Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser has two pieces worth a look. A column at Bloomberg news discusses some of the differences between America and Europe:
I also believe that the case for economic freedom in the U.S. has been helped by the visible example of our most successful entrepreneurs, from Andrew Carnegie to Steve Jobs.
The dominance of the European aristocracy provided the old European left with convenient villains, people whose great wealth and power were guaranteed by birth and who seemed to do little to justify their luxuries.
By contrast, Carnegie and Jobs earned their billions with ingenuity and effort.
And an article in City Journal advises, "If we want to bring America's jobs back, our governments—federal, state, and local—need to tear down barriers to entrepreneurship, create a fertile field for start-up businesses, and unleash the risk-taking innovators who have always been at the heart of our economic growth."
Venture capitalist Esther Dyson has a slight corrective that doesn't address Professor Glaeser directly, but is a bit more skeptical of start ups than he seems to be: "'entrepreneurs' often waste years and millions of dollars before giving up and selling out....The real spur to job and value creation is not turning hundreds of college grads (or dropouts) into entrepreneurs, but hiring thousands – and hundreds of thousands – of people into growing companies that can organize and motivate them and make the best use of their talents."
