“Firm entry” means new startup companies. “Firm exit” means the companies are gone. The two lines crossed about 2008, during the time of Republican President George W. Bush. Then “firm exits” kept going upward under Democratic President Obama, outpacing “firm entries,” meaning more businesses were being killed than created.

Partisan control of the U.S. House and Senate also flipped a couple times during this period.

So it’s a bipartisan disaster.

The Brookings study also looked at states. There’s an interactive map here.

California performed among the worst, with a 50 percent decline in new firm creation during the 30 years. This used to be the state of Intel and Apple, of HP and Fairchild Semiconductor.  Sure, we still enjoy such recent startups as Google and Twitter (Facebook started in Massachusetts). But the overall number of startups has gone down.

Yet other states have done but little better. Arch-rival Texas had 36 percent fewer startups. So they can say, “We were terrible, but not as bad as California.”

The “best” state was New York, a high-tax and high-regulation state like California. But its startups dropped “only” 18 percent.

California could lead the way back to leadership in startups by slashing taxes and regulations, by getting rid of zoning to make housing and business property more affordable, by putting a welcoming mat down to business and jobs creation — by all around being friendly toward business instead of clubbing business on the head.

Will it?

Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Over the years I’ve written many times how it  remains a mystery that the state that continues to produce the Internet Revolution can’t get its government computers to work right. That pretty much tells you all you need to know about how the public and private sectors operate. The private sector innovates, the public sector is incompetent.

About 15 years ago I wrote about how the state wasted something like $70 million on a computer system that didn’t work. Things haven’t gotten better, as Dan Walters notes:

When State Auditor Elaine Howle excoriated the state court system for mismanaging a very expensive computer system this month, it was a new chapter in an old and sad saga.

California, the home of cutting edge technology, has a very checkered history of using it effectively for government.

The “statewide case management project,” managed by the Administrative Office of the Courts, is the current poster child for rising costs and questionable utility.

Its costs, Howle noted, have escalated sharply and now are expected to hit $1.9 billion by the time it’s completed four years hence – not counting tens of millions of more that local courts will have to spend to use it. Meanwhile, many local judges are complaining that it doesn’t work well and is consuming funds that would be better spent offsetting budget-related cutbacks in court operations.

This is occurring in a state that houses the HQ of Apple, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Intel, etc.

Here’s an idea. Why don’t we just abolish the state government, and let these competent high-tech firms run things?

Feb. 18, 2011