Why Millennials Are Not Entrepreneurs

[selfevident1]

Came across this piece today. It cites governmental regulations as the reason why Millennials are not entrepreneurs. I think it is a generational thing too. The Hero generation is generally raised to be followers rather than risk-taking entrepreneurs. Thoughts?

https://fee.org/articles/why-are-so-few-...IwQk0wPSJ9

[Odin]

That's a rather biased looking source.

[Ragnarök_62]

(06-20-2016, 04:13 PM)Odin Wrote: That's a rather biased looking source.

Try This.




Student debtie smacks Millies!

Video Required!  Wyle Millie.





Uh, all of student debt bombs gotta hurt after a while ya know.






OTOH, when California Eric does stuff, Brer Xer gets...

[selfevident1]

(06-20-2016, 04:13 PM)Odin Wrote: That's a rather biased looking source.

What is biased about it?

[selfevident1]

(06-20-2016, 07:48 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(06-20-2016, 04:13 PM)Odin Wrote: That's a rather biased looking source.

Try This.




Student debtie smacks Millies!

Video Required!  Wyle Millie.





Uh, all of student debt bombs gotta hurt after a while ya know.






OTOH, when California Eric does stuff, Brer Xer gets...

So...I'm not sure the point you wish to make with that graph. I think you mean to say that Millennials may not be pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities because of the skyrocketing price of college tuition. If that is your reasoning, I have two points about that. Please correct me if I misinterpreted your point.

1. You don't really need post high school education to start your own business. In fact, some of the most successful businesses out their were started by individuals who were not able to attend school for one reason or other.

2. A quick internet search of "millennials college enrollment" produces thousands of search results that indicate that more Millennials attend/have attended college than any other generation in history. Refer here as one example.

{See follow up for details}


So, I don't think lack of schooling is the reason why they may not pursue entrepreneurial opportunities.

[selfevident1]

(06-21-2016, 01:52 PM)selfevident1 Wrote:

(06-20-2016, 07:48 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(06-20-2016, 04:13 PM)Odin Wrote: That's a rather biased looking source.

Try This.




Student debtie smacks Millies!

Video Required!  Wyle Millie.





Uh, all of student debt bombs gotta hurt after a while ya know.






OTOH, when California Eric does stuff, Brer Xer gets...

So...I'm not sure the point you wish to make with that graph. I think you mean to say that Millennials may not be pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities because of the skyrocketing price of college tuition. If that is your reasoning, I have two points about that. Please correct me if I misinterpreted your point.

1. You don't really need post high school education to start your own business. In fact, some of the most successful businesses out their were started by individuals who were not able to attend school for one reason or other.

2. A quick internet search of "millennials college enrollment" produces thousands of search results that indicate that more Millennials attend/have attended college than any other generation in history. Refer here as one example.

{See follow up for details}


So, I don't think lack of schooling is the reason why they may not pursue entrepreneurial opportunities.

OK, I thought I could make a screen shot and post it here. That didn't work, so, I will try something else.


"> Fact 4: Millennials have invested in human capital more than previous
generations.
More Millennials have a college degree than any other generation of young adults. In 2013, 47 percent
of 25 to 34 year-olds received a postsecondary degree (associates, bachelor’s, or graduate degree) and
an additional 18 percent had completed some postsecondary education, as Figure 6 shows. Also,
because the rate of young workers with some post-secondary education but no degree has been flat
while the share with a degree has risen, more students are completing the degrees they start after
high school.


from...

https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/.../millennials_report.pdf

There we go. Anyway... Just some food for thought.

[Galen]

(06-21-2016, 03:50 PM)taramarie Wrote: Lack of jobs and a massive debt would cause them to become entrepreneurs out of desperation. That is what is happening here in NZ anyway. But they are creating these businesses with friends for that team support. Again I know because that is what is happening here in NZ with the current business i am connected with and when we graduated a few had teamed up to start a business together.

I have seen some of that for the same reason.  It isn't easy because the regulatory deck is stacked against small business by design.  Unfortunately, I also know too many Millies that just sit on their asses and expect things to be done for them.  I hope your business venture goes well.  I have one of my own and let me tell you it has been one hell of a roller-coaster ride and I am not sure that it ever ends.

[Ragnarök_62]

(06-21-2016, 01:52 PM)selfevident1 Wrote:

[b Wrote:selfevident1][/b]
So...I'm not sure the point you wish to make with that graph. I think you mean to say that Millennials may not be pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities because of the skyrocketing price of college tuition. If that is your reasoning, I have two points about that. Please correct me if I misinterpreted your point.

1. College is turning Millies into debt slaves.
2. That has a whole bunch of consequences.
a. It's delaying any of the usual milestones of young adulthood like marriage, house purchase/ rental, leaving the nest, and as far as business formation, debt gets in the way of getting a business loan.

Quote:1. You don't really need post high school education to start your own business. In fact, some of the most successful businesses out their were started by individuals who were not able to attend school for one reason or other.

That was not implied. Classic'Xer has just a high school education, I think. He correct me if I've messed it up. However, he also didn't make himself a debt serf.

Quote:2. A quick internet search of "millennials college enrollment" produces thousands of search results that indicate that more Millennials attend/have attended college than any other generation in history. Refer here as one example.

I wouldn't dispute that all. It also confirms my idea of college degrees now in general. Since there's an over supply of college degrees, the price goes down accordingly. That's just simple econ 101. The fact of the matter now, is a college degree is a lousy investment, period. It's overpriced and underpaid.

{See follow up for details}


So, I don't think lack of schooling is the reason why they may not pursue entrepreneurial opportunities.

It's sort of the opposite. Debt is one factor that gets in the way. The other factors are Gordian Knot regulations where small businesses have no chance. There's also a slew of tax fuckups like Worker's Comp, payroll taxes, perhaps healthcare.   I know I'd never start a business due to that stuff.

[Odin]

(06-21-2016, 01:23 PM)selfevident1 Wrote:

(06-20-2016, 04:13 PM)Odin Wrote: That's a rather biased looking source.

What is biased about it?

It is a right-wing propaganda site.

[Galen]

(06-22-2016, 03:56 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(06-22-2016, 03:27 AM)Galen Wrote:

(06-21-2016, 03:50 PM)taramarie Wrote: Lack of jobs and a massive debt would cause them to become entrepreneurs out of desperation. That is what is happening here in NZ anyway. But they are creating these businesses with friends for that team support. Again I know because that is what is happening here in NZ with the current business i am connected with and when we graduated a few had teamed up to start a business together.

I have seen some of that for the same reason.  It isn't easy because the regulatory deck is stacked against small business by design.  Unfortunately, I also know too many Millies that just sit on their asses and expect things to be done for them.  I hope your business venture goes well.  I have one of my own and let me tell you it has been one hell of a roller-coaster ride and I am not sure that it ever ends.

I hope so too. I am working and trying to get extra hours while in most of my spare time I am working at a business idea. I can only do my best and never give up. Tiring but nothing is accomplished if one does not work for it. Yes some are entitled. I could not do that. How boring. Too ambitious for that and sitting on arse does not put food on the table. I have myself, my furbabies and my in debt mother to feed.

I am not done until they plant me in the ground.  It is a useful attitude to have.

[pbrower2a]

So the ideal social order for entrepreneurialism is one in which labor is ultra-cheap, public services are minimal, taxes are low, unions are not in existence, regulation is practically nil, and education is devalued. Even the roads are bad, so people must rely upon doing everything locally. One continent is full of such places, so it ought to be a hotbed of economic development. It's Africa.

Let's ignore the right-wing claptrap  about people being too well off for their own good. No generation wants its kids to be poorer than itself, and no generation is willing to give up much for the good of humanity. Nobody wants to be cheap labor, and nobody wants to work seventy-hour weeks in a consumer society if the rewards of the consumer society are available. It may be easier to be an employee than the operator of a small factory. Entrepreneurs create the consumer society while being unable to participate in the hedonistic consumerism that the entrepreneur-created society creates. Maybe a really-nasty 4T destroys so much capital that people must become shoe-string entrepreneurs. So people open cobbler shops, fruit stands, or hole-in-the-wall eateries before the overall economy can start producing automobiles again.

The highly-educated who owe huge amounts of student debt are incapable of creating workplace capital that they own. Maybe someone with a graduate degree might start a professional practice, but a veterinary clinic is no growth business. People heavily in debt must typically become employees -- not entrepreneurs.

Yes, some kids really are coddled, especially if their parents are members of the executive elite or the lucrative professions. They well know the consumer society, and they are unlikely to start dealing in used cars, If they start a business it is likely to have a 'party' atmosphere that fails to turn a profit, and it of course fails.

Let's remember that businesses need customers. Who patronizes small businesses? The middle-income groups. The middle-income groups have been getting squeezed through job losses, degradation of the workplace, and student-loan debt.

On the other side, maybe we are churning out profits without much true entrepreneurial activity. We are good at making things more expensive than they need be. Much of the profit in America is economic rent -- guaranteed streams of revenue for passive investments in financial 'services', sweetheart contracts between government and business (in public-private partnerships in which the taxpayers  take most of the entrepreneurial risk and financiers get a reliable stream of profit). Americans are leaving rural areas and the Rust Belt for the big coastal cities where costs are high but attractions are plentiful. One does not start a business so that one can attend the symphony or get a sunburn on the beach. High incomes now come either from being a big landowner (farmer or landlord), owning huge amounts of business equity mostly from inheritance, high-paying professions, membership in the corporate nomenklatura, or even outright crime. Near-zero interest rates favor  existing businesses getting loans at low rates, with loans to small businesses going through subprime lenders. It's easier to collect student loans from someone in hock to become a school teacher than to collect them from someone who sets up a small business.

[Cynic Hero '86]

The Current rise in entrepreneurship is only the beginning. Soon Millennials will recognizes the need for meritocratic entrepreneurs and build a shadow government to replace the current government in the beltway. Soon the meritocratic state, the civil-military education system, the combined civil and military meritocratic caste, these will come into existence. Like him or hate him martin Shkreli is the prototype of the future administrative entrepreneurs who would be the "advisors" to the governments of Latin America after the vassalization that continent. Far more so, Shkreli is the prototype of the military governors who would administer the Middle East and North Africa after the general pacification of the middle east. It would be done on a MUCH grander scale than what Shkreli is trying to do with his company.

[pbrower2a]

(06-23-2016, 09:08 AM)Cynic Hero Wrote: The Current rise in entrepreneurship is only the beginning. Soon Millennials will recognizes the need for meritocratic entrepreneurs and build a shadow government to replace the current government in the beltway. Soon the meritocratic state, the civil-military education system, the combined civil and military meritocratic caste, these will come into existence. Like him or hate him martin Shkreli is the prototype of the future administrative entrepreneurs who would be the "advisors" to the governments of Latin America after the vassalization that continent. Far more so, Shkreli is the prototype of the military governors who would administer the Middle East and North Africa after the general pacification of the middle east. It would be done on a MUCH grander scale than what Shkreli is trying to do with his company.

Completely wrong. Small-scale entrepreneurs fill the interstices of an economy that Big Government and monopolistic behemoths ignore because such activity, however useful it may be to Humanity as a whole, is either 'inadequately profitable' or is impossible to micromanage on a large scale. But if such businesses create a family income for the owners that working to exhaustion for near-starvation pay does not offer, then economic freedom will manifest itself in a revival of small business. Some workers will see that their employers offer only 'jobs too small for their spirits', as an assembly-line worker reported to Studs Terkel in Working -- a reality now spreading elsewhere into the American economy. Think also of the low glass ceilings that bureaucratic organizations impose upon anyone who did not get hired for the fast track like the few people 'entitled' to become part of the elite.

Add to this that college education is becoming fiendishly expensive while no longer offering a reliable prospect of an above-average income. College graduates are job-takers and not job-creators. The typical college graduate would rather work as a letter carrier than start a house-cleaning service. But miss college, and one may want to set up a dry-goods store in a small town that fills a niche that chain retailers abandoned. Just because people largely abandoned impulse shopping (and retailers can't profit without people who buy on impulse) during the worst economic meltdown since 1929-1933 does not mean that they won't return as a phenomenon that Amazon can't well serve.

People do not like being abused, exploited, and humiliated; they will make great personal sacrifices to avoid such. Two weeks' paid vacation after ten years' employment isn't worth hating one's job. One is more likely to end up with several weeks of unemployment than 'earning' two weeks of vacation after ten years of devoted service to an employer who deserves no personal devotion.

The "meritocratic" scheme that you suggest well describes what we now have in Corporate America, with a self-serving Soviet-style nomenklatura controlling the internal opportunities while keeping wages down. I can easily imagine how that scenario works by 2100, when the next Crisis Era arrives. Your 'meritocratic' elite will be among the second batch of people to the guillotine or whatever new technology of execution is in vogue at the time. Who will precede them? The political leadership recently overthrown and tried as 'criminals against humanity', 'counter-revolutionary plotters', or even simply 'murderers and thieves'.

Finally, Martin Shkreli is the worst sort of capitalist out there -- someone who finds a commodity to monopolize to the harm of everyone else. It's not surprising that an administration that dislikes corporations bleeding the government would turn on him and look for a pretext for criminal charges against him. Monopoly capitalism is good only for the monopolist.