Small Business - The Heart of America

Many people today are struggling a lot — especially sole proprietors — aka,  small business.  But that isn’t totally because of the COVID virus. We as a people in the U.S. are often in trouble due to not using wise money management, lack of income, or both.  Today’s Americans have created $1T in ‘personal debt’.  We’re talking credit cards, not home loans.  And some of those people are business owners — mom and pop.  Our nation depends on those businesses!  A lot!

I’ve found that a great deal of those who are in favor of socialism believe that large corporate companies represent 70-90% of all business in America.  Not so.  Those ‘little guys’ mentioned earlier are the workhorse of this country.  They represent over 90% of all companies in America!  That’s 90% of 28.7M companies!  (A conservative estimate.)  88% of those companies have less than 20 employees. And 40% of them have a revenue under $100K per year.  20% of small businesses are employer companies and 80% are non-employer companies.  (e.g., mom and pop)  They generate almost 50% of our country’s GDP annually.  And lastly, they account for 66% of all jobs in this country.  If we let them fail, we all fail.

Quite a different description of our economy than you expected I’m sure.

Consequently, we depend on these smaller companies for almost everything.  The lock down of Americans should be making that point more obvious every day.  Have you tried eating out lately?

The key point here is that these small companies can make or break our country’s economy.  And many of those companies have been struggling before this economic implosion.  This means that when this pandemic is over — assuming it does end — there will be a big hole in our economy.  An estimate of our unemployment situation has gone from 3.4% to 10-17% practically over night.  And we aren’t done yet.  Those unemployment numbers are expected to rise for months to come.

Wall street cheerleaders are trying to say that we will see a “V” curve in the market.  This means it dropped like a rock and will take off again (any minute) like a rocket — don’t bank on that.  A more realistic expectation is that it will take years for us to recover.

So what should you do?  I’ve been telling people to get out of debt NOW.  Many have not listened.  As a result, it will be harder for those who are “behind” to catch up, and many won’t.  Things are about to change for the worse.  So now is the time to get yourself in a position to survive our future.  Prepare.

It is a subject far to complex to explain in this article, but our capitalist system has been abused.  Capitalism only works if you have ethics, moral values, and little greed.  However, socialism would make our situation even worse . . .  a LOT worse.

With the advent of our current crisis, the U.S. government has taken steps to “save us” by lending money to corporations with the understanding that our government will take as collateral a percentage of those companies.  That sounds a lot like socialism.  Which brings to mind the “boiling frog”.  We the people have been in that boiling pot for decades and have accepted things that would never have considered in prior years.  Today, we can’t even go outside due to government orders.  The water is getting hotter.

In November we’re going to vote for a president.  If you think more socialism is the answer to our problem, then we should just dig up Lenin and not mess around with Sanders or Biden.  It will take strength, courage, tenacity, sacrifice, and help from our Maker to dig us out of this hole we have dug.

We’ve done what felt good for a long time, living for today and ignoring tomorrow.  It’s time we do what is right for everyone, not by taking money from one group to give to another.  But by changing what we do with our money and resources and do what is right for all of America.

Please share this information with friends and implore them to vote intelligently in November.  Do what is right for America, not just you.