Subsidized Wages Rather Than Unemployment
My first observation in this post is that sites like eLance and the lower wage, on-demand workers they provide are critical to boostrapped startups these days. I’ve used eLance a ton over the past year and a half and I can say for sure that The Accountant Guide wouldn’t be were it is today with that source of labor. So, my first premise is that low wage on-demand labor significantly helps foster startups in the early stages when capital, revenue, and earnings are sparse.
Washington (DC) has been giving a lot of unemployment benefits lately. The argument is that we need to in order to help rebound the economy. Here is my proposal: Instead of giving someone unemployment benefits, create a market for labor in which the demand is met by small companies and startups and the government matches the pay of the employer. So, for instance if I normally make 40/hr, the government will match a startups 20/hr on this market. The benefit is that we help startups get off the ground (which is critical to a rebound in the economy), get people back to work, and the government’s money incentivizes working rather than “looking for a job”. In short, the government’s money helps create jobs that otherwise wouldn’t have existed, people get to work rather than sit at home, and startups are created that otherwise would not have been able to get off the ground.
Thoughts?
