Small Business

[DonCoquixote]

What is sad is that, when I read my daily fish-wrap, the opinion section of the paper is full of small business defending the GOP. Down here, a lot of Tea party/extreme GOP support is from small business that claims the Government taxes are the reasons why many Small businesses fail, and that small business makes the jobs.

Now, I am a former small business owner, in a family full of small business owners, and yes, he do get the label "petit bourgeois" thrown at us a lot by a bunch of jerks that find us easier targets than the Big Boxes. However, as any HONEST small business owner should know, the real threat to most small businesses does not come from taxes, but the efforts of national franchises to grind you out of existence with their muscle. It does not matter if your business is a Pizza Parlor, Pet Store, Plumbing service, or Funeral Parlor, there is some national franchise trying to push you and your family out of the nest,profiting from the work you did to develop a market. The Franchise has more muscle than you do, because very often, even if some attorney or former politician put up the money to "buy" a franchise, the company has already devoted a certain amount of money to taking over your area:

They have spent the money to flood the Sunday paper with coupons, undercutting any price you can offer.

They have bought the Radio and TV ads that will tenderize the brains of your customers, making them drool like Pavlov's dogs when they hear the jingle Madison Avenue has drilled into their mind since they were six.

They have influence with the real estate companies, which they will use to try and take whatever location you have, and/or make damned sure you cannot get a crack at any new one. Starbucks is famous for finding out which areas are good for a potential Coffee shop, and buying out all of them, so that the Mom and Pop shops have no chance. Pharmacy chains are famous for doing that too, having every little corner of a market mapped out, like some kid playing a board game. By the way, notice that there are few Mom and Pop Coffeehouses or Pharmacies, yet certain franchises seem to be on every street corner?

Add to this that the local Politicians like the influence, so the same (expletive deleted) you helped elect for years can stab you in the back, yet appeal to the voters that "they were trying to bring in new jobs to the area." The way the Chamber of Commerce acted in the last election shows that all too well. For many small businesses, the chamber of commerce is supposed to act like a union, where members support one another against the national franchises (aka scab labor), however, when the chamber of commerce works against you, where do you turn?

But of course, many small business owners don't realize that the only reason they exist is because the national franchises have not yet chosen to take them out. Of course, on the flip side, it's not like the left is all that supportive either, with some mealy mouth calling you a "capitalist pig" while at the same time yelling for a "manager" to get one of your best employees fired.

So, on the one hand, we see that Small Business needs help, and is often deluded into working against itself: however, we have the centrists who cannot form a message and the left who often talks as if small business must die.