At the Atlantic, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Arizona, Andrei Cherny, proposes a "Steve Jobs Act":
reform of the unemployment insurance system to allow for more flexibility for potential entrepreneurs. And it would build on the emerging bipartisan consensus that certain regulations such as the accounting requirements in the Sarbanes-Oxley reforms have a disproportionate impact on young firms ill-equipped to handle the onerous burdens.
Yet the "Steve Jobs Act" would go much further. It would make healthcare and retirement benefits more universal, personalized, affordable and portable so that entrepreneurs have a greater ability to strike out on their own. With the knowledge that companies such as Nike, Intel, FedEx, and, yes, Apple Computers all started out with the benefit of government loans, it would create a National Innovation Bank to invest in companies with a potentially high rate of return in job creation. It would open the doors of legal immigration to hard-charging, determined new Americans like those who came through Ellis Island a century ago and like the Syrian immigrant who was Steve Jobs' biological father. And it would make sure our public schools put a greater emphasis not only on science and mathematics, but on the creative problem solving skills that are at the heart of the entrepreneurial drive.
I've been pushing the unemployment insurance reform here for months. The Sarbanes-Oxley change is Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 5. Health care and retirement portability make sense, though the details matter. Legal immigration is Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 27 and No. 6. I don't think a "National Innovation Bank" is a good idea — too much potential for corruption or cronyism, and better to have private capital invest for return rather on investment rather than tax it to allow politicians or bureaucrats invest for "return in job creation." As for public schools, I'd prefer local or parental-choice-driven reforms rather than some sort of national mandate.
Anyway, it's both interesting and frustrating that there's actually a fair amount of left-right consensus on some things that could help the employment picture, but nonetheless it doesn't seem to get done.
