What’s with all the micro-surgical spot-targeting and bet-placing for tax relief and bailouts and government “investment”?
Tax relief or some form of government “investment” for young entrepreneurs is the announcement du jure, today, by the Prime Minister and Minister in charge. Great. Everyone could use tax relief. Who’s going to argue? It’s practically politically-incorrect to be “against” that.
But why just “young entrepreneurs”? The answer, in a word, is that it’s because it sounds good. It’s actually specious tripe.
In fact, “young” entrepreneurs have it easier today than ever, and easier than other aged entrepreneurs. They can get their business ideas and messages out and spread around faster than ever before imaginable, resources are available to them like never before, and probably most importantly, they have their whole lives ahead of them—all the time in the world, relatively speaking — to “get it happening” and to possibly—probably—fail and try again. And again.
It’s actually us “over the hill”, “old” entrepreneurs who need the help, if anyone does. We’re just as adept at making a go of it, in fact probably more so because we’ve been around the block a few times and arguably have a more realistic outlook and a wealth of experience and knowledge and a Rolodex of contacts. (Young people will have to Google “Rolodex”). What we over the hillers lack is TIME. Being over the hill and an entrepreneur inherently means you’re in a hurry to git ‘er done. We need to get that idea launched and really flying, like, right now. We don’t have the luxury of time. We can’t stumble and fall and start again over and over like the “young” entrepreneurs.
So why the tax relief for “young entrepreneurs” — the very ones who need it least?
Once again they’re making poor decisions; placing lousy bets on the economy in their effort to social or economically engineer success, oh and their political popularity too. It’s specious and wrong-headed if we are to be intellectually honest about it. All entrepreneurs need relief from taxes and the excessive government regulations and licensing and stumbling blocks that sometimes make starting a business all but ridiculous. Not just for “young” ones. Entrepreneurship and that “pioneering spirit” is literally what built our country. And the best way to crush it is to stay in our way, governments.
This is just more proof that dinosaur government politicos and bureaucrats are often precisely the worst people to make government “investment” decisions because very often, they have little experience out there in the practical, real-life world. Many of them—Michael Ignatieff, Stephen Harper, Jack Layton, to name a few fairly well-known ones—have exactly no experience in the private sector. No experience risking it all and starting up a private business and running and building it, and paying taxes on it and hiring and firing and struggling in every way, shape, and form. This pedantic announcement today smacks of just that ignorance.
Soon I’m going to head for the Colorado hills and join Galt.
(And yes, for those of you keeping score at home, the word of the day is “specious”. Again that’s “specious”. Thank you.)
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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