Andrew Yang Talks About the Vital Importance of Entrepreneurship to America’s Economic Recovery

In a question-and-answer session published today by Right to Start, entrepreneur and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang talks about entrepreneurship – and its vital importance to America’s economic recovery – with Victor Hwang, Founder & CEO of Right to Start.

The topic is crucial, because even before the pandemic the United States was in a startup slump, with new businesses starting at their lowest overall rate in more than 40 years. And historically startups create virtually all job growth, including replacing jobs lost.

As Andrew Yang says in the discussion, “It's hard to overstate the damage that is being done right now [by the pandemic] in small business ownership and entrepreneurship. And those mom-and-pop businesses are the main employers in most communities. They're the source of most American jobs.”

photo courtesy of yangforny.com

He then recommends the following actions to support entrepreneurship:

“There are so many things we would need to do if we were going to give small business owners and entrepreneurs a real foothold moving forward. Certainly, cash relief would be my first move, because you'd help families stay afloat, but that money would flow right into local businesses for groceries and car repairs and daycare and the like. But that would just be the beginning. We should be doing more to enable businesses to reopen on an individual level and recognize that in many cases a credit line is not the right solution… If you give me a credit line, and I owe you instead of them, that maybe doesn't make it possible for me to reopen…” “The rejuvenation of these businesses,” he continues, “is going to take really significant and dramatic measures in many cases, but we are already doing dramatic things for the airlines and the biggest companies. We should be trying to do everything we can for the small businesses that can comprise the majority of employers.”

He concludes:

“To me, entrepreneurship is about allowing people the ability to actually build the thing that they know that the world — or their community — needs. And that's unfortunately going to be much more difficult for just about everyone in this environment, but it's exactly what we need more of right now.”