Thursday, May 30, 2013

If Greensboro's Leaders Were Really Interested In Economic Development 48

They would begin making an effort to understand the relationship between high taxes and the loss of small businesses to other communities beyond the City limits of Greensboro. They would begin compiling data to determine the number of small business start-ups and existing small businesses lost due to Greensboro's poor business climate documented by the very studies paid for by the City.

And they would openly address the fact that when Greensboro is rated 98th out of 102 worst economies it means our leaders have failed us miserably. Then with their new found information they would do something about it-- something other than building roads and buildings the majority of Greensboro will never benefit from.

You see, small businesses, not the giant automakers they dream of attracting, are the most important sector, the driving force of our economy. From wikipedia:

"In the US, small business (less than 500 employees) accounts for more than half the nonfarm, private GDP and around half the private sector employment.[10] Regarding small business, the top job provider is those with fewer than 10 employees, and those with 10 or more but fewer than 20 employees comes in as the second, and those with 20 or more but fewer than 100 employees comes in as the third (interpolation of data from the following references).[16] The most recent data shows firms with less than 20 employees account for slightly more than 18% of the employment.[17] According to “The Family Business Review,” “There are approximately 17 million sole-proprietorships in the US. It can be argued that a sole-proprietorship (an unincorporated business owned by a single person) is a type of family business” and “there are 22 million small businesses (less than 500 employees) in the US and approximately 14,000 big businesses.” Also, it has been found that small businesses created the most new jobs in communities, “In 1979, David Birch published the first empirical evidence that small firms (fewer than 100 employees) created the most new jobs” and Edmiston claimed that “perhaps the greatest generator of interest in entrepreneurship and small business is the widely held belief that small businesses in the United States create most new jobs. The evidence suggests that small businesses indeed create a substantial majority of net new jobs in an average year.” Local businesses provide competition to each other and also challenge corporate giants.

Of the 5,369,068 employer firms in 1995, 78.8 percent had fewer than 10 employees, and 99.7 percent had fewer than 500 employees.[18]"

But as Councilman Zack Matheny and Assistant City Manager in charge of economic development, Andrew Scott proved just last week, Greensboro's leaders don't care about small businesses and economic development and to date I've proved it over 48 times. It's time to send them packing along with their developer cronies and elitist enablers.

Or we can just wait until GPAC is built and the angry mobs burn it to the ground. Yes folks, people on my side of town really are that angry.