sportzboytjwsqueeeeeezzeeeesome more tax breaks outRegistered Userregular
Re: that SF thing. That's another point that is missed. Companies will (at least partly, and frequently mostly) pass on costs to the consumer. Should a business be considered viable because they can exist of their employees are not covered coverage-wise, so this lowers their costs enough to compete with companies that are taking care of their employees? Sounds like something in the non-coverage company's model is inferior if that's how they get to compete.
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I'd like you to name a few that would be impacted to a great degree, or put under, by this and why they shouldn't be.
Any change you make in the law is going to kill a percentage of small businesses. This is because our "entrepreneurship" culture prods people to start nonviable businesses at a massive rate. So, you have millions of businesses that are one bad day from going under. They are the mayflies of modern capitalism.
Sucks for the small business owners, but I'm not sure what moral or legal rationale you have for making their employees - i.e. the people who just work for them - suffer more than other workers in order to give a small margin of extra viability for those businesses. It's not like the death of millions of small businesses wouldn't be immediately followed by the creation of another million small businesses who will either thrive or fail under the new rules.
I agree with you but let's consider this - if the end result for both scenarios is the employee being unemployed, is it worth it? It's a weird situation, definitely.
Is it? No, but that's why I feel greater social safety nets need to exist. No one deserves to be homeless because a business goes under. We, as a society, put far too much weight on it. They can be our parents, our children, even ourselves. One bad move and we could be the guy asking for quarters and nowhere to go and nothing to do to fix it.
Businesses need to grow and fail, that's natural, that's capitalism, but we as a society need to make sure we can all fill the roles business require. If that means supporting our downtrodden citizenry, good, we should do this. It's right and it's proper.
I don't know how I feel about social safety nets creating huge corporations and conglomerates... maybe we need to to compete in the world today. Maybe we should stop giving two shits about competing in the world at all. Self reliance and all that.
This picture goes far deeper than people being unemployed and having no benefits because we made small businesses get health coverage for their employees. I think anyways. It's a good step though, health insurance for everyone. This way when you're 40 you're not old and broken. At least you have a fighting chance to compete with the young kids and the outsourced departments in India. It's good for the nation as a whole.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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KasynI'm not saying I don't like our chances.She called me the master.Registered Userregular
If your business is shut down because of one regulation or law you run a shitty business
This, as a blanket statement, is entirely useless, unfair, and naive. Depends on the scope of the law or regulation. For the most part, I'd agree that businesses should be able to adapt to certain regulatory environments - especially with things like health insurance that have been a long time coming. But there are a lot of businesses that make society function that are already operating on some very thin margins. As a general attitude, declaring everything that can't comply with hypothetical new regulation a shitty business model, I think that itself is quite shitty.
It's really not, because if it wasn't that specific regulation, then it would be the next materials shortage affecting that business, or the next tax bump in their county, or the next regulation that wasn't this one.
You're being too idealistic about these businesses. Many of them are bad (or nonviable if you prefer) ideas who have hung on for a while, but that doesn't make them viable long-term operations just because they haven't folded yet.
You act as if every new regulation, tax, or law affects businesses to the same degree. It's not some new monthly expense to contend with like anything else that we're talking about.
Many new regulations/ taxes do nothing or next to nothing to certain places. Some can completely cripple businesses.
I could tell you about the small business we use for lien sale services - three employees that service a huge area in California - that is facing potential failure pending a new and mostly wrongheaded regulation on how vehicles are valued. Their business model isn't unsound and they don't run a failing business by any stretch, but they would suffer pretty big over an onerous new bit of poorly thought-out law. One tiny thing that someone who knows very little about their business thought was a good idea, and it would really change the game for them in a bad way.
I know, trollololanecdotal, but I'm pretty uncomfortable with an attitude in this thread right now that all companies of any size should be able to deal with whatever the state decides for them, or else they're a shitty business in the first place. I mean, we realize that not all government policy - even with the good intention of protecting consumers - is inherently valuable, efficient, or correct, right?
I fail to see how providing health insurance will negatively impact anyone in any meaningful way. Pass the costs to your customer. It's likely to be insignificant. You have failed to convince me with how, just saying that we will be in big trouble and lots of businesses will go kaput and this has a significant impact.
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not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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sportzboytjwsqueeeeeezzeeeesome more tax breaks outRegistered Userregular
If your business is shut down because of one regulation or law you run a shitty business
This, as a blanket statement, is entirely useless, unfair, and naive. Depends on the scope of the law or regulation. For the most part, I'd agree that businesses should be able to adapt to certain regulatory environments - especially with things like health insurance that have been a long time coming. But there are a lot of businesses that make society function that are already operating on some very thin margins. As a general attitude, declaring everything that can't comply with hypothetical new regulation a shitty business model, I think that itself is quite shitty.
It's really not, because if it wasn't that specific regulation, then it would be the next materials shortage affecting that business, or the next tax bump in their county, or the next regulation that wasn't this one.
You're being too idealistic about these businesses. Many of them are bad (or nonviable if you prefer) ideas who have hung on for a while, but that doesn't make them viable long-term operations just because they haven't folded yet.
You act as if every new regulation, tax, or law affects businesses to the same degree. It's not some new monthly expense to contend with like anything else that we're talking about.
Many new regulations/ taxes do nothing or next to nothing to certain places. Some can completely cripple businesses.
I could tell you about the small business we use for lien sale services - three employees that service a huge area in California - that is facing potential failure pending a new and mostly wrongheaded regulation on how vehicles are valued. Their business model isn't unsound and they don't run a failing business by any stretch, but they would suffer pretty big over an onerous new bit of poorly thought-out law. One tiny thing that someone who knows very little about their business thought was a good idea, and it would really change the game for them in a bad way.
I know, trollololanecdotal, but I'm pretty uncomfortable with an attitude in this thread right now that all companies of any size should be able to deal with whatever the state decides for them, or else they're a shitty business in the first place. I mean, we realize that not all government policy - even with the good intention of protecting consumers - is inherently valuable, efficient, or correct, right?
I do understand that there are some businesses that will fail with this legisltation, because of the legislation. I mean, I get that. I'm okay with it though, since the benefits to many Americans is so large, compared to the few businesses that will be (possibly) crippled by this legislation. I mean, do you really feel that, say, 50 mom-and-pop places going under across the country is not a fair price to pay to get benefits to (almost) all Americans? It's not that I don't care, I don't feel that it is unacceptable compared to the benefits that will be reaped by our country as a whole.
This is the same argument that people use for things like putting freeways through someone's property, and that's generally shakier reasoning since their are many alternatives much of the time, but the benefits to the majority of people tend to supercede individual property rights in this country. Why wouldn't one apply that same standard to the majority of employees in this country?
Again, that company you're describing may be closed by this law... but will the demand for that business go away? Or will they end up passing most of the cost onto customers since that demand won't go away? If the demand is there, people will still pay. If the demand is there, but not at the price they're going to need to charge, then yes, this business is no longer viable, but it was only viable as a niche business who couldn't suffer through any large cost increase, whether or not it came from this legislation or not, right? However, that legislation may be "bad" if the net benefit to citizens doesn't outweigh the cost of (probably) crushing a small company or two... but if it does provide a net benefit to citizens, why is it bad because it crushed a company? I understand that it would be awful for that company and it's employees.
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Deebaseron my way to work in a suit and a tieAhhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered Userregular
edited July 2012
If the compensation you offer is so meager that you have to offload the cost of health insurance onto the taxpayers, then seriously, fuck your business.
For better or for worse, we're rolling with the employer sponsored model. NO MOAR FREE RIDING DEADBEATS.
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KasynI'm not saying I don't like our chances.She called me the master.Registered Userregular
I fail to see how providing health insurance will negatively impact anyone in any meaningful way. Pass the costs to your customer. It's likely to be insignificant. You have failed to convince me with how, just saying that we will be in big trouble and lots of businesses will go kaput and this has a significant impact.
I uh...never said that specifically re: health insurance (although I think the current <50 employee exemption is a fair number) - there were some generalities being spoken to about businesses adapting to new regulation and I was responding somewhat broadly.
Feral had quite a bit of good things to say on the last page as to how smaller businesses are disproportionately affected by health insurance costs, though.
There's a point at which the positives of mandating insurance coverage for employees almost certainly outweigh the new short-term financial burdens, but you don't seem to want to acknowledge that there's also a point where a business can be small enough that those same burdens are too punitive financially. Not every business is in the same position to just pass every cost onto the customer in the way that larger corporations can with products that people are going to buy anyway - and I'm just a bit uncomfortable at dismissing disproportionate amounts of punishment to certain size businesses.
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KasynI'm not saying I don't like our chances.She called me the master.Registered Userregular
This argument against healthcare (re:small businesses) seems to be the identical argument that you still hear occasionally regarding minimum wage.
I don't think it's identical. I haven't heard anything about a raise in the minimum wage being particularly punishing to small businesses. If anything it impacts larger businesses the most.
It's not like the death of millions of small businesses wouldn't be immediately followed by the creation of another million small businesses who will either thrive or fail under the new rules.
I just had this image of obamacare as the death star.
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of small businesses suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
Small businesses feel the brunt more. A large business with 500 employees getting $3 more an hour isn't really anything.
A small business with 5 employees with an employee making almost 1/3 more than they did before will likely feel the pinch a lot. Not that there's anything wrong with that, fix your pricing.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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KasynI'm not saying I don't like our chances.She called me the master.Registered Userregular
Small businesses feel the brunt more. A large business with 500 employees getting $3 more an hour isn't really anything.
A small business with 5 employees with an employee making almost 1/3 more than they did before will likely feel the pinch a lot. Not that there's anything wrong with that, fix your pricing.
Is there something about small businesses that makes them - all things being equal - more likely to have a greater % of their expenses tied up in payroll?
No, other than most people who run SBs are probably not great business people and don't know how to budget. They may also not have cash reserves to help the period between an increase in revenue will help them with their new compensation. But restaurants in particular (ones that don't have waitstaff) seem to be the most affected (I know some people that run them). Something to do with barely running above cost once everyone's paid out, or something.
I never really wanted to get into the fight with them about it. I'm going to guess it's mostly the "not having enough capital reserves so this will affect me and probably shut me down" being the most likely.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Again, that company you're describing may be closed by this law... but will the demand for that business go away? Or will they end up passing most of the cost onto customers since that demand won't go away? If the demand is there, people will still pay. If the demand is there, but not at the price they're going to need to charge, then yes, this business is no longer viable, but it was only viable as a niche business who couldn't suffer through any large cost increase, whether or not it came from this legislation or not, right? However, that legislation may be "bad" if the net benefit to citizens doesn't outweigh the cost of (probably) crushing a small company or two... but if it does provide a net benefit to citizens, why is it bad because it crushed a company? I understand that it would be awful for that company and it's employees.
What about the case of services that people are only willing to pay up to a certain amount for? For example, on site tech support probably falls into that category. If your costs would force a small business that does that to go over what people are willing to pay, they go out of business and people resort to some other means. At that point, you're not just killing a business, but an entire market.
Also, there's a lot of claims that small business owners don't know how to run a business. Anyone have any actual data for that? Specifically the claim that they don't know how to budget? ( @bowen )
The real answer here is to slowly unravel the idea that people should get insurance through their job
its a shitty burden on employers
its a shitty burden on employees because you always have to wait and pay through the ass for COBRA coverage
It discourages reasonable job mobility
it discourages freelancing and entrepreneurship
it costs too damn much
Small businesses feel the brunt more. A large business with 500 employees getting $3 more an hour isn't really anything.
A small business with 5 employees with an employee making almost 1/3 more than they did before will likely feel the pinch a lot. Not that there's anything wrong with that, fix your pricing.
Is there something about small businesses that makes them - all things being equal - more likely to have a greater % of their expenses tied up in payroll?
No, but small businesses generally pay more than large businesses for everything else anyway (relatively, a mom and pop computer shop isn't going to be able to sell replacement hard drives for what Newegg.com can)
This argument against healthcare (re:small businesses) seems to be the identical argument that you still hear occasionally regarding minimum wage.
I don't think it's identical. I haven't heard anything about a raise in the minimum wage being particularly punishing to small businesses. If anything it impacts larger businesses the most.
Not necessarily small businesses, but startups, absolutely yes. Minimum wage definitely disproportionately hurts startup businesses.
Wal-Mart, for example, could pay their employees all $3 an hour more and it'd cost maybe an extra few pennies on socks if they felt like absorbing none of the costs into their profits
I'd like you to name a few that would be impacted to a great degree, or put under, by this and why they shouldn't be.
Any change you make in the law is going to kill a percentage of small businesses. This is because our "entrepreneurship" culture prods people to start nonviable businesses at a massive rate. So, you have millions of businesses that are one bad day from going under. They are the mayflies of modern capitalism.
Sucks for the small business owners, but I'm not sure what moral or legal rationale you have for making their employees - i.e. the people who just work for them - suffer more than other workers in order to give a small margin of extra viability for those businesses. It's not like the death of millions of small businesses wouldn't be immediately followed by the creation of another million small businesses who will either thrive or fail under the new rules.
Because we have a service economy. It's important to the economy to have lots and lots of businesses, it's better to err on the side of not fucking small businesses if you can given their volatility and the number of people they employ, especially given the high unemployment. This isn't to say we should avoid a public good because oh no small business, it just means when we fuck them we should at least have the decency to give them a reach around with a subsidy or tax break or something
And redefine small business, the Republican definition of it is fucking ludicrous
If the compensation you offer is so meager that you have to offload the cost of health insurance onto the taxpayers, then seriously, fuck your business.
For better or for worse, we're rolling with the employer sponsored model. NO MOAR FREE RIDING DEADBEATS.
I find it curious that this board has transitioned to a "Boo socialized medicine, Yay unemployment!" model
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KasynI'm not saying I don't like our chances.She called me the master.Registered Userregular
@nexuscrawler pretty much has it. That's the solution with the most upside, and it avoids the issues we've been discussing for a few pages now.
The real answer here is to slowly unravel the idea that people should get insurance through their job
its a shitty burden on employers
its a shitty burden on employees because you always have to wait and pay through the ass for COBRA coverage
It discourages reasonable job mobility
it discourages freelancing and entrepreneurship
it costs too damn much
And there we have it.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
No, but small businesses generally pay more than large businesses for everything else anyway (relatively, a mom and pop computer shop isn't going to be able to sell replacement hard drives for what Newegg.com can)
I think some of that also has to do with the disadvantage of brick and mortar vs. online retailer. Conversely, small businesses that provide a service (plumber, lawn care, etc) tend to have far more competitive pricing than their larger corporate counterparts.
"We’re surrounded. That simplifies our problem of getting to these people and killing them."
@nexuscrawler pretty much has it. That's the solution with the most upside, and it avoids the issues we've been discussing for a few pages now.
Somehow I doubt that anyone in this thread will disagree with universal health care. However, its not a political reality in the United States in this decade. Unless there's some contention about it being good, I think we can all reasonably take it as a given that its preferable and go back to concerning ourselves with things that might happen before my grandkids retire.
Also, there's a lot of claims that small business owners don't know how to run a business. Anyone have any actual data for that? Specifically the claim that they don't know how to budget? ( @bowen )
It was anecdotal. Most of them were morons and I was surprised they were able to stay in business. Networking is far more important, it's who you know, not how good or how cheap you are.
My former bosses have always been in with huge church groups or buddies from school/fraternity and that's how they get I'd say 80% of their business. Which is different than a bakery or something. The guy who owns the restaurant definitely gets hit harder because he's got to pass the costs to the consumer or take a pay cut, not that he's exactly poor or anything, but he already pays his employees well compared to other restaurants (everyone gets like $8+ an hour even waiters). Minimum wage increases, he said, might put him out of business because now he's gotta ramp up dining costs over what they were and that's already pretty untenable because not a whole lot of people are eating out right now.
He said pretty much the biggest thing keeping him afloat is Friday nights and catering for drug reps. I'm surprised, actually, that NYS changed drug rep laws so they can't give sticky pads and pens, that was a huge kick in the ass to small business in our area (a lot of printing places had to lay off a ton of people when that went into effect).
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
No, but small businesses generally pay more than large businesses for everything else anyway (relatively, a mom and pop computer shop isn't going to be able to sell replacement hard drives for what Newegg.com can)
I think some of that also has to do with the disadvantage of brick and mortar vs. online retailer. Conversely, small businesses that provide a service (plumber, lawn care, etc) tend to have far more competitive pricing than their larger corporate counterparts.
Alright, local hardware store vs big box hardware store
That's not relevant anyway, small employee pools (like, 6 or less) mean extremely expensive health care costs, which is what we're talking about
@nexuscrawler pretty much has it. That's the solution with the most upside, and it avoids the issues we've been discussing for a few pages now.
Somehow I doubt that anyone in this thread will disagree with universal health care. However, its not a political reality in the United States in this decade. Unless there's some contention about it being good, I think we can all reasonably take it as a given that its preferable and go back to concerning ourselves with things that might happen before my grandkids retire.
Detaching health insurance from the workplace isn't the same as universal health care. Nexuscrawler was referring to the former. (Although I would also disagree with your view of just how far off UHC is politically. I don't think earlier than 40 years from now is impossible.)
Wouldn't the yet-to-be-implemented state insurance exchanges be an example of that in action?
The real answer here is to slowly unravel the idea that people should get insurance through their job
its a shitty burden on employers
its a shitty burden on employees because you always have to wait and pay through the ass for COBRA coverage
It discourages reasonable job mobility
it discourages freelancing and entrepreneurship
it costs too damn much
That's what I dislike most about Obamacare. It makes our health insurance system even more employer-based than it currently is. McCain had a fundamentally good idea with shifting the tax deduction on employer health insurance to a flat per-person credit spendable on health exchanges. Mash that up with the flatter pricing and non-discrimination clauses Obamacare puts on health insurance companies and Wyden's free choice amendment, and we'd have the makings of a downright decent system that doesn't ruffle the Socialism! feathers.
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sportzboytjwsqueeeeeezzeeeesome more tax breaks outRegistered Userregular
Small businesses feel the brunt more. A large business with 500 employees getting $3 more an hour isn't really anything.
A small business with 5 employees with an employee making almost 1/3 more than they did before will likely feel the pinch a lot. Not that there's anything wrong with that, fix your pricing.
Is there something about small businesses that makes them - all things being equal - more likely to have a greater % of their expenses tied up in payroll?
No, but small businesses generally pay more than large businesses for everything else anyway (relatively, a mom and pop computer shop isn't going to be able to sell replacement hard drives for what Newegg.com can)
This argument against healthcare (re:small businesses) seems to be the identical argument that you still hear occasionally regarding minimum wage.
I don't think it's identical. I haven't heard anything about a raise in the minimum wage being particularly punishing to small businesses. If anything it impacts larger businesses the most.
Not necessarily small businesses, but startups, absolutely yes. Minimum wage definitely disproportionately hurts startup businesses.
Wal-Mart, for example, could pay their employees all $3 an hour more and it'd cost maybe an extra few pennies on socks if they felt like absorbing none of the costs into their profits
I'd like you to name a few that would be impacted to a great degree, or put under, by this and why they shouldn't be.
Any change you make in the law is going to kill a percentage of small businesses. This is because our "entrepreneurship" culture prods people to start nonviable businesses at a massive rate. So, you have millions of businesses that are one bad day from going under. They are the mayflies of modern capitalism.
Sucks for the small business owners, but I'm not sure what moral or legal rationale you have for making their employees - i.e. the people who just work for them - suffer more than other workers in order to give a small margin of extra viability for those businesses. It's not like the death of millions of small businesses wouldn't be immediately followed by the creation of another million small businesses who will either thrive or fail under the new rules.
Because we have a service economy. It's important to the economy to have lots and lots of businesses, it's better to err on the side of not fucking small businesses if you can given their volatility and the number of people they employ, especially given the high unemployment. This isn't to say we should avoid a public good because oh no small business, it just means when we fuck them we should at least have the decency to give them a reach around with a subsidy or tax break or something
And redefine small business, the Republican definition of it is fucking ludicrous
If the compensation you offer is so meager that you have to offload the cost of health insurance onto the taxpayers, then seriously, fuck your business.
For better or for worse, we're rolling with the employer sponsored model. NO MOAR FREE RIDING DEADBEATS.
I find it curious that this board has transitioned to a "Boo socialized medicine, Yay unemployment!" model
I find it interesting that you're thinking there would be much (not none, but much) unemployment occuring in this situation. And it's already been talked about how allowances should probably be made for TRUELY small (5? 10? even up to 50 in some people's minds? employees) businesses. I understand that we don't want to smash small business, but this is a transition that, 10, 50 or 100 years down the line, is quite likely. If your business can't handle it, it is not viable! It is okay that some small businesses fail... I mean, the internet sure impacted a lot of local businesses, some in a negative way... has the internet caused unemployment?
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The plus with Obamacare is at least it gives people without a decent employer based option somewhere to get somewhat competitively priced plans
Which is so sweet. A few of my friends have employer-provided policies that are close to having no insurance at all.
Yeah I have a high deductible one. It costs an arm and a fucking leg to have it. It might be cheaper for me to cancel it, get my employer to give me the $100 a month they dump into my HSA account, and get something else. Especially since everyone here is pushing 50 and I'm still a young healthy guy. It costs me like $200 to see a doctor and get routine lab work done (which is paid by the HSA but still). I feel I'd come out ahead not having an HSA in the long run. Maybe a $10 copay on the doctor's visit or something.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Its funny because employer based health insruance is itself a result of real overzealous government regulation
it surfaced in the 50s when the government put caps on how much you could get paid. Companies got around the restrictions by giving people retirement plans and health insurance instead of pay
Also, there's a lot of claims that small business owners don't know how to run a business. Anyone have any actual data for that? Specifically the claim that they don't know how to budget? ( @bowen )
It was anecdotal. Most of them were morons and I was surprised they were able to stay in business. Networking is far more important, it's who you know, not how good or how cheap you are.
My former bosses have always been in with huge church groups or buddies from school/fraternity and that's how they get I'd say 80% of their business. Which is different than a bakery or something. The guy who owns the restaurant definitely gets hit harder because he's got to pass the costs to the consumer or take a pay cut, not that he's exactly poor or anything, but he already pays his employees well compared to other restaurants (everyone gets like $8+ an hour even waiters). Minimum wage increases, he said, might put him out of business because now he's gotta ramp up dining costs over what they were and that's already pretty untenable because not a whole lot of people are eating out right now.
He said pretty much the biggest thing keeping him afloat is Friday nights and catering for drug reps. I'm surprised, actually, that NYS changed drug rep laws so they can't give sticky pads and pens, that was a huge kick in the ass to small business in our area (a lot of printing places had to lay off a ton of people when that went into effect).
The resturaunt example makes no sense. How would a rise in minimum wage affect the pay of your current employees if they're already paid well above minimum wage? In this case, almost twice as much (Last time I checked for wait staff in NY, min wage was $4.60). It's not like his current emplyees are going to leave their 8/hour base pay in order to get $5.60/hour.
If anything, a rise in the minimum wage would actually help the employer in question because it would force other resturanunts to raise their prices to cover the increase in minimum wage, while he would not. It actually makes his product more competitve.
Sounds like he might be one of the morons who doesn't know how to budget.
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sportzboytjwsqueeeeeezzeeeesome more tax breaks outRegistered Userregular
Again, that company you're describing may be closed by this law... but will the demand for that business go away? Or will they end up passing most of the cost onto customers since that demand won't go away? If the demand is there, people will still pay. If the demand is there, but not at the price they're going to need to charge, then yes, this business is no longer viable, but it was only viable as a niche business who couldn't suffer through any large cost increase, whether or not it came from this legislation or not, right? However, that legislation may be "bad" if the net benefit to citizens doesn't outweigh the cost of (probably) crushing a small company or two... but if it does provide a net benefit to citizens, why is it bad because it crushed a company? I understand that it would be awful for that company and it's employees.
What about the case of services that people are only willing to pay up to a certain amount for? For example, on site tech support probably falls into that category. If your costs would force a small business that does that to go over what people are willing to pay, they go out of business and people resort to some other means. At that point, you're not just killing a business, but an entire market.
Also, there's a lot of claims that small business owners don't know how to run a business. Anyone have any actual data for that? Specifically the claim that they don't know how to budget? ( @bowen )
Going to spoiler for large, but... @syrdon
A lot of small business owners do not know how to run a business.
Again, this is anecdotal, but... at my college, we had to do a semester-long consulting with a local business. We had ~4 groups (iirc), and we also looked at presentations/binders from previous classes. Keep in mind, yes, we should be entry-level "experts" at this sort of thing by this point in school, and joe-business owner probably wasn't an accounting/finance/marketing graduate, however: almost every business that was consulted with was a giant pile of poo, management-wise.
No formal budgeting or planning of costs.
Adding employees or salespeople without knowing if they would have a gain from that employee b/c they wanted to "grow" the business
Add a salesperson for an area, giving that person all your existing clients, and paying them an immediate commision on any sales that person made to those people without giving them a reason for gaining new clients or raising prices to account for giving away commision on sales they were already making
No marketing plan (I ran a couple ads this year in tidbits)
Starting food-producing companies without reseaching the health-code information they would need for their place of business (uh... our location sucks because we can't use 3/4 of it because it's not up to code for x/y/z)
Keeping poor records (uhh... I don't really know what my costs are. we kind of buy things when we need them)
Keeping bad vendors or bad customers
Free Shipping even if it meant they it would make the business fail (it's our policy)
Not passing on costs (such as shipping a heavy thing over a long distance, or gas rising steadily over the last 10 years) (it's our policy)
Not understanding the value that their business provides (customer service, or convience, or something else) and ignoring building around that
Having huge standing inventory (very little flexibility and paying thousands/year on loans/credit since they had inventory that was doing nothing for them)
I could probably go on, but then it starts getting into individual situations. And every business we consulted on was smart enough to see that they were not making much money and could do something about it if someone would tell them what to do about it.
Think about all the small businesses out there that are blaming taxes, minimum wage, WalMart, etc for why they aren't raking in the dough. Obviously those are factors, but they are not factors that the business can control; however, they ignore the ones they can control far too often.
I actually learned a lot from talking with my brother-in-law (mentioned earlier in the thread). He's been really open to changes in the way he runs his company; he used to have his men take company vehicles home because they could go right to a job. Then he started doing the math on the cost of them coming into the shop and getting the van/truck and heading out, and the savings in gas if they left it at the shop and had them leave them at the shop. Turns out he saved a bunch of money each month. Same thing with buying in bulk; he's too small to buy everything in bulk, so he goes to local stores, but he can buy random batches of parts in bulk every little while, and saves a grip on that batch. He has cut way back on his standing inventory (due to some convience/laziness concerns, each truck used to be "fully" stocked more or less. Parts went missing or unused for months or years.) which has given him the flexibility to buy these larger lots of parts, and they get used up instead of sitting, plus save money.
These are all examples of changes that the previous owner (our super-cool father-in-law, RIP) could have made, but didn't feel comfortable with, or didn't have the overall business planning acumen to do. He ran a solid business, but Kenny has been doing really well but changing processes internally and sitting down at the books and figuring out where he's losing money that he can control.
Are small businesses in general doing this? Not really! Successful ones, sure, but the ones that are struggling or failing frequently do it to themselves, but blame things out of their control.
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@nexuscrawler pretty much has it. That's the solution with the most upside, and it avoids the issues we've been discussing for a few pages now.
Somehow I doubt that anyone in this thread will disagree with universal health care. However, its not a political reality in the United States in this decade. Unless there's some contention about it being good, I think we can all reasonably take it as a given that its preferable and go back to concerning ourselves with things that might happen before my grandkids retire.
Detaching health insurance from the workplace isn't the same as universal health care. Nexuscrawler was referring to the former. (Although I would also disagree with your view of just how far off UHC is politically. I don't think earlier than 40 years from now is impossible.)
Wouldn't the yet-to-be-implemented state insurance exchanges be an example of that in action?
I bet detaching health insurance from employment will be nearly as difficult as enacting medicare for all.
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
The resturaunt example makes no sense. How would a rise in minimum wage affect the pay of your current employees if they're already paid well above minimum wage? In this case, almost twice as much (Last time I checked for wait staff in NY, min wage was $4.60). It's not like his current emplyees are going to leave their 8/hour base pay in order to get $5.60/hour.
If anything, a rise in the minimum wage would actually help the employer in question because it would force other resturanunts to raise their prices to cover the increase in minimum wage, while he would not. It actually makes his product more competitve.
Sounds like he might be one of the morons who doesn't know how to budget.
If I had to guess it would probably be the staff felt entitle to the pay raises. We're talking kitchen staff specifically and not the waiters. So if minimum wage goes from from $7.50 to $9... he's got to at least raise them $1, if not more (to keep them at the same position they were before) since a raise in minimum wage means a raise in cost of living in the area (maybe).
Or something. I wouldn't doubt companies would lose business to a minimum wage. Mostly restaurants because if your sandwhich went from $6.75 to $9.25 you might have a hard time making the case to eat out.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
The real answer here is to slowly unravel the idea that people should get insurance through their job
its a shitty burden on employers
its a shitty burden on employees because you always have to wait and pay through the ass for COBRA coverage
It discourages reasonable job mobility
it discourages freelancing and entrepreneurship
it costs too damn much
That's what I dislike most about Obamacare. It makes our health insurance system even more employer-based than it currently is. McCain had a fundamentally good idea with shifting the tax deduction on employer health insurance to a flat per-person credit spendable on health exchanges. Mash that up with the flatter pricing and non-discrimination clauses Obamacare puts on health insurance companies and Wyden's free choice amendment, and we'd have the makings of a downright decent system that doesn't ruffle the Socialism! feathers.
Anything Obama implements is going to ruffle the Socialism! feathers.
Again, that company you're describing may be closed by this law... but will the demand for that business go away? Or will they end up passing most of the cost onto customers since that demand won't go away? If the demand is there, people will still pay. If the demand is there, but not at the price they're going to need to charge, then yes, this business is no longer viable, but it was only viable as a niche business who couldn't suffer through any large cost increase, whether or not it came from this legislation or not, right? However, that legislation may be "bad" if the net benefit to citizens doesn't outweigh the cost of (probably) crushing a small company or two... but if it does provide a net benefit to citizens, why is it bad because it crushed a company? I understand that it would be awful for that company and it's employees.
What about the case of services that people are only willing to pay up to a certain amount for? For example, on site tech support probably falls into that category. If your costs would force a small business that does that to go over what people are willing to pay, they go out of business and people resort to some other means. At that point, you're not just killing a business, but an entire market.
Also, there's a lot of claims that small business owners don't know how to run a business. Anyone have any actual data for that? Specifically the claim that they don't know how to budget? ( @bowen )
Going to spoiler for large, but... @syrdon
A lot of small business owners do not know how to run a business.
Again, this is anecdotal, but... at my college, we had to do a semester-long consulting with a local business. We had ~4 groups (iirc), and we also looked at presentations/binders from previous classes. Keep in mind, yes, we should be entry-level "experts" at this sort of thing by this point in school, and joe-business owner probably wasn't an accounting/finance/marketing graduate, however: almost every business that was consulted with was a giant pile of poo, management-wise.
No formal budgeting or planning of costs.
Adding employees or salespeople without knowing if they would have a gain from that employee b/c they wanted to "grow" the business
Add a salesperson for an area, giving that person all your existing clients, and paying them an immediate commision on any sales that person made to those people without giving them a reason for gaining new clients or raising prices to account for giving away commision on sales they were already making
No marketing plan (I ran a couple ads this year in tidbits)
Starting food-producing companies without reseaching the health-code information they would need for their place of business (uh... our location sucks because we can't use 3/4 of it because it's not up to code for x/y/z)
Keeping poor records (uhh... I don't really know what my costs are. we kind of buy things when we need them)
Keeping bad vendors or bad customers
Free Shipping even if it meant they it would make the business fail (it's our policy)
Not passing on costs (such as shipping a heavy thing over a long distance, or gas rising steadily over the last 10 years) (it's our policy)
Not understanding the value that their business provides (customer service, or convience, or something else) and ignoring building around that
Having huge standing inventory (very little flexibility and paying thousands/year on loans/credit since they had inventory that was doing nothing for them)
I could probably go on, but then it starts getting into individual situations. And every business we consulted on was smart enough to see that they were not making much money and could do something about it if someone would tell them what to do about it.
Think about all the small businesses out there that are blaming taxes, minimum wage, WalMart, etc for why they aren't raking in the dough. Obviously those are factors, but they are not factors that the business can control; however, they ignore the ones they can control far too often.
I actually learned a lot from talking with my brother-in-law (mentioned earlier in the thread). He's been really open to changes in the way he runs his company; he used to have his men take company vehicles home because they could go right to a job. Then he started doing the math on the cost of them coming into the shop and getting the van/truck and heading out, and the savings in gas if they left it at the shop and had them leave them at the shop. Turns out he saved a bunch of money each month. Same thing with buying in bulk; he's too small to buy everything in bulk, so he goes to local stores, but he can buy random batches of parts in bulk every little while, and saves a grip on that batch. He has cut way back on his standing inventory (due to some convience/laziness concerns, each truck used to be "fully" stocked more or less. Parts went missing or unused for months or years.) which has given him the flexibility to buy these larger lots of parts, and they get used up instead of sitting, plus save money.
These are all examples of changes that the previous owner (our super-cool father-in-law, RIP) could have made, but didn't feel comfortable with, or didn't have the overall business planning acumen to do. He ran a solid business, but Kenny has been doing really well but changing processes internally and sitting down at the books and figuring out where he's losing money that he can control.
Are small businesses in general doing this? Not really! Successful ones, sure, but the ones that are struggling or failing frequently do it to themselves, but blame things out of their control.
I see no data, no sources, nothing that could be verified. You've got anecdotes, which simply should only ever be considered in cases where data collection is impossible.
Possible issues with your sample: You've got a self selecting population, specifically people who thought they had enough of a problem that a consultation would be worth their time. Of course they have problems!
I've seen no data form either side to be honest. I would err on the side of caution that a healthcare system forced on all businesses (OR SURPRISE NO BUSINESSES AND MAKE IT SOCIALIST) would be a good thing in general anyways. Best to be doing it for the health of the nation, not the health of your businesses. New businesses will replace them. Employees will get hired. The only they're we are worried about is some random Mom and Pop store in the middle of booniefuck arizona that happens to employee more than themselves and their fucking children.
Excuse me while I cry a single tear for the 0 businesses that this may affect until further evidence is provided.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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sportzboytjwsqueeeeeezzeeeesome more tax breaks outRegistered Userregular
Again, that company you're describing may be closed by this law... but will the demand for that business go away? Or will they end up passing most of the cost onto customers since that demand won't go away? If the demand is there, people will still pay. If the demand is there, but not at the price they're going to need to charge, then yes, this business is no longer viable, but it was only viable as a niche business who couldn't suffer through any large cost increase, whether or not it came from this legislation or not, right? However, that legislation may be "bad" if the net benefit to citizens doesn't outweigh the cost of (probably) crushing a small company or two... but if it does provide a net benefit to citizens, why is it bad because it crushed a company? I understand that it would be awful for that company and it's employees.
What about the case of services that people are only willing to pay up to a certain amount for? For example, on site tech support probably falls into that category. If your costs would force a small business that does that to go over what people are willing to pay, they go out of business and people resort to some other means. At that point, you're not just killing a business, but an entire market.
Also, there's a lot of claims that small business owners don't know how to run a business. Anyone have any actual data for that? Specifically the claim that they don't know how to budget? ( @bowen )
Going to spoiler for large, but... @syrdon
A lot of small business owners do not know how to run a business.
Again, this is anecdotal, but... at my college, we had to do a semester-long consulting with a local business. We had ~4 groups (iirc), and we also looked at presentations/binders from previous classes. Keep in mind, yes, we should be entry-level "experts" at this sort of thing by this point in school, and joe-business owner probably wasn't an accounting/finance/marketing graduate, however: almost every business that was consulted with was a giant pile of poo, management-wise.
No formal budgeting or planning of costs.
Adding employees or salespeople without knowing if they would have a gain from that employee b/c they wanted to "grow" the business
Add a salesperson for an area, giving that person all your existing clients, and paying them an immediate commision on any sales that person made to those people without giving them a reason for gaining new clients or raising prices to account for giving away commision on sales they were already making
No marketing plan (I ran a couple ads this year in tidbits)
Starting food-producing companies without reseaching the health-code information they would need for their place of business (uh... our location sucks because we can't use 3/4 of it because it's not up to code for x/y/z)
Keeping poor records (uhh... I don't really know what my costs are. we kind of buy things when we need them)
Keeping bad vendors or bad customers
Free Shipping even if it meant they it would make the business fail (it's our policy)
Not passing on costs (such as shipping a heavy thing over a long distance, or gas rising steadily over the last 10 years) (it's our policy)
Not understanding the value that their business provides (customer service, or convience, or something else) and ignoring building around that
Having huge standing inventory (very little flexibility and paying thousands/year on loans/credit since they had inventory that was doing nothing for them)
I could probably go on, but then it starts getting into individual situations. And every business we consulted on was smart enough to see that they were not making much money and could do something about it if someone would tell them what to do about it.
Think about all the small businesses out there that are blaming taxes, minimum wage, WalMart, etc for why they aren't raking in the dough. Obviously those are factors, but they are not factors that the business can control; however, they ignore the ones they can control far too often.
I actually learned a lot from talking with my brother-in-law (mentioned earlier in the thread). He's been really open to changes in the way he runs his company; he used to have his men take company vehicles home because they could go right to a job. Then he started doing the math on the cost of them coming into the shop and getting the van/truck and heading out, and the savings in gas if they left it at the shop and had them leave them at the shop. Turns out he saved a bunch of money each month. Same thing with buying in bulk; he's too small to buy everything in bulk, so he goes to local stores, but he can buy random batches of parts in bulk every little while, and saves a grip on that batch. He has cut way back on his standing inventory (due to some convience/laziness concerns, each truck used to be "fully" stocked more or less. Parts went missing or unused for months or years.) which has given him the flexibility to buy these larger lots of parts, and they get used up instead of sitting, plus save money.
These are all examples of changes that the previous owner (our super-cool father-in-law, RIP) could have made, but didn't feel comfortable with, or didn't have the overall business planning acumen to do. He ran a solid business, but Kenny has been doing really well but changing processes internally and sitting down at the books and figuring out where he's losing money that he can control.
Are small businesses in general doing this? Not really! Successful ones, sure, but the ones that are struggling or failing frequently do it to themselves, but blame things out of their control.
I see no data, no sources, nothing that could be verified. You've got anecdotes, which simply should only ever be considered in cases where data collection is impossible.
Possible issues with your sample: You've got a self selecting population, specifically people who thought they had enough of a problem that a consultation would be worth their time. Of course they have problems!
Except that I have 100% verifiability of these people failing at business basics. Are you seriously giving struggling small business owner's the benefit of the doubt that they're all (or even more then 50%) good businesspeople who are just unable to make it for reasons outside of their control? And that the only people who got help from us are the ones who were making large mistakes left and right in running their business? Your total dismissal of years of data (the college has done this over 5 years, I don't know exactly how far back, but I know at least 2006) without providing any data yourself (I mean, this is the best I have to base my opinion on) seems silly.
In five years, from businesses that were anywhere from somewhat profitable and looking to increase profits or expand, to businesses that were going broke in under a year, not ONCE was there one where the students looked at their business and said, "Huh, they're doing almost everything correctly. We'd suggest these few things, but these guys are really kicking butt!"
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Is it? No, but that's why I feel greater social safety nets need to exist. No one deserves to be homeless because a business goes under. We, as a society, put far too much weight on it. They can be our parents, our children, even ourselves. One bad move and we could be the guy asking for quarters and nowhere to go and nothing to do to fix it.
Businesses need to grow and fail, that's natural, that's capitalism, but we as a society need to make sure we can all fill the roles business require. If that means supporting our downtrodden citizenry, good, we should do this. It's right and it's proper.
I don't know how I feel about social safety nets creating huge corporations and conglomerates... maybe we need to to compete in the world today. Maybe we should stop giving two shits about competing in the world at all. Self reliance and all that.
This picture goes far deeper than people being unemployed and having no benefits because we made small businesses get health coverage for their employees. I think anyways. It's a good step though, health insurance for everyone. This way when you're 40 you're not old and broken. At least you have a fighting chance to compete with the young kids and the outsourced departments in India. It's good for the nation as a whole.
You act as if every new regulation, tax, or law affects businesses to the same degree. It's not some new monthly expense to contend with like anything else that we're talking about.
Many new regulations/ taxes do nothing or next to nothing to certain places. Some can completely cripple businesses.
I could tell you about the small business we use for lien sale services - three employees that service a huge area in California - that is facing potential failure pending a new and mostly wrongheaded regulation on how vehicles are valued. Their business model isn't unsound and they don't run a failing business by any stretch, but they would suffer pretty big over an onerous new bit of poorly thought-out law. One tiny thing that someone who knows very little about their business thought was a good idea, and it would really change the game for them in a bad way.
I know, trollololanecdotal, but I'm pretty uncomfortable with an attitude in this thread right now that all companies of any size should be able to deal with whatever the state decides for them, or else they're a shitty business in the first place. I mean, we realize that not all government policy - even with the good intention of protecting consumers - is inherently valuable, efficient, or correct, right?
I do understand that there are some businesses that will fail with this legisltation, because of the legislation. I mean, I get that. I'm okay with it though, since the benefits to many Americans is so large, compared to the few businesses that will be (possibly) crippled by this legislation. I mean, do you really feel that, say, 50 mom-and-pop places going under across the country is not a fair price to pay to get benefits to (almost) all Americans? It's not that I don't care, I don't feel that it is unacceptable compared to the benefits that will be reaped by our country as a whole.
This is the same argument that people use for things like putting freeways through someone's property, and that's generally shakier reasoning since their are many alternatives much of the time, but the benefits to the majority of people tend to supercede individual property rights in this country. Why wouldn't one apply that same standard to the majority of employees in this country?
Again, that company you're describing may be closed by this law... but will the demand for that business go away? Or will they end up passing most of the cost onto customers since that demand won't go away? If the demand is there, people will still pay. If the demand is there, but not at the price they're going to need to charge, then yes, this business is no longer viable, but it was only viable as a niche business who couldn't suffer through any large cost increase, whether or not it came from this legislation or not, right? However, that legislation may be "bad" if the net benefit to citizens doesn't outweigh the cost of (probably) crushing a small company or two... but if it does provide a net benefit to citizens, why is it bad because it crushed a company? I understand that it would be awful for that company and it's employees.
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QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
For better or for worse, we're rolling with the employer sponsored model. NO MOAR FREE RIDING DEADBEATS.
I uh...never said that specifically re: health insurance (although I think the current <50 employee exemption is a fair number) - there were some generalities being spoken to about businesses adapting to new regulation and I was responding somewhat broadly.
Feral had quite a bit of good things to say on the last page as to how smaller businesses are disproportionately affected by health insurance costs, though.
There's a point at which the positives of mandating insurance coverage for employees almost certainly outweigh the new short-term financial burdens, but you don't seem to want to acknowledge that there's also a point where a business can be small enough that those same burdens are too punitive financially. Not every business is in the same position to just pass every cost onto the customer in the way that larger corporations can with products that people are going to buy anyway - and I'm just a bit uncomfortable at dismissing disproportionate amounts of punishment to certain size businesses.
I don't think it's identical. I haven't heard anything about a raise in the minimum wage being particularly punishing to small businesses. If anything it impacts larger businesses the most.
I just had this image of obamacare as the death star.
A small business with 5 employees with an employee making almost 1/3 more than they did before will likely feel the pinch a lot. Not that there's anything wrong with that, fix your pricing.
Is there something about small businesses that makes them - all things being equal - more likely to have a greater % of their expenses tied up in payroll?
I never really wanted to get into the fight with them about it. I'm going to guess it's mostly the "not having enough capital reserves so this will affect me and probably shut me down" being the most likely.
Also, there's a lot of claims that small business owners don't know how to run a business. Anyone have any actual data for that? Specifically the claim that they don't know how to budget? ( @bowen )
its a shitty burden on employers
its a shitty burden on employees because you always have to wait and pay through the ass for COBRA coverage
It discourages reasonable job mobility
it discourages freelancing and entrepreneurship
it costs too damn much
No, but small businesses generally pay more than large businesses for everything else anyway (relatively, a mom and pop computer shop isn't going to be able to sell replacement hard drives for what Newegg.com can)
Not necessarily small businesses, but startups, absolutely yes. Minimum wage definitely disproportionately hurts startup businesses.
Wal-Mart, for example, could pay their employees all $3 an hour more and it'd cost maybe an extra few pennies on socks if they felt like absorbing none of the costs into their profits
Because we have a service economy. It's important to the economy to have lots and lots of businesses, it's better to err on the side of not fucking small businesses if you can given their volatility and the number of people they employ, especially given the high unemployment. This isn't to say we should avoid a public good because oh no small business, it just means when we fuck them we should at least have the decency to give them a reach around with a subsidy or tax break or something
And redefine small business, the Republican definition of it is fucking ludicrous
I find it curious that this board has transitioned to a "Boo socialized medicine, Yay unemployment!" model
And there we have it.
I think some of that also has to do with the disadvantage of brick and mortar vs. online retailer. Conversely, small businesses that provide a service (plumber, lawn care, etc) tend to have far more competitive pricing than their larger corporate counterparts.
It was anecdotal. Most of them were morons and I was surprised they were able to stay in business. Networking is far more important, it's who you know, not how good or how cheap you are.
My former bosses have always been in with huge church groups or buddies from school/fraternity and that's how they get I'd say 80% of their business. Which is different than a bakery or something. The guy who owns the restaurant definitely gets hit harder because he's got to pass the costs to the consumer or take a pay cut, not that he's exactly poor or anything, but he already pays his employees well compared to other restaurants (everyone gets like $8+ an hour even waiters). Minimum wage increases, he said, might put him out of business because now he's gotta ramp up dining costs over what they were and that's already pretty untenable because not a whole lot of people are eating out right now.
He said pretty much the biggest thing keeping him afloat is Friday nights and catering for drug reps. I'm surprised, actually, that NYS changed drug rep laws so they can't give sticky pads and pens, that was a huge kick in the ass to small business in our area (a lot of printing places had to lay off a ton of people when that went into effect).
Alright, local hardware store vs big box hardware store
That's not relevant anyway, small employee pools (like, 6 or less) mean extremely expensive health care costs, which is what we're talking about
Which is so sweet. A few of my friends have employer-provided policies that are close to having no insurance at all.
Detaching health insurance from the workplace isn't the same as universal health care. Nexuscrawler was referring to the former. (Although I would also disagree with your view of just how far off UHC is politically. I don't think earlier than 40 years from now is impossible.)
Wouldn't the yet-to-be-implemented state insurance exchanges be an example of that in action?
That's what I dislike most about Obamacare. It makes our health insurance system even more employer-based than it currently is. McCain had a fundamentally good idea with shifting the tax deduction on employer health insurance to a flat per-person credit spendable on health exchanges. Mash that up with the flatter pricing and non-discrimination clauses Obamacare puts on health insurance companies and Wyden's free choice amendment, and we'd have the makings of a downright decent system that doesn't ruffle the Socialism! feathers.
I find it interesting that you're thinking there would be much (not none, but much) unemployment occuring in this situation. And it's already been talked about how allowances should probably be made for TRUELY small (5? 10? even up to 50 in some people's minds? employees) businesses. I understand that we don't want to smash small business, but this is a transition that, 10, 50 or 100 years down the line, is quite likely. If your business can't handle it, it is not viable! It is okay that some small businesses fail... I mean, the internet sure impacted a lot of local businesses, some in a negative way... has the internet caused unemployment?
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Yeah I have a high deductible one. It costs an arm and a fucking leg to have it. It might be cheaper for me to cancel it, get my employer to give me the $100 a month they dump into my HSA account, and get something else. Especially since everyone here is pushing 50 and I'm still a young healthy guy. It costs me like $200 to see a doctor and get routine lab work done (which is paid by the HSA but still). I feel I'd come out ahead not having an HSA in the long run. Maybe a $10 copay on the doctor's visit or something.
it surfaced in the 50s when the government put caps on how much you could get paid. Companies got around the restrictions by giving people retirement plans and health insurance instead of pay
The resturaunt example makes no sense. How would a rise in minimum wage affect the pay of your current employees if they're already paid well above minimum wage? In this case, almost twice as much (Last time I checked for wait staff in NY, min wage was $4.60). It's not like his current emplyees are going to leave their 8/hour base pay in order to get $5.60/hour.
If anything, a rise in the minimum wage would actually help the employer in question because it would force other resturanunts to raise their prices to cover the increase in minimum wage, while he would not. It actually makes his product more competitve.
Sounds like he might be one of the morons who doesn't know how to budget.
Going to spoiler for large, but...
@syrdon
A lot of small business owners do not know how to run a business.
No formal budgeting or planning of costs.
Adding employees or salespeople without knowing if they would have a gain from that employee b/c they wanted to "grow" the business
Add a salesperson for an area, giving that person all your existing clients, and paying them an immediate commision on any sales that person made to those people without giving them a reason for gaining new clients or raising prices to account for giving away commision on sales they were already making
No marketing plan (I ran a couple ads this year in tidbits)
Starting food-producing companies without reseaching the health-code information they would need for their place of business (uh... our location sucks because we can't use 3/4 of it because it's not up to code for x/y/z)
Keeping poor records (uhh... I don't really know what my costs are. we kind of buy things when we need them)
Keeping bad vendors or bad customers
Free Shipping even if it meant they it would make the business fail (it's our policy)
Not passing on costs (such as shipping a heavy thing over a long distance, or gas rising steadily over the last 10 years) (it's our policy)
Not understanding the value that their business provides (customer service, or convience, or something else) and ignoring building around that
Having huge standing inventory (very little flexibility and paying thousands/year on loans/credit since they had inventory that was doing nothing for them)
I could probably go on, but then it starts getting into individual situations. And every business we consulted on was smart enough to see that they were not making much money and could do something about it if someone would tell them what to do about it.
Think about all the small businesses out there that are blaming taxes, minimum wage, WalMart, etc for why they aren't raking in the dough. Obviously those are factors, but they are not factors that the business can control; however, they ignore the ones they can control far too often.
I actually learned a lot from talking with my brother-in-law (mentioned earlier in the thread). He's been really open to changes in the way he runs his company; he used to have his men take company vehicles home because they could go right to a job. Then he started doing the math on the cost of them coming into the shop and getting the van/truck and heading out, and the savings in gas if they left it at the shop and had them leave them at the shop. Turns out he saved a bunch of money each month. Same thing with buying in bulk; he's too small to buy everything in bulk, so he goes to local stores, but he can buy random batches of parts in bulk every little while, and saves a grip on that batch. He has cut way back on his standing inventory (due to some convience/laziness concerns, each truck used to be "fully" stocked more or less. Parts went missing or unused for months or years.) which has given him the flexibility to buy these larger lots of parts, and they get used up instead of sitting, plus save money.
These are all examples of changes that the previous owner (our super-cool father-in-law, RIP) could have made, but didn't feel comfortable with, or didn't have the overall business planning acumen to do. He ran a solid business, but Kenny has been doing really well but changing processes internally and sitting down at the books and figuring out where he's losing money that he can control.
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I bet detaching health insurance from employment will be nearly as difficult as enacting medicare for all.
If I had to guess it would probably be the staff felt entitle to the pay raises. We're talking kitchen staff specifically and not the waiters. So if minimum wage goes from from $7.50 to $9... he's got to at least raise them $1, if not more (to keep them at the same position they were before) since a raise in minimum wage means a raise in cost of living in the area (maybe).
Or something. I wouldn't doubt companies would lose business to a minimum wage. Mostly restaurants because if your sandwhich went from $6.75 to $9.25 you might have a hard time making the case to eat out.
Anything Obama implements is going to ruffle the Socialism! feathers.
Possible issues with your sample: You've got a self selecting population, specifically people who thought they had enough of a problem that a consultation would be worth their time. Of course they have problems!
Excuse me while I cry a single tear for the 0 businesses that this may affect until further evidence is provided.
Except that I have 100% verifiability of these people failing at business basics. Are you seriously giving struggling small business owner's the benefit of the doubt that they're all (or even more then 50%) good businesspeople who are just unable to make it for reasons outside of their control? And that the only people who got help from us are the ones who were making large mistakes left and right in running their business? Your total dismissal of years of data (the college has done this over 5 years, I don't know exactly how far back, but I know at least 2006) without providing any data yourself (I mean, this is the best I have to base my opinion on) seems silly.
In five years, from businesses that were anywhere from somewhat profitable and looking to increase profits or expand, to businesses that were going broke in under a year, not ONCE was there one where the students looked at their business and said, "Huh, they're doing almost everything correctly. We'd suggest these few things, but these guys are really kicking butt!"
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BUT IT'S NOT HARD DATA POINTS AGHHHHHHHHHHHH.
TylerJ on League of Legends (it's free and fun!)