A very common thing for politicians to say is that they promise to save hundreds of jobs by keeping the paper mill, or the army base in town. Which is a very respectable goal, but they do seem to be missing something big. The majority of Americans don’t work at large factories, but at small businesses. Setting laws to be more favorable to small business, and making it easier to start a business would end up creating more jobs than a new mill.
Yes, but small businesses don’t donate nearly as much to politicians, and don’t put nearly the same effort or resources into lobbying, as big businesses.
I hear politicians talk about small businesses and boast about making things easier for them all the time.
The question is redonkulous. I can’t even count how many government support programs there are to aid small businesses, from the Small Business Administration, to tax credits for small businesses to help on costs like health care, to carve-outs that exempt small businesses from many regulations, to all the various contract set-asides that dictate that certain contracts can only be bid on by small businesses.
I just looked at the issues section of the campaign website of my incumbent senator, running for re-election this year, and small businesses are literally the first thing mentioned under “jobs,” which is itself the very first issue listed.
I hear about small businesses so much that I just treat it as a buzzword. Everybody is for them and wants to help them, and the other guy is always hurting them. (And the definition of “small business” is so loose that there are always figures massaged to advance whatever agenda is being hidden being the small businesses.)
I’m just waiting for our politicians to finally thank our troops for their service.
Hardly.
I think the bigger issue is that where saving the mill or base and keeping hundreds of people employed is a clear, discrete thing that can be done and visualized, helping “small business” isn’t nearly so clear cut- what helps Joe’s Sub Shop on 1st street may or may not be the same policy that helps Laverne’s Hair Salon on Avenue B, and the policies that might help each of them, may not help Hank the painting contractor.
So they try to do more catch-all things that would help all small businesses- better loans, certain regulation exemptions and other basic stuff that should in theory help everyone.
And then the results are harder to measure, because exempting a small business from certain tax filing rules, or something like that doesn’t directly translate into the saving of X many jobs, for example.
Yet despite all that, politicians seem very sensitive to small businesses, even if they trumpet the big-ticket successes as loud as they possibly can, because those are tangible successes that are easily understood.
A lot of the large donors that hit the donor cap are small businessmen.
Just as long as we don’t forget that, if you have a business, you didn’t build it. You also didn’t pay the taxes for the government infrastructure that did.
Regards,
Shodan
Most government handouts go to big business. They crow a lot about the small business programs but the lion’s share of the dough goes to the lions. Just last week a report surfaced here in Ontario showing that of the $5 billion a year spend on business handouts, eighty percent goes to very large businesses, much of which was simply given away. Almost none goes to tryly small business (e.g. under $1 million in annual gross.) In one hilarious case, a big networking company got $16 million in handouts. The company, Sandvine, which was making so much money it was starting a share buyback program, then paid out about $16 million in dividends to its shareholders. And they’re nothing. Ontario has paid $220 million to Cisco Systems, of all people. The story’s the same in any state or province, I assure you.
I could have personally handed out that $16 million to small businesses I know of that would actually be saved from bad situations and grow their business.
Yes, politicians will go on and on about small business; in practice, however, small businesses are generally left to die. Shockingly, what politicians say and what they do are often at odds.
The reason this happens is what bump said; a large business whose name is known is a visible thing a politician can take credit for. Give a billion dollars to GM to “save jobs” and everyone knows what you did, especially in the town GM has a plant. Give a billion dollars to 2,000 small businesses you have never heard of and no one notices.
This isn’t true in my state ,Ma. ! When the sale taxes was increase the small businesses said this was going to hurt them b/c people will drive to
tax free NH which is 10 minutes drive to get to. The small liquid stores weren’t happy about this at all. I went to Home Depot in NH and I was told they are getting more shoppers from MA b/c of the our tax increase . Politicians don’t give a crap about small businesses here .
So, are small businesses dying? Help educate me.
I just googled some stats on small business, and I’m not seeing a huge problem. Small business starts are up by something like 25% over the last few years, the survival rate of small businesses is up, bankruptcies are down… I’m not seeing a systemic problem with small businesses at this point in time. What, exactly, is the problem that needs to be fixed?
I own a small business, and I don’t have a department of “applying for government handouts” or the time to do it myself or the handout in relative terms is so small it’s not worth the hassle or some liberal is misconstruing a tax break as a handout. $220 million is a lot of money and worth Cisco’s time to get it. But to my business it would be $2200 and not worth my effort to pursue.
Most small businesses are very small. The SBA defines small businesses as pretty large, in some cases over 1000 employees. Very small businesses can’t afford to bribe federal level politicians, and rarely can coordinate a large enough bloc to have any effect. They are the equivalent of the individual citizen among the businesses.
Wow. Those are strong words. It’s almost like you’re trying to parody someone who actually said those things. Which, as anyone with basic reading and critical thinking skills knows, no one did.
Just, yanno, sayin.
What Obama said was that small businesses didn’t build roads and bridges. Which is true.
And their children. And their children’s children.
Well, the problem is that too much money is being handed out to big businesses. I never said it should be given to small businesses.
The OP asked why small businesses get ignored, and I helped to answer the question. I am not saying all the money should be given to them. It should for the most part not be given out at all.
I’ve known a dozen businesses or more who got money from this:
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/txcrdt/sred-rsde/menu-eng.html
In every case - every one, no exceptions - it was total bullshit. Nothing they were doing really constituted “Scientific research or experimental development.” Nothing was even close. In not one single case, ever, have I ever encountered a company that incurred a SRED-claimed expense they would not have incurred anyway in the course of doing normal business; they just saw the gravy tap and figured they might as well classify some expenses as “research” to get free money. For $25,000 you can hire a consultant - usually a former government employee - who will wordsmith it for you so you qualify and get $50,000 in tax credits. Every year the government hands out $4 billion in tax credits for these claims. The marginal return the country gets is, I’m guessing, unmeasurably small.
Small, medium or large business, it’s wasted.
Actually, while right at half of U.S. private-sector employment is at “small businesses,” the definition of small business is sufficiently malleable that the paper mill may well qualify.
Any manufacturing plant that employs less than 500 people, e.g., is a small business by the government’s definition; a paper mill may employ up to 1250 before it loses that status, so keeping 300 jobs at the mill IS helping small business. In a few industries, such as telecommunications and oil/gas , 1500 employees qualifies as “small business.” Summary of size standards.
Only a tiny percentage of Americans, perhaps no more than one or two percent, actually work at what we usually think of as mom-and-pop enterprises. In 2010, e.g., of the 28 million small businesses in the United States, three-quarters had no W-2 employees at all, and just over half (52%) were based out of somebody’s home. Most were probably sidelines: the lady who sells Avon to supplement her income, or the electrician who does side-work in addition to his day job.
And recognize that the money I have is “hard-earned”…
But I also contest the OP’s premise, most Americans are either employed at what we would normally think of as “mid-to-large-sized businesses”, or small businesses that are critically dependent on large businesses to survive (see article).