Jeff Cornwall is talking about the election’s impact entrepreneurship today [HT: rexblog]. He basically says that the party lines are too blurry on the key concerns of small business owners for us to know how the election will impact entrepreneurship.
Professor Cornwall says this:
What are the public policy issues that matter most to small business owners and the entrepreneurial economy they are sustaining? If we look at the research on entrepreneurial development and the opinion polls of small business owners it all boils down to three things: regulation, taxes, and property rights.
As a small business owner, I am much more interested in providing health care for my employees than I am in property rights. Sure, taxes are a part of business, but there is no way taxes would be able to increase at the same pace as health care.
We must keep our attention on the issues that matter for entrepreneurs…
I don’t think there is much likelihood that the national government will do much to address the rising cost of health care (regardless of Democrat, Republican, or divided). I do think that our state government in Tennessee has the capacity and opportunity to make a real difference for us and our employees.
It is a positive sign that Governor Bredesen was relected yesterday. His CoverTennessee plan has the potential to make it more realistic that small businesses in the entrepreneurial economy will be able to provide health care benefits for their employees. Unfortunately the CoverTennessee plan has been put on hold.
Will the Republicans in the divided state senate prevent employees of small businesses from easily attaining health care, or will they work with Bredesen to make sure that small businesses like mine can afford to provide health care for our hard working employees who are just starting families.
