Entreprenuershit

One of the annoying things going around now via right-wing "pundits" is the idea that the stimulus package will make entrepreneurship a thing of the past, as people will just take government handouts and roll around in bathtubs filled with cash. Cause, you know, nothing kills coming up with new streams of income quite like time and money.

But people like Sean Hannity would like you to think that the way to give birth to great entrepreneurs is to strip people of anything they have, and make it so that they're, and I quote, "desperate to feed their families!" and therein hafta do something big.

While obviously there are exceptions, the general route to success of most of the entrepreneurs I've read about include a mix of things like time, money, timing, luck, family financial status, education et al. These things allow a person to formulate an idea of what he wants to do, and then try to do it. Things like having no money and a panicky, "desperate" personal situation I would think would lend itself to paralysis, maybe in the form of clinging to whatever crappy job one might have before coming home to stare at the tv 6 hours a night. Which is pretty much the opposite of entreprenuership. Which I'm pretty sure is impossible to spell correctly, by the way.

How bout if in 1975 Bill Gates was "desperate to feed his family"? He would've either 1) gotten a regular 9 to 5 to take care of his family's short-term needs, or 2) knocked off a liquor store. I feel fairly secure guaranteeing at no time did he look into his starving children's eyes and decide "dammit...I need to feed my family - I'm going in the basement for a few years to work on developing an operating system that can be bundled with virtually every computer on the planet, and get paid for licensure..."

Now, have you heard more stories like that, or about someone who borrowed $20k from an uncle to start a business?

This isn't about whether or not the stimulus is a good thing in and of itself; but it is about a group of "experts" with huge national audiences spewing shit over and over that is the exact opposite of what is actually true. Which is infuriating both in it's blatant falsehood, and it's hypocritical association with the GOP being the "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps!" party (even tho Seanzarelli let it slip yesterday that for a while a few years ago his dad was paying for his health insurance. Hmm.)