The U.S. government is shutdown at the moment and it costs the U.S. government money and everyone else! Tourism and airline revenues are greatly affected by this shutdown. U.S. passports can’t be issued during this shutdown resulting in millions of visitors turned away with 368 National Park Services closed too. 200,000 applications for U.S passports are put to a halt reducing the revenues for tourism. The government shutdown also affects startup businesses as loans from the government have to wait. This whole government shutdown prevents economic growth as it does not provide a fertile ground for startups and most of all it removes people from work as 31% of government services are shutdown. As long as the Congress is in a dispute, the U.S. is in somewhat of a standstill which increases the cost as potential revenues are not capitalized on and increases the unemployment rate. The saying, “Time is Money” is extremely relevant to this situation as the longer this shutdown lasts, the higher the cost. As a result, this puts the U.S. at risk to defaulting its debt which affects the whole global economy and may tip the U.S. into a recession. We can see that the government has a significant impact on businesses and daily lives.

The United States are known for groundbreaking startups such as Google, Youtube, Apple, and Microsoft. These U.S. companies wouldn’t have started without having risk-prone leaders who took a chance with their idea. However, the culture in Germany is very risk-adverse. Under 50% of Germans think that creating a business is an attractive idea. It’s intriguing how the tolerance of risk changes with geographical location; as a result, it greatly affects business decisions. Business creation in Germany is lagging behind the United States as many German venture capitalists have a general fear of failure as they invest more selectively and expect propositions to break even within 18 months. In addition, Germany does not innovate because it focuses on the industries it excels in like the car industry resulting in a trade surplus. Even with low unemployment, why take risks? Innovation is a cost in the balance sheet that can skyrocket making it a very risky proposition. A risk-adverse environment is not the right breeding ground for innovation resulting in a lack of innovation in Germany. Overall, we can see that a country’s culture can greatly affect business decisions, like Germany, and create barriers in business start-ups and innovation.