Politicians don’t seem to have many great ideas to help with the economy. They either want to increase or decrease: individual or corporate taxes, spending, and entitlements. These things may have a positive or negative impact on the economy but none of them will turn things around. These are important issues that do indeed need to be vetted, because they can greatly hinder or help business, however…
The real key to economic revival is small business growth, both new and existing, when you consider the facts…“Small firms (employing less than 500 employees): Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms, employ about half of all private sector employees, pay nearly 45 percent of total U.S. private payroll, have generated 60 to 80 percent of net new jobs annually over the last decade, create more than half of nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP), hire 40 percent of high-tech workers (such as scientists, engineers, and computer workers), are 52 percent home-based and 2 percent franchises, made up 97.3 percent of all identified exporters and produced 28.9 percent of the known export value in FY 2006, produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms; these patents are twice as likely as large firm patents to be among the one percent most cited. Source: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census and International Trade Administration; Advocacy-funded research by Kathryn Kobe, 2007 (sba.gov/advo/research/rs299tot.pdf) and CHI Research, 2003 (sba.gov/advo/research/rs225tot.pdf); Federal Procurement Data System; U.S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics
Considering these statistics, whatever government can do to help business start and succeed is key to helping turn around the economy. A pro-business political system will be focused on facilitating international trade, availability of cash, internationally competitive taxes, ease of operation (simplified and less but good regulations), extra tax incentives for starting new businesses and research and development for cutting edge technologies. These are just a start, there are many more creative ideas then these here. Why not bring the best entrepreneurial minds together, from many successful businesses; they would come up with a fantastic list of things that could be done.
I firmly believe that within the most extreme of difficulties lies opportunity to succeed beyond our competitors. What are your ideas?