Virginia Postrel has a thought-provoking piece on the way petty bureaucracies impede the growth of small businesses. After working with small businesses for a while, I’ve seen much the same thing. It’s the small little unnecessary fees, the constant bureaucratic hassle, and the petty fiefdoms in obscure government offices that give small-business owners the biggest headaches.
Considering that small businesses employ 50% of the American workforce, its surprising that this isn’t a bigger political issue. Then again, such petty bureaucracy has become so routine that it has been accepted as a fact of life by all too many. However, seeing as though we need a stronger economy and more jobs things like this tend to add up over time. How much lost productivity, jobs, and wages are the direct effect of petty bureaucracy is anyone’s guess, but I’d be willing to wager that it would be more than enough to make a big dent in unemployment and lost wages.
You continually talk about these oppressive and accumulating regulations that government needlessly places upon small businesses, but have yet to offer a single specific example….perhaps because you know that what Jay Reding considers a “little unnecessary fee” may not be quite so irrelevant to a more moderate crowd. Either way, we’re all awaiting examples to go with the generalities.
Try reading the article before leaving one of your rants or would that require you to think too much?
if you don’t like bureaucracy, and still want to crack down on SMEs, then you obviously never worked for a “big company”!