Forum Post: It's time to step up to the plate - How many of you out there have ever been involved in running/owning a businesses?
Posted 12 years ago on July 21, 2012, 4:08 p.m. EST by SteveKJR
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I get the impression that the vast majority of people posting on this site as to what needs to be done with the "evil rich and wealthy" and how everything should be on an "equal playing field" when it comes to business operations and the wealth generated, have never been involved in either starting up a business or managing/operating a business on a day to day basis.
I say this because a lot of what is posted on this site is just plain stupid when it comes to what a business should do or not do. Some of what is posted is off the wall, and very little of what is posted has any true credibility.
So I am posing this question because I doubt that 99% of you who have contempt for businesses have ever been involved in owning a business or managing a business, let alone putting up money to start up a business.
Now, I am not interested in listening to you rant and rave about how business have taken jobs out of this country, or how businesses don't pay a fair wage or give employees a share of the profits - we've been there and done that.
I am just curious to know and I am sure a lot of other people would like to know how many of you actually have "business experience credentials" that would give you any kind of credibility in knowning what business is all about.
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I'm self-employed and a partner in a small business & I detect self-referential if not self-righteous - hubris behind this post. It's reactionary in nature & seems oblivious as to how detached most of the realities of small businesses are from those of The Corporations !
The fear behind someone coming for your paltry few dollars is absurd and usually a paranoid line spun by those who can't see past their own nose !!
Corporate Captured Politics ; Bankster Larceny & 0.01% Plutocracy and Kleptocracy are the issues at hand - SO GET REAL !!!
fiat lux ...
i am also - have my own business for 40 years and we just started another one (solar construction) - it is astounding how easy it was to get it up and running. this is a very buisiness friendly country. most of what they are saying about regulation and taxation is utter nonsense. we are not at all concerned about taxes - if we have business and make money we will gladly pay the tax. any investor will tell you that - do not worry about the tax - worry if you have made a good investement - figure out the taxes later!
So let me ask, did you have to invest a lot for start-up? I know the solar panel industry is on the move - new technology - I think the costs have come down also - do you do it for residential or commercial use?
we do ground array - big fields of panels. we bought machines that dirve posts in the ground - that's it mostly - we ponied up a fair amount of $ for the machines and start up costs
I'm a builder/renovator.
I have to be "on the job" even when I'm off the job. I don't work to plans, unless I've drawn them up myself. Most of my creations are visualised, and my day starts over coffee in the pre-dawn hours, planning and thinking weeks ahead.
No one here is against business? What are you on about?
People here are talking about the problems rising from corporate/military/bankster control system that infects the world currently. It was not this way 30 years ago,. it has grown up while many where comfortably sleeping, in middle class dreams,. a small 1% of the population decided more was not enough and have been systematically taking everything.
Entrepreneurial small business is the back-bone of america, we are not against this,. you are simply ill-informed. Capitalism is not small business,. it is a system of institutionalized exploitation,. bailouts for the rich and taxes for the poor,. .
I own a small business.
Have started, owned and operated two successful businesses.
Sure, I've had a few small businesses and found it normally takes twice as many hours at half the pay to start one. Even when you leave the office, the business does not leave the mind. I would agree strongly that business owners don't just sit around and count their money as some here imply.
I am not against business at all, but completely in favor of a free market as long as it is also a fair market. Their remarkable efficiency provides an abundance of goods and services. We enjoyed a good standard of living up until the 70's when real income began to lag behind productivity. In the last 40 years productivity has increased 80%, but only 10% of that productivity has gone to the lower and mid incomes. This is when the free market became an unfair market and is the basis for much of our protest.
unless you "retroactively retire"
then you don't have to do anything and you can still somehow be the CEO
I operate a side business and work for a news organization.
The CEO getting massive pay versus workers making minimum wage is not something you need business credentials to understand that it's wrong.
When I go out and do my side business I make 1,200 for an 8 hour shit. If I hire someone to assist me, I pay them 20 dollars an hour. I still make a lot of money for myself and my "employee" just made almost triple the minimum wage. They are just there to help carry items and move lights for me. A task anyone can do. And I still pay them a good wage.
I also have a stake in a small production company.
Businesses and corporations can easily pay employees more money if they weren't so greedy.... and they can still be kind of greedy while paying their employees very well.
So there's 2 answers for you. One you asked for and one you didn't.
You a DJ?
Video production
I was a corporate officer of a public corporation
I am not anti-capitalist
I was there when the company was formed and thru many struggles
I was involved in many other corporate startups
It is really so simple - there is nothing wrong with capitalism
that regulation cannot cure
just ask TR & FDR
ever since the powell memorandum and president alzheimers, Americans have been stupid enough to elect de-regulators.
Now we need to elect people who will regulate and channel capitalism into honest growth and productivity for the 99% in stead of crapitalism for the greedy 1%
ran a restaurant dish washing for a couple years
quit and moved to fire the manager
I have been a co founder of several startup companies. An officer in a public company. The Investor relations manager of a public company. Owner of a consulting business. I have been a senior manager in a $100 million company that grew to $$200 m and was acquired. Another that was a little over $100 m grew to over $250m and was acquired.
My name is on 4 patents and two books. I have been a CEO, COO, VP Marketing, VP Development, Director of Product Planning and Management and various other positions. But I am retired now.
I still have contempt for many of the business practices that have come to light and so should you. The Financial sector scandals seem to come every other week.
I sell marijuana, cocaine, and pills to the wealthiest 1% of Americans.
The responses tell me that we have a lot of very capable, hardworking people on this site. I recently asked anyone who is interested to provide thoughts as to how we could "retire" from the culture that has eroded and form our own small, self contained communities, ignoring and not supporting the banks, corps, gov't that got us here. Please see my other post called People's Solution.
business is all about taxes.
I have owned small businesses for 30 years. Found a niche in a fashion product, (wallpaper), and had a seven store chain. Time to change to something else as I did five years ago because fashion changed and wallpaper became unpopular.
Now, instead of concern that big box stores might put me out of business, my concern is with my own suppliers that as very large corps, have part of their strategy to take away the profits the store owner made in the past. They have the power to price fix my margins and lower them every year. I will be forced to do something else.
I work for myself, and I tell you the number one thing that I see my business clients worrying about is the overall uncertaintly ahead. Its killing risk taking. No one knows whats ahead because we have never dealt with the underlying problems of the situation that caused it all to begin with.
If you could pick one thing - higher demand for your product or services, lower taxes or less regulation. What would you choose? What would be the one thing that would do the most good. Allow you to grow your business, hire more people. Feel more confident about your business.
Obviously higher demand. But the thing is that you cant artificially create a demand on the long term. We have been doing that for over 30 years and now the bill is coming due.
I understand exactly what you are saying but let me ask - is your business being affected by outside sources other then the government?
If so, please explain -
It's really more of an overarching fear of the unknown. I'm a hard worker, a real ball buster, so I dont get too affected by any of it. Just keep moving forward as best as possible.
I can see that in the future though, big box retailers and big business will probably eventually swallow up most of the mom and pop stores, which means that each goliath will use one huge ad agency from NYC and make others like me almost irrelevant.
Since the gov (unfotunately) has their hands in almost everything these days, its hard to point out anything without something being traced back to them. Whether its costs of basics, costs of supplies, etc.
Big box stores have swallowed up a lot of mom and pop stores. What needs to be done is people need to start catering to the smaller stores and if they have to pay more to do it so be it.
At least they are contributing to the local economy instead of having the money go into the pockes of big corporations.
It's not easy to keep a business opened with todays economy. I applaud those who are hanging in there.
Government needs to stop handing out big checks to big corporations and start looking to helping the small businessman - they are the ones who keep the economy going and they are the ones who do most of the hiring.
I think you hit the nail on the head- its about the consumer having the whereabouts to shop at the local...seek them out.
Ive been working for myself for almost 10 yrs now.
An interesting thing Ive noticed with the economy- the worse it gets, the more people roll over. I would have expected people to be buckling down during this, but it seems the workforce is even worse now than when all the free money was flying around.
Think that might be because our society has been taught not to "survive"?
Look at all the posts here on this site - it's all about taking away from someone else who succeded and giving it to the "less fortunate"
Our country wasn't built on that attitude and if the younger generation feels "washed up", they will be washed up. Only the strong survive - sirvival of the fittest.
The weak will perish and the strong will continue on.
Your perception is messed-up to say the least.
Just as I though, we only have a few people on this site who actually know what's involved in owning/operating a business.
So with that being said, lets have a bit of a "roundtable" discussion if you will.
First off if your business is successful, are you satisfied with how it's going, could it do better, are there things in place stopping you from growing your business and what do you think needs to be done to improve your business.
Now, as I have stated in my post I don't want to hear about big corporations. I want to hear about your business and how you are running it.
The reason I say this is because what you say will inform a lot of people out there who don't know what's involved in runing a business to understand what you have to deal with.
If you are going to blame big corporations provide facts as to how they directly affect your business, how they directly affect your day to day operations and how they affect your revenues. Then provide a solution as to what you think should change so that you are not "directly affected" by them.
Like I stated the purpose of this dialogue is to "inform people" with positive information on just what a person is up against when running a business be it positive or negative.
I have owned several businesses, some large, including a manufacturing company. I think capitalism is working exactly as designed and businesses are doing what they are supposed to do in this system.
Contrary to what some others claim here, the problem is not corporations or bankers or business. The problem is the capitalist system itself. It is unfair and undemocratic.
The capitalist system is a sham and incredibly inefficient.
The only fair economic system is one where income is allocated based on how hard you work. If we allocated income in that way, the minimum wage would be $115k, the work week would be 20 hours, everyone would be wealthy and most social problems would vanish.
I wrote a post here which explains exactly how that would work. It is called democratic market socialism. It is what informed social activists (who understand economics and business) have been advocating for the past 150+ years.
The basic idea is peer reviewed in mainstream economics journals and advocates have been publishing on the subject for nearly 100 years from Oskar Lange debunking Mises and Hayek in the famous economic calculation debate to Paul Cockshott today.
Wouldn't half as many goods be produced in a 20 hour work week, so the wage would be half of $115k?
We are able to reduce the work week to just 20 hours and still produce $15 trillion in GDP by automating half the jobs. Automating half the jobs is what enables us to pay out those incomes for only working half the time.
It is all explained in my post on democratic market socialism. This comment expands on the 20 hour work week claim.
that's workable
So, lets say we raised the minimum wage to $115K - what would the cost of goods and services be?
If all we did was raise the minimum wage to $115k and kept everyone else's income the same, that would obviously cause inflation and just make things more expensive. That is not what I am advocating.
What I advocate is that we allocate income based on how hard you work, which is the only fair economic system. The way you allocate income based on how hard you work is by limiting differences in income to only what is necessary to get people to do difficult work and give their maximum effort.
You are not going to come up with any valid scientific study that says we need to pay people much more than 4 times more income in order for income to be an effective incentive. If we limited differences in income in that way, the bottom earners would make $115k and the top earners would make $460k.
So all we are doing is re-allocating EXISTING income. The increase in the minimum income is is paid for by lowering the top income. The amount we are reducing the top pay is exactly equal to the amount we are increasing the minimum pay. The net result is no increase in price on average. We are still paying out the same exact total income.
You can read the details of this idea in this post. And you can see how the incomes of $115k to $460k were calculated in this comment.