We need to encourage entrepreneurs of all ages who want to start all types of businesses.
For example, a friend of ours started a business creating fantastic pastries and desserts for restaurants. Her company will never go public. But she employs 8 or 9 people who probably never would be hired by a tech startup.
A couple of the big obstacles to starting a business need to be addressed:
1. Healthcare - our friend wouldn't have started her business if she didn't have coverage through her husband's employer. She couldn't afford the financial risk.
2. Intellectual property laws are a mess. Everyone on HN already knows about the patent fiasco, but the continual and unjustified extension of copyright law also presents an obstacle for some endeavors.
The economy has become much more dependent on service jobs. We're not very good at increasing the productivity of services jobs yet. How do you increase the productivity of a psychologist, artist, or even a server at a fancy restaurant?
When I first started programming, I used the hunt and peck method. Life was tedious.
Then I took a class called "One Hour to Touch Type" from the University of Washington's Experimental College. I actually learned the entire keyboard in about an hour. I practiced about 20 minutes per day for a month to become proficient.
The 10th most popular book at the Seattle Public Library is "I Stink!" by Jim and Kate Mcmullan. It's about garbage trucks in NYC and targets children ages 4-8.
Google needs Bing to be moderately successful to avoid an anti-trust lawsuit.
Bing is a win for Microsoft either way. If it gets about 30% market share, then Bing makes Microsoft money and forces Google to invest more in search. If even the largest software company after investing billions can't stop Google's growth in search, then Microsoft and others will claim that that Google is a monopoly. So it should be subject to anti-trust laws.
In the old days, when General Motors completely dominated the car industry, they made sure to keep their market share under 25%. They believed, probably correctly, that a higher share would bring anti-trust sanctions.
The data doesn't seem to agree with your supposition of runaway state spending. According to the Tax Foundation (http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/486.html), state and local spending as a percentage of income has trended downward since 1994. The overall state and local tax burden as a percentage of income was 10.4% in 1994 and 8.9% in 2008 (the last year shown in the table).
Having said that, I'm opposed to the initiative. WA needs fundamental tax reform including replacing the B&O tax with a value added tax as well as changes to reduce the regressivity of the state tax system. The initiative is a band-aid.
We were in Ashland,OR for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival a few years ago. The public radio station repeatedly said they were located in "the mythical state of Jefferson".
Medicare, not Social Security, is the primary problem. Social Security's problems can be resolved using a similar adjustment like that done in the 80's. Push out the retirement age and there is no problem.
Medicare and healthcare costs are an enormous problem. Expect a combination of tax increases, benefit cuts, and means testing. If Congress finally acts to eliminate waste, the growth in healthcare costs can be slowed.
For some queries, Wolfram Alpha is excellent. As mentioned in other comments, Wolfram's marketing sucks not the search engine.
Like all potentially disruptive products, it meets the needs of a particular niche well, For example, try "population density" in W-A and Google. Be sure to click on the "More" links to expand W-A's results. Amazing.
Over time Google may have a problem. I'm using Twitter for real-time search, W-A where it's strong, and even using Live.com when Google doesn't return meaningful results.
"To qualify as a small business, the corporation, when the stock is issued, may not have gross assets exceeding $50 million (including the proceeds of the newly issued stock) and may not be an S corporation."