Has it ever occurred to you that some people think complaining about the existence of rich people is not an issue that needs to be “solved” by risking the destruction of an economy that encourages innovation?
Ya, the same way Medicare and SS ruined it. What if, instead, security nets amplified risk taking given American culture? I’m told that New Zealand has a huge extreme sport industry because of its generous medical system.
If we had strong single-payer, we would see a 100 fold increase in startups. And these startups would self funded and creatively bootstrapped. Without the burden and complexity of securing private health insurance, anyone with a couple months rent saved up could try starting a business. We'd probably even see old people do it.
Speaking of which, I'd love to see the temporal evolution of a histogram of ages of founders of all the IPOs in a given year. In a good economy, I bet it would be a fixed density across the spectrum, in an ok economy it might be bimodal and in a poor economy it would be a single peak.
> If we had strong single-payer, we would see a 100 fold increase in startups. And these startups would self funded and creatively bootstrapped. Without the burden and complexity of securing private health insurance, anyone with a couple months rent saved up could try starting a business. We'd probably even see old people do it.
This is a good thought! You've identified a factor holding people back and thought about what might happen if it was removed.
Yet, is it perhaps possible that there could be more complexity to this? Several countried with strong single-payer health care systems spring to mind. France and Germany and the UK are not generally regarded as having 100x the startups as the US. Self-funding and creative bootstrapping has not replaced VCs.
It could be worth considering the possibility that access to health care might not be the thing preventing endless fields of startups. Perhaps there could be some other factors at work?
Single-payer is a policy whose time has come in the US. But it might not be a silver bullet for conjuring startups ex nihilo.
> Without the burden and complexity of securing private health insurance, anyone with a couple months rent saved up could try starting a business.
How expensive is private health insurance in the US? I've seen numbers as low as $6k a year, but from your post it sounds more like $20k a year.
I doubt that it would massively increase the amount of startups. We have all that (and more) in Germany, and you don't see companies popping up everywhere, and the ones that are founded are mostly copy cats.
Actually I think you do. Compare these two systems:
European style welfare: Big government which takes care of people so companies don't have to.
American style welfare: Small government which doesn't take care of people, but lots of regulations on companies forcing them to provide welfare normally provided by government.