By Steve Deam, Sr.
In this age of class warfare and widespread desire to blame the greedy “rich” for a failure of capitalism, I think it’s very important that we do not count the small business owner as part of the perceived problem. The average small business owner that I know has worked tirelessly to build up their business. Additionally, in most cases they have risked everything to take a chance on building a successful business. According to a study by the U.S. Small Business Association, only 2/3 of all small business startups survive the first two years and less than half make it to four years. The risks are very real.
Although the current administration seems determined to treat individuals making $200K or more as “rich”, I thought it would be useful to demonstrate a few typical annual incomes with a bar chart. And yes, the following chart is drawn accurately to scale.
The left most bar, which you can just barely see represents a typical employee earning from $35,000 to $70,000 annually. The next bar, which is still barely visible represents the annual income of the typical small business owner. Now, compare those incomes to those of big company CEO’s, movie stars, sports stars, etc. It is easy to see that most small business owners make only marginally more than their average employees.
People like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs are so far off the chart it’s not even funny!
Given the fact that small businesses account for 70% of new job creation, wouldn’t it make sense for the government to help small business owners expand and create jobs?
While politicians love to give lip service to helping the real job creators – small business, unfortunately just the opposite is happening. Small businesses are experiencing cost increases from every direction including; taxes, health care, energy, regulations, and many other areas. Meanwhile, Wall Street big businesses export jobs all around the world while enjoying all sorts of tax breaks as a result of spending millions of dollars on lobbying! Is it any wonder unemployment is continuing to hover over 9%?
If we want to play the blame game, let’s make sure we are blaming the real source of our problems – Big Government and Wall Street! Not only are they the source of our problems, they hold all of the power to do anything about it. Unfortunately, it is in their best interest to continue with the status quo!
If we ever want to turn things around in America it is essential that we elect people who have real-life business experience and have demonstrated that they want to change the way things work in Washington. What we suffer from more than anything as a nation is corruption from the top down! And I’m speaking of both parties…
Ultimately it is my sincere belief that a good job will always take care of people better than the government can. I suggest we support the real job creators – small business! We’re not looking for bailouts, we simply want Government to get out of our way and let us do what we do best – grow our business and create jobs!