15 ms·

The Invisible American

90 points by randomname2 10y ago

chiph 10y ago
Small business doesn't get the support it needs from government, in terms of ease of starting & doing business. In places like Singapore you can have a legal firm chartered in an hour. It took a couple of weeks for some friends & I to get an LLC set up (receive the paperwork from the Secretary of State). I think this is due in part to your Senator/Congressman not really knowing any small businessmen. All the lobbyists he sees are from large corporations. And he doesn't interact with a local dry cleaner, barber, or auto repair, as those services are provided by the capitol complex. If they did, they'd be more aligned with their needs.
- soared 10y ago
  It took me 30 minutes to set up my C-corp in Colorado. You just go online and register.. pay $50 and pick a name. What did you do?
  - brianlweiner 10y ago
    Colorado tends to rank in the top 10 as far as ease-of-starting I believe. I think these kinds of regulations are often overlooked when states dream of starting their own tech hubs.
  - douche 10y ago
    It's a spectrum. One of my buddies started an LLC in NY. I'm just going to quote him: New York State: 1. When you incorporate an LLC in this state, they require you to publish your LLC's incorporation in two different newspapers, at a cost of about $1200. They choose the newspapers. 2. Their LLC incorporation website only works during business hours. Yes, that's right. The website only works 9 to 5. 3. They can only receive information by fax and mail and the fax numbers don't work.
    - logfromblammo 10y ago
      I was under the impression that if you want to start an LLC, you do it in Delaware if you ever want to upgrade to a C corporation or be acquired, in Nevada if you worry about taxes, in Wyoming if you want privacy, or in New Mexico if you want anonymity. Then you register it as a foreign corporation with your state's Secretary of State. Incorporating in your own state is unnecessary, unless you have a fixed business location that is always staffed during business hours, and are keen on avoiding registered agent fees. Just incorporate in Delaware. Administration of U.S. corporations is their cash cow. They can't afford to make the process too burdensome, or some other state will eat their lunch.
      - pbarnes_1 10y ago
        Nevada is over-rated due to nexus and residency laws. You have to really know what you're doing and be willing to actually live there. If you're CA based, the FTB will find you. They're 10x more ruthless than the IRS.
      - macNchz 10y ago
        NY state imposes the LLC publication requirement on foreign as well as in-state businesses, so that particular strategy, while valid for the stated reasons, doesn't avoid the big up front cost of starting an LLC in New York.
      - soared 10y ago
        People say that a lot. The truth is, if you don't get acquired/ipo it won't matter. If you do, you'll hire an expensive lawyer anyways and they will move it and handle anything related. Its easier just to do it in your own state. If it ever really matters, you'll have a ton of money and an expensive lawyer to deal with it for you.
    - macNchz 10y ago
      This law is ridiculous and I followed an effort to repeal it a few years ago (it failed), but there are two ways to work around it: you can use a registered agent for your business in a county where it's cheap to publish (I believe for around $150/year you can register with an agent in Albany and advertise in a nearby newspaper for $75 or so), or you can delay actually doing the publication as there's no penalty, and only publicize when you absolutely need to (e.g. if you're suing someone). Also, if you're not wedded to the simplicity of an LLC you can start an S-Corp in NY state inexpensively and with no publishing requirement–though with more overhead and differences in structure.
  - chiph 10y ago
    This was in North Carolina. We couldn't open our business bank account until we had the paperwork from them, so we couldn't (officially) fund the business or buy anything for it for those few weeks.
- jvm 10y ago
  If you find this difficult you might want to try out Stripe Atlas. > With Stripe Atlas, entrepreneurs can easily incorporate a U.S. company, set up a U.S. bank account, and start accepting payments with Stripe. https://stripe.com/atlas https://stripe.com/atlas
  - noxryan 10y ago
    It sounds like this is geared toward "high growth" startups. "With Stripe Atlas, you can establish a C-Corporation for your business in Delaware." Probably not ideal for a typical small business.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- pbarnes_1 10y ago
  It's really not that hard to get a company set up in the US. It takes less than a day to do it with someone like INCServ with your standard Delaware Corp. That said, it's definitely far more friendly setting up in places like Australia, Canada, etc. Also a lot less onerous in terms of requiring lawyers, accountants, tax people to stay in compliance. It costs a lot more to just exist in the US.
samsolomon 10y ago
> According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of the total U.S. adult population that has a full-time job has been hovering around 48% since 2010 -- this is the lowest full-time employment level since 1983. I've never heard the statistics for full-time employment. I knew that it would be low, but below 50 percent? That's incredible.
- lr4444lr 10y ago
  I also wonder what the rate would be if you subtracted out people who involuntarily have to stitch together 40 hours from 2 or more jobs.
  - tiatia 10y ago
    http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-chart...
    - knightofmars 10y ago
      http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2015/06/15/deconstructing-shadowstats-part-2-in-search-of-an-alternative-measure-of-unemployment/ http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2015/06/15/deconstruct...
      - knightofmars 10y ago
        tl;dr: "The bottom line here is that the ShadowStats alternate unemployment rate of 23 percent for May 2015, and similar rates for other recent months, are completely implausible. To get an unemployment rate that high, we have to include millions of people who do not even claim to want a job, let alone make any effort to look for one. We have to assume that the status of long-term discouraged worker is a trap from which almost no one escapes from year to year, by finding work, by making even a single unsuccessful attempt to find work during the year, by changing their mind about wanting work, or by death."
- wyldfire 10y ago
ZeroGravitas 10y ago
This seemed strangely political for a polling company. edit: following some links, they have a real consistent focus on small businesses as being the answer to economic problems. That's actually something I believe as well, but it still seems strange to see it being pushed so heavily by a polling company. This seems to be his key manifesto: http://www.gallup.com/opinion/chairman/186638/killing-small-business.aspx http://www.gallup.com/opinion/chairman/186638/killing-small-...
- a3n 10y ago
  It's labeled an opinion piece. I'd be interested in opinions formed by people who look at a lot of data.
- joe_the_user 10y ago
  Yes, Going from declining living standards to lack of identification as middle class seems like a logical, small step. Going from that to talking about small business seems a large and unjustified leap. As I'd understand it, most of the decline in American median income and living standards has come from the end of industrial union jobs and well paid corporate jobs. While more Americans than ever survive on the "gig economy" and apparently don't make much doing that, true, successful small business people would be in the top 5% of income and just by statistic would seem to be doing well (but may be under attack in a fashion not visible by statistics for all I know). Edit: You could say the article uses a "the cause of this problem is the lack of applying my solution to it" sort of rhetoric, which feels a bit dodgy regardless of what one might think of the solution.
- ubernostrum 10y ago
  On the other hand, most "support small business" proposals boil down to "make someone else pay to keep this person in business". It's worth asking some tough questions about which businesses generate enough value to be worth making others pay to keep them afloat.
  - pitaj 10y ago
    > most "support small business" proposals boil down to "make someone else pay to keep this person in business" When really, they should be, "don't make anyone pay to keep anyone in business" Corporate bailouts and monetary policy are socialized risk and privatized reward, benefiting the large and entrenched firms.
cheriot 10y ago
Class status is self reported so I wonder how much can be traced to economic vs mentality changes.
tps5 10y ago
> The percentage of Americans who say they are in the middle or upper-middle class has fallen 10 percentage points, from a 61% average between 2000 and 2008 to 51% today. This statistic is psychological. Americans want to be middle class and tend to identify as such even if their income does not fall into what is considered a "middle class income" (lower or higher). So, while it is significant that fewer people identify as middle class, it is not clear what that actually means. And we certainly shouldn't take it for granted that everyone who no longer identifies as middle class has seen a salary drop from 65k to 28k.
- jonnathanson 10y ago
  Self-reported sentiment is still a useful metric, but I agree that we should only make so much of it, and that we shouldn't conflate it with harder metrics.
- scarmig 10y ago
  It's still pretty interesting. Historically Americans have always considered themselves middle class, regardless of whether they were on food stamps, received EITC, or drove a Bugatti. The fact that now many more people are identifying themselves as poor or working class is a shift toward the international norm, which might presage a change in America's political "exceptionality."
  - zeveb 10y ago
    > The fact that now many more people are identifying themselves as poor or working class is a shift toward the international norm, which might presage a change in America's political "exceptionality." I really fear that it may. Once folks realise that they can make their lives better (in the short term at least) by using State violence to rob those who are better off (rather than through hard work), the long-term results are going to be ugly.
    - zyxley 10y ago
      You seem to be doing that extreme-libertarian thing where you call taxes "robbery" while ignoring the negative economic effects of the general lack of safety nets in the US. You may want to read up on the concept of the "tragedy of the commons" first.
tboyd47 10y ago
The author posits that three metrics have to be turned around in order to save the middle class: (1) the full-time job rate, (2) the number of publicly-listed companies trading on the US exchanges, and (3) the number of new "startups" (which author seems to use as a blanket term for all small businesses) You can't expect the number of small businesses to increase if the vast majority of people in the country have no idea how to run a business. The cultural norm in America is to entrust the doing of business to the elites of major corporations and aspire to be lifer employees for them. This worked until these companies started buying each other up, blowing their profits on stock buybacks and shareholder dividends, and laying their experienced workers off in the 1990s. The reality changed very dramatically, but the culture did not change with it. Our education system is very much biased towards STEM and liberal arts, not business and trade. It is very, very odd contrasting with such an aggressively pro-capitalist foreign policy.
- gavinpc 10y ago
  > the vast majority of people in the country have no idea how to run a business Chicken and egg problem, but most people (myself included) don't know how to prioritize the use of small businesses, either. How many days go by before you interact with a small business in any way? How much of this is due to habit and choices you made long ago?
- a3n 10y ago
  I think more people would start businesses, and go through the learning curve of running a business, if it weren't for the state of health insurance. Unless you're rich, the only affordable way to get good health insurance is through an employer. If you've got kids, or some expensive medical condition in your family, a lot of people are going to suck it up and work for the man, for health insurance.
  - tboyd47 10y ago
    That's another factor that's unlikely to change. However, as fewer and fewer young people choose to have kids, we could at least expect those people to take a risk if they knew what they were doing.
seibelj 10y ago
As someone who supports all business large and small, the #1 thing the government needs to do is get everyone taxed at the same rate. Large companies who can play games with taxes, moving profits offshore, loopholes, etc. wind up with 0 to 20% corporate tax rate while small businesses who can't afford to figure that out pay full freight of 35%. I don't know what the solution is, but until this is figured out, an enormous subsidy and competitive advantage is given to big business which small businesses cannot possibly match.
- Quinner 10y ago
  Replace corporate taxes with a VAT, perhaps?
  - astazangasta 10y ago
    Since a VAT is a consumption tax, it is essentially regressive; poor people are hit harder.
    - zeveb 10y ago
      That could, though, be balanced with e.g. basic income.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - todd8 10y ago
      Corporate taxes have a similar (although not identical) impact; the corporate taxes end up costing three different groups: shareholders due to reduced dividends, employees due to reduced wages and bonuses, and consumers due to increased prices for company's products. Thus corporate taxes tend to have an impact across the entire population, somewhat like VATs, see [1]. I feel like this is why they are popular, it sounds like you are taxing someone else to most people. [1] http://www.pgpf.org/sites/default/files/0102_tax-rates-full.gif http://www.pgpf.org/sites/default/files/0102_tax-rates-full....
bandrami 10y ago
The percentage of Americans who say they are in the middle or upper-middle class has fallen 10 percentage points, from a 61% average between 2000 and 2008 to 51% today. That number is still too high. It should be about 33% (but then about 80% of Americans consider themselves "above average" drivers, too). That devastated American remains counted as "full-time employed" because he still has full-time work -- although with drastically reduced pay and benefits. Nonsense. 2015 saw the largest income increases ever recorded at each of the bottom four quintiles.
- itbeho 10y ago
  "The data for 2013 and beyond reflect the implementation of the redesigned income questions." https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/press-kits/2016/20160913_iphi_slides.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/press-kit...
- astazangasta 10y ago
  >Nonsense. 2015 saw the largest income increases ever recorded at each of the bottom four quintiles. I see you bought that propaganda item that was floating around last week. Anytime someone is talking about the "largest increase" of anything, they are usually trying to lie to you. In this case, while income may have "increased dramatically" between 2014 and 2015, real median income is still lower than 2008: http://images.dailykos.com/images/134215/large/household-income-monthly-median-since-2000.gif?1426491420 http://images.dailykos.com/images/134215/large/household-inc...
- mdorazio 10y ago
  As itbeho pointed out, the census moved the goal posts, rendering that whole claim questionable at best [1]. Additionally, income increases don't refute what the author said at all. If I lost a 75k a year job and replaced it with a 30k a year job, an increase of anything less than 150% leaves me worse off than I was before. You can see this if you look at real median wage information - we are still well below 2007 levels, even with the census tricks. [1] http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-15/deconstructing-median-income-farce http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-15/deconstructing-medi...
losteverything 10y ago
Invisible meaning not represented, not invisible like Fussell's "top/bottom out of sighters" - which I thought the article was going to be about <That devastated American remains counted as "full-time employed" because he still has full-time work -- although with drastically reduced pay and benefits. He has fallen out of the middle class and is invisible in current reporting. <More disastrous is the emotional toll on the person -- the sudden loss of household income can cause a crash of self-esteem and dignity, leading to an environment of desperation that we haven't seen since the Great Depression. I would challenge the author to prove, expand and support this.
cryoshon 10y ago
Unemployment is high, wages are low, debt is high, savings are low, and cost of living is high and rising rapidly in the only geographical places which don't suffer from high unemployment and low wages. Consumption is low due to the above factors. Job generation is low. New business founding is low. Taxes are the most burdensome to those who have the least; capital is heavily concentrated at the very top, with most of the bottom 70% owning very little whatsoever. Retirement accounts are being filled slowly (if at all), not filled at all, or withdrawn from prematurely. Mortgages are being reversed in order to liquidate owned shares in exchange for cash. The upper class has flourished, and is richer than ever before, including the gilded age, with fortunes the size of Rockefeller now common among their ranks. The upper middle class has taken a minor hit, but has largely recovered and is reaping the gains of their investment funds. Middle class families have fallen into instability, and must now accept a lower standard of living, worse education, and high levels of debt. Lower class families have fallen into desperation, and many have their stuff repoed and their homes foreclosed. The underclass is hopelessly trapped working in multiple minimum wage jobs if they are lucky enough to work at all, packed in with a dozen to a household. A growing population at the very bottom lives in utter squalor, frequently in the context of complete municipal anarchy such as in Detroit or Flint. How hard is it to understand that the economic health of the majority of people in the US is very poor?
- mason240 10y ago
  Almost none of the things in your first paragraph are true.
  - thinkdevcode 10y ago
    Because you don't want it to be or because you have proof? If you have proof, show it.
    - mason240 10y ago
      Let me get right on proving other people's arguments.
twblalock 10y ago
I find it amusing when people think they have discovered for the first time that the unemployment numbers are "wrong" in some way, e.g. only people who are actively looking for work are considered unemployed (as opposed to people who gave up looking), people who take new jobs for lower wages than their old jobs are considered fully employed. The unemployment figures have been that way the entire time! It was never a secret.
- david927 10y ago
  Not "the entire time" -- they have changed the way that unemployment is calculated multiple times over the years, and always in favor of lower unemployment. And while it's not a secret, it's definitely not actively publicized. That's the point; lower unemployment numbers are published to try to lower unemployment. Never trust numbers if the one collecting the data has any inclination towards the result, no matter how trustworthy the source seems to be; bias will find a way in. Any government's numbers on unemployment and inflation will always be suspect for that reason. S&P/Moody's/Fitch? Years ago, I remember a trader in Zurich laughing at my question as to their trust-worthiness. If I was a full-time investor with a large portfolio, I would pay to do my own tracking of prices across a wide basket of goods, as well as research to get my own numbers on unemployment, underemployment and jobless, the same with credit ratings. Any large discrepancies with the official numbers would be a sign as to what is being sold and how desperately.
jlj 10y ago
Part of the Johnson/Weld platform is to get government out of the way of entrepreneurship. http://fortune.com/2016/07/07/small-business-libertarian/ http://fortune.com/2016/07/07/small-business-libertarian/

90 points by randomname2 10y ago

chiph 10y ago

Small business doesn't get the support it needs from government, in terms of ease of starting & doing business. In places like Singapore you can have a legal firm chartered in an hour. It took a couple of weeks for some friends & I to get an LLC set up (receive the paperwork from the Secretary of State). I think this is due in part to your Senator/Congressman not really knowing any small businessmen. All the lobbyists he sees are from large corporations. And he doesn't interact with a local dry cleaner, barber, or auto repair, as those services are provided by the capitol complex. If they did, they'd be more aligned with their needs.

soared 10y ago
It took me 30 minutes to set up my C-corp in Colorado. You just go online and register.. pay $50 and pick a name. What did you do?
- brianlweiner 10y ago
  Colorado tends to rank in the top 10 as far as ease-of-starting I believe. I think these kinds of regulations are often overlooked when states dream of starting their own tech hubs.
- douche 10y ago
  It's a spectrum. One of my buddies started an LLC in NY. I'm just going to quote him: New York State: 1. When you incorporate an LLC in this state, they require you to publish your LLC's incorporation in two different newspapers, at a cost of about $1200. They choose the newspapers. 2. Their LLC incorporation website only works during business hours. Yes, that's right. The website only works 9 to 5. 3. They can only receive information by fax and mail and the fax numbers don't work.
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    I was under the impression that if you want to start an LLC, you do it in Delaware if you ever want to upgrade to a C corporation or be acquired, in Nevada if you worry about taxes, in Wyoming if you want privacy, or in New Mexico if you want anonymity. Then you register it as a foreign corporation with your state's Secretary of State. Incorporating in your own state is unnecessary, unless you have a fixed business location that is always staffed during business hours, and are keen on avoiding registered agent fees. Just incorporate in Delaware. Administration of U.S. corporations is their cash cow. They can't afford to make the process too burdensome, or some other state will eat their lunch.
    - pbarnes_1 10y ago
      Nevada is over-rated due to nexus and residency laws. You have to really know what you're doing and be willing to actually live there. If you're CA based, the FTB will find you. They're 10x more ruthless than the IRS.
    - macNchz 10y ago
      NY state imposes the LLC publication requirement on foreign as well as in-state businesses, so that particular strategy, while valid for the stated reasons, doesn't avoid the big up front cost of starting an LLC in New York.
    - soared 10y ago
      People say that a lot. The truth is, if you don't get acquired/ipo it won't matter. If you do, you'll hire an expensive lawyer anyways and they will move it and handle anything related. Its easier just to do it in your own state. If it ever really matters, you'll have a ton of money and an expensive lawyer to deal with it for you.
  - macNchz 10y ago
    This law is ridiculous and I followed an effort to repeal it a few years ago (it failed), but there are two ways to work around it: you can use a registered agent for your business in a county where it's cheap to publish (I believe for around $150/year you can register with an agent in Albany and advertise in a nearby newspaper for $75 or so), or you can delay actually doing the publication as there's no penalty, and only publicize when you absolutely need to (e.g. if you're suing someone). Also, if you're not wedded to the simplicity of an LLC you can start an S-Corp in NY state inexpensively and with no publishing requirement–though with more overhead and differences in structure.
- chiph 10y ago
  This was in North Carolina. We couldn't open our business bank account until we had the paperwork from them, so we couldn't (officially) fund the business or buy anything for it for those few weeks.
jvm 10y ago
If you find this difficult you might want to try out Stripe Atlas. > With Stripe Atlas, entrepreneurs can easily incorporate a U.S. company, set up a U.S. bank account, and start accepting payments with Stripe. https://stripe.com/atlas https://stripe.com/atlas
- noxryan 10y ago
  It sounds like this is geared toward "high growth" startups. "With Stripe Atlas, you can establish a C-Corporation for your business in Delaware." Probably not ideal for a typical small business.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
pbarnes_1 10y ago
It's really not that hard to get a company set up in the US. It takes less than a day to do it with someone like INCServ with your standard Delaware Corp. That said, it's definitely far more friendly setting up in places like Australia, Canada, etc. Also a lot less onerous in terms of requiring lawyers, accountants, tax people to stay in compliance. It costs a lot more to just exist in the US.

samsolomon 10y ago

> According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of the total U.S. adult population that has a full-time job has been hovering around 48% since 2010 -- this is the lowest full-time employment level since 1983. I've never heard the statistics for full-time employment. I knew that it would be low, but below 50 percent? That's incredible.

lr4444lr 10y ago
I also wonder what the rate would be if you subtracted out people who involuntarily have to stitch together 40 hours from 2 or more jobs.
- tiatia 10y ago
  http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-chart...
  - knightofmars 10y ago
    http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2015/06/15/deconstructing-shadowstats-part-2-in-search-of-an-alternative-measure-of-unemployment/ http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2015/06/15/deconstruct...
    - knightofmars 10y ago
      tl;dr: "The bottom line here is that the ShadowStats alternate unemployment rate of 23 percent for May 2015, and similar rates for other recent months, are completely implausible. To get an unemployment rate that high, we have to include millions of people who do not even claim to want a job, let alone make any effort to look for one. We have to assume that the status of long-term discouraged worker is a trap from which almost no one escapes from year to year, by finding work, by making even a single unsuccessful attempt to find work during the year, by changing their mind about wanting work, or by death."
wyldfire 10y ago

ZeroGravitas 10y ago

This seemed strangely political for a polling company. edit: following some links, they have a real consistent focus on small businesses as being the answer to economic problems. That's actually something I believe as well, but it still seems strange to see it being pushed so heavily by a polling company. This seems to be his key manifesto: http://www.gallup.com/opinion/chairman/186638/killing-small-business.aspx http://www.gallup.com/opinion/chairman/186638/killing-small-...

a3n 10y ago
It's labeled an opinion piece. I'd be interested in opinions formed by people who look at a lot of data.
joe_the_user 10y ago
Yes, Going from declining living standards to lack of identification as middle class seems like a logical, small step. Going from that to talking about small business seems a large and unjustified leap. As I'd understand it, most of the decline in American median income and living standards has come from the end of industrial union jobs and well paid corporate jobs. While more Americans than ever survive on the "gig economy" and apparently don't make much doing that, true, successful small business people would be in the top 5% of income and just by statistic would seem to be doing well (but may be under attack in a fashion not visible by statistics for all I know). Edit: You could say the article uses a "the cause of this problem is the lack of applying my solution to it" sort of rhetoric, which feels a bit dodgy regardless of what one might think of the solution.
ubernostrum 10y ago
On the other hand, most "support small business" proposals boil down to "make someone else pay to keep this person in business". It's worth asking some tough questions about which businesses generate enough value to be worth making others pay to keep them afloat.
- pitaj 10y ago
  > most "support small business" proposals boil down to "make someone else pay to keep this person in business" When really, they should be, "don't make anyone pay to keep anyone in business" Corporate bailouts and monetary policy are socialized risk and privatized reward, benefiting the large and entrenched firms.

cheriot 10y ago

Class status is self reported so I wonder how much can be traced to economic vs mentality changes.

tps5 10y ago

> The percentage of Americans who say they are in the middle or upper-middle class has fallen 10 percentage points, from a 61% average between 2000 and 2008 to 51% today. This statistic is psychological. Americans want to be middle class and tend to identify as such even if their income does not fall into what is considered a "middle class income" (lower or higher). So, while it is significant that fewer people identify as middle class, it is not clear what that actually means. And we certainly shouldn't take it for granted that everyone who no longer identifies as middle class has seen a salary drop from 65k to 28k.

jonnathanson 10y ago
Self-reported sentiment is still a useful metric, but I agree that we should only make so much of it, and that we shouldn't conflate it with harder metrics.
scarmig 10y ago
It's still pretty interesting. Historically Americans have always considered themselves middle class, regardless of whether they were on food stamps, received EITC, or drove a Bugatti. The fact that now many more people are identifying themselves as poor or working class is a shift toward the international norm, which might presage a change in America's political "exceptionality."
- zeveb 10y ago
  > The fact that now many more people are identifying themselves as poor or working class is a shift toward the international norm, which might presage a change in America's political "exceptionality." I really fear that it may. Once folks realise that they can make their lives better (in the short term at least) by using State violence to rob those who are better off (rather than through hard work), the long-term results are going to be ugly.
  - zyxley 10y ago
    You seem to be doing that extreme-libertarian thing where you call taxes "robbery" while ignoring the negative economic effects of the general lack of safety nets in the US. You may want to read up on the concept of the "tragedy of the commons" first.

tboyd47 10y ago

The author posits that three metrics have to be turned around in order to save the middle class: (1) the full-time job rate, (2) the number of publicly-listed companies trading on the US exchanges, and (3) the number of new "startups" (which author seems to use as a blanket term for all small businesses) You can't expect the number of small businesses to increase if the vast majority of people in the country have no idea how to run a business. The cultural norm in America is to entrust the doing of business to the elites of major corporations and aspire to be lifer employees for them. This worked until these companies started buying each other up, blowing their profits on stock buybacks and shareholder dividends, and laying their experienced workers off in the 1990s. The reality changed very dramatically, but the culture did not change with it. Our education system is very much biased towards STEM and liberal arts, not business and trade. It is very, very odd contrasting with such an aggressively pro-capitalist foreign policy.

gavinpc 10y ago
> the vast majority of people in the country have no idea how to run a business Chicken and egg problem, but most people (myself included) don't know how to prioritize the use of small businesses, either. How many days go by before you interact with a small business in any way? How much of this is due to habit and choices you made long ago?
a3n 10y ago
I think more people would start businesses, and go through the learning curve of running a business, if it weren't for the state of health insurance. Unless you're rich, the only affordable way to get good health insurance is through an employer. If you've got kids, or some expensive medical condition in your family, a lot of people are going to suck it up and work for the man, for health insurance.
- tboyd47 10y ago
  That's another factor that's unlikely to change. However, as fewer and fewer young people choose to have kids, we could at least expect those people to take a risk if they knew what they were doing.

seibelj 10y ago

As someone who supports all business large and small, the #1 thing the government needs to do is get everyone taxed at the same rate. Large companies who can play games with taxes, moving profits offshore, loopholes, etc. wind up with 0 to 20% corporate tax rate while small businesses who can't afford to figure that out pay full freight of 35%. I don't know what the solution is, but until this is figured out, an enormous subsidy and competitive advantage is given to big business which small businesses cannot possibly match.

Quinner 10y ago
Replace corporate taxes with a VAT, perhaps?
- astazangasta 10y ago
  Since a VAT is a consumption tax, it is essentially regressive; poor people are hit harder.
  - zeveb 10y ago
    That could, though, be balanced with e.g. basic income.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - todd8 10y ago
    Corporate taxes have a similar (although not identical) impact; the corporate taxes end up costing three different groups: shareholders due to reduced dividends, employees due to reduced wages and bonuses, and consumers due to increased prices for company's products. Thus corporate taxes tend to have an impact across the entire population, somewhat like VATs, see [1]. I feel like this is why they are popular, it sounds like you are taxing someone else to most people. [1] http://www.pgpf.org/sites/default/files/0102_tax-rates-full.gif http://www.pgpf.org/sites/default/files/0102_tax-rates-full....

bandrami 10y ago

The percentage of Americans who say they are in the middle or upper-middle class has fallen 10 percentage points, from a 61% average between 2000 and 2008 to 51% today. That number is still too high. It should be about 33% (but then about 80% of Americans consider themselves "above average" drivers, too). That devastated American remains counted as "full-time employed" because he still has full-time work -- although with drastically reduced pay and benefits. Nonsense. 2015 saw the largest income increases ever recorded at each of the bottom four quintiles.

itbeho 10y ago
"The data for 2013 and beyond reflect the implementation of the redesigned income questions." https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/press-kits/2016/20160913_iphi_slides.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/press-kit...
astazangasta 10y ago
>Nonsense. 2015 saw the largest income increases ever recorded at each of the bottom four quintiles. I see you bought that propaganda item that was floating around last week. Anytime someone is talking about the "largest increase" of anything, they are usually trying to lie to you. In this case, while income may have "increased dramatically" between 2014 and 2015, real median income is still lower than 2008: http://images.dailykos.com/images/134215/large/household-income-monthly-median-since-2000.gif?1426491420 http://images.dailykos.com/images/134215/large/household-inc...
mdorazio 10y ago
As itbeho pointed out, the census moved the goal posts, rendering that whole claim questionable at best [1]. Additionally, income increases don't refute what the author said at all. If I lost a 75k a year job and replaced it with a 30k a year job, an increase of anything less than 150% leaves me worse off than I was before. You can see this if you look at real median wage information - we are still well below 2007 levels, even with the census tricks. [1] http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-15/deconstructing-median-income-farce http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-15/deconstructing-medi...

losteverything 10y ago

Invisible meaning not represented, not invisible like Fussell's "top/bottom out of sighters" - which I thought the article was going to be about <That devastated American remains counted as "full-time employed" because he still has full-time work -- although with drastically reduced pay and benefits. He has fallen out of the middle class and is invisible in current reporting. <More disastrous is the emotional toll on the person -- the sudden loss of household income can cause a crash of self-esteem and dignity, leading to an environment of desperation that we haven't seen since the Great Depression. I would challenge the author to prove, expand and support this.

cryoshon 10y ago

Unemployment is high, wages are low, debt is high, savings are low, and cost of living is high and rising rapidly in the only geographical places which don't suffer from high unemployment and low wages. Consumption is low due to the above factors. Job generation is low. New business founding is low. Taxes are the most burdensome to those who have the least; capital is heavily concentrated at the very top, with most of the bottom 70% owning very little whatsoever. Retirement accounts are being filled slowly (if at all), not filled at all, or withdrawn from prematurely. Mortgages are being reversed in order to liquidate owned shares in exchange for cash. The upper class has flourished, and is richer than ever before, including the gilded age, with fortunes the size of Rockefeller now common among their ranks. The upper middle class has taken a minor hit, but has largely recovered and is reaping the gains of their investment funds. Middle class families have fallen into instability, and must now accept a lower standard of living, worse education, and high levels of debt. Lower class families have fallen into desperation, and many have their stuff repoed and their homes foreclosed. The underclass is hopelessly trapped working in multiple minimum wage jobs if they are lucky enough to work at all, packed in with a dozen to a household. A growing population at the very bottom lives in utter squalor, frequently in the context of complete municipal anarchy such as in Detroit or Flint. How hard is it to understand that the economic health of the majority of people in the US is very poor?

mason240 10y ago
Almost none of the things in your first paragraph are true.
- thinkdevcode 10y ago
  Because you don't want it to be or because you have proof? If you have proof, show it.
  - mason240 10y ago
    Let me get right on proving other people's arguments.

twblalock 10y ago

I find it amusing when people think they have discovered for the first time that the unemployment numbers are "wrong" in some way, e.g. only people who are actively looking for work are considered unemployed (as opposed to people who gave up looking), people who take new jobs for lower wages than their old jobs are considered fully employed. The unemployment figures have been that way the entire time! It was never a secret.

david927 10y ago
Not "the entire time" -- they have changed the way that unemployment is calculated multiple times over the years, and always in favor of lower unemployment. And while it's not a secret, it's definitely not actively publicized. That's the point; lower unemployment numbers are published to try to lower unemployment. Never trust numbers if the one collecting the data has any inclination towards the result, no matter how trustworthy the source seems to be; bias will find a way in. Any government's numbers on unemployment and inflation will always be suspect for that reason. S&P/Moody's/Fitch? Years ago, I remember a trader in Zurich laughing at my question as to their trust-worthiness. If I was a full-time investor with a large portfolio, I would pay to do my own tracking of prices across a wide basket of goods, as well as research to get my own numbers on unemployment, underemployment and jobless, the same with credit ratings. Any large discrepancies with the official numbers would be a sign as to what is being sold and how desperately.

jlj 10y ago

Part of the Johnson/Weld platform is to get government out of the way of entrepreneurship. http://fortune.com/2016/07/07/small-business-libertarian/ http://fortune.com/2016/07/07/small-business-libertarian/