The United States of Entrepreneurs

"One of the country’s most popular television programmes, currently being recycled as a film, features the USS Enterprise boldly going where no man had gone before."

Actually, two of the country's most popular television programmes feature people singing and dancing their way to stardom. Like entrepreneurs, some fail miserably, some exit disappointed but graciously, and some make it big.

Still, point taken.

Between 1996 and 2004 it created an average of 550,000 small businesses every month.

I think they mean every year? I have serious doubts that 6.6 million new businesses are started a year.

I believe it. In 2003 there were around 23 million businesses in the US. Only 5.7 million of them had employees other than the owners, though.

Well, if we get 6.6 million a year, and we only have 23 million or so, that means that the companies have pretty low half-life.

You can check the US economic census. Great stuff in general and quite useful for market research.

http://www.census.gov/econ/census02/

In the UK, there's 1 limited company for every 10 people.