3% of all business owners make 84% of all private biz income. Why? They’re not covering for unknown weaknesseses.
Why small business is fed up with government
Both sides are addicted to Big.
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This article was published on April 10, 2011. So far, 4 people have left their thoughts. Share your own thoughts.
What really grinds the gears of small business owners is the near-complete inattention by lawmakers on who creates jobs.
So said Kimble Fletcher Ainslie in a Cato Institute article from December 20, 2001 titled “Bush Ignores Small Business.”
Eight years later under a different president, Catherine Clifford’s article in CNNMoney.com on September 30, 2009 continued the criticism of lawmakers ignoring small business:
Business owners really bring out the pitchforks when they consider the speed with which billions of dollars were distributed to large Wall Street firms and banks. That is what sticks in the small business owner’s throat more than anything.
Banks received $700 billion dollars in handouts in October 2008, with almost no regulations or restrictions. In February 2009, big businesses and big state governments received $787 billion, an incomprehensible $1.5 trillion total dollars. General Motors alone received $30 billion dollars when they would not have qualified for a credit card.
The top job provider in the U.S. economy is businesses under 10 employees. Those with 11-19 employees are second. Seventy-nine percent (79%) of all businesses in America have less than 10 employees.
In February 2009 while big businesses and big state governments were receiving $787 billion, the politicians threw a $255 million bone to small businesses in the form of the SBA ARC loan program, providing a potential $35,000 for a business that could get one. That’s 2/100th of one percent of the $1.5 trillion dedicated to the single largest job growth sector in our economy. While giant banks and corporations got handouts and bailouts many times in just a few days, the first ARC loan didn’t get processed until June 2009, five months later. By December 2009, only 45% of that tiny amount had been loaned.
Adding insult to injury, in December 2009, Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, a self-proclaimed small business advocate, introduced legislation to kill the program and return the remaining 55% back to the Treasury immediately.
Small business owners are not fed up with the government because they don’t get handouts. They are fed up with the symbiotic, parasitic relationship between politicians, big business and big banks. It’s hard enough to grow a small business. Swimming upstream against the constant deluge of advantages, handouts, bailouts, special loan programs and preferential treatment given to big businesses is the real rub.
The mis-named Small Business Administration is of no help. When the SBA was created in 1953 the big business lobby got their political friends to define small business as any business with under 500 employees, which is 99.94% of all businesses in America (only 17,000 of 28 million are larger than 500 employees). It’s like calling everyone under 7′ tall “short”. So it’s no surprise that almost all of the SBA’s attention is on businesses that are 6-7′ tall. Businesses under 5′ 4″ aren’t on the radar. So even with the SBA, true small businesses are on the outside looking in.
In 2009 Australia passed the Fair Work Act, legally defining a small business as having fewer than 15 employees. A similar law in the U.S. would be a good start. Then small business needs the creation of a real SBA, not so they can get handouts, too, but so they have a seat at the table to level out what has been an un-level playing field for decades.
The big business-big government parasitic relationship has been exposed by this last recession. It’s time to put an end to all the patronage that goes between the two of them, all to the detriment of true small businesses.
Add Your Own
Thoughts
Jan Rossi
04/18/11
Totally agree with your words and tone and everything! The big boys play in their ocean while the small business people are doing their own thing in a pond. All tax incentives and hand outs go to the big boys. Our system is so incredibly out of whack. I feel sorry for our elected Representatives that go to Washington to try and fix this and repeatedly get squashed. When will this end? It is a sad state we are in….people still can’t get over the hand outs to the Wall Street firms….it’s a dark cloud….GREAT POST!
Rich Anderson
04/18/11
On the mark Chuck!
Chuck
04/18/11
Jan,
Great question “When will this end?” I’ve been asked a number of times by different political parties to run, but as you mentioned, well-intentioned Reps head for Washington all the time and get sidetracked by all the shiny objects.
The way we’re going to fix this is from the outside in, so we don’t have to play the “give me your vote and I’ll give you mine” nonsense. This has to be an uprising of small business owners against both sides who are both addicted to their own pet versions of big.
And regarding your comment – “people still can’t get over the handouts” to the bigs – the politicians handed us our best opportunity with that, because never before has it been made so obvious that the bigs are in bed with each other – the handouts exposed it like no other single act in our history. We can use that and the continuing self-absorbed actions since then to get this fixed.
To0 big a problem? Not at all, says Gandhi: – “Anyone who thinks they are too small to make a difference hasn’t been to bed with a mosquito.”
Bob
08/16/11
Is it just me or have we (sadly) just lost faith or rather belief that we CAN make a difference here? Repeatedly I see these same decisions being made that benefit the big companies as you have pointed out.
I guess my real question is how…how can we fix this from the outside in? What does this uprising look like?
As I look around and consider real businesses doing “everything they can to just barely make it” I get the impression they too have lost faith and they too do not believe they have the power to make a difference.
I want you to know I am not putting down this post at all, but when I read posts like this that bring up this issue (of government doing the right thing for businesses) I have three thoughts/feelings:
1) So true.
2) It’s frustrating. The problem feels hopeless.
3) What can we do?
In other words….what does a mosquito bite look like?
Chuck
08/16/11
Bob,
Great question. For each of us, the mosquito bite looks like proactively going to the House Rep and Senator from our area and taking this message to them, and not letting them simply say “we’ll look into that”.
Require a response; what they did to fix it, how they will keep it happening in the future, and most importantly, demand that they take a clear, written stance on defense of small business against the kind of regulations that regularly benefit their big business buddies while hurting small business.
Be a bull dog – don’t let them smooth talk you and assuage you with “future” talk – we’re going to someday do something, blah, blah, blah. Politicians have gotten very used to simply saying things they have no intention of doing, largely because they find we have a short memory and if they give us a platitude, we walk away and forget. Don’t accept political speak or platitudes – get them to sign on to being part of the solution and require that they give you something in writing as to how they will be that solution.
If we keep the pressure on, they will slowly begin to respond. It will be VERY slow because the “bigs” have so much to protect – they’re not going to give it up easily. One mosquito bite at a time!