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The economy is only a little better than it was when Obama left office. So right now the economy is part of the cycle that started long before Trump came into office but Trump supporters want people to believe that the economy just magically started to improve suddenly when Trump became president. The truth is that Trump inherited the long improving economy that was well underway during the Obama years which included 70+ months of private sector job growth. Obama, on the other hand, inherited the worst recession since the depression which officially started on December 2007 and ended on June 2009 according to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) which is the organization that determines the start and end dates of recessions (of course end dates of recessions don’t signal the end of a struggling economy). Early in Obama’s first term they passed the Stimulus that helped end the recession which created up to 3.3 million jobs according to the CBO. University of Chicago (no bastion of liberal economy thinking at least historically) did at least two surveys of economists on the stimulus and the vast majority concluded that the stimulus did work. The vast majority of Republicans bashed the stimulus in the national press and voted against it but at the same time many of these same Republicans either took credit for parts of the stimulus or wrote letters asking for more stimulus money.So to summarize, the economy is only slightly better than it was when Obama left office and the current economy has little to do with Trump. It was during the Obama administration where the heavy lifting was really being done with the stimulus to help get us out of the worst recession since the depression. We would have gotten out of the recession anyway since there are always cycles in the economy but it would have been a slower recovery.

There have been a lot of studies published by economists out of their own college departments on The Seattle Minimum Wage Experiment.When you publish out of your own department, you have a significant amount of freedom because your team will be the only ones reviewing your own work before it is published.A more comprehensive and professional analysis was released by The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which is seen as the gold-standard in economic research.The abstract reads:Using administrative employment data from the state of Washington, we use short-duration longitudinal panels to study the impact of Seattle’s minimum wage ordinance on individuals employed in low-wage jobs immediately before a wage increase. We draw counterfactual observations using nearest-neighbor matching and derive effect estimates by comparing the “treated” cohort to a placebo cohort drawn from earlier data. We attribute significant hourly wage increases and hours reductions to the policy. On net, the minimum wage increase from $9.47 to as much as $13 per hour raised earnings by an average of $8-$12 per week. The entirety of these gains accrued to workers with above-median experience at baseline; less-experienced workers saw no significant change to weekly pay. Approximately one-quarter of the earnings gains can be attributed to experienced workers making up for lost hours in Seattle with work outside the city limits. We associate the minimum wage ordinance with an 8% reduction in job turnover rates as well as a significant reduction in the rate of new entries into the workforce.Emphasis added.For the complete paper: Minimum Wage Increases and Individual Employment Trajectories (2018)Remarkably, I’ve noticed in the Democratic debates that they are still arguing about increasing the minimum wage, when that appears to be a method which is contrary to its purpose— it harms low skill, low wage workers and benefits higher-skilled workers only by causing them to supplement their income with work outside of the area with the higher minimum wage rate.We have known this from pure theory for quite some time, but only in the last few years did we have payroll data of a sufficient quality to conclude on the matter.P.S., if you’re going to share someone else’s study (even if it’s published out of someone’s own economics department), please at least read it in its entirety first, because most of these are using an old method to estimate the effects on aggregate, while Jardim, et al. used the actual wage data to compute the real effects.

Once there was a 50-year-old farmer in Florida.He had a large pond down by his fruit orchard. One evening he decided to go down to the pond and take a five-gallon bucket to pick some fruit.As he neared the pond, he heard female voices shouting and laughing with glee. As he came closer he saw a bunch of young women skinny-dipping in the pond.He made the women aware of his presence and they all went to the deep end. One of the women shouted to him, 'We're not coming out until you leave!'The old man thought for a second and said, 'I didn't come down here to watch you ladies swim or to make you get out of the pond naked.'Holding the bucket up he said, 'I'm here to feed the alligator!'We become wiser as we grow older.That’s one of the reasons why senior managers make great founders.They are usually focused on achieving relevant metrics rather than building “the greatest product ever”.They have 10, 15, 20 years worth of connections. Pair that with deep industry knowledge and you have the resources to fight the most common entrepreneurial pitfalls.Age also gives you a higher sense of self-worth. You start paying less and less attention to what other people think about you. That enables you to start taking chances and risks you would otherwise hold back from.Here’s some data to back up that if you are over 40 there’s still hope for you:Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research and MIT shows that accumulated decades of professional experience in a given sector make a difference.Source: NBERMore so, people who had been previously employed in their startup’s sector were not 10% or 15% more likely to see either high growth or a successful exit of their own startup but a whopping 125%!In another interesting study, we also see that in the US 40% of founders were leaders in the corporate world before starting a new business. Close to 29% were previously ranked anywhere from Director to CEO according to Harvard Business School.So to answer your question: No. Over 50 is not too old to be an entrepreneur.Odds are, you’re in the best position to succeed you have ever been.You are wiser, more focused, have better connections and already know how your industry works.It’s time to make it happen.If you want to dig a bit deeper into why senior managers make great founders and how they can improve, I recommend a quick read of this article.Also, I found the farmer’s story here.Thanks for the A2A, Rick Ewart. It was a nice one. :)