PUTTING A FACE ON SMALL BUSINESS

Editorial sent over by Cliff Knizley:

As a follow up to my last editorial, I’d like to further my case in support of the small business owner by introducing you to someone who you really already know. My friends, Jason and Laura Welty are parents in their thirties and owners of Flavors Eatery in St. Augustine. They are the quintessential small business owners.

Fourteen hour workdays are a way of life for Jason and Laura. A business loan that helped them get started is a fact of life, as are the day to day concerns of unpredictable employees, unexpected fluctuations in the cost and availability of necessary supplies and the stress as business ebbs and flows. Flavors Eatery is their baby and it is the livelihood for their family.

Before these young parents are able to pay themselves, they must first meet a variety of financial obligations. They must pay rent, business loans, their employees, a bevy of insurance policies and countless taxes. They must purchase the goods and services that are required to keep churning out enough meals to meet their obligations. If employees fail to show, the owners pick up the slack.

Day after day and week after week, owning and operating a small business is a risk. The personal fortunes of small business owners is inexorably tied to the fortunes of the business. Their courage and their passion are admirable.

Now more than ever, a presidential candidate is portraying the Welty’s and other’s like them as a renewable resource ripe for plunder and deserving of your scorn. Barrack Obama loves to throw around the figure of $250,000. That’s the current ceiling that he has arbitrarily set as an acceptable level of success. Obama and his following think that once you reach their mandated ceiling, you and your business become a burden to society and a target for his message of class warfare.

Take a minute and wrap your mind around that number. Is it gross income or net? Given Obama’s well documented devotion to “spreading the wealth”, we should assume it’s gross income. $250,000 is less than $5000 a week in total cash flow, hardly worth the personal risk inherit in maintaining a small storefront.

Why is it that $250,000 in annual income is the magic number at which the pursuit of the American Dream is automatically brought to a screeching halt by the federal Government? Who is Obama to declare himself more capable of wisely spending the Welty’s hard earned money than they are?

If they can keep the money they make, the Weltys can then entertain the idea of expansion. If they do expand, the overall economy expands. More goods and services are purchased, more employees are hired, more business gets done.

When the truly productive are demonized by liberal rhetoric, when politicians create a wedge between owners and workers, when upward mobility is slandered and the entrepreneurial spirit is under indictment, the economy shrinks and we all lose, except the government.

The government grows and expands it’s influence by devouring what belongs to others and spreading the wealth while claiming to be fair. The government expands on the backs of the restaurateur, the retailer and the service provider. Americans have done pretty well without Barrack Obama and we’re better off when Jason and Laura expand their influence on America. We will be worse off if Barrack Obama is allowed to devour capital in order to expand his influence.

Filed under: PC by Mr.PC