Comments by "Magic Beans" (@Magic_beans_) on "America's Dangerous Obsession with Entrepreneurship" video.

  1. Owning a business isn’t likely to make you rich. I’ll pull from an article in Entrepreneur magazine, so you know I’m not data mining to make business ownership look bad. According to them and the AmEx study they cited: - Median individual income in the US for 2017 was around $52,000 and median household income was $62,000. - Median entrepreneurial income at the same time was $68,000 per year. (“Will Entrepreneurship Make You Rich? A Realistic Perspective” by Dan Bova, May 8, 2017) It’s an honest living, above average even. But the fact that the wealthiest people are mostly business owners doesn’t mean most business owners become wealthy.
    1
  2. Sure, but is starting a business any more certain? Even the stats passed around by entrepreneurs say 7.5% of businesses fail each year, with the first year higher at 12.5%. A company or industry laying off 7% of their workforce is seen as severe (that was the tech layoffs of 2023). If layoffs reach 10% that’s crisis management (Boeing 2024-25). And of course those don’t happen every year; nationwide the only time we’ve had more than 2% of the population laid off was Q2 2020, and you probably remember what happened then. If you think you’ll beat the odds, or at least that you’ll enjoy the process whether it pays off or not, great. I’m not here to discourage you. I’m saying that the people who promote business ownership as easy, lucrative, and safer than a W-2 job are full of it.
    1