I am a small business owner who deals exclusively with small business owners as a consultant and financial advisor.
To date, in my 10 years experience I have yet to meet a business owner who started his or her own business for the purpose of providing jobs in his community.
I have yet to meet the business owner who took the risks of mortgaging their homes or cashing in their retirement funds so that they could provide health care insurance for others.
I have yet to meet the business owner who busts their rears working 70 plus hours weekly to contribute to supporting the welfare recipients of his or her neighborhood.
No, these business owners who have taken the risks with time, money, blood, sweat and tears go into business because they believe in the American Dream.
The Dream of owning your own business and being the boss is what drives many out of the traditional workplace and into their spare rooms to fight against the odds and succeed in business.
Many fail in this attempt and whether that failure is due to bad financial decisions, a downturn in the economy or for whatever reason, many others still take that risk and strike out on their own.
Close to 80% of all the people in this nation are employed by companies with less than 100 employees.
So anything that affects the way small business owners do business affects 80% of the people who are employed in this country.
So why is it that the media and the left wing portion of our government are always on the attack against small business owners? Let's face it, there are far more of those who are dependent on these business owners than there are actual business owners.
If the one owner is hurting, it will impact the 100 or so employees he has.
But there is a very real clear and present danger to small business owners that is on the cusp of putting our economy into a tailspin that will take decades to recover from.
The "Living" Wage Before the minimum wage was in effect you could see gas stations with four or five attendants per car that would pull in for gas.
The day the law passed there were at least four guys in each gas station in America that lost their jobs.
Why? Because the gas station owner could no longer afford to have that service level.
True, they were making less than a dollar an hour, but what a lot of liberals and of course, mainly Democrats don't understand is that the employee had the right to walk away from any job that wasn't paying enough.
If we truly let the market decide what someone's labor is worth the small business owner would still have to compete with other employers to attract the best and the brightest.
That's called a free market and is what it should be.
Now the left wants a 'living' wage.
What constitutes a 'living' wage? Is it $10 an hour? In other words, is it $400 a week, or $1200 a month? Can anyone really live on $10 an hour? If the liberals win this election and they pass this 'living' wage what happens in the private sector? Even if they only bump it up to $10 an hour, the small business owner is looking at a $12000 yearly difference in his or her payroll expenses.
That would mean cutting one person or cutting a few of them to part time.
While the welfare recipients will cheer the Democrat efforts to 'soak the rich', the 'rich' will be laying off workers to offset their additional expenditures.
And if that weren't bad enough now they want to change the employee contributions to Social Security.
Obama's plan is to now require the employer to contribute the full amount of the Social Security for their employees in addition to removing the cap for those employees who make over the allotted amount.
This increase will mean that it will be the employer who will be contributing 16% of the employee's pay from the company funds, thus doubling the payroll expenses for small business owners.
As a small business owner you have to logically think about what you would do if your payroll taxes double overnight.
Sure there would be 100 employees cheering the move, but those 100 employees could swiftly turn in to 75 or 50.
And yet, in an election 100 votes to 1 automatically wins in favor of the majority.
We saw the same thing during the Carter Administration when there was a 74% marginal tax rate on those earning $250000 a year.
In order to stop 74% of their hard earned dollars from being taxed, many business owners closed up shop, or one of their shops many hundreds of those cheering idiots were unemployed, the unemployment rate was close to 20%, interest rates were almost at 20% as well, add them together and we get the "misery index".
This incessant class envy strategy is what has kept the Democrats in business for so long.
What so many of those 'cheering idiots' don't realize until it's too late, is that the rich that they so despise and envy are the ones that provide the jobs, the benefits, and the growth in the economy.
You cannot ask a poor man for a job.
You cannot ask the food stamp cashing welfare recipient for a job.
You must go to the one who can provide it, the rich man, or the one who takes the risk and starts their own business.
If these strategies and more as part of the Obama plan are implemented, you will see fewer and fewer of these brave souls making our country what it is, the greatest country in the world.
And as the business owners cry foul, they are drowned out by the masses they employ with shouts of 'More! More! More!' finally the masses will win their prize, unemployment and the worst Depression ever to hit our nation.