Stimulating Entrepreneurs

What’s the best way to haul ourselves out of the economic pit that rampant deregulation got us into? More deregulation! That, at least, is the suggestion in today’s (surprise) Wall Street Journal. Tom Hayes and Michael S. Malone say the biggest problem with President Obama’s stimulus is that it leaves out “anything more than token support for the long-proven source of most new jobs and new growth in America: entrepreneurs.” The way to do so, they say, is to “kill Sarbanes-Oxley,” the regulatory act created in the aftermath of the scandals at Enron and WorldCom. Also: kill the payroll tax and let businesses fund their own retirement accounts because, if anything, this crisis has proven we can trust the private sector with our nest eggs.