By Peter Galuszka
“They’re coming out with multiple, onerous regulations,” says Mike Bucci, a small business owner in Richmond, according to a visual runby Chief Baconaut James A. Bacon Jr., as part of a blog posting titled”Paperwork, Solar Panels, and Job Creation.”
Mr. Bucci complains that his small business, which comes up with business solutions, was stymied because he had to go through a lot of paperwork to export some products. He did not, however, go into details and didn’t say, for instance, if it was the U.S. government that was requiring the paperwork or perhaps the customs people of the nation where he was shipping. It apparently didn’t matter, because accouding to those mantras that our James A. Bacon Jr. so likes, it shows over-regulation and the big, bad government.
So, it was with considerable curiousity that I noticed a report by McClatchy publications, prepared by reporters from the Charlotte Observer, The Kansas City Star, The Miami Herald and the Sacramento Bee, among others, stating that their survey of small business owners had no particular problems with government regulations.
On the contrary.”Govenment regulations are not ‘choking’ our business, the hospitality business,” says Bernard Wolfson, president of Hospitality Operations in Miami.
In Charlotte, Rick Douglas, owner of Minit Maids, likewise saw no deluge of regulations although he did complain about workers’ compensation claims. In Gulfport, Miss., small business woner Rip Daniels says his problem is not regulations but the difficulty of getting business insurance. He credits Washington’s stiumulus with keeping small business afloat.
So, we have a very different perspective than that promoted by The U.S. Chamber of Commerce which tends to represent big corporations capable of helping pay for the Chamber’s ornate and museum-like headquarters just across a square from the White House in Washington.
Besides getting insurance from private carrier, a huge problem for small business is getting capital to expand. Crushed by their excesses in subprime mortgage lending, many big banks are protecting their loan-making ability like jealous mother hens. They have been taking a beating for years and are making lenders pay. Bank of America, which had to absorb Merrill Lynch and Countrywide, a major subprime lender, is about the lay off 30,000 people.
They are not really all that interested in lending money to small operations. Curiously, under Obama, the U.S. Small Business Administration has doubled its lending through a program that helps small businesses find loans with reasonable interest rates that are backed by the U.S. government.
Why are they doing this? Presumably because private lenders are not doing it.
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