January 23, 2012
Folks in Washington policy circles are go really wild for silly fads: hula hoops, streaking, lava lamps, etc. Okay, I don’t know if the policy wonks really got into any of these, but they do fall for silly intellectual fads.
The Washington Post showed this sort of infatuation by printing a column from Steve Case telling us that new businesses were responsible for all the new jobs created in the last three decades. Case concludes from this that we should have policies that foster the growth of new businesses.
This is classic silly logic. New businesses both gain and lose jobs, just as do existing businesses. There is no obvious reason to prefer jobs in new businesses than existing businesses. If we adjust the balance so that we favor new businesses to the detriment of existing businesses, there is no reason to assume that the additional job growth in new businesses will exceed the additional job loss in existing businesses. The fact the new job growth happened to all be in new businesses is irrelevant.
To see this, imagine that all the job growth in the United States over the last three decades had occurred in the South, with the rest of the country just holding its own. It does not follow that if we had tax incentives for businesses to locate in the South, which were paid for with tax increases on the rest of the country, that we would see more overall job growth.
This is the essence of the argument put forward by Case. It makes no sense on its face. Policies toward new business should not be affected by the fact that they are net job creators just as it doesn’t make sense to favor a specific region because it is a net job creator.
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