Soon I will tell you the story of how my husband and I have become small business owners. Our North Carolina corporation just became official yesterday. It's called "New Voyage, LLC." (I don't like LLC. It just doesn't work like Inc. You can't make a word out of it and it messes up the rhythm of any name. But it's the thing to be these days, so there it is.)
Sharp readers will realize that the name came from the title of the book "New Voyage to Carolina," written by my ancestor John Lawson. (An aside: there is going to be a symposium at UNC next weekend to celebrate the books 300th year of publication. I'm trying to get there, but it depends on how things go in L.A. next week. I'm sure John Lawson would/will understand that finding a way to feed my child trumps all else and his priority would probably be for the bloodline to continue. Not that my cousins, nieces and nephews aren't doing their part. But I digress...
The economy. The anchor person was SHOCKED. SHOCKED, I tell you. To learn that the unemployment figures had gone up. Me, I was shocked that they hadn't gone up any more than they have. But since Congress shows no sign of slowing down its taxing and spending frenzy, there will be lots of time for that later.
So by the end of the month, Chris and I will own a small (very small) business. A friend asked me if we'll be hiring and I laughed the Big Laugh. We will not be doing any firing either. We will be working. Those jobs that usually go to college kids? We'll be doing them. The jobs that go to people who have families to feed? We'll be doing them, too. Because we've got kids to feed and the business is only breaking even.
Now, we're going to work very hard to try to make the business profitable, but in the present economy ... with unemployment numbers continuing to rise ... it's going to be hard to find people with money to spend. So, no we will not be hiring.
You know why else? Because the Tyrant-in-Chief is going to sock us with a penalty if we don't provide health care for our employees. Here's some simple math: business is breaking even. We (a) provide health care for new employees or (b) get socked with a penalty ... then business is losing money. Soon, we'd have to fire the skeletal staff we have. Which means -- are you with me so far -- the unemployment figures go up even higher.
I have all sorts of ideas for how to expand the business, which would mean we could hire some of the many unemployed people, but if we expand enough to make a significant profit, we'll find ourself in the "spread the wealth" tax bracket, wherein we'd probably make about the same amount of money that we would if we did much less work. (Who is John Galt?)
Small businesses, I would imagine, are not nearly as eager to lay people off as are giant corporations, who just look at numbers. (Ask me how I know and I'll tell you about television staffs currently operating with 3 writers working 24/7 as opposed to 6 writers with relatively normal lives, because the corporations who bought the networks looked at the spreadsheets and said, "Why on earth do you need 6 people to write a television show? I hear rumors that they are beginning to learn the answer to that, thank God.
This administration, as far as I can see from personal experience, has done a very effective job of destroying the people they wanted to destroy. All of my friends are people who were extremely self-sufficient and productive members of society, with their own pension plans made up of money they had saved for years, or other plans for retirement (selling their small business) that in no way involved needing help from the government. Now they are all wiped out, afraid of the future, and ... here's a surprise ... NOT HIRING. In fact, most of them are now reluctantly firing the "like family" employees they've held onto for as long as they could.
So yeah, great plan. Destroy the Evil Rich People.
Congratulations, the mighty are fallen. (You may notice that they weren't all that mighty to begin with, and that rich liberals who don't pay their taxes are still keeping the over-priced restaurants in business. Has anyone calculated the Royal Couple's carbon footprint lately? Not to mention the amount of taxpayer dollars that have gone into their romantic dinners and vacations and Michelle's designer wardrobe ... sorry, I've been to J. Crew lately. They're not selling what she's wearing.)
And lest you think I'm letting the Republicans off the hook ...
We're selling our house. The real estate agents that we interviewed all told us the same thing -- the banks aren't lending, the houses aren't appraising for what the buyers are willing to pay, our house is worth less than we owe on the mortgage but banks aren't approving short sales even if they are close to the asking price...
I have a very clear memory of President Bush explaining that we needed the bailout because banks weren't lending and the economy would come to a crashing halt if we didn't do something. So we gave eleventy bazillion dollars of our own money to the Fed... which has nothing to do with "fed" anything, has no oversight and won't tell us where the money went.
We have no idea what the real unemployment figures are. None of my unemployed friends have filed for unemployment, because we will all sell everything we own on Craigslist before we ask the government for a handout. And the people who have stopped bothering to look for work -- and they are legion -- don't show up in the figures either.
So tell me again about all these "green" jobs that were going to replace the jobs we've lost. Where are they? I'm pretty sure that all my unemployed friends will take a job of any color.
Also, tell me how the unemployment figures are going to get better, if you continue to pound the hell out of small business owners.
I think we are very close to hitting the point that Margaret Thatcher talked about. You know, the point when the socialists have run out of everybody else's money.