For some background, I’m a successful small business man...yes, one of them 2%.er’s. I live in the Republican stronghold of Arkansas, the northwest corner. The home of over 7,000 Wal-Mart employees and since early 2002 when Wal-Mart made the announcement that if you’re a vendor, you set up shop here, adding another 30-40K folks and a sea of vendor offices all over the county, all carrying the misinformation and hate that corporate Wal-Mart spreads through its ranks and its vendor slaves about Democrats and about a million other things. (My business is not tied to retail, we are in the area, because this is where we were born.)
About our Daughter - last week I was involved in a fundraiser for our local candidates. Short handed, I asked our daughter to come and help with ticket sales. She’s never been political to our chagrin, and I thought it would be great for some of "my people" to meet one of our kids. With her help, the event went off without a hitch and she got a chance to meet "my people", and she was surprised just how nice and smart they were.
Right after the event, she heads out to a party where her husband and our coveted grandchildren are. The hosts are 2 Wal-Mart executives, good friends of our daughter one a regional guy and the other a buyer.
She wasn’t in the door 2 minutes before she was attacked. And I mean attacked. They pounded her on her old man’s intelligence, how could a small businessman be a Democrat? How could a small businessman support these proposed corporate tax increases? How could a small businessman support Obama’s new health plan? How could a small businessman support the tax increases on the rich (over 250K)? On and On...
Now our daughter is a political neophyte. She was not prepared on policy or did she have an historical prospective of how to defend her old man from this onslaught...so, I’m going to do it right here for her and hope she’ll email her "friends" the answers to why her old man, a successful small businessman is a Democrat.
First and foremost, you work for the largest retailer in the world. You know jack shit about the challenges and the risks small business owners face. In fact, the company you work for has single handily destroyed 10’s of 1000’s of small businesses around this country. The fact the Wal-Mart is concerned about my business if laughable.
Start with that one Princess
Next, the corporate tax rate, if you’re a small businessman and you’re paying a high corporate tax...get a new accountant. With the accelerated depreciation schedules and a 5 inch book of other tax breaks available to small businesses your corporate tax liability can be managed nicely.
Move on the Health Care
My company has faced double digit increases in its health care costs for 5 consecutive years. Your friends, not the slups who work in the stores, have affordable health care. Your old man has a small group. Wal-Mart gets a huge break on their costs because of the principle of the "economy of scale". The more employees you have the cheaper it is to offer health care benefits because the risk is spread across a larger number.
You old man’s business has a small group, and is punished with much higher rates because of the size of our group. It’s not fair and never has been. Obama’s healthcare plan puts my business on a much more even playing field. He’s not asking to socialize healthcare, he proposes to put my company into a larger pool (more competitive), which will reduce my cost per employee – for right now, that’s good enough for me.
McCain, he wants to just give my employees a 5K tax cut – they can then take that and buy their own. Princess, you’ve meet most of our people, and there is no way that that 5K would ever get to purchasing health care – and if it did, a health care SHARK would promise them the world, and they’d have a substandard policy. Then what? We (hospitals and doctors) would end up paying for the difference in their policies coverage and those costs would be passed onto you and I through higher premium cost. The same vicious cycle we are in now...just more predatory.
Yes, the tax cuts
Yes, your old man, through the Bush tax cuts was able to put those extra dollars into a nice investment portfolio. Like most of my business associates and friends throughout the country – mostly Republican, the Bush tax cuts did not do what were intended. What small businessman in their right mind, since 2004, (being in 2 wars and a crushing national debt) would even think about expanding their business? Not me and not many others. That’s why you’ve seen no new capital equipment, company vehicles and your still using the same computer that you had in 2004, as you put it, the dinosaur.
And last week, that nice investment portfolio, well, Princess, the bad news is...it’s gone, it’s gone 3 times – your folks lost 3 times more than they gained through those tax cuts. Not only that, we are entering dark days for the business, the economy is slowing down to a crawl, retail will be down 20-30% over the Christmas season, and we may well be facing lay-offs. We’ll be lucky to maintain the small growth we’ve enjoyed the last 4 years, but I suspect for the next 2 years we’ll have negative growth – no new computer. .
Lastly, tell your friends this...because it’ll drive them crazy. Tell them, that this small businessman would do cart wheels and joyfully pay the same tax rates he was paying under the Clinton administration, if we could get back the confidence, accountability and stable economy that administration offered. Our country and this world were in a far better place then. If you need more, step into my office this afternoon – we’ll talk.
Dad
Update [2008-10-14 9:4:9 by Arkydem]: On the Rec list - wow, thank you so much - I think it is important small business all over the country start talking about what Bush/McCain ecomonic policies (funny-but not a joke) has done to their business - it's been catastrophic and I fear that many small businesses will be gone next year - and one last thing...I'm sick of the Chamber of Commerce, the federal, state and local level...who's never ending mantra is protecting small business...and all along, they don't give a rats ass about small business...they are a tool of the Republican Party...all of them - dropped my membership when I went to a candidate forum and the Republican sat down and opened his note book - he had the questions and prepared answer right there...and wasn't even trying to hid it. Again, thanks for the rec.
Update 2 I'm proud of you guys. Oft times I'll go through the comments on many diaries and the community loses its focus. Although there is some Wal-Mart bashing - the content, stories, and observations of the commentators have so much more enhanced the subject matter here - it's been quite an education - and for that I'm thankful.