Every Business & Personal Activity Has A Start-Up Cost
In America, access to personal start-up costs is almost entirely dependent on the wealth of the family you happened to be born into
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
Who’s Going To Fund The Start-Up Cost?
If you’re a programmer and you’ve got an idea for a new app, the start-up cost to develop the app and bring it to market might be as little as half a million dollars. If you’re an entrepreneur and you want to manufacture automobiles, the start-up cost might be ten billion dollars.
The more complicated the activity, the higher the start-up cost and the smaller the number of people who have access to that amount of capital.
If you’re not someone like Bill Gates and you don’t personally have the start-up cost you will have to get the money from other people.
The programmer presents his idea to friends, family, angel investors and venture capitalists, and asks them provide the start-up cost in exchange for a share in the profits of the planned business.
Personal Activities Also Have Start-Up Costs
The difference between the start-up cost for a commercial activity and the start-up cost for a personal activity is that the person who needs start-up money to create a commercial product has something to sell while the person who needs start-up money for personal goals doesn’t.
There aren’t any venture capitalists who fund individuals’ life goals because the cost exceeds the VC’s potential return.
The start-up cost for a simple personal activity like going to a party is low — having some way to get to the party (transportation costs); clean, appropriate clothes, a clean body, i.e. shower, brushed teeth and combed hair.
As the personal activity become more substantial, e.g. becoming professionally trained, the number of people with access to that higher amount of money becomes smaller and smaller.
Personal Start-Up Costs Are Family Funded
Young people have no money and no saleable skills and they can only clear that start-up barrier through resources provided to them by their family.
The United States is not a meritocracy. Access to personal start-up costs is not dependent on talent. The government doesn’t give everyone an aptitude test and then fund the living expenses and education of everyone who scores above a certain level.
In America, access to personal start-up costs is almost entirely dependent on the wealth of the family you happened to be born into.
Family support is what gets a young person over the start-up-cost barrier and the lack of family support is what leaves a person trapped behind the barrier.
The start-up cost for getting a standard college degree is beyond the means of the children in half the families in this country. The start-up cost for an advanced degree — medical doctor, dentist, etc. — is higher still, and the pool of people who have access to that cost is even smaller.
The More Technologically Advanced The Society, The Higher The Personal Start-Up Costs
Moreover, as the world becomes more technically complex the start-up costs for education, housing, medical care, etc. increase and the barriers get ever higher.
Compare the cost of becoming a medical doctor in 1921 with the cost of becoming a medical doctor in 2021.
Compare the cost of starting a grocery store or a restaurant in 1921 with the cost of starting one today.
In 1921 there were plenty of jobs whose start-up costs were only a strong back and the ability to read and write.
Today the start-up cost to get a decent-paying job is far higher than even a few decades ago and each year it gets higher still, leaving the percentage of the population stuck behind the barrier ever larger.
No, The Republican Yuppies Didn’t Do It All Themselves
I’m sick of people whose families fed them, housed them, and clothed them into their twenties, paid part of all of their college tuition, room and board, books and other expenses who now boast about how hard they worked to become an accountant or a lawyer or real-estate developer or an IT specialist or whatever, and how poor people are poor because they don’t want to work hard like they did.
Without Their Family’s Money, Today They Would Be Working At Walmart
It was their parents’ payment of their start-up costs that got them past the barrier between themselves and a college degree. If at age eighteen they had been told that they were on their own and if you took away all the money their families spent on feeding, housing, clothing and educating them, today they would be the ones working at Walmart and Home Depot.
If You Really Wanted America To Be A Meritocracy
If you really want America to be a meritocracy then give every kid in America an aptitude test and provide those with high scores the same living expenses and education that the “I became a success through my own talent and hard work” Republican complainer got from his/her family. If you did that then many of those kids who today are stuck in dead-end jobs would themselves be the accountants, doctors, architects and computer scientists.
Today, their talent is undeveloped, wasted, because they had the bad luck to be born into a family that did not have the means to provide them with the start-up cost required to have a professional career.
America is not a meritocracy. America is a country where financial success and failure is primarily dependent on family wealth, not on talent or intelligence.
Don’t pretend otherwise.
— David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
