Read Your Own Stats

It is generally said--but really not believed--that most American jobs are created by small business. 75% of all U.S. businesses have no payroll; they mostly are self-employed people in unincorporated businesses. They account for 3.4% of reported national business receipts.

Small businesses with a payroll are a different matter. The Huffington Post recently reported that small business was responsible for 93% of the jobs in the last 15 years. A Census report examining from 1988 to 2004 showed that businesses with fewer than 20 employees accounted for 90% of all firms and 97% of all new jobs. But these numbers have a twist: Nearly all net job creation from 1980 to 2010 were in companies less 5 years old. If you guess that that number was a dot com bubble, in the collapse from 2007 to 2010 it was 67%.

More. Immigrants with graduate degrees make up 8% of immigrants annually. But, according to the WSJ, immigrants founded or co-founded 25% of all American high-tech firms from 1995 to 2005 and 24% of U.S. patents.

These are pretty shocking numbers and one would think the topic on every one's lips would be how the society could take advantage of these dramatic observations. And encourage them. The first thing that comes to mind is the tendency of communities to fight over the relocation of existing industries. By these numbers, that is the last thing they should be doing. They should be finding small start ups and fostering them. They should be making taxes easier, funding easier and recruiting easier. But one never hears of any of this. Instead we hear that the new Dodd bill intends to decrease angel investing by 75% and delay successful funding for start ups by 3 months.

We seem wrong more often than chance would allow. Perhaps there is some self-destructive thing hidden in success. Or perhaps these incredibly bad decisions are the subtle work of some patient enemy who has wormed his way into our governmental processes. More likely it is the work of Mediocrity, that persistent hanger on, feeding mindlessly off the achievements of others, fussing about the workplace like so many sorcerer's apprentices.