[IamNotAtWork]

I think the rising cost of health care, child care, etc just mean that your business better provide a real service or fill a niche that is badly needed. If the barrier to entry is super low then everyone with a half baked idea would start a business, watch it fail and default on their debt. It's probably not a bad thing to be at least somewhat hard to start a business. That said, most serial entrepreneurs bring their own money and manage to build something as they have the capital. Then after a few years, sell their mediocre company for 20x what they put in. Rinse and repeat. Life is pretty good when you are already rich.

[lkrubner]

Whether starting a business is good or bad is irrelevant, the question is why it is happening less now than in 1980. Also, where does this trend end? The rate of business formation has been declining for almost 40 years, and the rate of decline has accelerated since 2000. So we should ask, how far does this trend go? How large do the monopolies grow? Will there ever be an era when the USA returns to creating new businesses at a rate that would have been normal for most of the 20th century?