Not everything in those bills was about strengthening small businesses, and a lot of it does so indirectly. This is all great; I hope it passes, I wish the 3 trillion version had passed!
But what I’m (naively, I’m sure) actually promoting here is a much bigger change in priority, which is actually aimed at getting rid of humungous corporations wherever possible and preparing smaller businesses to take their place. As Strollen says, politicians have been pandering to small businesses for decades. Meanwhile huge multinational corporations have continued to grow in market share, geographical footprint, and power over our lives. I’m in favor of doing something radical to reverse that instead of the usual cant + emergency loans that run out in three days (and which the big companies can often get their hands on thanks to loopholes).
All true! None of those things I listed are guaranteed, and some require policy movement on other fronts (like urban planning). But most of them are antithetical to or impossible for a global megacorp. To give them their due, big big companies can donate huge sums (usually to huge global charities) and they are often institutionally more socially progressive by default. (They also generally do those things for reputational/PR reasons.)
I support that, but if it’s just trying to soak off of big corps to fund federal programs while they continue to grow, then it’s not enough. I want to disincentivize companies over a few hundred employees, and massively disincentivize companies over a few thousand. Then work the other side of the ledger and give subsidies directly to small businesses that operate, hire, and provide locally and regionally.
The cultural expectation that constant exponential growth is the aim of a business is toxic and destructive. We need to reverse the mentality of entrepreneurs (or, really, encourage the emergence of a new kind of entrepreneur) to be focused on providing sustainable goods to a specific community, through both its services, and jobs it provides. I would use taxation to make growth and economies of scale beyond a certain level not profitable.
Those breaks exist because the costs would typically be too big a portion of their revenue, right? So let’s make them so they’re not always clinging to the edge of viability and then start holding them to account for how they treat their workers, the environment, etc. Even if it’s hard to hold them to account, a town full of cash-flush businesses will start to offer benefits and wages that will attract folks away from the ones who stay stingy.
Emergency funds are for digging folks out of holes, not building them up.
Huge retailers do this stuff because they can afford to, thanks to economies of scale and a toleration for waste. If small businesses’ margins were bigger, they would provide them too. But I also oppose fetishizing the convenience of consumers. In a true community, people (including businesspeople) are participants in the life of that community, not isolated actors trying to maximize their personal gain. It’s impossible to think of a faceless global corporation like Amazon as part of our community, so we obsess over discounts and how next-day shipping is even better than two-day shipping, etc. We think differently–or at least can think differently–about our local bookshop.
(I don’t know if this is a bigger tangent than a thread like this usually accommodates, but I’m happy if a mod wants to split this off into a new thread.)
