Let Me Tell You About My Neighbor
My neighbor Tom runs a feed store. Been open since 1987. His father opened it. Tom took over in 2004. He employs seven people — three full-time, four part-time. He sponsors the Little League team. He lets farmers run tabs when the harvest is late. Last year his health insurance premiums went up 23% and he had to let one of his full-time people go.
Tom isn't on CNBC. Nobody from the Federal Reserve asks him how the economy is doing. But Tom is the economy — him and the 33 million other small businesses that employ half the American workforce.
The Disconnect
When the President says the economy is strong, he's reading from a report that measures GDP growth, stock market indices, and unemployment rates. These are real numbers. They are also incomplete numbers.
GDP doesn't tell you that Tom's profit margin has shrunk from 12% to 4% since 2020. The stock market doesn't tell you that 42% of small businesses reported difficulty making payroll in the last quarter. The unemployment rate doesn't tell you that Tom's former employee is now working two part-time jobs with no benefits and calling it "employed."
I talk to small business owners every week. They'll tell you exactly how the economy is: it's surviving, not thriving. And the things that are killing them aren't in the headlines.
Property taxes up. Insurance premiums up. Minimum wage mandates up. Credit card processing fees up. The cost of compliance with regulations they can barely understand — way up. Revenue? Flat. That's the small business economy. Strong is not the word.
The Regulation Tax Nobody Calculates
The National Association of Manufacturers estimates that federal regulations cost small businesses approximately $34,671 per employee per year. That's not a tax they write a check for — it's a death by a thousand paperwork cuts. Hours spent on compliance. Software purchased to meet reporting requirements. Consultants hired to interpret rules that change annually.
A company with 500 employees has a compliance department. A company with 7 employees has Tom, sitting at his desk at 9 PM, trying to figure out whether the new OSHA reporting requirement applies to a feed store that's been operating safely since Ronald Reagan was president.
What Would Actually Help
Stop treating small businesses like they're small versions of big businesses. They're not. They're the backbone of every community in this country, and they're being regulated, taxed, and insured into extinction while Washington congratulates itself on GDP numbers that mostly measure the health of Fortune 500 companies.
Tom's feed store doesn't need a bailout. It doesn't need a program. It needs Washington to get out of the way. He's been running a business since before most members of Congress held a real job. He knows what he's doing.
Let him do it.
