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0 pointsnandemo16y ago0 comments

What I got from that link is that "small business percentage" is not a reliable indicator of entrepreneurial spirit.

One interpretation of the data presented here is that self-employment and small-business employment may be a less important indicator of entrepreneurship than we have long thought. Another reading of the data, however, is that the United States has something to learn from the experience of other advanced economies, which appear to have had much better luck promoting and sustaining small-business employment.

The self-employment rates in Figure 1 are particularly high in Greece (35.9 percent), Italy (26.4), Portugal (24.2), and several other countries where agriculture is still an important part of national employment.

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jules16y ago· 3 in thread

Lets compare this to the profitability of the countries (dollars mean billion dollars). I'm not an economist so I don't know whether this makes sense at all.

    Country selfemployed export import   net
    ========================================
    Greece      35.9%     $27     $82   $-55 (ouch)
    Italy       26.4%    $369    $358   $+11
    Portugal    24.2%     $58     $88   $-30
    Spain       17.7%    $216    $293   $-77
    Germany     12.0%  $1,187  $1,022   $+65
    Netherlands 12.4%    $398    $359   $+39
    
    EU           ~13%* $1,952  $1,690  $+262
    US           7.2%    $995  $1,445  $-450

* I eyeballed this from the data in the PDF posted above

So within the EU there doesn't seem to be a positive correlation between net income of a country and self employment (or if there is one it's negative), except maybe that self employment is higher in the EU than in the US and net income of the EU is positive whereas net income of the US is negative (Anyone want to make a table of the full data set? Export and import can be found on wikipedia and self employment in the PDF posted above).

Offtopic: While browsing wikipedia I found this: External debt of Luxembourg is 4,973.68% of GDP (not kidding). Is this something to be very scared about if you live in Luxembourg, or is it not a big problem? Can somebody with a understanding of the matter explain this? :) Edit: Oh I think I get it: it's the amount they borrow, not the net amount of lending/borrowing.

jacoblyles16y ago

Using exports - imports to measure the "profit" of a country is deeply, deeply flawed. The US can consume more than it produces because other countries invest the dollars they earn from trade in American assets. High demand for American assets is not a bad thing.

stretchwithme16y ago

the US's advantage is not that people are self employed. it is that one can start a business and grow it rapidly (or slowly and steadily), eventually hiring a lot of people and/or creating efficiencies for those using the product or service.

in other words, its the ability to be entrepreneur and not have boot anchors placed in you path. having many small shops making products by hand is not what creates wealth

jules16y ago

I agree, and politicians agree more and more too, even the left wing wants to make it easier for new companies, especially technology companies (and in many ways center right wing in Europe is left of left wing in the US). Unfortunately it's still int he "talk" stage and it's unclear if they will enter the "do" stage soon. But the numbers show that the US is currently consuming a lot more wealth than it is creating whereas the EU is producing more. Why is this despite US's focus on economy and EU's focus on welfare states? This may be because of a higher standard of living in the US and not because of lower productivity.

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