Small Business and Retirement

This thread is for ATS small business owner insight and reflection. I have long believed U.S. small business owners grease the American Wheel and carry the majority of the economic burdens our country imposes. I respect home grown products, goods, and services. We as American citizens inherently know we should buy domestic. The competitive nature of our consumerism leads us wherever the best price meets adequate quality or user satisfaction. Still no problem in my view.

I take personal offense where CEOs of so-called "Home Grown" small businesses aim to set their sails on corporate wind falls. Point in case...our Medical Industry and the ancillary businesses that feed off their wakes. Hospitals, Doctors, Admins, and Boards are not the enemy. Small business owners are. Numerous start up ancillary companies run their services bare bone, exploit markets with absurd pricing all in an effort to gain customers, or Books of Business. Revenue streams are no longer the focus for major industry small business owners. Market share by mass customer volume is the agenda. Once the customers are locked into bottom line or sub profit pricing, the Wolves come calling. Sell...Sell...Sell. Employess of sold businesses scramble to fit into Corporate employment. CEOs walk straight to their banks, after paying off their investors, who orchestrated every step of small business X's demise.

Corporations buy people, not consumers. Services sold below profit, damn the regime. And the kicker? We all feed the enemy we despise and curse. How? Every person, every budding career has barriers to life and their financial path. Doctors want free or discounted everything. Why? They are burdened with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt! They feel entitled to discounts, especially early on. This doesn't only apply to doctors, or the Healthcare Industry, but it is the industry where I have well identified this problem.

Medical Waste is necessary, and heavily regulated, rightfully so. However, the big Pharmas, Medical Device Makers, and Waste Disposers have more lobbyists and attorneys than Big Oil. They back small businesses by providing insane windfalls to small business owners, I.e. retirement security. The consumer recieves short term gain only to be enslaved to laws and regs which marries them to the large corporations at a later date. There is no saving. Only passing the burden of market entry to the consumer, the customer.

I am sick and effin' tired of the skeptics who blame Corporate America for poverty, imbalance, debt, interest rates, and crushed hope/dreams. Small businesses enable these Goliaths to feed, and they do so not caring about their customers, who were them, and they become again. Look inside yourself, not around. Grow your business, don't sell. We need each other to bring about balance of markets again. Make your money, retire, live, enjoy life...but do not do it in a fashion that no one following you will be able to do the same. Pay it forward, let the system work.

I may add more to this later, as I am pissed off right now, but please share and talk amongst our community about this, specifically about how small business is far too susceptible to cashing out when their involvement and effort is needed. Small business owners are the key to the World Economy, so much promise, ingenuity, leadership, responsibiliy to their communities...damn the lot who sell us out.

a reply to: Boscov

Not contradicting the OP, just wondering your take on the following.

What happens to small businesses who become successful? Example Annie's. Macaroni and cheese, healthy snacks, etc. They were recently bought out by one of the food conglomerates.

They sold because it was better than the alternative. The mega corps can afford endless but pointless legal wrangling until the little guy has no choice but to sell or fold. The mega corps can afford to change the regulatory landscape in which the up and comings operate or more accurately, cannot operate.

I am not suggesting I like it that way. I prefer to do business locally when possible. It is just becoming more difficult.

a reply to: ABNARTY

You raise the point. The consumer must champion their community businesses. Who elects the legislature? How, where, why, when, and by whom do regulations get passed? The DOJ is supposed to govern anti-trust, but without consequence, they follow the lobbyists, utter scum. We must support our small businesses, including paying more to offset legal expenses, litigations, suits. Pay more for your local, they survive, and in turn stay loyal to their locals. We consume their goods, use their products, and advantage their services, yet leave them prey to bigger banks. Your community's survival is an investment built on trust...we betray each other and blame the corps that pick up the pieces of our inability to function.

I got to re read the unibomber manifesto, this is a consumer based world if everybody stopped consuming everything would grind to a halt.

a reply to: Boscov

Yup, the problem with the United States of America is small businesses.

a reply to: greencmp

In my observation, yes. Ultimately, the consumer holds power. Small businesses prey on that advantage, only to yield said advantage for a payout. Small business keeps current, fresh. Only so many can carry the burden, better said...few tote the rock, and even fewer secure it.