Sure, live the dream, but not at everyone else's expense. I run my own business, too. But I would never ever dare to ask for handouts and bailouts each time my business felt the crunch. You are embellishing hard, cold economics. Either a business is fruitful or it is not. Struggling from one month to the next and not being able to survive 3 months of storm is not considered a successful business. As taxpayer and someone who has to look after my own employees and family and customers, I could not care less about some struggling business around the corner. You and I and everyone else voted for hard, cold capitalism. Then let capitalism play out: Let the weak ones die, and the strong ones survive and thrive. It really gets to me each time I hear how in good times some people love to keep all the profits for themselves but in tough times everyone else needs to bail them out. So, sorry, no sympathy for your sweet-sounding, American dream. What you present is not the American dream, it is a distorted and selfish image of being a business owner.
What say you about the guy who just started a business? Finally got his act together and decided to go it on his own? Not all business started profitable. Almost surely none of them, truthfully. All I'm saying is that if we are going to help someone - it should be the small businesses. Nothing more than that. I may be embellishing but perhaps you're deluded by the fact you are successful. That's good for you. That doesn't mean many people that were like you, people who were just starting a business, do not or should not need help in a time that in corporate contracts is written as force majeure. Corporations can shield themselves and shame on them for not doing so sooner. The small business, as you probably know from experience, has no such opportunity. Do we really want to create a situation where corporations absorb the majority of labor? I don't think so, and history doesn't either. You should be careful with what you are saying. You are promoting the oligarchy.
You keep on talking about all sorts of personal decisions. Why do others have to care about how someone starts his business? Why do others need to take on the business risks of an entrepreneur? Do said entrepreneurs also share their profits with the broad public later on? If not, then the public has zero obligation nor should it even show interest in taking on the risk of business, small or large, startup or seasoned. In this context its utterly irrelevant whether I personally am successful or not. I would never share my success with outsiders who never shared risk with me nor invested in me. Hence I have zero business asking said outsiders to bear my business risk. Can I bring it to the point and ask you a simple question? Do you believe in the equality of opportunity or outcome? Because the divergence in our believes lies in exactly this answer. If you believe in the equality of opportunity you attempt to give everyone a fair chance of starting a business but after that some businesses fail and others thrive, we should not aim to make everyone equally well off.
Equality of opportunity is what I believe in. But we are not in normal times. I'm arguing that if the government is going to bail someone out it should be the small business. If anything this is consistent with equality of opportunity. Otherwise you're agreeing with the premise that "Bill Gates can start a business at any time and is okay that it fails, why isn't Joe's Pizza Shop?" This is the kind of thinking that leads to a plutocracy. If you cannot see the fallacy in that premise I don't think we'll ever see eye-to-eye on our definition of "opportunity". I'll key you in though - Bill Gates can start businesses on the margins of his wealth and the small business owner often fully invests in his business. The difference is substantial and one you are not recognizing.
The government does not bail anyone out. I thought this was clear. It is you and me and especially our children who bail out private enterprises even though those enterprises do not benefit me or my children at all in good times. Or has a Benz or Aston Martin ever been donated to you by successful small business owners? If I ran a small restaurant business and all of a sudden I had no patrons for whatever reason I would have to let my employees go if I could not afford to keep them employed through crisis. I would then shut my business for a few months, pay the rent and reopen when everything is over and rehire. Simple as that. That is how a purely capitalist society works. Everything else is a social market economy with a well financed social welfare system such as the one of Germany or Japan or Denmark. The US voted for a purely capitalist model. What you are suggesting is the exact problem of the US. A privatization of gains and socialization of losses. That is why the US is struggling now more than advanced societies in Asia or Europe. Emphasis on "advanced". We have committed the same error in 2008/2009. Instead of letting weak players go bankrupt we propped up poorly performing businesses, we worshipped moral hazard and we have learned nothing from our mistakes. This is what often makes me very sad and hopeless about the future of this country.
Perhaps I'm missing your joke, but America hasn't been a "free market" for a long time. A discussion for another time. We can thank the fed, citizens united, lobbyists for billionaires, the removal of the gold standard, copyright laws extending two lifetimes, rampant consumerism, nearly infinite intellectual property protection, the healthcare lobby, and billionaire fetishism for our slow and steady decent into a "corptocracy". We are wholly owned by the 50 largest companies in the US. It's naive to think any of us have a choice. We are no different from Asia and Europe. We just keep the ruse of "free market" going because if we didn't people would go crazy. But hey, Ford gave us the 40 hour work week. We should be forever thankful. Right? The market wasn't free then either. It was never free. It's been owned by the JP Morgans, Goldmans, Schwabs, Rothschilds, and Rockefellers since the 1900s. We have no control. For me, what I cling to is the survival of small business by any means. Without that - what hope is there? Every time the chickens come home to roost we bail out these people directly or indirectly. At what point are we going to support small business? The answer is never. More people agree with you than me. That's why we're where we are.
I was not joking, sadly. It is an entirely free market. Every American can vote for a politician and administration that implements a better system and makes significant changes. If the desire in the broad public was there then they would have someone emerge that stood for necessary changes. This is not the case currently, perhaps it will take more time and more suffering for everyone to wake up. But I do generally agree with your thoughts in your first paragraph. The hope that is there is that the middle class wakes up to the ruse that we both agree exists. Where we disagree is that you make a magical difference between small and big failing businesses. As if poor management in small businesses was more excusable than poor management in large corporations. I would actually argue that poor management, moral hazard, transgressions, and illegal conduct in small businesses pose a much larger cost to society than the one at large corporations because large businesses are on average much more heavily regulated and watched and scrutinized than a small shop at the far end of the local strip mall. I sternly believe that we are where we are because we are all way too emotional and get sucked into ruses time and again. We fall for snake oil, we let lies/deceit/criminal behavior slide (perfect example, government NPA with Epstein). Most of us are too undereducated to call out false narratives by the establishment and top 1%. That makes us lethargic and disables us from sound decision making.
Small businesses employ over 50percent of all the employees in America. Small businesses tend to be boot strapped and that’s why most are not capitalized for a shock like this. Further america takes pride in its small business culture - it represents the American dream. Anyone can theoretically start a small business and succeed. They represent the entrepreneurial spirit that has defined America. There was a poll done that showed majority of American individuals would take a tax hike if it meant small businesses got a tax break. Big corporations by contrast are faceless monoliths who should know better.
Muppet! Very very very very very very few, so few its not worth mentioning let alone worrying about, 30 world wide lol Cars kill people all ages thats not discriminating hope you never drive a car again.