Edward Glaeser

Unleash the Entrepreneurs

Professor of economics at Harvard University, a City Journal contributing editor, and a Manhattan Institute senior fellow., Nov 08, 11.

Tagged with urbanism, jobs, free market, regulations

Cities play an outsize role in supporting entrepreneurship, especially the kinds of entrepreneurship that employ the less skilled. Our three largest metropolitan areas—New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago—produce 18 percent of America’s output while housing only 13 percent of America’s population. Yet many of our policies, like subsidized highways in low-density areas, pull Americans away from the urban centers that are the country’s true economic heartland. We need to eliminate those policies.

In general, we should never use public dollars to bribe people to remain in dead-end jobs. We should place far less emphasis on the industries of the past and more on those of the future. Federal policies that bail out auto companies and subsidize agriculture aren’t merely expensive; they also encourage people to stay in declining industries rather than strike out on their own.

And we should work diligently to support free markets, whose most important function may be to allow human genius to create new ideas that give jobs to thousands. As America looks to the future, it must renew its commitment to economic freedom, a climate in which entrepreneurs—and America’s workers—can thrive.

Full Story: Unleash the Entrepreneurs
Source: City Journal, Autumn 2011

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