https://www.stlouisfed.org/Publications/Central-Banker/Fall-...

The Small Business Administration also helps with loan guarantees. So the support is sort of there, but takes a different form, and maybe one could say the impersonal nature of it is both a strength and a weakness in comparison. Numbers of small businesses and their starts have been in decline too. I suspect this has to do with the difficulty of more and more Americans in attaining any savings from their wages (let alone enough to set aside to help capitalize a small business).

All the more important to support one another. Although, if everyone in a person's trust circle is more or less in the same boat, then tough luck :(

With no meaningful support from gov/banks etc, people banding together to help each other might be an alternative. Some non profits are working in this space too. After Sandy, some orgs in NY were giving interest free loans to small biz people who lost their trucks etc.

Although on average they are poorer, residents of India have a great deal more freedom with respect to the costs of everyday life. No matter how basic their housing, transport, clothing, food, education, safety, etc. may be, they can always trade down if their situation or preference changes. Many lives lived happily in India would be largely illegal in USA.

When you take these trust networks over to a high-trust society, they just act as additional leverage in your life.

I know Indian guys who lent each other large five figure sums to help business deals go along and, the most surprising to me, had one take on a mortgage for another in Menlo Park! (The family it was for was a dual income software engineer family, just missing a credit history and starting capital).

Because there is a general lack of trust of people outside one's immediate family and a (usually very) small circle of friends.