Good intentions or not, the $787 billion stimulus package our government recently passed can’t create the momentum I believe is necessary to carry this nation through the current economic crisis into renewed prosperity. President Obama’s strategy to save existing jobs is a noble endeavor, but the funding package does very little create new ones.
This really goes against my grain as a business owner. I’m a futurist, and I tend to support ideas that take us away from where we’ve been and into new worlds of business possibilities.
I also am a huge fan of novelist Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. It’s eerie how recent conversations I’ve had with frustrated business owners and entrepreneurs have reminded me of her book. These business owners have told me that if our President and Congress intends to tax away half of what they earn, then they’ll just quit working.
In Rand’s story, our country’s most prolific entrepreneurs, the great engines of the global economy, grow frustrated by overregulation, excessive taxation and a government whose approach to battling poverty is built on the quasi-socialism belief that big government “knows best.” To everyone’s shock, the entrepreneurs and business tycoons in the book quietly shut down and disappear.
Naturally, the world suffers when everyone feels the loss of such entrepreneurial activity. The consequences are dire. New growth stops. The economy collapses. Anarchy sets in.
Paint any scary picture you want of greedy moguls who chase bigger and bigger profits, but life without entrepreneurial ingenuity is a far more frightening image to me. Most of society is fed by the seeds sewn by business owners.
On Feb. 23, I read a Wall Street Journal editorial at online.wsj.com that mirrors my feelings about the President’s stimulus bill and what it lacks – namely any substantive assistance for small business owners and entrepreneurs.
I wanted to share it with you here and encourage you to tell me your thoughts on the issues.
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