
The Invisible American - randomname2
http://www.gallup.com/opinion/chairman/195680/invisible-american.aspx
======
chiph
Small business doesn't get the support it needs from government, in terms of
ease of starting & doing business. In places like Singapore you can have a
legal firm chartered in an hour. It took a couple of weeks for some friends &
I to get an LLC set up (receive the paperwork from the Secretary of State).

I think this is due in part to your Senator/Congressman not really knowing any
small businessmen. All the lobbyists he sees are from large corporations. And
he doesn't interact with a local dry cleaner, barber, or auto repair, as those
services are provided by the capitol complex. If they did, they'd be more
aligned with their needs.

~~~
soared
It took me 30 minutes to set up my C-corp in Colorado. You just go online and
register.. pay $50 and pick a name. What did you do?

~~~
douche
It's a spectrum. One of my buddies started an LLC in NY. I'm just going to
quote him:

    
    
      New York State:
      1. When you incorporate an LLC in this state, they require you to publish your LLC's incorporation in two different newspapers, at a cost of about $1200. They choose the newspapers. 
      2. Their LLC incorporation website only works during business hours. Yes, that's right. The website only works 9 to 5.
      3. They can only receive information by fax and mail and the fax numbers don't work.

~~~
logfromblammo
I was under the impression that if you want to start an LLC, you do it in
Delaware if you ever want to upgrade to a C corporation or be acquired, in
Nevada if you worry about taxes, in Wyoming if you want privacy, or in New
Mexico if you want anonymity.

Then you register it as a foreign corporation with your state's Secretary of
State.

Incorporating in your own state is unnecessary, unless you have a fixed
business location that is always staffed during business hours, and are keen
on avoiding registered agent fees.

Just incorporate in Delaware. Administration of U.S. corporations is their
cash cow. They can't afford to make the process too burdensome, or some other
state will eat their lunch.

~~~
soared
People say that a lot. The truth is, if you don't get acquired/ipo it won't
matter. If you do, you'll hire an expensive lawyer anyways and they will move
it and handle anything related.

Its easier just to do it in your own state. If it ever really matters, you'll
have a ton of money and an expensive lawyer to deal with it for you.

------
seibelj
As someone who supports all business large and small, the #1 thing the
government needs to do is get everyone taxed at the same rate. Large companies
who can play games with taxes, moving profits offshore, loopholes, etc. wind
up with 0 to 20% corporate tax rate while small businesses who can't afford to
figure that out pay full freight of 35%. I don't know what the solution is,
but until this is figured out, an enormous subsidy and competitive advantage
is given to big business which small businesses cannot possibly match.

~~~
Roboprog
What would happen if we shifted away from income tax to property taxes and
import tariffs at the federal level? (adjusted as needed to be "revenue
neutral")

~~~
cptskippy
Property taxes are usually the county's way of generating revenue. Assuming
the Federal Government could come up with mileage rates for the entire country
and survive the huge backlash from the transition...

Businesses with small footprints would see a tax benefit. Businesses would
probably start implementing mandatory work from home policies and reduce their
office space. Most businesses rent so property holders would feel the tax
burden and rents would go up significantly. Businesses would also start moving
to locations with cheaper mileage rates. Businesses would start downsizing
their office spaces at the detriment of employees. Businesses have already
started the practice of selling their property assets and then renting them
for other reasons, this would only increase. In the end you'd be penalizing
businesses that need store fronts to operate and encouraging more teleworking.

Tariffs would only affect a small portion of business and you might see an
increase in manufacturing in the US but that would depend on the property
taxes.

With both you'd be missing large business segments. Service providers that
don't need physical locations or produce products would have to pay no taxes?
That's basically a potential free ride for any call center operator, software
development firm, or any other company that can outsource or telework it's
staff.

~~~
random28345
> Most businesses rent so property holders would feel the tax burden and rents
> would go up significantly.

Property holders would feel the tax burden, decreasing the net revenue from
rent, and decreasing property values.

Rents are already at "market rates", and property values adjust to reflect the
return on renting property. There might be some short-term price fluctuations
as property owners try to maintain their existing margins, but an efficient
market for real estate will stabilize rents close to the existing prices. The
real losers would be those who purchased real estate assets expecting a
consistent future return.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Rents are already at "market rates",

Rents are at market rates given current market conditions. Increasing costs to
hold property by imposing new taxes on property holders decreases supply of
rental property -- that is, it reduces the quantity supplied at any given
price point -- which, with a normally-shaped demand curve, decreases the
quantity traded and increases the market clearing price.

Market prices aren't independent of market conditions.

------
tps5
> The percentage of Americans who say they are in the middle or upper-middle
> class has fallen 10 percentage points, from a 61% average between 2000 and
> 2008 to 51% today.

This statistic is psychological. Americans want to be middle class and tend to
identify as such even if their income does not fall into what is considered a
"middle class income" (lower or higher).

So, while it is significant that fewer people identify as middle class, it is
not clear what that actually means. And we certainly shouldn't take it for
granted that everyone who no longer identifies as middle class has seen a
salary drop from 65k to 28k.

~~~
scarmig
It's still pretty interesting. Historically Americans have always considered
themselves middle class, regardless of whether they were on food stamps,
received EITC, or drove a Bugatti. The fact that now many more people are
identifying themselves as poor or working class is a shift toward the
international norm, which might presage a change in America's political
"exceptionality."

~~~
zeveb
> The fact that now many more people are identifying themselves as poor or
> working class is a shift toward the international norm, which might presage
> a change in America's political "exceptionality."

I really fear that it may. Once folks realise that they can make their lives
better (in the short term at least) by using State violence to rob those who
are better off (rather than through hard work), the long-term results are
going to be ugly.

~~~
zyxley
You seem to be doing that extreme-libertarian thing where you call taxes
"robbery" while ignoring the negative economic effects of the general lack of
safety nets in the US.

You may want to read up on the concept of the "tragedy of the commons" first.

~~~
zeveb
> You seem to be doing that extreme-libertarian thing where you call taxes
> "robbery" while ignoring the negative economic effects of the general lack
> of safety nets in the US.

I don't know what else you would call threatening people with deadly force
unless they give the threatener money, other than 'robbery.'

You'll note that I didn't say that taxes aren't necessary: they are. They are,
in fact, almost the textbook definition of a necessary evil: we must have
them, and they are evil. We don't live in a perfect world.

What concerns me is that we have already raised the economic footprint of the
State far beyond what is necessary, and that it is in fact deadweight holding
us all back — to include the poor, whose ultimate interests are served not by
dragging down the rich, but by being lifted up.

~~~
occamrazor
You walk into a store, take an apple and walk out of the door without paying.
The police stop you and threaten you to forcefully deprive you of your
freedom, unless you give money to the shop owner.

Would you call this robbery too? It seems to fit your definition.

~~~
pitaj
No. He would say that the stealing is the initiation of force so use of force
in retaliation is justified.

~~~
occamrazor
Yes, but no violence, or even force, is used by the thief in this example.

------
ZeroGravitas
This seemed strangely political for a polling company.

edit: following some links, they have a real consistent focus on small
businesses as being the answer to economic problems. That's actually something
I believe as well, but it still seems strange to see it being pushed so
heavily by a polling company.

This seems to be his key manifesto:

[http://www.gallup.com/opinion/chairman/186638/killing-
small-...](http://www.gallup.com/opinion/chairman/186638/killing-small-
business.aspx)

~~~
ubernostrum
On the other hand, most "support small business" proposals boil down to "make
someone else pay to keep this person in business". It's worth asking some
tough questions about which businesses generate enough value to be worth
making others pay to keep them afloat.

~~~
pitaj
> most "support small business" proposals boil down to "make someone else pay
> to keep this person in business"

When really, they should be, "don't make anyone pay to keep anyone in
business"

Corporate bailouts and monetary policy are socialized risk and privatized
reward, benefiting the large and entrenched firms.

------
samsolomon
> According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of the
> total U.S. adult population that has a full-time job has been hovering
> around 48% since 2010 -- this is the lowest full-time employment level since
> 1983.

I've never heard the statistics for full-time employment. I knew that it would
be low, but below 50 percent? That's incredible.

~~~
lr4444lr
I also wonder what the rate would be if you subtracted out people who
involuntarily have to stitch together 40 hours from 2 or more jobs.

~~~
tiatia
[http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-
chart...](http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts)

~~~
knightofmars
[http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2015/06/15/deconstruct...](http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2015/06/15/deconstructing-
shadowstats-part-2-in-search-of-an-alternative-measure-of-unemployment/)

~~~
knightofmars
tl;dr: "The bottom line here is that the ShadowStats alternate unemployment
rate of 23 percent for May 2015, and similar rates for other recent months,
are completely implausible. To get an unemployment rate that high, we have to
include millions of people who do not even claim to want a job, let alone make
any effort to look for one. We have to assume that the status of long-term
discouraged worker is a trap from which almost no one escapes from year to
year, by finding work, by making even a single unsuccessful attempt to find
work during the year, by changing their mind about wanting work, or by death."

------
cryoshon
Unemployment is high, wages are low, debt is high, savings are low, and cost
of living is high and rising rapidly in the only geographical places which
don't suffer from high unemployment and low wages. Consumption is low due to
the above factors. Job generation is low. New business founding is low. Taxes
are the most burdensome to those who have the least; capital is heavily
concentrated at the very top, with most of the bottom 70% owning very little
whatsoever. Retirement accounts are being filled slowly (if at all), not
filled at all, or withdrawn from prematurely. Mortgages are being reversed in
order to liquidate owned shares in exchange for cash.

The upper class has flourished, and is richer than ever before, including the
gilded age, with fortunes the size of Rockefeller now common among their
ranks. The upper middle class has taken a minor hit, but has largely recovered
and is reaping the gains of their investment funds. Middle class families have
fallen into instability, and must now accept a lower standard of living, worse
education, and high levels of debt. Lower class families have fallen into
desperation, and many have their stuff repoed and their homes foreclosed. The
underclass is hopelessly trapped working in multiple minimum wage jobs if they
are lucky enough to work at all, packed in with a dozen to a household. A
growing population at the very bottom lives in utter squalor, frequently in
the context of complete municipal anarchy such as in Detroit or Flint.

How hard is it to understand that the economic health of the majority of
people in the US is very poor?

~~~
mason240
Almost none of the things in your first paragraph are true.

~~~
thinkdevcode
Because you don't want it to be or because you have proof? If you have proof,
show it.

~~~
mason240
Let me get right on proving other people's arguments.

------
tboyd47
The author posits that three metrics have to be turned around in order to save
the middle class: (1) the full-time job rate, (2) the number of publicly-
listed companies trading on the US exchanges, and (3) the number of new
"startups" (which author seems to use as a blanket term for all small
businesses)

You can't expect the number of small businesses to increase if the vast
majority of people in the country have no idea how to run a business.

The cultural norm in America is to entrust the doing of business to the elites
of major corporations and aspire to be lifer employees for them. This worked
until these companies started buying each other up, blowing their profits on
stock buybacks and shareholder dividends, and laying their experienced workers
off in the 1990s.

The reality changed very dramatically, but the culture did not change with it.
Our education system is very much biased towards STEM and liberal arts, not
business and trade. It is very, very odd contrasting with such an aggressively
pro-capitalist foreign policy.

~~~
a3n
I think more people would start businesses, and go through the learning curve
of running a business, if it weren't for the state of health insurance. Unless
you're rich, the only affordable way to get _good_ health insurance is through
an employer.

If you've got kids, or some expensive medical condition in your family, a lot
of people are going to suck it up and work for the man, for health insurance.

~~~
soylentcola
Purely anecdotal but this is the massive, major reason I've not seriously
considered starting my own business as well. Hell, I don't even have kids but
generally, it's the lack of "stability", whether real or imagined, in health
care and other less formalized forms of insurance (likelihood of stable income
over 5-10 year period) that keep me away.

I do all sorts of work with photography, video, multimedia, and that general
intersection of tech and the arts. In my case, do I want to start up a
production company or identify a market for people who want or need these
sorts of services and contract with them?

Or do I find a gig with a company or university that pays a decent salary,
includes health insurance, retirement investment, and the usual benefits? It's
pretty obvious from my post which way I've gone despite the fact that the work
isn't always inspiring or challenging or terribly lucrative.

Because at the end of the day, it pays me that middle-class salary and offers
some promise of stability. Could I be laid off or my position cut? Sure. But
if I had to put a wager on it, the odds of unemployment/underemployment are
much lower this way.

Anyway, I don't intend to complain. My field is one of those where you may
consider yourself lucky to have steady, non-gig work and I do consider myself
fortunate to have a steady income, benefits, and some savings while doing
something at least somewhat related to my interests and skillset.

But if we're looking for the psychological picture of why people might be
trading entrepreneurship with the potential for even greater earnings and
contribution to the overall economy, I'd say the major issue by far is
stability. There's not a whole lot of "safety net" in place for someone who
wants to start a small business.

When you constantly hear about them shutting down due to competition from big
corps or dips in the economy or just shitty luck, the effect it has on most
prudent adults is to make the prospect of entrepreneurship seem awfully risky
and likely to leave you back on the job hunt within a few years.

~~~
tboyd47
I'm in the same boat as you, but people like us who actually have a career
they're confident about are the exception, not the norm.

Immigrants start small businesses all the time without a safety net.
Restaurants, smoothie shops, tailors, cell phone stores, contractors,
convenience stores, etc. are often small businesses owned by foreigners
(anecdotally at least, in my experience). Why do we always say that we need a
safety net when we interact with these sorts of businesses all the time?

Is it because we have big, amazing careers ahead of us as employees that we
can't risk? Or is it just a cultural perception that those occupations are
mostly for foreigners?

~~~
yourapostasy
> Why do we always say that we need a safety net when we interact with these
> sorts of businesses all the time?

My two hypotheses, purely from personal experience, not at all based upon any
valid statistical data. YMMV, freely-given opinions worth what you paid for
it, etc.

Immigrants likely have not yet grown up in the kind of media-pumped, over-
saturated hyper-aware-of-health-factors as developed-nation (especially US)
native-born citizens. If this hypothesis is correct, then native-born would
have an exaggerated sense of risks, while immigrants have a more proportionate
sense tempered by their lives' constraints (making do without what native-born
would consider necessary safety nets).

Native-born citizens might statistically be unhealthier than immigrants.
Immigrants are a self-selecting group who are statistically going to exhibit
certain degrees of greater perseverance than the wider population. This
perseverance could be a contributing factor in diet choices, a major
contributor to the rising poor health outcomes in native-born populations in
the US. If so, then the immigrant group might not feel as much pressure to
secure the safety net as the native-born population.

Most diet choices in the US are unhealthy. Like very poor nutrient:calorie
ratios, excessively high portions, or encouraging poor convenience-oriented
habits over selecting and preparing whole foods closer to raw than processed.
All only possible with the kind of extravagant energy per capita spent in the
US that are not generally available in the nations immigrants tend to come
from, leading to catastrophic US general population health outcomes.

------
twblalock
I find it amusing when people think they have discovered for the first time
that the unemployment numbers are "wrong" in some way, e.g. only people who
are actively looking for work are considered unemployed (as opposed to people
who gave up looking), people who take new jobs for lower wages than their old
jobs are considered fully employed.

The unemployment figures have been that way the entire time! It was never a
secret.

~~~
david927
Not "the entire time" \-- they have changed the way that unemployment is
calculated multiple times over the years, and always in favor of lower
unemployment. And while it's not a secret, it's definitely not actively
publicized. That's the point; lower unemployment numbers are published to try
to lower unemployment.

Never trust numbers if the one collecting the data has any inclination towards
the result, no matter how trustworthy the source seems to be; bias will find a
way in. Any government's numbers on unemployment and inflation will always be
suspect for that reason. S&P/Moody's/Fitch? Years ago, I remember a trader in
Zurich laughing at my question as to their trust-worthiness.

If I was a full-time investor with a large portfolio, I would pay to do my own
tracking of prices across a wide basket of goods, as well as research to get
my own numbers on unemployment, underemployment and jobless, the same with
credit ratings. Any large discrepancies with the official numbers would be a
sign as to what is being sold and how desperately.

------
jlj
Part of the Johnson/Weld platform is to get government out of the way of
entrepreneurship.

[http://fortune.com/2016/07/07/small-business-
libertarian/](http://fortune.com/2016/07/07/small-business-libertarian/)

------
losteverything
Invisible meaning not represented, not invisible like Fussell's "top/bottom
out of sighters" \- which I thought the article was going to be about

<That devastated American remains counted as "full-time employed" because he
still has full-time work -- although with drastically reduced pay and
benefits. He has fallen out of the middle class and is invisible in current
reporting.

<More disastrous is the emotional toll on the person -- the sudden loss of
household income can cause a crash of self-esteem and dignity, leading to an
environment of desperation that we haven't seen since the Great Depression.

I would challenge the author to prove, expand and support this.

------
cheriot
Class status is self reported so I wonder how much can be traced to economic
vs mentality changes.

------
bandrami
_The percentage of Americans who say they are in the middle or upper-middle
class has fallen 10 percentage points, from a 61% average between 2000 and
2008 to 51% today._

That number is still too high. It should be about 33% (but then about 80% of
Americans consider themselves "above average" drivers, too).

 _That devastated American remains counted as "full-time employed" because he
still has full-time work -- although with drastically reduced pay and
benefits._

Nonsense. 2015 saw the largest income increases ever recorded at each of the
bottom four quintiles.

~~~
mdorazio
As itbeho pointed out, the census moved the goal posts, rendering that whole
claim questionable at best [1].

Additionally, income increases don't refute what the author said at all. If I
lost a 75k a year job and replaced it with a 30k a year job, an increase of
anything less than 150% leaves me worse off than I was before. You can see
this if you look at real median wage information - we are still well below
2007 levels, even with the census tricks.

[1] [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-15/deconstructing-
medi...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-15/deconstructing-median-
income-farce)

