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We know and share in the pain that fluctuating energy costs and gas prices and a decade of rising prices for groceries and other costs of living have inflicted on our nation and region.
A Center Square article in Tuesday's edition of the Williamsport Sun-Gazette offered some good news: The United States has seen nearly 3.5 million new businesses open for the first six months of 2026.
As we've noted in past editorials, businesses, new and existing alike, create the jobs necessary for families to support themselves -- to live, to lead our communities to their best chance of vitality.
New businesses can reinvigorate neighborhoods and offer new approaches and techniques that revitalize entire fields. America's success -- and many of the successes we've seen in our own region -- have been pioneered by this tumult natural to free markets.
Beyond how businesses have contributed to our communities' and nation's opportunities, we believe the work ethic of men and women pursuing their own dreams, ambitions and aspirations is worthy of praise and worth hoping for every success.
None of our praise for what these businesses -- and all businesses -- hope to accomplish diminishes the very real challenges that the cost of living places on families.
But we still believe their successes and accomplishments will only make addressing these challenges easier for our communities. We believe a realistic approach to the burdens of taxation, government spending and regulation will help new and existing businesses -- job creators -- improve their odds of success -- which in turn will allow our communities the growth and development necessary for lasting successes themselves.
The successes of businesses and communities are intertwined. We often are surprised and perhaps unsettled that such an obvious truth needs stated -- but skepticism about the nature of free markets and the effectiveness of job creation as an economic engine too often seems to resurface.
And so, while being mindful of the strains recent years have placed on families' budgets, we still encourage everyone to feel at least a little optimism about new businesses creating new jobs and meeting consumers' needs and to hope for their successes -- and the opportunities those successes in turn will create.