[EBH]

I think it is worrying as it indicates a lack of entrepreneurship and innovation.

[Nachum]

I think it is worrying as it indicates a lack of entrepreneurship and innovation.

And it represents the destructive influence of government policy on the same.

[OneWingedShark]

I think it is worrying as it indicates a lack of entrepreneurship and innovation.

I believe you're right; however, I am inclined to think these are symptoms rather than causes.
The causes are, I think, a combination of the following:

1. Confiscatory taxation — there is little incentive to make when there is no profit in it.
2. [De-]Motivation — it used to be that you could start at the bottom and work your way up; this is rapidly becoming untrue [at least in tech].
   I think a lot of it has to things like software patents and intellectual property — one friend I have left Google because they were trying to get him to sign on a new contract that would have made his own years-long research [starting years before they hired him] their intellectual property. (And anything else he produced in his free-time.)
3. Male-Despising Society (Institutionalized Misandry)
   We now live in a society where being male is liability, frowned upon and, if we're honest, despised — this extends to those 'male' attributes like logical-thinking. We can see the disregard here easily in the legal-system where in order to challenge a statute which is on-its-face contrary to the Constitution requires you to violate the statute and thereby implicitly acknowledge its authority, and are forced to the weakened position of the accused.
4. Cronyism
   Why play the game when the rules are changed to favor the special and punish the little guys?

[Grams A]

I think it is worrying as it indicates a lack of entrepreneurship and innovation.”

I used to have a mid-sized company but costs kept increasing so started downsizing to total of two. Impossible to grow beyond a certain point without increasing staff but I make a lot more money than I did when it was larger. Many friends in their early 50’s who absolutely cannot afford not to work have started their own cottage type businesses when they were phased out by the larger corporations.

There are lots of little niches out there to fill. It would be interesting to see exactly how much these types of businesses have increased over the past ten years. It definitely is the era to be creative, at least in this aspect of business.

[discostu]

I think there’s still plenty of entrepreneurship but the goal is different. Where once people started companies that they wanted to last forever now they’re starting companies that they want to sell. A favorite business plan, especially in tech, is take 5 years to get a good footprint and get bought before 10.