Nina Easton?s latest Fortune column explains the importance of entrepreneurial risk taking for the future of the American economy:

We shouldn’t forget that daredevils start companies, and startups produce jobs. A July 2010 study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation asserts that “startups aren’t everything when it comes to job growth. They’re the only thing.” Existing firms, Kauffman asserts, are “net job destroyers.”

A parenthetical note from Easton reminds us that ?risk? must mean ?risk.?

(Risk must be paired with consequences, something that Americans fundamentally understand: You take a risk, you fail, you don’t get bailed out. The root of Tea Party anger was not about risk taking per se, but about the fact that taxpayers were called on to underwrite the failures of reckless bankers and overleveraged homebuyers.)

Easton?s basic point about risk is one that should be familiar to readers in this forum, who have read about the need for government policies that help convince entrepreneurs that it makes sense to take economic risks.