Posted on 03/04/2022 7:43:52 AM PST by SeekAndFind
“I think I have a better idea on how to fight inflation. Lower your costs, not your wages.” If the American people needed a reminder of just how disconnected from reality career politicians are, President Joe Biden put a magnifying glass over the permanent Washington political class during his sixty-two-minute State of The Union address Tuesday evening.
President Biden’s baseless assertion that American businesses—large and small—are indiscriminately cutting wages is far from reality on main street. In fact, Biden’s assertion was a direct insult to small business owners across the country who are fighting tooth-and-nail to remain open as we emerge from the senseless lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic.
I am a small business owner. I own and operate a number of children's swim schools. Prior to the pandemic, we were voluntarily paying our entry level team members 65% more than the required minimum wage as starting pay. We did this—not because we were forced to—we did it because we value every member of our team and the contributions each person brings to the table in order to run a successful business. In the process, we’ve created 50 jobs, overwhelmingly occupied by women, and have seen hourly team members work their way from the bottom up into full-time, salaried management positions with room to grow.
In the face of restrictive and senseless lockdowns, many businesses, including startup firms like ours, found themselves struggling to survive. Sadly, many did not. As of late 2021, an estimated additional 200,000 businesses closed for good as a result of lockdowns and restrictions. Furthermore, a survey from the National Federation of Independent Business showed that an estimated 23% of small businesses would close if economic conditions do not improve. For context, small businesses make up 99.7% of U.S. employer firms, account for 49.2% of private sector employment, and are responsible for nearly two thirds of new jobs created each year. While government relief programs tied to the pandemic bought some time for a number of businesses, they won’t be enough for many of our most important job creators if economic conditions do not change.
While it may be politically popular for those who have never held a private sector job to make false claims about real value creators in our economy, Mr. Biden’s claims are further proof of how detached Washington is from the reality on main street. One doesn’t have to own a business, nor have a business degree, to understand that a business can’t just cut costs. A business certainly can’t just cut fixed costs. That is the nature of what they are – fixed. Nor can a business simply cut variable costs, particularly in this environment, as wages are rising and material costs are up across the board. These costs continue to go up, largely due to foolish energy policy decisions and a thirty-year trend of outsourcing control of our supply chains.
As the largely preventable spike in inflation continues to impact business, it is hitting hardworking American families the hardest. According to the Joint Economic Committee, Americans are paying, on average, an extra $385 per month on gas and basic goods. They, much like American businesses, can’t simply flip a switch and cut their costs.
After decades of selling out the American middle class, it remains painfully clear that Biden and the permanent Washington political class remains clueless on what it takes to start, run and grow a business. I’m from Michigan, the birthplace of the American middle class and home to the automotive industry. Over the past thirty years, I’ve watched as Washington politicians sold out the working man and woman in the name of “globalization.” I watched as career politicians put Washington special interests ahead of their constituents, which led to the hollowing out of great American cities.
It's more important now than ever, that Americans elect leaders who understand what it means to sign the front of a paycheck and grow a private business. Biden’s reckless statement is just further evidence of this need.
Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t cast stones. In this particular case, perhaps President Joe Biden and the permanent Washington political class should perform its own cost cutting measures on reckless spending rather than falsely claiming it is American business owners who are the problem.
Biden is such an idiot.
Wages=cost .... this guy cannot be this dumb.
Where Joe Biden Has it Wrong... everything he does. It’s obvious to anyone with a common sense which is about 50% of the US.. the rest supposedly voted for the ass.
Yep. Has spent his entire adult working life as a privileged US Senator and doesn’t have any idea how a business is run.
Hey Hey Ho ho braindead Joek has got to go.
Spoken like a guy who has never run a business in his life. Payroll IS a cost.
Wages are the largest cost to any business these people are FOOLS compete idiots!!!
Businesses take Biden direction to heart. They fire workers. That cuts cost immediately.
Dimjo as a career politician has never had to meet a payroll or pay inventory tax or corporate tax or any GD thing to do with business. He only collects. I suspect, mostly from graft & corruption
I order merchandise for the distribution company where I work. Our costs are going up all over the place. Suppliers that used to raise prices once at the first of the year are now raising them in the spring and fall as well. Freight charges are going up and fuel surcharges are being added. Joe’s comments sound like something you’d see in an AOC meme.
No, actually, he is NOT an idiot. Neither are the people who are really making the decisions behind the scenes (he only does and says what he is told to do and say). The group behind the scenes actually running the country are Marxists and they are deliberately trying to collapse the system in order to re-build it under their control.
They have all of the income they need for what they want to do, or, they don't pay for some of the items/services they get because people who want influence GIVE them those things, so money or economic welfare of others is of no consideration. What they WANT is absolute and total control over people and a functional way to permanently silence opposition even if it means killing them. They are succeeding.
The place to cut costs is Black political hires. Fire them in Biden’s name
Then if you’ve got em, smoke Union employees, starting with the oldest and most rotten. Senority? Let them sue and then fire the stewards
“ Hey Hey Ho ho”
No need to bring Kameltoe into this
Dunning-Kruger is strong with Biden.
said the old fool not smart enough to understand the business model of a lemonade stand...
Don’t Cut Wages, Cut Costs
And he cut useless spending by how much?
Yes and he learned this from running what successful business?
Excellent post, grasshopper. It also applies to his staff and the Obamas, who are actually running things.
A lot of people for the last two years cut their costs by not paying their bills.
Maybe businesses could try that.
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