Is it because more and more areas of business activity are conquered by large entities and thus are hard to enter into? As a small guy, you won't achieve economies of scale of Wallmart or marketing of McDonalds, while 70 years ago, if you were opening a convenience store or a restaurant, you only had to worry about local (non-chain) competition.

> Is it because more and more areas of business activity are conquered by large entities and thus are hard to enter into?

Is that true though? Artisanal, craft, handmade, premium, bespoke, etc. of every kind of bullshit is booming. Etsy, indiegogo, kickstarter, eBay and whatever else is big business for small producers of gadgets, trinkets and everything cute, right?

That said, yes, Amazon and other forms online shopping, is pushing out small shops, but cafés are opening everywhere in cities. (Urban revival and whatnot.)

But ... without hard numbers there are just feely-goody impressions, so I have no hard belief about this, just trying to offer a coutnerpoint.

>Is that true though? Artisanal, craft, handmade, premium, bespoke, etc. of every kind of bullshit is booming.

Only in markets where there's a high enough density of rich people with nothing better to spend their money on. Businesses selling hand crafted bagels don't exist outside areas where there's a lot of people willing to spend their discretionary income on craft bagels.

Well, the internet helps with this. But granted, you're not going to sell artisanal sandwiches over the internet.

And folks willing to spend $40 on specially roasted and ground coffee are far, far fewer than folks spending $2 for the grocery store brand.

> Is that true though? Artisanal, craft, handmade, premium, bespoke, etc. of every kind of bullshit is booming. Etsy, indiegogo, kickstarter, eBay and whatever else is big business for small producers of gadgets, trinkets and everything cute, right?

People don't rely on these for their main sources of income in most cases, they're almost always hobbyist endeavors or being subsidized by some other income source.

Consumers value the benefits of efficiencies of scale, such as online ordering, being able to return anywhere in the country, rewards programs, being able to find consistency in quality wherever you are, etc.

It's also impossible to compete on price with bigger competitors. How can a small business compete with Costco? Technology has allowed the bigger players to wring out all the efficiencies bringing margins down to as low as possible, so it's only viable to start businesses that have higher margins, such as professional services.

Also anything that you can sell as high value, to support your high margin. Hence the craft beer, artisanal soap, etc. (see also Etsy and co.) But usually that doesn't require people to start a small business, nor do most of these etsy shops are really able to support/become one.

Not sure about US - but for the UK: Number of UK start-ups rises to new record | Financial Times (2017) https://www.ft.com/content/cb56d86c-88d6-11e7-afd2-74b8ecd34...

Also: https://www2.gov.scot/About/Performance/scotPerforms/indicat...

Netherland has seem an immense growth in self-employed people.

If it's not the case in the US, could that somehow be related to this decoupling?

The Netherlands has entirely the same wage decoupling, albeit not totally at the same scale. A simple test for this: look at what kind of salary you need these days to support buying of a single-family home. I can tell you: my parents did this on the support of 1.5 medium-low income wages.

Could that be because more and more people are trying to live in cities, yet housing is not growing as fast as it did in the last "let's move to the city" boom?

Yeah, cities are expensive. Outside the city you can still buy a house on a single income. Not a big one, though. Still, compared to the house my parents bought when I was 6, houses have clearly become a lot more expensive.

Seems to me that a major reason there are fewer small businesses being created is because real wages are stagnant. You need extra money to start a business.

Add to that the costs of healthcare, which in the US tends to be tied to employment, and bingo. There's your answer. People have no money, nor no safety net if something goes wrong, so they stick to their garbage 9-5 instead of trying something new.

Is Medicaid not a safety net? What are those billions spent on? What about food stamps? The US has plenty of safety net.

I'm sorry, I didn't explain it quite enough.

To go from a comfortable - meaning I'm not living paycheck to paycheck concerned about whether I have to pay for either food, gas, OR medicine - to uncomfortable - meaning relying on the largess of the ruling class through 'social' programs - is a step most people are not willing or able to take.

I understand that those programs are a safety net, but they are further down the cliff than most people are comfortable with. If you've hit them, you've hit two feet from bottom with a very small chance of recovery.

Does that make sense? I think it's a difference in how you define 'safety net'.

If there are people who are unable to live in a home, there is not enough safety net. Housing should be a right of citizens, as well as medical care. Private property has allowed wage inequality to increase with no end.

Because business formation is pretty risky and, to me, seems to be getting riskier as you have to compete with global players in almost every market.

> Because business formation is pretty risky and, to me, seems to be getting riskier as you have to compete with global players in almost every market.

so by not risking, isn't it then "correct" to say that an employee shouldn't reap the rewards that the owners currently get as they bear the risk?

Entering a market as a new player is risky, but being a quasi-monopolistic incumbent is not really that risky.

I see this as the real crux. New business starts necessarily take labor out of the market while also increasing its demand (maybe not instantaneously).

I will be controversial and argue that the male sex compounds their income at a greater rate than the female sex principally because their genetical nature causes investment activity contra females which generally consume. Therefore With more women in the labor markets, there has been a drag on wages.

A factor could be how difficult and expensive it is for people to get health insurance on their own.