HE SAYS:
I have been self-employed for most of my working life and even though I did not start the United States Federation of Small Businesses, I naturally found it stimulating and rewarding to work with and for small businesses.
Let’s make no mistake about the fact that we all recognize that these are difficult times for small businesses in this country and USFSB, as a small business, is ever mindful of the struggles of its small business members. USFSB is also not immune to the same economic downturn that is adversely affecting the small business community.
Despite our troubles, we, as small business owners, should find the Occupy movement to be contrary to everything we believe in and strive for. Even if this movement appears to be less vocal lately, they have not gone away and their banner has been adopted by some politicians who hope to ride their agenda into office. Sure, we can agree in general terms with the call to clean up our financial institutions and we can support and even applaud such suggestions as to shop locally and spend our money at small businesses in our communities. Unfortunately, at its heart, the Occupy movement is not about those lofty ideas nor is it even a plaintive cry for help.
The Occupy movement, when stripped of its social equality veneer, represents nothing more than a class war from an increasingly out of control fringe group of underachievers who are mainly fueled by resentment and a sense of entitlement to feed off of other people’s success. Their movement seems, at times, to be more like an extended riot than a meaningful and productive protest as they try to bring down anyone with wealth and, at the same time, arrogantly demand other people’s money.
Think about the Occupy movement’s motives and tactics. Part of their agenda is to disrupt the economy so that they can impinge the profits of the very capitalists they want to tax. This is indicative of the irrational goals of a movement that wants to eviscerate the free enterprise system in order to improve the plight of workers; however, if they succeed just where will these liberated workers find jobs? History has taught us that every country and ideology that killed free enterprise in the name of worker’s rights has failed. As a small business owner and part of that free enterprise system, do you really think that you will be better off if the Occupy movement is successful?
Whether or not you are rich and even if there is no chance that your taxes will be affected, if you are a small business owner you should view the Occupy movement with its calls to redistribute to themselves the wealth that has been generated by the efforts of others as a perversion of the American Dream that you are pursuing. This is more than just about raising someone’s taxes. This is about whether or not we are going to continue to be a free, open and competitive society that values the inspiration, enthusiasm, and desire that drives people to strive for success.
Our country was built on the belief that the perseverance and entrepreneurial spirit of small business owners with their desire to be independent and self-reliant as they pursued success and created a better life for themselves and their families from their own efforts and ingenuity was the embodiment of the American Dream. It is this willingness to stake your future on your own efforts and abilities in a free and competitive society that made this country great and helped us lead the world in innovations and progress. We became the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world because we valued and encouraged the risk takers in pursuit of success.
As a small business owner, you are the heart and soul of that American Dream.* Even though every large and wealthy business started out as someone’s small business, being a small business owner is not just about the accumulation of wealth. The real motivation to start a small business is the value you place on the opportunity to be able to go as far as your talents will take you and to be in control of your own destiny. Even if you fall short, there is the pride and satisfaction in making the effort.
As small business owners, it is time to turn away from the Occupy movement and its efforts to remake America into its own lackluster and nihilistic image. It is time to once again embrace the ideals that made this country great in order to prevent the American Dream from being taken hostage by those who want to destroy it while they prosper from the success of others.
The Robin Hood image of stealing from the rich and giving it to, in this case, the not so poor Occupy movement may be a romantic notion in the movies but in real life it is abhorrent. Whether at gun point or through the power of the ballot, to demand someone else’s money is still highway robbery.
* It was reported, on January 6, 2012, that small businesses took the lead in job creation in December adding approximately 155,000 new jobs.
In “Take Back The American Dream, Part 2″ to be posted on Wednesday there is a call to action and Joe’s list of suggested Demands in anticipation of the Demands to come from the Occupy movement.
If you are concerned about the Occupy agenda, pass this on to other concerned citizens.
January 16, 2012 at 1:55 pm
You are SOOOOOOO wrong.
I have a MFA. I raised 2 children on my own. I worked and saved. 3 years ago I lost the central vision in one eye and have floaters in the other eye. I can no longer sit in front of a computer 8 hours a day and I have great difficulty reading text less than 18 pt. I have also developed inflamed tendons in one foot so I cannot take a job that requires me to walk or stand for long periods.
I have applied for over 3000 jobs since the spring of 2009. For some jobs I am over qualified; for some I am too old; for some I am under qualified; or some the fact that I am unemployed disqualifies me.
I volunteer at a local conservatory, a 4 hour shift where I don’t have to stand.
I have applied for disability but I am told there is a 12-18 month wait for a hearing — I am still waiting.
I had to take my Social Security early because unemployment benefits don’t cover monthly bills. $115 is taken out of my $900 monthly SS benefits to pay for medicare premiums – I cannot afford the co-pay to go to the doctor. Medicare does not cover vision or dental.
I tried to get a reverse mortgage on my condo but was told that one entity owns more than 10% of the building (2 of 14 apartments) so I don’t qualify.
I have used my savings, 401K and credit cards to pay for necessities such as food, gas, electricity, insurance, and phone. I don’t buy clothing although I now need a new pair of sneakers as the pair I now own have holes in the soles.
When I was turned down for the reverse mortgage I applied to a Senior Housing building. I was accepted and put at the top of the list because of my financial situation. May of 2011 I put my condo up for sale and moved into Senior Housing.
When I first put my condo on the market I was asking just enough to pay off my credit cards, home equity loan and mortgage. I have marked it down several times. If I am lucky enough to sell it before the Foreclosure process is complete I will only be able to pay off the home equity and mortgage leaving me with huge credit card debt.
It is my belief that the large banks (too large to fail) brought on the ‘recession’. Those banks made huge profits. The U.S. government bailed them out (that is you and me). Now those banks are sitting on the money. Instead of reinvesting it they are buying U.S. Bonds to make a profit. Small businesses and want-to-be homeowners are not able to get loans.
Now I am unable to sell my modest 2 bedroom condo because no one can get a loan. I know of other people in my village who got laid off from good paying jobs, unable to get new positions who are also loosing their homes. Freelancers cannot find enough work to support themselves and their families. Young people are graduating from college with $100,000 in student loan debts and can’t find jobs.
But Corporations are recording record profits; CEOs are being awarded major bonuses.
The ‘Occupy’ movement is not against small business it is a reaction to the Mega -Wealthy in our country. It is pretty obvious, in the past 30 years, that ‘trickle-down economics’ simply do not work.
Read the work of Dwight Eisenhower, Teddy Roosevelt, and Franklin D Roosevelt and see what they have to say.
Why can Monsanto sue an organic farmer because wind drift from Monsanto crops contaminated the organic crops?
Something is very wrong in this country. The economic in balance is tipping the scale much too far to the right.
“Men have unrealized potential for self-cultivation, self-direction, self-understanding, and creativity. It is this potential that we regard as crucial and to which we appeal, not to the human potential for violence, unreason, and submission to authority. The goal of man and society should be human independence: a concern not with image of popularity but with finding a meaning in life that is personally authentic; a quality of mind not completely driven by a sense of powerlessness, nor one which unthinkingly adopts status values, nor one which represses all threats to its habits, but one which has full, spontaneous access to present and past experiences; one which easily unites the fragmented parts of personal history; one which openly faces problems which are troubling and unresolved; one with an intuitive awareness of possibilities, an active sense of curiosity, an ability and willingness to learn.
This kind of independence does not mean egotistic individualism—the object is not to have one’s way so much as it is to have a way that is one’s own. Nor do we deify man—we merely have faith in his potential. — Port Huron Statement of Students for a Democratic Society, 1962″
I was never a member of SDS but found the above quote and believe it states a worthy goal. When unbalanced economics crush the spirit of people at the bottom then we have failed as a culture and a society.
January 17, 2012 at 12:16 pm
Mary,
I am as sure that I am right as you are that I am wrong. There is no doubt in my mind that very little of the Occupy agenda would provide any long term solutions to the problems facing our country.
I can sympathize with the hardships you and many others have endured as we all have our share of hardships; however, I do not believe that there is anything about the Occupy movement that will improve your situation. Unfortunately, the hardships you and others face have formed the basis of the fatal attraction some people now have for the false promises of a better world emanating from the Occupy movement. From your vantage point they may seem like a group of freedom fighters, but, to many of us they are just a group of disgruntled and unproductive people who have nothing but time to vent their frustrations over their limited prospects. They offer no solutions to those of us who feel that their brand of economic equality is just mediocrity in disguise. USFSB is a small family run business that is not for or against the wealthy; however, we do not share the values, support the tactics, or agree with much of the agenda of the Occupy movement.
What does the Occupy rhetoric of redistributing the wealth mean anyway? For starters, it implies that we are justified in taking from the wealthy because somehow they were randomly selected to be wealthy and did not earn their wealth. You say that the Occupiers are only after the mega-wealthy; however, what right do they have to arbitrarily decide how much is too much wealth such that they are entitled to take some of it? You say that the Occupiers are not after small businesses; however, if any small business was to find a way to grow and prosper into a big business then the Occupiers would feel justified to go after them and demand a piece of the action. Again, this is not our value system.
How would we redistribute that wealth? Would we reset everyone back to zero and see if we and our decedents can become the wealthy this time around? Maybe, we should not have to try that hard, let’s just make them support us (through taxes or otherwise) and pay for our health care, college educations, housing and a vacation or two as if we were their dependents. Perhaps, we should not even bother with the slow process of taxing them, let’s just storm their homes and businesses and be done with even the pretext of fairness. I am being facetious, of course, but it seems that the call to redistribute wealth makes a better slogan than a solution to the problems we face.
How would that redistribution of wealth improve the economy? To sustain economic growth we need jobs more than we need to provide subsidized giveaways to the Occupy movement. You say that “trickle-down-economics” has failed, but, isn’t redistribution of wealth just a forced version of the same thing? Some of us would rather have the opportunity to create our own wealth than seek the wealth of others regardless of how it gets trickled down. To me, that is one of the problems with this movement. The Occupy movement, at its core, is more interested in free programs than free enterprise. The taxes and charitable contributions from the wealthy already provide most of the funds for all of the “safety net” programs in place for the truly needy, what more do we want?
The quote from the Students for a Democratic Society sounds like much of the idealistic and unrealistic philosophies that came out of the haze that was the 1960s. The SDS was a radical group that went out of style in 1969 and the remnants of which morphed into the Weather Underground, considered by the FBI to be a domestic terrorist group. The SDS is not a movement on which I would base my values or world view.
The only substantive argument that you advanced is that the banks are to blame for our troubles. I agree that part of the problem was caused by banks making it too easy for people to borrow more money than they could afford, by banks not keeping enough money in reserve, by banks packaging their loans into exotic investment vehicles, and in too little government oversight of the whole process. That is only one side of the coin. The other side of that coin is the imprudence of over-zealous consumers as well as flawed government policies.
The government forced banks to end “red-lining” and to provide mortgages for properties in marginal real estate markets to people with the marginal ability to pay. It sounds good to extend the American Dream of home ownership, but when banks are forced to make bad business decisions in the name of social justice it is just a catastrophe waiting to happen.
Many people without two cents to rub together got caught up in the housing boom and made careers out of “flipping” houses with no money down and then started to believe they actually were real estate moguls. In reality, they did not have the resources to wait out any down turn in real estate prices. It was all hype and fantasy.
Many otherwise sensible people bought a more expensive house and incurred a larger mortgage then they really could afford stretching their budgets to the limit. Then they lived beyond their means and incurred more credit card debt then they could ever pay off while, at the same time, doing little or no savings to build a cushion for that “rainy day”. Many people went down this ill advised path in the mistaken belief that the increasing value of their homes was providing real wealth and financial security.
In the final analysis, if everyone had properly prepared themselves so that they could make their mortgage payments on time and pay off their credit card debt as it came due (even if they were temporarily out of work) none of this would have happened. There would not have been bank failures and a sudden crash of the real estate market with the ripple effect of massive job loss.
PS: The Occupiers need to get their facts straight if they want to continue to use the bank bailouts as one of their signature issues. The bank bailouts were deemed necessary by the government in order to save the economy and were not a windfall for the banks. These were loans that came with many restrictions, including caps on CEO compensations and, to date, most, if not all, of the banks have paid back the government with interest. The bank bailouts are a non-issue.
PPS: I am curious, do the Occupiers believe that extremely wealthy businesses like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and eBay, for example, are evil and greedy businesses that were built by oppressing the working class or do they acknowledge that all of them were very small businesses that grew because of great ideas and talented people?
January 17, 2012 at 6:43 pm
I wanted to respond again to a couple things about your article and comment. First of all, you’re right – there’s nothing inconsistent with your opposition to the occupy movement and your support of small businesses. It just struck me that the only thing you supported about the occupy movement was its support of you (“you” being small businesses). But of course there are loads of cases where people support one part of something and not the whole. Point taken.
The bank bailout (TARP anyway) was actually passed under the Bush Administration. This is a bit of a moot point because: 1.) it was under a Democratically-controlled legislature and Republican-controlled White House, so you can’t really pin blame on either party, 2.) it’s likely Obama would have done the same thing, and 3.) it seems like you support the action regardless of who passed the legislation. I only point it out because I’ve heard/read so often from people furious with “the bank bailouts passed by Obama,” and use them to criticize him, which is just factually wrong. In addition to TARP, there was also the auto bailout (Obama this time). In both cases, industries and government that so often laud the principles of competition and the free market were sorely in need of other people’s money, and they got it.
Because “bailout” has come to be so inflammatory, I’ll use the word “investment” instead. You’re right that these investments (at least the TARP investments; not sure about auto) were paid back, and I’m very happy about that (that might sound a little sarcastic, but it’s sincere). However, while those giving and receiving the loans are back to living normal lives, millions of people in the middle had trillions of dollars suddenly vanish. Many of these people spent entire careers (all sorts of careers), raising families and wisely saving for retirement. Unfortunately, if they were still, for instance, 10 years from retirement, their portfolios took a smacking from which they might never recover. Others spent their lives not saving wisely, taking stupid risks and ignoring obvious dangers in order to make a lot of money really quickly. But how are these people different from financial institutions (taking stupid risks) and government officials (ignoring obvious dangers)? The answer, as I see it, is that financial institutions and government officials have a lot of power, and those other people have none. Sure, they have power over their own decisions and lives to some extent, but they don’t have the power to force other people to fix their mistakes. And that’s what happened with the powerful: they forced everyone else to cover for their mistakes. Now the powerful, for the most part, have returned to their lives as they were before the financial crisis while many of the powerless suffer.
Investments were made in the financial and auto industries, among others, because those investments were likely to pay off. They did, and despite the previous paragraph about power and suffering, we’re better off than we otherwise would have been. What I believe to be the main spirit of the occupy movement is the idea that we should be making investments in the poor and middle classes, investments that will be paid back in full and make everyone better off. We know a lot of programs that work. They aren’t merely entitlement programs or wasteful handouts; they’re programs that help kids graduate and go on to start small businesses, join the labor force, pay taxes; programs to help mentally ill people recover, have normal lives, and stop using government-paid medical expenses; programs that give prisoners skills they need to survive when they leave prison, rather than do whatever they can to go back. And yes, sometimes these investments will be sunk costs; they will be wasted on people who don’t want to work and for whom nothing works. And yes, many of these people are occupying various places around the world. But again, I believe that’s just a minority segment of the occupy movement, though unfortunately a visible and inflammatory segment that makes for good TV. I believe the real spirit of the occupy movement is that the powerless want the powerful to use their power, and some of their money, to make investments that benefit the country as a whole in things like education and infrastructure and health. And I believe most of the occupiers would be willing to pay higher taxes and work very hard to make this happen.
No one’s asking rich people to be poor, or even to join the ranks of the middle class. They’re just asking rich people to be a little less rich for the purpose of making smart, targeted investments in things like education and health, and to make things better for everybody. Personally I think that everyone should be willing to make that investment, and everyone should be willing to work hard to pay it off.
January 18, 2012 at 10:08 am
Corey, thanks for the comments. You are correct, the bailout (TARP) was signed into law under the Bush Administration and continued with the Obama Administration. The point was not about the politics, but that the government made these bailouts to save the economy more than to save the banks. It was not intended as some kind of “sweet heart” deal for the rich banks but to protect the interests of all of the rest of us. That is where the Occupiers get it wrong, the bailouts were not favored treatment obtained by the rich and powerful, it was an acknowledgment that the bank failures would bring down the entire economy. Also, it was not really a bailout as you acknowledge, it was a loan that has been paid back.
I believe that in your assessment of the Occupy movement you give them more credit than they deserve. If they were protesting just for some incentive programs as you suggest to give them a lift into the economic mainstream so that they could be productive and pay back the “investment” as you call it that would be great and we could all support that kind of help. However, what I hear from the Occupy movement besides their disdain for the wealthy and big business (which they lump together as one common enemy) is that they want subsidized giveaway programs that will just improve their situations but will have no lasting benefit to the economy or the rest of us who will have to pay for their free programs.
Again, thanks for the clarification and for your thoughtful response.