Choose
the one that fits best according to the information given in the passage you
have just read.
America's businesses are getting older and
fatter, while many new businesses are dying in infancy.
A study last month by the
Brookings Institution found that the proportion of older firms has grown
steadily over several decades, while the survival rate of new companies has
fallen. In addition, young people are starting companies at a sharply lower
rate than in the past.
A new report from the National
Association of Manufacturers shows a major cause: The cost of obeying
government regulations has risen to more than $2 trillion (12.26 trillion yuan)
annually, or 12 percent of the GDP, and this cost falls disproportionately on
smaller, newer businesses.
It's risky, difficult and
expensive to start a business, and getting more so. Governments are imposing
various new rules on a seemingly daily basis: health insurance, minimum wage
increases and, most recently in California, compulsory paid sick days for even hourly
employees. These regulations shift huge social welfare costs directly onto
often-struggling small businesses, while being proportionally much less costly
for larger companies.
This is partly an unintended issue of resources—established companies can cope with new costs more easily—but it's also deliberate. For instance, big insurance companies got a seat at the table to help write Obama care, but less politically powerful firms—like medical device manufacturers—got squeezed.
Mature, successful corporations
can employ ex-lawmakers with connections, distribute campaign contributions and
even write regulations for themselves. They are also more likely to want to
protect steady revenue streams than revolutionize their industry.
Major companies that have been so ill-managed they would otherwise collapse—airlines, car companies and banks—stagger(蹒跚)on because politicians ride to the rescue with bags of taxpayer money.
The genius of our unique system
of government is the determination to protect and defend the rights of the
individual over the rights of the nation. As such, the rise of a well-connected
oligarchy(寡头政治)that protects big business at the expense of small business, and
the established over the new, is opposite to American ideals.
Income inequalitywhich is directly caused by faulty government policy—is being promoted as the reason to impose more of that bad policy. But let's be perfectly clear, we do not have a free market but one where government picks winners and losers through regulations and financial aids.
Politics is, and always has
been, about balancing competing interests seeking to benefit themselves, and
that's as it should be, but the force of government should never be used to
reduce competition, kill innovation or support and extend artificial
monopolies(垄断)by harming the consumer, the taxpayer and the economy. Policy must
breed our new and small businesses or see the as-yet undreamed of innovations
that could be our bright future die in infancy.
