Job openings are up, the unemployment rate is down, and the overall economic picture is clearly better. So everything’s grand, right? Not so fast. Jim Clifton is the CEO of Gallup, who in a recent article outlined some important factors being overlooked that don’t bode well for the long-term economic outlook. “You never see it mentioned in the media, nor hear from a politician that, for the first time in 35 years, American business deaths now outnumber business births,” warned Clifton. “Four hundred thousand new businesses are being born annually nationwide, while 470,000 per year are dying.” Indeed, politicos on both sides of the aisle focus too much on the headline unemployment rate rather than long-term volatile factors like the historically low labor participation rate and business creation. Opines Clifton, “My hunch is that no one talks about the birth and death rates of American business because Wall Street and the White House, no matter which party occupies the latter, are two gigantic institutions of persuasion. … I don’t want to sound like a doomsayer, but when small and medium-sized businesses are dying faster than they’re being born, so is free enterprise. And when free enterprise dies, America dies with it. Let’s get one thing clear: This economy is never truly coming back unless we reverse the birth and death trends of American businesses.” That would entail Washington unleashing the regulatory shackles. More…