The capitalist safety net
Aaron Shwartz and James Robertson trade discussion points about the impediments to start-ups in America, namely the social safety net and the time requirements. I’d like to just recount a story from a previous employer.
Some years ago, when Bush was in his ascendancy, I worked for a CEO of a small start-up that was a staunch Republican support. This is important because one day, over lunch, we happened upon the topic of health care, specifically nationalized health care. What shocked me was that he admitted that of late, he had come around to be a big believer in nationalizing the health care system. The reasoning he gave me, which is distinctly capitalistic, was as follows:
- As a tech start-up, hiring the “best and brightest” requires competitive benefits to be offered.
- The “best and brightest” often are slightly older, more established, which means they’re considered higher risk.
- For a small company, the cost of good insurance is very high because of the risk pool.
- Risk of losing insurance discourages the best people from taking a risk at a small company.
- Starting a company means giving up insurance and other “necessaries” in this world.
What this does is place start-ups at a severe disadvantage to more established companies. By nationalizing health care, you take that major issue out of the equation, and people can consider a broader set of opportunities. More freedom is better for everyone.
James discusses the issue around hours, etc., but that’s much further down the consideration process than “I can’t do it because my kids need insurance” decision point.
This entry was posted at 2:38 pm on 10 June 2008 and is filed under Social. You can follow any responses to this entry through the post-specific RSS 2.0 feed.
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