Conservatives: reckless gamblers giving you life planning advice
by David Atkins
One of the most remarkably asinine things you’ll hear conservatives say during this economic crisis is that the answer to youth unemployment and student debt is for more young people to start their own small businesses. You can see example after example of this “very serious” advice, including this clueless article from Time’s business section:
The U.S. government is being strangled by partisan politics. Youth employment is at a 60-year low. Student-loan debt is approaching $1 trillion (and default rates are rising quickly).
Yet young Americans are far more optimistic about the country’s future than the pundits would have you believe — and they are demonstrating that optimism through entrepreneurship. According to a 2011 survey, 23% of young people started a business as a result of being unemployed. Fifteen percent started a business in college. And let’s not forget the veterans, who are twice as likely as other Americans to own businesses.
So why are so few pundits and politicians building on that entrepreneurial energy as a solution to joblessness and economic malaise? The fact is, it’s high time we funneled our collective energy toward rebuilding an entrepreneurial America.
Or there’s the very prim Tory who advocated the same thing to Paul Krugman:
What we need to be doing is really making it easier to young people to start their own businesses, making it far far easier for new entrepreneurs. I mean, you say we have to give them jobs, create jobs, we shouldn’t be about creating jobs, we should be about enabling the economy to create jobs by low tax regimes, opportunities for people to start businesses and so on, not by creating jobs.
Nice fantasy. Here’s reality:
While some two-thirds of small firms make it past the two-year mark, just 44 percent can hack it for four years, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And by “hack it,” we’re just talking survival rates here: Plenty of those “survivors” are choking down ramen noodles to keep the lights on.
If those odds don’t scare you off, consider too that some industries may be inherently tougher to crack than others. Your friends might think that you rival Mario Batali in the kitchen, or that you can go sole for sole with the likes of Kenneth Cole. But the sober truth is that it takes more than talent to run a restaurant, a clothing boutique and a host of other ventures. Sadly, some of the most enticing industries are also the riskiest.
What all these “conservatives” are advocating, then, is that young people spend their twenties going into even more debt to build a small business, over 55% of which will fail within four years, leaving them destitute, in double the debt they started with, and unemployable by age thirty.
So-called conservatives are advocating this. As public policy, it’s sheer madness. I say this as one of the few who made it: I started by own small business at 23 and am still going today. But first, it’s a volatile and gut-wrenching experience I wouldn’t recommend for most people, to say nothing of everyone, and second, I have some advantages: I run it out of home so there’s no major overhead cost, I had no student debt due to scholarships, and I had six years of apprenticeship in the industry from working 30 hours a week in my family business while going to college. So I have every advantage you could ask for in this regard, and it’s still touch-and-go such that I wouldn’t advocate my career choice to most people.
Listening to comfortable conservatives advocate this sort of nonsense for average college graduates is nothing short of insane. It’s insulting. They might as well tell young people to go to Vegas and dump all their money on one play at a roulette table in Las Vegas. At least the roulette table gives you near 50% odds, which is better than the odds of your small business staying afloat for more than four years.
But it makes sense. It’s conservatives, after all, who thought it was a great idea to bet the entire country’s economic future on the whims of the Wall Street casinos. Why wouldn’t they give the same advice to our nation’s youth?
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