The Steve Jobs Act: Why It's Time to Invest in Entrepreneurs

From The Atlantic:

The eulogies and encomiums delivered to Apple founder Steve Jobs seemed to capture some of this longing. They were celebrations of greatness and vision in a middling, small moment. At the end of a decade that saw Iraq, Katrina, and Lehman Brothers become watchwords of American weakness, they were paeans to someone who believed, with Thomas Paine, that we had it “in our power to begin the world over again.” But, perhaps most of all, in a floundering economy, they spoke to a sense that it is entrepreneurs and innovators — and not merely infrastructure spending and payroll tax cuts — that are needed to rebuild the engine of economic growth.

The facts back up this assumption. Research from the Kauffman Foundation has demonstrated that new and young companies, those under the age of five, are responsible for all net job creation over the past generation. It is the entrepreneurs who start these businesses — and not the business tycoons courted by both parties — that are the true “job creators.” But while Republicans focus on tax cuts and regulatory relief for large corporations and Democrats look to keep teachers and police officers in their jobs, it is these entrepreneurs — the next generation’s Steve Jobses — who are being overlooked.