Gallup reports that small business owners’ primary concern is government regulation:
PRINCETON, NJ — Small-business owners in the United States are most likely to say complying with government regulations (22%) is the most important problem facing them today, followed by consumer confidence in the economy (15%) and lack of consumer demand (12%).
This conflicts pretty starkly with the NASB surveys which have persistently found low demand to be the most significant single concern. It’s possible that can be explained by NASB’s disproportionate membership of real estate and hospitality concerns.
Clearly, small business owners have been brainwashed into believing that government regulation is their main problem. What do they know?
All snark aside a little farther down in the survey the small business owners’ prescription for improving things casts the matter into even more confusion:
When asked what they would need to see in order for their business to thrive in 2012, the nation’s small-business owners are most likely to say growth in sales (15%), job creation (14%), and fewer government regulations (12%).
which would seem to me to reverse the first set of responses. In all likelihood small business owners are like the rest of us: they don’t know what to do about it but they do know that something is wrong.
I wouldn’t call it ‘brainwashing’ per se. Small business owners have an array of problems, from going through massive paperwork to even establishing a business, to retaining financial backing in their start-ups or expansion efforts, and then figuring out if it’s even worth becoming a larger business entity, because of increasing overhead burdens such as >50 employee threshold putting them into the Obamacare mix.
At an earlier time in my life, I considered opening up a small retail business. It was one of those back-in-the-mind kind of down-the-road dreams. However, as the complexities of putting such a business together have grown those contemplations have completely vanished. I’ve known friends, as well, who have tried opening small cafes, a deli or a coffeehouse with open mic music as a component — all have been met with an assortment of requirements, regulations, financing problems which finally quelled either the idea or the attempted project.
Go through the historical BRIBE survey. I see little correlation between business owners concerns about regulations and economic performance
Go through the historical BRIBE survey. I see little correlation between business owners concerns about regulations and economic performance.
You can’t know whether or not business would have been better under different regulatory schemes.
This will be familiar to most, because I really don’t give a rats arse about supposed surveys.
Week before last I was at Sea Island at the pro golf tournament hosted/sponsored by McGladrey. Now with McGladrey, you are talking about one of the largest small to medium sized business auditors/tax prepers in the country. Spoke with many McGladrey-ites and small business owners.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say this is scientific, but I’ve been doing this for 20 years and have a pretty good sense. (And after all, I’m a small business owner as well.) They are profoundly worried about regulation, taxation and the cost to employ. Hence they are stuck in neutral. Do they worry about “demand?” Of course. But this “demand” thing is circular. Businesses consume as well as consumers. If you don’t think your business customers will invest and buy because of concerns about regulation/taxes/cost to employ……….then neither will you.
As a final point, which I know will initiate invective…….many owners have simply decided to wait this current Administration out. They are already rich, and don’t have to take the risks, you see. Time will pass.
I don’t know why this lesson is so hard to learn: Politicians simply can’t threaten/burden businesses or “the rich” on a daily basis and then look around in bewilderment and ask “where are the jobs?”
Unless they aren’t the sharpest knives…..
The problem with this is that many don’t view the current administration as being an obstacle to economic growth. In their POV our fiscal problems originated with Bush, ware slowed down by Obama, and recovery is now being held hostage by the R House. “If right-wing political opponents, with their anti-keynesian approaches, would leave the parking lot, it could then be filled with a socially progressive agenda, and all would be peachy and prosperous for the country”….that’s the collective wisdom of some.
As for providing incentives or confidence for business, just taxing and regulating them more, whipping that sector into shape, will make them want to march out voluntarily and throw their money into capital venture investments, with jobs and demand soon to follow.
I personally don’t get this rationale. It isn’t something that would prompt me to risk any more than we already have, into our current business. It’s similar to knowing there is a traffic jam on the freeway. Do you go down the ramp and become stranded in non-moving cars? Or, do you wait it out, or take another route altogether? I would opt for the last two…..
One last comment….my husband just returned from the building supply store in town. We’ve been on the North Coast for three days now, and business is even more dead than last month. Of course the tourist trade has ebbed. But, still, even the locals seem to be staying home. When by husband talked to one of the employees about business he made an unusual off-the-cuff remark (for him), saying,….”if only we had a better business leader in the WH.” The woman wholeheartedly agreed, saying everyone felt the same way. BTW, this is a very liberal community.
I wonder how common this sentiment is in the majority out there?
(The above BRIBE was supposed to be NFIB. Droid has issues.)
What the hell are these supposed regulations? Dont tell me about the ACA. I run my corporation too. It will make little difference in what I actually pay each year, or change the basic uncertainty I already face. As to the rest, I really dont know how to deal with feelings crap. I look at numbers. Translate these fears of regulation and anti-business concerns into real numbers. Show me how these concerns about regulations correlate with poor economic performance. To be clear, again, I think that we have long over regulated small business, it is impossible to over regulate banks and we are hit or miss on large businesses. That still is a long way away from explaining current circumstances.
Also once again, with anti-regulatory utopia in the aughts, why no jobs?
Steve
“Also once again, with anti-regulatory utopia in the aughts, why no jobs?”
Count the number of pages of regulations on January 1, 2000, and then on December 31, 2009………..and get back to me. And that doesn’t even deal with the “quality” of the regulations.
BTW – has Michelle changed the menu at McDonalds to apples and bird seed yet? There’s a jobs producer forya……
“BTW – has Michelle changed the menu at McDonalds to apples and bird seed yet? ”
Hope not. We need more heart disease to keep our heart program intact.
Steve
“Hope not. We need more heart disease to keep our heart program intact.”
Heh, I know that was snark. But you do realize we still live in a free society, right? You aren’t going Joe Califano on us are you?