[ubermonkey]

This is a great idea, honestly, for the economy at large. If more people start more companies, we're probably all better off even if they don't all survive.

If an American political party were TRULY pro-business and pro-entrepreneur, they'd get behind policies like this. They'd also support divorcing health care from employment, because holy COW how many folks would start a new venture IF ONLY they could afford private market insurance?

[devonkim]

Milton Friedman was also a staunch supporter of social safety nets as well as free markets. Anyone that supports free markets and Friedman’s ideas should try to understand why he supported them together ardently. I consider myself both a supporter of actually free markets along with very generous safety nets for the non-winners of such an aggressive business climate. Otherwise, we quickly approach a literal meat grinder of humans and loss of human potential is unfortunate no matter what the economic system.

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/23/business/23scene.html

[Mirioron]

But Negative Income Tax has actually been tried and it didn't produce quite the results that people were hoping for.

[merpnderp]

The fact neither political party is for divorcing healthcare from employment goes to show how corrupted they are by the industry. This is such a slam dunk no brainer for improving not on the health care industry, but the quality of everyone's lives, the only reasonable explanation is corruption.

[rayhendricks]

This is exactly what Bernie Sanders is doing. He is independent but was running as a Democrat in the 2016 election primary. https://berniesanders.com/issues/medicare-for-all/

[Mirioron]

>If more people start more companies, we're probably all better off even if they don't all survive.

Not if the policy causes more inefficiencies itself. If people can, at will, take 6 months off, then all companies need to plan for more redundancy. This is obviously inefficient. So it ends up being a question of whether the benefits outweigh the negatives.

Considering that Sweden isn't exactly topping the charts in economic growth or wealth or GDP per capita or disposable income, I'm not sure whether this system is good in the long run.

[danmaz74]

Efficiency is important, but if all the benefits of the efficiencies accrue to the rich, we're not "all better off".

Plus, GDP per capita doesn't capture some very important aspects of of what makes people live better lives, eg job security, not being afraid of health issues, leisure time, etc.

[refurb]

how many folks would start a new venture IF ONLY they could afford private market insurance?

Probably not many? The US seems to dominate in start up compared to Canada or Europe (free healthcare).