05.11.08

Political Policy And Small Business

Posted in Political, Small Business at 17:11 by lnxwalt

I have recently made several posts on political subjects.

The object isn’t primarily political (as in pro or anti this or that candidate), however, but to help mold the agenda to focus on SLOBs as the key to our economy and our society (in conjunction with another small, local unit, the family).

For small towns in far away areas around major cities, SLOBs provide the economic wherewithal to keep the town going when economic swings cause large, out-of-area corporations (LOOACs) to retreat. Because they are locally-owned, their interests are intimately tied to those of the local economy. Because they are small, they are less likely to be able to coerce local governments into sacrificing residents’s interests for the benefit of the business. Certainly SLOBs are not a panacea for every possible ailment, but they are a fundamental piece of bringing about a locally-focused economy where fewer individuals are marginalized.

When the glass factory, the slaughterhouse, and the furniture store leave your town, the only way your community will keep going is to have a strong local economy, based upon smaller, locally-owned businesses, and not upon LOOACs.

The Victor Valley’s cities are currently oriented toward attracting LOOACs, rather than organically growing their economies through backing SLOBs. This must change, if we are to have any chance of adequately employing all or nearly all of our residents. The best thing about backing SLOBs? No tax subsidies! All they really need to do is fund the training and education work of the local college and help with loan guarantees for smaller start-up businesses. Barstow, in a similar state, needs to back its college and help with start-up funding for its local residents. LOOACs ask for all of this and tax subsidies too!

For inner cities, SLOBs, rather than LOOACs, are the key to bring about prosperity. LOOACs hire hundreds or even thousands of people at once, and therefore attract applicants from far-away parts of the city, often leaving nearly as many local area residents unemployed (or underemployed) as there were before the corporation’s arrival. They also use that large number of jobs to extract tax and other concessions from city governments. In essence, your local minimart probably pays extra taxes in order to allow “Big Blue” to bring a few hundred minimum-wage jobs and Chinese goods to the market.

Small, locally-owned businesses cannot exist in isolation, if we want the local community and economy to benefit. There must be a veritable ecosystem of small, locally-owned suppliers, distributors, and retailers to help the community become resilient against the various twists and turns of the wider economy. But there is more: SLOBs are more strongly integrated into the local community, sponsoring Key Clubs and youth sports, ponying up funding to send the local band to a competition in the state capital, hiring your brother-in-law who just got out of jail, and giving a first employment experience to your neighbor’s high school kid. Because SLOBs lack the resources to go it alone, they are more likely to support your local community’s attempt to bring about high-speed Internet access, towers and infrastructure for mobile telephone service, and better lab facilities at your local high school and local college.

In remote farming communities in middle America, SLOBs may be the only things still keeping some towns on the map. When LOOACs leave a farming-based community, or during times of consolidation, where smaller, family-operated farms are gobbled up by large, corporate-operated agricultural businesses, graduates often have no choice but to leave the area.

So it is vitally important that any so-called small business advocate makes his voice heard on political choices that will affect the direction of our national policies toward smaller businesses.

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