Would better social services result in more self-employment and lower unemployment?
Today on another thread, a claim was made in the comments that the US venture capital system (and capital system in general) was the best in all the world. In the OP it was noted that tech development in partnership with venture capital is responsible for 11% of all private sector jobs. So, are VCs the "job creators"? 11% of private sector jobs seems not insignificant.
In the same thread, it was also hypothesized that a richer set of social services might result in higher rates of self-employment. This does seem to be the case. If we look at the OECD survey of self-employment rates -- guess who is second to last? The US -- with 7% of the workforce being self-employed. On the other hand, the UK has 13.9% of the workforce self-employed. And that is a percentage of the entire workforce (presumably private and public).
Current evidence seems to be that the "job creators" are not creating jobs -- this is well trodden territory here -- record corporate profits are not resulting in more employment (not to mention the quality of the jobs that are to be had).
So why not empower people to work for themselves? The US is the second to worst of the OECD in rate of self-employment. Would more generous social services -- even as meager as the ACA -- result in higher rates of self-employment -- and lower rates of unemployment? We would only need to grow the self-employment rate by 2 or 3 percent to make a big dent in the overall unemployment rate. It seems like the government could be the real job creator -- by making it possible for individuals to work for themselves -- and isn't independence and making it on your own one of the core right-wing principles? Shouldn't they be supporting this too?