accounted for almost all economic growth and all net job creation. Established firms","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/03\/death-of-american-entrepreneur\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/03\/death-of-american-entrepreneur\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/03\/death-of-american-entrepreneur\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Death of American Entrepreneur?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/","name":"Leithart","description":"My blog is a public notebook, featuring essays, notes, and explorations on Scripture, theology, literature, politics, culture.","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#\/schema\/person\/6bb7113e4dd45fe26045622aa56f891d","name":"Peter Leithart","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f1033df9cd7263d2e0408cf9ee92ee4d?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f1033df9cd7263d2e0408cf9ee92ee4d?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","caption":"Peter Leithart"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Leithart\/","https:\/\/twitter.com\/PLeithart"],"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/author\/pleithart\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3021"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17938\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

{"id":17938,"date":"2016-03-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-07T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=2760"},"modified":"2016-03-07T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-03-07T00:00:00","slug":"death-of-american-entrepreneur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/03\/death-of-american-entrepreneur\/","title":{"rendered":"Death of American Entrepreneur?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

David Goldman reports<\/a> that \u201cFrom 1977 t0 2005, business startups accounted for almost all <\/em>economic growth and all <\/em>net job creation. Established firms shrank and new firms grew. After the Great Recession of 2008, the opposite occurred: established firms accounted for all <\/em>the recovery in employment, and startups contributed nothing <\/em>to net employment growth. Under the Obama administration, America changed from the world\u2019s most innovative economy to the most static and cartelized.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why? Goldman identifies several factors: \u201cEconomists offer as many reasons for the decline of the American entrepreneur as historians offer for the fall of the Roman Empire. Regulatory strangulation is probably the most important: Obamacare, environmental regulations, Dodd-Frank disclosures and other encroachment on entrepreneurs\u2019 time, energy and capital are killers. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Obamacare alone will stifle the creation of 2.3 million new jobs by 2021. What used to be a disruptive, innovative technology sector has turned into a small number of monopolies run by patent trolls rather than engineers. That kills investment in startups. A decline in federal support for cutting-edge research and development has also reduced the backlog of prospective inventions.\u201d <\/span>There have been success stories, especially \u201cthe shale oil boom, now a fading memory in a world of $30\/barrel oil.\u201d<\/p>\n

None of the candidates are talking about what Goldman considers the biggest economic problem facing American. He thinks it\u2019s ignored because few people have seen benefits from innovation: \u201cAmericans under the age of 40 haven\u2019t seen much benefit from entrepreneurs. The last three waves of entrepreneurs\u2013the dot.com bubblers of the 1990s, the mortgage subprimers of the 2000s, and the shale oil drillers of the past five years\u2013all were carried out in body bags. The one innovation that affected daily life in the past ten years was the smartphone, and that came from an established monopoly, namely Apple.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without innovation and innovators, the US \u201ceconomy will decay, like Britain\u2019s before it.\u201d We all need \u201cthe disruptive, obnoxious, driven visionaries who take the risks that transform economic life.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In a column on the results of Super Tuesday, he returned to this theme, arguing that downward mobility explains Trumpism: \u201cAmericans are shrewd. You can\u2019t spit on them and tell them it\u2019s raining. They know the game is rigged against them. They know it\u2019s rigged the same way that they know a lottery is rigged: There aren\u2019t any winners. They know that they are downwardly mobile because they aren\u2019t upwardly mobile. Americans don\u2019t mind playing against bad odds\u2013they play the lottery all the time\u2013but they think that they are playing against zero odds. Ordinary Americans had an outside chance to get rich until 2008. Now they have no chance at all.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Goldman thinks \u201cAmericans tolerate a wealthy elite if and only if they can get in on the action, too. The cartelized, corrupted, closed wealth-creating mechanism of the past eight years shuts them out.\u201d As a result, \u201cthe Republican base is out for blood.\u201d
<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It looks as if they\u2019ll get it.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"