Posted on 09/14/2010 5:04:02 PM PDT by Kaslin
It is taken as gospel among politicians of both parties that small business is the engine of job creation. "We're starting with small businesses because that's where most of the new jobs do," President Obama said earlier this year. "Small businesses are the job generator of America," echoed Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain.
They're in good company. George W. Bush and John Kerry, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan have all made that claim. Only one problem: These assertions are overblown and simplistic. Take it from a reliable source — the chief economist for the Small Business Administration. "It's not true," Zoltan Acs told me when I asked about whether small business is, in fact, the engine of job creation. "It's half the story."
Small businesses are job creators; they are also job destroyers, as firms fail. Most startups do: About 40% of jobs created by startups are eliminated in the first five years. Meanwhile, established small businesses — your neighborhood dry cleaners — don't generate many new jobs.
The chief source of small-business job creation comes from a mere handful of firms — the "gazelles," in the evocative term of economist David Birch — that start small and prosper. The difficulty is that the gazelles among the herd can only been seen in the rear-view mirror.
And existing firms that change with the times and expand are another major source of new jobs, a phenomenon that the bipartisan fetishization of small business studiously ignores.
This conventional wisdom about small business was once revolutionary. About 30 years ago, Birch reported that small businesses were responsible for somewhere between two-thirds and four-fifths of net new jobs (jobs created minus jobs lost).
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
The government and the elite prefer that we work for large corporations over having or working for a small business. Working for a large corporation, it is easier to control the masses.
Gads......how does this idiot find her feet?
So here’s a question - if you believe small businesses don’t drive hiring, or matter, who does? Now we’re back to the big coporations you hate. SOMEBODY has to do it.
WHY does IBD have that lunatic lefty, Ruth Marcus, writing for them.
Carter...... Really? I would have never guessed that he led the pack.
What do you mean if I believe small businesses don’t drive hiring? It’s that leftwing lunatic who wrote the column, that doesn’t.
The mission of the SBA is to promote small businesses because they are weak and weepy and deficient and needy. With that view of small businesses of course they are not the engine of this economy. I would like to see but have not yet seen the numbers on small businesses that do not require SBS support to prosper.
The token idiot column. It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta’ do it.
So I guess 90% taxes are good then?
I think smalltown was referring to Ruth Marcus, not you.
Sorry, that’s just the way the post came up. It’s of course directed to whoever wrote it.
In the big social economies in Europe or Russia etc. you end up with very close relationships between major firms and government. Government is influenced and shaped by these firms and vice versa, but the playing field is hardly level anymore because the regulators, the laws, tax code etc is all created with the “big boys” on the table and the little guy being left out.
The US economy historically was a small to medium sized world, with near 2/3rds of all employed people working in these businesses.
I’ll tell you what’s “overrated” when it comes to “Job Creation”... it’s spending on Public Works, roads, etc. These are almost all done by union firms, or those paying union scale. The employment numbers are fairly inelastic. Budgeting more money for this stuff is more likely to stretch out the timeline than it is to result in greater employment as there are only so many qualified firms.
That is the Democrat “game plan” for stimulating the economy and it is a sick joke.
I'm all for small businesses, because that's how large businesses start out. But from what I have read and heard Zoltan Acs is probably right.
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