Small Business

On a Friday night in early June, eight strangers came up with an idea to help poor Americans on government assistance gain access to healthier food. They designed a website and business model to help overcome a problem referred to as urban “food deserts –– that many low-income Americans in big cities live miles from the nearest grocery store. After three days, the eight strangers, which included the two authors of this piece, pitched the company and won a little prize –– the invitation to present the solution at an international summit organized by the World Bank and the White House.

"For all its current economic woes,” the Economist magazine recently asserted, “America remains a beacon of entrepreneurialism.” That idea is at the heart of America’s self-image. Both parties celebrate entrepreneurial small business as the fount of innovation and growth. Even if America no longer manufactures its own smartphones or computers, we cling to the idea that American entrepreneurs invent most of the new products and services that matter to the world.

Editor's Note: This is a guest blog post authored by Lina Khan, program associate with New America's Markets, Enterprise and Resiliency Initiative.

If there’s one thing Americans have faith in it’s the country’s entrepreneurial verve. Even amid high unemployment and a tepid economic recovery, we generally believe that strong entrepreneurship and upstart businesses will help steer us out of our present ditch. Media reports and sparring politicians fixate on this crucial sector of the American economy, a source of new products, new ideas, new jobs, and new wealth.

An article published today shows that America’s entrepreneurial sector is actually in deep crisis. The piece, written by Barry C. Lynn and myself in the forthcoming issue of the Washington Monthly, shows that for over a generation fewer Americans have been creating new businesses. The nation’s self-image notwithstanding, the number of new entrepreneurs – measured per capita – declined by 53 percent between 1977 and 2010. Even the share of self-employed Americans has fallen, dropping by more than 20 percent between 1991 and 2010.

America’s entrepreneurial sector is in deep trouble. Although the mainstream media continues to promote the idea that the nation’s small and upstart businesses are either generally thriving or, at worst, recovering from the sudden blow of the Great Recession, a closer look at the data reveals the exact opposite to be true, with a long-standing decline in the numbers of independent startups per working-age American.

The Asset Building News Week is a weekly Friday feature on The Ladder, the Asset Building Program blog, designed to help readers keep up with news and developments in the asset building field. This week's topics include anti-poverty initiatives, access to financial services, and inequality.

Millennials are the first downwardly mobile generation in decades, staring down a host of economic challenges--student debt, the rise of low-wage jobs, and the ballooning cost of tuition, food, and rent. Media regularly serve up sobering statistics about twentysomethings, while Occupy Wall Street struggles to stay on message. How will the Great Recession affect Millennials longterm? And do they have what it takes to fight back?

This piece is authored by Jay Pelosky, Principal of J2Z Advisory. A version of this piece originally appeared on the Huffington Post.

Fear, in any real market, is a natural emotion. There is the fear of not making a sale, not landing a job, not winning a client. Such fear is healthy, even constructive. It prods us to polish our wares, to refine our skills, and to conjure up—every so often—a wonder.