Entrepreneurs afraid of Walker Administration Surprises? Wisconsin 4th Lowest starting Businesses, 2nd for biggest Decline in decade.

I just want to say right off the bat; we can't blame the following entirely on Scott Walker, but he really hasn't helped the situation much. If you get on the wrong side of our Republican Authority, you're in trouble:

WSJ: Wisconsin has one of the lowest rates of entrepreneurial activity in the nation, according to the 2012 Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity.

The rankings show the number of new businesses initiated per capita fell substantially from levels of a decade ago.

The Democrats wanted to tackle this problem head on, but Republicans resisted, and instead passed legislation that supposedly helped business, but mostly advanced their more ideological goals:

Between 2000 and 2002: 0.32 percent, or 320 of every 100,000 Wisconsin residents, started businesses. In 2012: The report says 0.18 percent, or 180 of every 100,000 adults in Wisconsin started a business, the fourth lowest of the 50 states. Only Michigan, Nebraska and Minnesota had a smaller percentage of residents engaged in entrepreneurial activity last year.

Wisconsin also showed the second biggest decline in entrepreneurship from a decade ago. 

Nationwide, 300 of every 100,000 adults started a business in 2012.

Loss of Safety Nets would Make it Harder to Start a Business

Thom Hartmann examines of the resulting economy if Paul Ryan's austerity plan becomes law, where social safety nets are "saved" but dramatically reduced:

Thom's blog: America's entrepreneurial class is dying.

While small businesses have certainly taken a hit following the Bush Great Recession, the evidence shows that American entrepreneurs have been getting pummeled for more than thirty years.

According to a new study released today by the New American Foundation, the number of entrepreneurs per capita has dropped by 53% since 1977. And since 1991, the number of Americans who are self-employed has dropped by more than 20%. In other words, Americans who use to be able to start their own businesses are increasingly being forced to join the ranks of the working poor.

That's because our nation has forgotten how to foster an entrepreneurial class over the last thirty years. With massive tax cuts for the wealthy and for transnational corporations - the rich are getting richer and the big corporations are getting bigger. It doesn't help that we no longer enforce the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and have jumped head-first into so-called Free Trade either, which has given way to giant transnational corporations that small business upstarts simply can't compete with.

Not only that, we've destroyed the social safety net in the country, which used to give Americans a chance to take risks and try new jobs because they had a net of security to fall in if they failed.

Today if they fail, they're condemned to indefinite poverty - so no one can afford to take risks to start small businesses. This is the consequence of thirty years of Reaganomics - and it's what Republicans today are doubling-down on.