The attack on small business

To the editor:
 
Liberals and Democrats attack small business; conservatives and Republicans never do. Bullying and destroying many defenseless small businesses and cozying up to large corporations is what bullies do.

Look at the situation with Covid 19 earlier. The big box stores were allowed to remain open while small businesses were required to be shuttered. If preventing contagion was the objective, this defies common sense. Consumers would be more safely dispersed buying from many different locations rather than buying from the fewer locations of big box stores. A sad result is that Yelp reports that for sixty percent of the millions of small businesses who closed their doors during the pandemic their closure is permanent.

A personal anecdote reflective of most small businesses everywhere might be instructive. Beginning my building business with $6,000 in 1975, I spent almost all on an option to purchase ten lots in a subdivision. My well financed and well known local and national competitors had purchased hundreds. I was at a severe disadvantage. But not as much as one would think. A writer in a building trade magazine at the time captured the situation in a nutshell: “the further a manager is from a site the more unsightly that site becomes”. My competitors were not managed from there. I was there all the time and I had more skin in the game as my existence was on the line. And doing both the selling and the accounting every day I knew the situation hour by hour.

Building on a good product in early sales and by being flexible in buying unsold scattered lots here and there in the subdivision, in time I sold a large number of houses. Not too long after, I bought my competitor’s lots and was the only builder in the subdivision. They had more overhead and could not always have their best people there so I could give better service with a better home at a lower price.

In fact, at one point a competitor’s representative came by my sales office in the garage of our one model home and said: “We are raising our prices” implying that we should join the other builders in the subdivision in raising our prices together to increase everyone’s profitability. I simply responded: “Great, I will sell more houses”. Like small business owners everywhere I had everything on the line So I could deliver better prices and service than my much larger competitors.

Because large corporations are fewer in number with weak leaders and infested with lobbyists they can be more easily controlled.

On the other hand, small business owners are naturally independent and intensely dislike being controlled so they are less accommodating than corporate CEOs.

Large corporations give large campaign contributions to Democrat officeholders in exchange for passing legislation favorable to their business. And through unequal enforcement of that legislation, it is much easier for the government to destroy a small business than a large one.

Plus large corporations have teams of lawyers prepared to take on accusations of dishonesty whether accurate or not. Small businesses seldom can even afford a lawyer making them very vulnerable to false attacks or non payment for items they sell.

The benefits to the left of cozying up to large corporations can be seen more clearly today than ever before.

Large corporations now timidly follow the liberal government’s directives with their “woke” policy of supporting Critical Race Theory. And their HR departments of course focus on equity and other foolishness in all that they do.

Today small business startups are at record numbers with 5.4 million beginning in 2021. It is important that as they have now come out of the pandemic that they collectively push back against the “woke” wimps who are trying to make America in their image. The natural strength and independence that they reveal every day will create a great American future.

Vern Wuensche