The Secret to Fixing the World Economy – Entrepreneurship

There was a great interview of Dambisa Moyo in the NY Times magazine this past Sunday.  The crux of the interview was that Ms. Moyo advocates that the way for African nations and other evolving countries to get out of their economic malaise is to foster and promote entrepreneurship.  She goes even further to say that most of the handouts and aid that is dumped in these countries actually does more harm than good.  In the end, she promotes lending groups like Kiva.

What makes this most interesting is that this comes in the wake of the U.S. government and its “economic stimulus” package.  President Obama went to a joint session of Congress last night, but he never really advocated that we find our way out of this mess through entrepreneurship.  Instead, government spending will lead the charge.  This is in such stark contrast to what Ms. Moyo preaches that it makes you scratch your head.

If entrepreneurship has made America great and is the key to helping developing African countries, why is our government not doing more things to get out of the way of America’s start-ups?

Instead of a bailout from Congress, here is what we should be offering:

• Eliminate all payroll taxes for 1 year
• Provide $100 billion to banks to provide loans, but the loans have to be given to businesses with less than 10 employees
• Offer a $5 billion dollar prize to the first company/group that can produce and sell 5,000 cars that get over 100 MPG

How many jobs could be created from that type of stimulus?