Positive Lessons from and for the States

The just-published 2011 edition of SBE Council’s "Small Business Survival Index" http://www.sbecouncil.org/news/display.cfm?ID=4689 provides both positive and negatives lessons in terms of how public policy affects small businesses and the economy.

The Index is the most comprehensive measure of the public policy climates for entrepreneurship in the 50 states and District of Columbia. By tying together 44 major government-imposed or government-related costs, the states are ranked as to how friendly or unfriendly they are in terms of policy decisions affecting entrepreneurship and investment. The factors included in the Index – assorted taxes, various regulatory costs, government spending and debt, property rights, health care policies, energy costs, and much more – matter to the competitiveness of each state and to the well being of small business.

Of course, the tendency is to focus on what the worst states are doing wrong. And those states – for example, the bottom fifteen are: 37) North Carolina, 38) Maryland, 39) Hawaii, 40) Illinois, 41) Iowa, 42) Massachusetts, 43) Minnesota, 44) Connecticut, 45) Maine, 46) California, 47) Rhode Island, 48) Vermont, 49) New Jersey, 50) New York and 51) District of Columbia – sure do a lot wrong. That attention is expected, since it is critical for these states to turn things around. It’s simply natural to focus on what needs fixing.

But the states at the top provide the lessons that the bottom states need to learn. The top fifteen states on the 2011 Index are: 1) South Dakota, 2) Nevada, 3) Texas, 4) Wyoming, 5) South Carolina, 6) Alabama, 7) Ohio, 8) Florida, 9) Colorado, 10) Virginia, 11) Washington, 12) Mississippi, 13) North Dakota, 14) Utah, and 15) Arizona. These states lead by example.

by Raymond J. Keating

Full Story: http://www.sbecouncil.org/news/display.cfm?ID=4694