Belmont University

Yet Another Reason to Keep Government out of Managing Entrepreneurship

From the Albany Times Union (via Ben Cunningham):

The former head of a publicly-funded program meant to help jump-start businesses admitted Monday to finagling a fraudulent $95,000 pay raise, using his corporate credit card for a trip to Disney World and insisting his father be included on two business junkets to China.

Posted by Jeff Cornwall on May 2, 2007 07:17 AM |

Comments

Yeah, cause this sort of stuff never happens in the business world.

Is it fair to say that when the U.S. Government does something you like (for instance, bringing in foreigners to do technical jobs for small businesses), you're all for it, but if it's something you don't like (giving money to small businesses) you hate it?

the article the other day just mentioned that the government wants to make funds available to small businesses that meet certain criteria, but what's wrong with that? They're looking for businesses owned by women (hey, no sense letting half your population go unused, it will give us a leg up on the rest of the backwards world) and veterans (who frankly deserve something after the way we've treated them at Walter Reed. But maybe you'd like to pull the G.I. Bill and all sorts of other things we give veterans?)

Is there a single shred of evidence that private investment in business will drop if the government starts investing? And how is it any worse than the woman who runs the unprofitable gift shop because her husband runs the largest car dealership in the state? There are all sorts of businesses in America that stay afloat because of nepotism. Adding a few out of government funds isn't going to hurt.

And as has been pointed out elsewhere, the recent changes to bankruptcy law have made it harder to finance a new business with credit cards. One of the reasons America has always done so well is that failure has never destroyed your life. In countries where failure is a life-ending proposition, you find little innovation (imagine that). So throwing some government money out there to keep some businesses from having to use credit card debt may be a good fix for a problem created by credit card company lobbyists.

Birdied by: Matthew Rigdon | May 2, 2007 02:47 PM

thats pretty much disgusting. how can they do that..

Birdied by: gio | May 4, 2007 11:12 PM

Tap it in and Comment, Please

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