US ranks behind Rwanda, Belarus, Azerbaijan in creating new business - World Bank

Joe The Plumber

Barack Obama is home working on his memoirs when he discovers a leak under his sink, so he calls Joe the Plumber to come and fix it.
Joe drives to Obama's house, which is located in a very nice neighborhood where all the residents certainly make more than $250,000 per year.

Joe arrives and takes his tools into the house. Joe is led to the room that contains the leaky pipe under a sink. Joe assesses the problem and tells Obama, who is standing near the door, that it's an easy repair that will take less than 10 minutes. Obama asks Joe how much it will cost. Joe immediately says, "$9,500."

"$9,500?" Obama asks, stunned, "But you said it's an easy repair!"

"Yes, but what I do is charge a lot more to my clients who make more than $250,000 per year, so I can fix the plumbing of everybody who makes less than that for free," explains Joe; "it's always been my philosophy. As a matter of fact, I lobbied the state government to pass this philosophy as law, and it did pass earlier this year, so now all plumbers have to do business this way. It's known as 'Joe's Fair Plumbing Act of 2013.' I'm really surprised you haven't heard of it."

In spite of that, Obama tells Joe there's no way he's paying that much for a small plumbing repair, so Joe leaves. Obama spends the next hour flipping through the phone book looking for another plumber, but he finds that all other plumbing businesses listed have gone out of business. Not wanting to pay Joe's price, Obama does nothing. The leak under Obama's sink goes unrepaired for the next several days.

A week later, the leak is so bad that Obama has had to put a bucket under the sink and it fills up so quickly it has to be emptied every hour, and there's a risk that the room will flood. So, Obama calls Joe back and pleads with him to return. Joe goes back to Obama's house, looks at the leaky pipe, and says, “Let's see - this will cost you about $21,000."

"A few days ago you told me it would cost $9,500!" Obama quickly fires back.

Joe explains the reason for the dramatic increase. "Well, because of the 'Joe's Fair Plumbing Act,' a lot of rich people are learning how to fix their own plumbing, so there are fewer of you paying for all the free plumbing I'm doing for the people who make less than $250,000. As a result, the rate I have to charge my wealthy paying customers rises every day.

"Not only that, but for some reason the demand for plumbing work from the group of people who get it for free has skyrocketed, and there's a long waiting list of those who need repairs. This has put a lot of my fellow plumbers out of business, and they're not being replaced - nobody is going into the plumbing business because they know they won't make any money. I'm hurting now too - all thanks to greedy rich people like you who won't pay their fair share."

Obama tries to straighten out the plumber: "Of course you're hurting, Joe! Don't you get it? If all the rich people learn how to fix their own plumbing and you refuse to charge the poorer people for your services, you'll go broke, and then what will you do?"

"I'll just sit on my ass and draw unemployment for 99 weeks. By then, I'll qualify for food stamps, housing allowance assistance, and the many other government programs which all together amount to $168.00 per day, which is more than I was making before Obamacare was the law of the land. Praise the Lord for you and all the Democrats in Congress!"

:):):)

If you don't mind, I'll be borrowing that for some emails. Good stuff!
 
Tao I looked at the link to the study. Is seems they used incorporating a business in New York State for the time line in the US. I would venture that is one of the hardest states to set up a business and wouldn't be representative of the United States, and not of Texas, NM or AZ(states I've worked in). I looked at the New Zealand web site and the federal government part of it is streamlined and quick. But that should be expected when comparing a country with a population of 4+ million to a country with 300+ million.
And if you read in the requirements details of how the study was done and the minimum company size it would take months of planning anyway regardless of government requirements. Things like setting up a bank account and waiting for approval of a company name would be done at the same time other business set up work was being done and shouldn't extend the start time of a business. The difference in a few days starting up a business should not make much if any difference in the business climate of a country. IMO.

How to start a business in New Zealand;
http://www.business.govt.nz/starting-and-stopping/entering-a-business/starting-a-business

Judge for yourself if you can get this done in 1/2 a day.
 
Tao I looked at the link to the study. Is seems they used incorporating a business in New York State for the time line in the US. I would venture that is one of the hardest states to set up a business and wouldn't be representative of the United States, and not of Texas, NM or AZ(states I've worked in). I looked at the New Zealand web site and the federal government part of it is streamlined and quick. But that should be expected when comparing a country with a population of 4+ million to a country with 300+ million.
And if you read in the requirements details of how the study was done and the minimum company size it would take months of planning anyway regardless of government requirements. Things like setting up a bank account and waiting for approval of a company name would be done at the same time other business set up work was being done and shouldn't extend the start time of a business. The difference in a few days starting up a business should not make much if any difference in the business climate of a country. IMO.

How to start a business in New Zealand;
http://www.business.govt.nz/starting-and-stopping/entering-a-business/starting-a-business

Judge for yourself if you can get this done in 1/2 a day.

They chose the largest business city in each country. You could argue that New York City would have a lot of regulations, etc., but so would other country's largest cities, comparably.

It still doesn't explain how we're ranked behind countries like Belarus, which is still run in an old soviet style economy, or how we slipped 9 points since last year's report. Or how we're below a good deal of other western countries. Hell, we're behind Afghanistan.

For the supposed "Land of the Free", it's not very regulation free.
 
Did you look at the specifics of the study Tao, I did just a little. Now it may be true America is making it harder for small business start up, I don't know and I don't think the study shows that. The study is flawed and I wouldn't read too much into it.
Ask yourself what would it mean if the time frame for the US went from 5 days to 3 days. Would it mean anything at all? I don't think so.
And I stand by what I said before, there are opportunities out there for small start ups if that's what a person wants to do. It isn't that hard to get started in most places. In reality getting started is the easiest part of business, making it work now that's where it gets tough.
 
Again, you keep getting hung up on the business days to start up. There are a ton of metrics compared. Such as dealing with construction permits, paying taxes (which we rank #64 in!!).

The best rank we get is "obtaining credit". Sure, we're eager to enlist more debt slaves, but that's about it. It's the DTF rating (Distance to Frontier) which encompasses a broad range of indexes.
 
Did you look at the specifics of the study Tao, I did just a little. Now it may be true America is making it harder for small business start up, I don't know and I don't think the study shows that. The study is flawed and I wouldn't read too much into it.
Ask yourself what would it mean if the time frame for the US went from 5 days to 3 days. Would it mean anything at all? I don't think so.
And I stand by what I said before, there are opportunities out there for small start ups if that's what a person wants to do. It isn't that hard to get started in most places. In reality getting started is the easiest part of business, making it work now that's where it gets tough.
I didn't look at the study (because the link from the article doesn't work) so i have no idea if it's 'flawed'. But according to the article it isn't based solely on time, so why do you keep harping on it? I would think that the main concern is how much it costs to start up, of course time etc also plays a role. google starting a bank and let me know if you think that "opportunity is there for whoever wants it." Or how about casino's, where im from, the State operates casino's (1 of which lost money for years, maybe decades) and lotto's etc but it's illegal to gamble, does that make sense to you, or anyone? i would like to start a casino myself and im sure many others would as well. :D how about a simple bar or liquor store, i don't know how it works where u are but here we need licenses, pricey licenses just to sell booze. see where im going here?

btw forget other countries because we don't live there. there is no doubt that it is harder to start a business here than it was in the past, and it is a fact that small businesses are disproportionately effected by regs and taxes, so less of them is better for the economy as a whole.
 
Did the simpleton find the story hilarious ?

Are you referring to me mr high iq, can't spell, has very poor grammar, and lives in a camper? Yes, your life must be quite interesting, to say the least...
 
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