I think it's more troubling that small business formation is declining than you think. Small businesses provide a way for smart and hard-working people to improve their financial situation when they don't have other options available to them. Startups mainly help people who could have gotten a 6 figure job to potentially make even more. I'm not trying to criticize startups, but I think it's clear that a society where people can move out of poverty is a better one than a society where people remain in poverty but can move from the middle to the upper class.
> a society where people can move out of poverty is a better one than a society where people remain in poverty but can move from the middle to the upper class
This is a very subjective claim. I would certainly prefer to live in the latter country and so do most people I know (and we do, by moving from Canada to the US in much larger numbers per capita than vice versa).
this is a very limited mindset. Poor people that are not able to move into middle class will in the long run cause a lot of instability. Poverty and level of education are correlated. Living in a democracy with more people being poorer opens the door to populists with short sighted politics (hi Donald)
But, it was not so much poor who ended up voting for Trump. He has same support among middle class and rich. The main predictor is race and secondary smaller is gender, not so much poverty.
