No, small business is not the backbone of the American economy

[pecksniff]

Every pol seems to say that at one time or another, but it is not true. The backbone of the economy -- that from which everything else hangs -- is the industrial, agricultural and financial sectors. Small business is the fingers. Without the industrial, agricultural and financial sectors, most small businesses would have nothing to sell or to do; very few of them make their own goods on the premises, or provide services that they could provide without bank loans to get started.

 

[Rightguide]

Every pol seems to say that at one time or another, but it is not true. The backbone of the economy -- that from which everything else hangs -- is the industrial, agricultural and financial sectors. Small business is the fingers. Without the industrial, agricultural and financial sectors, most small businesses would have nothing to sell or to do; very few of them make their own goods on the premises, or provide services that they could provide without bank loans to get started.

99.9% of all American businesses are small businesses. Educate yourself:

https://cdn.advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/23142719/2019-Small-Business-Profiles-US.pdf

 

[pecksniff]

99.9% of all American businesses are small businesses. Educate yourself:

https://cdn.advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/23142719/2019-Small-Business-Profiles-US.pdf

Possibly, if you count each distinct business as an equal unit -- but not in terms of percentage of GDP, I should think. A Ford dealership is in no meaningful sense the equal of the Ford Motor Company.

 

[Rightguide]

Possibly, if you count each distinct business as an equal unit -- but not in terms of percentage of GDP, I should think. A Ford dealership is in no meaningful sense the equal of the Ford Motor Company.

Click on the friggin' link and educate yourself. It's a government website, and stop posting stupid shit:

A total of 287,314 companies exported goods from the United States in 2016. Of these, 280,229, or 97.5%, were small firms; they generated 33.3% of the United States’s $1.3 trillion in total exports.

 

[pecksniff]

Click on the friggin' link and educate yourself. It's a government website, and stop posting stupid shit:

A total of 287,314 companies exported goods from the United States in 2016. Of these, 280,229, or 97.5%, were small firms; they generated 33.3% of the United States’s $1.3 trillion in total exports.

But, they didn't make those goods. They bought them from factories -- big businesses.

 

[pecksniff]

See Big is Beautiful: Debunking the Myth of Small Business, by Robert Atkinson and Michael Lind.

Summary
Why small business is not the basis of American prosperity, not the foundation of American democracy, and not the champion of job creation.

In this provocative book, Robert Atkinson and Michael Lind argue that small business is not, as is widely claimed, the basis of American prosperity. Small business is not responsible for most of the country's job creation and innovation. American democracy does not depend on the existence of brave bands of self-employed citizens. Small businesses are not systematically discriminated against by government policy makers. Rather, Atkinson and Lind argue, small businesses are not the font of jobs, because most small businesses fail. The only kind of small firm that contributes to technological innovation is the technological start-up, and its success depends on scaling up. The idea that self-employed citizens are the foundation of democracy is a relic of Jeffersonian dreams of an agrarian society. And governments, motivated by a confused mix of populist and free market ideology, in fact go out of their way to promote small business. Every modern president has sung the praises of small business, and every modern president, according to Atkinson and Lind, has been wrong.

Pointing to the advantages of scale for job creation, productivity, innovation, and virtually all other economic benefits, Atkinson and Lind argue for a “size neutral” policy approach both in the United States and around the world that would encourage growth rather than enshrine an anachronism. If we overthrow the “small is beautiful” ideology, we will be able to recognize large firms as the engines of progress and prosperity that they are.

 

[Rightguide]

But, they didn't make those goods. They bought them from factories -- big businesses.

You are a friggin' idiot. Does a farmer buy his crops and animals from a big business? Does a cattle rancher buy his cattle form or big company or does he sell his product to a big company? Do small oil producers buy their oil from big oil companies or do they drill for their own and sell it to big companies? Does a small fashion designer or dress maker buy his finished products from a big company, or big retail companies sometimes carry their products? You might look up the SBA definition of a small business. Again, click on the link and find out.

 

[pecksniff]

You are a friggin' idiot. Does a farmer buy his crops and animals from a big business?

A lot of our agricultural products are now grown by agribiz corporations, because even in that sector, industrial scale is more efficient than the family farm.

 

[Dribble]

You can't educate ignorance. The Fascist traitor Rightguide...vette...believes all the lies he is spoon fed by Putin

 

[CornusKousa]

You are a friggin' idiot. Does a farmer buy his crops and animals from a big business?

The answer to that is:

per farmer- most of the time if you consider they sourced it somewhere.

Per-lb of food on most the mainstream market and even a good minority of the local/farmers markets? A lot of the time.

Does a cattle rancher buy his cattle form or big company or does he sell his product to a big company?

Animals might work differently for some species. But chickens? Selling baby chicks for other farmers to raise is it's own entire industry.

A lot of our agricultural products are now grown by agribiz corporations, because even in that sector, industrial scale is more efficient than the family farm.

100% true.

And as long as we don't legally shut down or enable big ag to destroy family ops, then whatever.

 

[Dribble]

Educate yourself traitors.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-produ...y farms (less than,of the value of production.

3% accounts for 44% of production value. Now...let us look at the Govt subsidies...shall we? Do you think they benefit the 3%...or 97% more. Think before answering. Don't want to embarrass our Fascist traitors on a Sunday...the Lord's Day

Gotta love...50% of the small farms produce $10k or less per year

 

[pecksniff]

Now, I'm not saying I entirely like this state of affairs. The most persuasive utopian novel I have ever read is Pacific Edge, by Kim Stanley Robinson, which depicts a society where no business enterprise is allowed to be so large that all the people involved in it cannot personally know each other; so you never have a situation where the executives see the employees as labor costs and nothing else. (Also, everybody gets a work-free universal basic income of $10,000 a year and nobody is allowed to have more than $100,000 -- which still leaves plenty of scope for competition, because "everybody wants to be a hundred.") That would be economically inefficient compared to a big-biz model -- but aren't some things more important than efficiency?

 

[pecksniff]

But compare Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy, 1888. It's a Rip van Winkle story -- a man of the 19th Century wakes up in 2000, in an America which has become a socialist utopia -- but not as a result of any proletarian revolution. What happened instead was, the trusts (or as we would say now, conglomerates) got bigger and bigger until they absorbed the whole economy -- and then the government stepped in and nationalized the trusts and took over their management in the public interest. (No resistance to this by the capitalist class is mentioned; it is implied that the transformation depended on widespread acceptance of socialist values.)