-
More Businesses Now Eligible For SBA Loan Program
Tweet Share on Facebook May 4, 2009 Comment (3)The standards to qualify for Small Business Administration-guaranteed 7(a) loans have been expanded. The SBA is making a temporary change to allow business with net worth of $8.5 million or less to qualify if their average net income after taxes is $3 million or less. The change goes into effect next week and will last until September 30, 2010.
Read more here.
-
E-Cigarette Ban On Its Way?
Tweet Share on Facebook May 4, 2009 Comment (90)An update on my post from a couple weeks ago: Jacob Sullum of Reason reports that the FDA will announce tomorrow a ban on "electronic cigarettes," nicotine delivery devices that resemble cigarettes. One importer of e-cigarettes has filed suit against the FDA, claiming the agency is blocking its products.
I'll post more about this tomorrow when the FDA releases an official statement.
-
Fears Of Immigration's Impact On The Environment Are Unfounded
Tweet Share on Facebook May 1, 2009 Comment (6)The evidence is pretty strong that if we want more job and business creation in this country to help pull us out of this recession, more immigration is a great way to get there. But paradoxically, the recession is creating political pressure to block immigration reform, as my colleague Bonnie Erbe rightly points out. Quite different from me, Erbe sees this as a positive development.
I come to my opposition to massive legal and illegal immigration from an environmental perspective. We're never going to cut down on smog, overdevelopment, traffic jams, yes, even traffic jams (and oh, don't forget, global warming) without first getting population growth under control.
The problem is that the evidence seems to point to the exact opposite conclusion: if you want less environmental degradation worldwide, demand more immigration.
How can that be? One simple reason: poor countries pollute more than rich countries. Economic growth is not the enemy of the environment, as many people assume.
-
Who's Crazy Enough To Have Started A Business In 2008?
Tweet Share on Facebook April 30, 2009 Comment (1)As it turns out, tons of people. The Kauffman Foundation just released the latest results in its annual Index Of Entrepreneurial Activity. According to the Index, in 2008 an average of 0.32 percent of American adults started businesses each month. That's higher than the 0.28 percent, 0.29 percent, and 0.27 percent from 1997 to 1999--when the economy was booming. It's true that a lot of people hadn't felt the recession yet for much of 2008. But in 2002--a year of recession following 9/11--the number of people starting a business each month went up 0.29 percent, from 0.26 percent in 2001. It continued to increase to 0.30 percent in 2003.
The bad news, however, concerns the type of businesses being created.
Entrepreneurship rates increased only for low-income types of businesses and not for high-income types, which may be early signs of how the recession is impacting firm formation," said study author Robert Fairlie, professor of economics and the director of the Master's program in Applied Economics and Finance at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
-
Craiglist Killer Reaction Might Lead To Government Crackdown
Tweet Share on Facebook April 30, 2009 Comment (1)When the news of the so-called "Craigslist Killer" broke, I speculated that we'd see renewed efforts by state officials to regulate online classifieds. Here's the first significant example: the Illinois attorney general sent a letter to Craigslist earlier this week demanding that the site shut down all erotic services ads (HT: Radley Balko).
So is this a serious attempt to confront this criminal issue, or just a quick and easy to scapegoat the problem?
Well, over at Techdirt, they make a convincing argument about why it's odd to single out Craigslist for these crimes, or even the Internet at all.
-
Amidst Swine Flu Mayhem, Remember Benefits Of Immigration
Tweet Share on Facebook April 30, 2009 Comment (1)The swine flu outbreak has given immigration opponents a new threat to harp upon as a reason to close the borders.
It's quite debatable we should even count the swine flu as a cost of an open immigration policy (which, to be clear, the US does not have). But I'll let other people carry on that debate. Instead, I'd like to point to more empirical evidence about the benefits more immigration brings to the American entrepreneurial sector. (See previous evidence here.)
The National Bureau of Economic Research has a new working paper by Jennifer Hunt, an economist at McGill University.
Using the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates, I show that immigrants who originally entered the United States on temporary work visas or on student/trainee visas... are more likely than natives to start a successful company, suggesting that immigrants have a niche in startups based on technical knowledge from master's and doctoral degrees.
We often hear about immigrants "taking jobs" form Americans, but rarely do we hear about the jobs they create.
-
Lithuania's Economy In Major Decline
Tweet Share on Facebook April 29, 2009 Comment (1) -
The Most Influential Films--A Story Of Unsung Heroes
Tweet Share on Facebook April 29, 2009 CommentVia Marginal Revolution, check out this list of the 10 most influential movies of the last ten years. I could quibble with some entries on this list--Coraline, for example, came out just a few months ago, so it seems more than a bit premature to talk about its influence. But overall, this list does seem to get at the origins of some of the imagery, narrative structures, and plot devices that we see over and over in recent films.
While the list has some big blockbusters like The Matrix, and some critical successes like Traffic, it has at least one movie that I recall being generally panned upon release (Polar Express), and even one that was not an outright bomb--2004's Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow. It only grossed $57 million worldwide, with a $70 million budget. But its influence has been undeniable, and has led to major commercial success--for other people. The idea of making a movie with the actors being the only "real" component, and computer-generating the rest, was first seen in Sky Captain, but (arguably) perfected in Sin City and Zack Snyder's 300, the latter of which grossed almost $500 million.
So what does this have to do with entrepreneurship?
-
Swine Flu: What Business Owners Should Know
Tweet Share on Facebook April 28, 2009 Comment (3)Have you seen people wearing masks during your morning commute the past few days? Fears about the swine flu has caused some people to change their daily habits. I talked to Chris Falkenberg, president of Insite Security, about what the possible pandemic means for the business owner. And yes, walking around in a mask is a complete overreaction.
But, Falkenberg argues, overreaction is not the main problem. Even if the swine flu turns out to another overblown panic, if it inspires your business to develop or improve upon a crisis management plan, then you've put your business in a better position. "If you don't have a crisis management plan, it's time to develop one," says Falkenberg.
Fortunately, crisis plans for more conventional disasters--such as hurricanes or floods--can also provide a modicum of protection in the case of a pandemic, Falkenberg says. So that means that many of the strategies I covered in this article from September about disaster protection would also apply here.
-
Filling The Gaps Left By GM's Layoffs
Tweet Share on Facebook April 28, 2009 Comment (81)Here’s one of those stories that’s so good I kick myself for not writing it.
With the auto companies like zombies (except thriving on bailout money instead of braaiinnsss), what's the Steel Belt to do? The politicians behind the bailout of the Big Three say we need to rejuvenate the auto and manufacturing jobs. But, as NPR reports, some entrepreneurs are trying to take Michigan's economy in a new direction.
Without the federal government propping up the auto companies, job losses would be even more massive in Michigan. So the local economy can't survive without the help, right? But, as this report shows, even in the recession, new businesses are popping up to replace the old.
