I am a small business owner and obtaining financing is not difficult. And the rates are very low (4.5%). The availability of debt has not been the problem for any business with a pulse. If you can't get financing today, your business model is garbage. The problem with the overall economy is a demand problem. I'm not a liberal. I don't want to increase welfare as liberals seem hell bent on doing for some reason. I see the lack of demand more closely tied to demographics a and I'm not sure there is any viable solution that doesn't involve some pain. That's part of the issue issue at hand IMO. We had 2 decades with virtually no pain, but nothing in life comes that easy. The time has come for the piper to be paid.
Basically, businesses require some volume of demand to sustain them. Demographics? Or the middle-class squeezed to extinction? If the pockets where the pools of wealth were collecting would spend it on a large volume, and on domestically-stimulating products and services rather than outsourced/overseas goods and services, then maybe things would pick up in the US.
Yes, good point. Certainly the loss of the middle class has been a big factor but I really think that they biggest problem is the demographics. Every day 10,000 boomers retire. That means their income goes down substantially, and they are no longer spending like they were when they were raising their kids, building their businesses, putting their kids through college, building their dream house. Now, they are starting to downsize their homes, lower incomes, their kids are on their own (or at least trending that way). It's going to be 10 years before we work though that demographic glut, IMO.
oh shit man, I started living that way when my last kid left the house. I always said, "If everybody lived like I do we would be in a worldwide depression." Car paid for, don't need a new one. House sold, don't need anything. Kids out on their own no need for Nikes. the only thing they get me on is trading