“Moving Forward in Uncertain Times” is the first video of our series “The Story of Business” — a joint project between us and the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council. This short documentary features Wes Garner, owner of Great Lakes Calcium, a small business in Green Bay, Wisconsin that makes the compound in Tums.
Wes is an entrepreneur, and he’s invested his life into his business. But Wes is worried. Uncertainty is one of the most damaging hurdles a business can face. And Wes doesn’t understand why government is making things unnecessarily uncertain and complex for his business.
Watch Wes’s story below and please share with others.
Below, watch part two of “The Story of Business.” And in case you missed it, check out a more comedic take on the economic uncertainty problem in our popular video, “Wait and See.”
Tags: economic uncertainty, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, Government Spending, healthcare, regulation, SBE, small business, Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, the story of business, uncertainty, uncertainty & lack of confidence
It’s very desirable that the general public is aware of how difficult it is to create value from available resources and maybe make a profit over time. Many people see business activity as dominated by rich, fat cat capitalists gouging consumers for outrageous, undeserved profits. That’s poppycock!
“Many people see business activity as dominated by rich, fat cat capitalists gouging consumers for outrageous, undeserved profits. That’s poppycock!”
You are naive or uninformed regarding the statement above. Corporate america (sic) is ruining and bankrupting this country. Look around, read, research. People more prominant, professional, and respected than you have detailed the facts.
If you are saying the small business man does not fit in that category that’s one thing. However, businesses today don’t seem to re-invest profits except to the end of profitability at any cost. In the face of such truth, you’re dismissed.
Not all small business bosses are so honorable, so let’s be careful in allowing all open range. My SF boss is stealing wages from most employees to build a larger savings and bigger mansion in Florida; Such small business owners do not deserve any special consideration. Just major jail time !!
It is foolish to assume that an increase in taxes will be absorbed by a business owners’ personal income and insulting to avow that it must be, or to infer that they are ‘evil’ if they do not personally absorb the increase. The owner of a business has every right to do as they wish with their profits, the market will determine whether or not they make the correct decisions.
Taxes are a cost of doing business and are considered just as any other cost when moving forward with a business plan. Health care costs are in the same boat as well (not sure when health care morphed into a right in the worplace rather than a benefit, but I digress). Yet, these are two areas where Washington has created great uncertainty as to what these costs will be going forward and it is very, very difficult to form a business plan when one does not know what costs will be. Also, markets hate uncertainty. Volatility in stock prices is the inevitable result of a government that will not send a clear message as to how costs will be manipulated through regulations.
Most often it is the case that taxes, just as any other cost, are passed onto the customer through increased prices for goods and services. If the market will bear the increased prices, so be it, if not, tax increases will be made up elsewhere. It is sometimes the case that a business owner, when faced with a tax increase (or other cost increase), lays off an employee (or employees) and uses the savings in labor costs to offset the tax increases. Remaining employees must then increase productivity to cover for the smaller labor force. For a small business, this is usually the quickest and easiest way to offset tax increases. Think this doesn’t happen? Think again. Have you ever owned a small business?
Health care has turned into a “right” in the workplace rather than a “benefit” because neither the government nor the free market has been able – or willing – to provide an affordable alternative. I own a small business that does $4 million a year in sales with 30 employees. My largest expense outside of salaries is healthcare – more than R&D or anything else that could actually grow our business. My degree was in Industrial Psychology and not medicine, yet every year I’m supposed to pore over hundreds of complicated pages from health insurance companies trying to determine what is the right health plan for my employees. And no matter what plan I choose, you can bet that it’s not good for everybody. Right now 50 million Americans have no health insurance at all so the rest of us who pay for it have to pick up the entire bill for the entire country. I’m surprised more small businesses don’t support a government-funded plan because spreading costs among 300 million people makes more much sense than the way it is now.
In light of the recent passage of “government funded” national comprehensive health care reform, your response begs the following questions:
A) Is the new plan “not good for everybody”, or good for everybody in your company?
B) Has it led (or will lead) to a reduction in the “hundreds of complicated pages” you must pore over?
C) Actually reduced (or projected to) health care costs for your company?
D) The system is now set up that large employers will see a reduction in health care costs by simply paying the fines levied for not offering health care and allowing their employees to go onto the government plan.
As a small business owner and exempt from fines levied on companies that have 50 or more employees, do you see a future where you simply drop health coverage altogether so your employees have to purchase their own coverage on the open market or go onto the government plan?
Unfortunately, the zeitgeist in this country is that one’s perception of what constitutes a “good” healthcare plan improves in direct coorelation with how much of said plan is paid for by other people. If fact, a coorelation exists but is usually inverse rather than direct – i.e. it is usually the case that the more one’s health plan is paid for by others, less and less is offered by the plan. Healthcare, like most other goods and services in this country, cannot escape the adage “you get what you pay for”.
We are creating a system where the “haves” who can afford to pay for private health care insurance and co-pays will be serviced by a completely different health care delivery system than the “haves nots” who will be forced to accept whatever plan/services the government offers them for no (or comparatively little) personal cost. (See IHS)
BTW, costs are not spread among 300 million, just those out of the 300 million who pay taxes.