Live Coverage Of The First Republican Debate

I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear a question about entrepreneurship in a presidential debate. To read most media coverage, you’d think the U.S. was in the midst of an entrepreneurial boom. But the economic data tell the opposite story: The rate at which Americans start businesses has been falling for decades. Marco Rubio’s answer focused on regulations, including Obamacare. Truth is, economists aren’t sure why the startup rate is falling, but the decline has mirrored similar trends in labor participation, job turnover and geographic mobility (how often people move between cities). Economists worry that suggests the U.S. economy is losing the flexibility that helped fuel its past growth. There’s probably no single policy that would help reverse those trends. But it’s good to see the problem entering into mainstream political discourse.