secondbreakfast

The validation I needed

I think these are all factors.

Tyler Cowen talks about this issue quite a bit. The stat he often quotes is that new business creation is down by about half since 50 years ago.

Here's an interesting post he had on it: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/08/wi...

It could be as simple as demographic shifts (which would explain its long slow and consistent decline), or the other factors you and him mention might also be playing an outsized role.

I've considered living in CDMX for a while for the food people and language. Where in Mexico do/did you live?

Fantastic quote, thanks.

I am this way about learning Spanish. Hard to focus only a day at a time.

That's a unique way of viewing it, cool.

(Author here).

^I host my blog on blot.im - it is an amazing service, and fully recommend it. Thanks David!

Basecamp

It's not academic, but perhaps the founding fathers were onto something. The original constitution set the number of House Representatives to 1 for every 30,000 citizens. It was not until 1911 that the House capped the number at its present 435. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_H...

A more specific question might lead to a better discussion:

If the economy-wide goal[0] is increasing wealth[1], then why are increasing prices better than flat or decreasing prices[2]?

[0] There is general consensus that stable economic growth is our macroeconomic goal, generally defined as increasing output per person, or GDP. [1] Generally in economics this is taken to mean real purchasing power. [2] An increasing money supply is a side effect of the real goal of central banks: small amounts of inflation. If a population were shrinking, or if output was contracting, it might well mean that the money supply could remain flat or decrease and there might still be inflation. But as the population grows, the money supply must increase not just to keep prices flat but to encourage slight inflation.

Keynes writes brilliantly on this topic in "Essays on Persuasion," and many of the points are addressed here in the comments. But it can generally be distilled into three main points:

A low level of inflation 1) compels business activity because businesspeople can sell things at a higher price than they paid for all of the inputs; 2) compels consumer spending because today is the most valuable your cash will ever be; and 3) compels lending because there is a cost to simply doing nothing with cash.

Without those incentives, there would be a severe pull-back in lending, spending, and business and job creation, which are the same deflationary forces fought in the 2008 financial crash.

Because you can buy more with a deflationary currency tomorrow than you can today. So the tendency would be to not buy things with a deflationary currency and instead buy things with an inflationary currency.

>Low pay, long hours, everyone is a 'manager'...

There have been class-action lawsuits filed against dollars stores addressing this very issue of misclassifying employees as managers in order to avoid paying hourly overtime.

Family Dollar lost a $35 million judgment[0]. Dollar General faced a similar lawsuit, but the case lost class-action certification on a technicality[1].

[0] http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-11th-circuit/1459728.html

[1] https://newscenter.dollargeneral.com/news/court-decertifies-...