Immigration, Bankruptcy, Startups and the Economy

Lost in the immigration debate is a great point that Paul Graham illustrates quite nicely. Namely that our entire immigration policy is based on the idea that skilled labor should come here and work for some company.

Let's lay out a very basic groundwork

1) All companies were startups at one point
2) Startups are generally the leaders in innovation
3) Startups and small businesses in general represent the vast majority of jobs

We should be doing all we can to encourage startups...

We should relax immigration requirements... particularly in cases where someone wants to form a company here...
We should relax bankruptcy standards... I'm a banker and I can still say this... Bankruptcy laws allow people to feel like there life won't be over if they fail at a startup... that's a damn good safety net...
We should have a tax structure that incentivizes both the startup and the investors putting money into the startup... The means a small business friendly tax code (which we generally have) and reasonable capital gains rates on investments...

I'm sure that's a very unusual way to think about some of these issues but it's a very important way to think about them as well...