Small Businesses & Economy
According to the National Federation of Independent Business, the biggest problem that small business owners face today is lack of consumer demand.
While it is true that sales and demand suffers during slow economic times, the blame cannot be placed solely on one person or organization. Based on the weekly polls conducted by the NFIB, the bane of small business has ranged from sales and big box businesses to taxes and regulation.
Previously taxes were the top hurdle that small businesses had to jump to have a successful year. But, taxes can only be taken into account if there is a profit to be had, which in the case of suffering sales does not happen often. During this economic rut consumers have chosen the road of abstinence from spending; and in turn this directly influences the local economy.
In years past, the government has countered a faltering economy with borrowing more money to run a bigger deficit to plump up government spending and increase demand. Think about the effect that government spending had on ending The Great Depression. This results in a shorter and shallower recession period. However, this technique did not work as well as hoped during the current recession. It seems our government has reached its debt load limit and will have a limited ability to generate demand through spending. The only way to go forward is to either add borrowing capacity by paying down debt or increasing taxes, or both.
Therefore, everyone is watching and waiting for the right time to spend. How do you, as a small business owner or employee, feel about this?
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