The Obama speech today was really interesting, and imo hopeful. In particular, he suggesed that small businesses be taxed at zero capital gains!!! If true, and all the potential loopholes are worked around, I see a future where companies are extremely agile (a concept from computer science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development) and they are smallish on the order of 1 to 100 employees. The only problem I see is that some projects, like drug discovery, are extremely risky and mostly can only be born by megalith corporations. Maybe I am wrong about that. Maybe this is the duality that we seek - large corporations are a partner with government to take on risks. Small corporations have no direct government partnership and therefore are very risky, but are incentivized by not being taxed. I think this is exciting.
LOL. Yeah, those big anti-tax, pro-business democrats, leading the charge. That'll be the day. Don't get me wrong, I'd supoprt the idea. Just like I'd support reducing government, which is even more likely than this.
In the last 40 years, many legitimate and successful small businesses have been killed by Wall Street backed overleveraged conglomerates and subsidized/lopsided global trade. Well guess what? Wall street can't fund these monoliths like it used to. And global trade is collapsing - as soon as oil goes to 150+, gobal trade will experience another wallop due to transport costs killing profit margins. The dinosaurs will have to give in to the small mammals again. I bet that in the next decade or so, localism and small businesses will reign again. Food, manufacturing, etc... will become more and more localized as costs to transport skyrocket and banking no longer funds many behemoth businesses that engage in products/services that can just as easily be made locally. I welcome it.
"In particular, he suggesed that small businesses be taxed at zero capital gains!!!" i never heard the speech but capital gains has almost no effect on most small business until they decide to retire and sell out.
Didn't hear the speech (never do), but sounds like a hopeful, empty suggestion. Most small businesses are not public and have no traded stock... the concept of "capital gains" barely, if at all, appplies to them.
Just so that we are all talking about the same thing: http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/SmallBusinessFINAL.pdf
Obama has never been short on hopefulness. The only problem is that Obama's hope does not become reality. Selling hope is pretty easy because its cheap and everyone has their own hopes and dreams. Actually delivering those hopes is what greatness is all about and Obama has totally failed on the delivery. Not to worry, when Obama fails on this, it will be somebody else's fault as is always the case.
Nothing there excites me. I don't believe tax considerations are first and foremost on whether to start up a business. Offering loans to pay energy costs is the American Dream. His focal points on health care reek of Me starting a business to provide health care. Sorry, Gm was the last failed experiment. How about I give my employee's x dollars more an hour and tell them to go scratch and find their own health insurance. A small business owner is just a cash churner for the gov't. The rest is a psycho bureaucratic maize that does nothing to lower the cost of entry. The gov't offers to small business are like being on the receiving end of aid to a third world country, is this really the best they can do?