Vice President Kamala Harris will propose a tax deduction of up to $50,000 for new small businesses on Wednesday, a tenfold increase over existing relief and her latest economic policy aimed at winning over middle-class Americans after jumping into the presidential race over a month ago.
You know what would really help small businesses, like a lot? Public health insurance (covering things like vision and dental). A huge part of the cost of doing business is benefits for employees. Well, with public health insurance that's a huge budget item that suddenly small businesses don't have to pay.
Want to make it better? Expand social security to be something you could live off of. Boom, now you as a small business owner don't need benefits like 401ks. Your employees will be well taken care of by a government ran pension.
Want to go a step further? Expand public housing, public transport, and food security programs. Now all the sudden a business doesn't need to pay top dollar because the cost of living for everyone has been significantly decreased. You can easily find low wage workers and hire crews of them because the added income for everyone is more of a bonus rather than a necessity.
What else could you do? Reduce the full time work week from 40 hours to 30 hours. For a small business, it means you can actually focus on having your employees doing useful work rather than having them hang around an extra 10 hours a week doing nothing. For the employees, now they have spare time on their hands which means more opportunities to interact with the community and small businesses.
By taking care of the basic needs of the population you give the population a lot of spare capital and time. All of which can stimulate the economy to new heights.
You know what would really help small businesses, like a lot? Public health insurance (covering things like vision and dental). A huge part of the cost of doing business is benefits for employees. Well, with public health insurance that’s a huge budget item that suddenly small businesses don’t have to pay.
It would massively help the creation of small businesses, too, by massively reducing the cost/risk faced by entrepreneurs.
Interesting incentive move. I immediately wonder how people are going to exploit it, though I don’t believe the potential for abuse should dissuade an attempt at progress.
My [likely ignorant] take is that we need better incentives for workers, renters, and first-time homeowners, not MBA shysters "entrepreneurs" creating "new businesses" dropshipping imported garbage and other ventures that add little value to society.
Tf are you on about? You realize that a huge chunk of small business owners are middle class, right? Hell, many of them are barely holding on at all. My wife is a social worker and started her own "business" this year, which is just a small office she rents so she has a safe place to meet her clients. I promise you we are far from being wealthy. Don't confuse small business as being riddled with millionaires and billionaires, because that's just complete nonsense.
I assumed they were pointing out how small business tax breaks can be taken advantage of by those wealthy types pretending to be people like your wife. On the other hand, benefits to workers, renters and first time home-owners can't be exploited as simply and would benefit your wife just the same.
But if I'm wrong then, yea, I agree with you 100%.
It’s lemmy. Most people don’t get a small business is often tradesmen, the local restaurant down the street or that weird quirky store in your neighborhood.
They’re also the ones struggling hard right now. I’m no fan of Harris but based on the limited article, I support the idea.
We need to make it easier for the average person to start a business and have some prosperity.
I seek out small locally owned businesses as often as I can.
Real weird that people don't seem to get that competition from small, local businesses is what we want to end the corporate grip on our lives. Millionaires get venture capital loans, not $50k small business loans.
If she wins and she does this, I will open my own business. I've been on the fence for months about it, this is enough to pull it off. I look forward to a future with her as our President.
I will never understand how politicians crow about how small businesses and entrepreneurship are what the US needs and then simultaneously complain that there's a shortage of workers. Maybe not every business is inherently virtuous simply by existing, and if there aren't enough workers, that could mean there are too many businesses.
And then think that somehow their business will become Wal-Mart, which has actually priced likely them and most other small businesses in their area out of competing.
The businesses that are most successful in my area that have lasted over the last 5 years are intelligent, humble, and treat their employees very well.
They've opened in places that make great sense for them location wise
They only participate in marketing, events, etc when it provides a real benefit
The owners spend real time and energy at the business and events, participating in the community
The employees are paid well, provided for (I mean benefits, not just pats on the back), and have opportunities for advancement as the business grows
These businesses deserve a tax deduction to me.
The type of people with shit shill companies to put their debt on or because they post a lot on social media about "hard knocks university" and their instagram is full of shit they bought on a business loan but never about what their business does and the work they do deserve to fail;
These people deserve the "limited" in "limited liability company" to come full circle. Unfortunately the second group is a significant amount of people that will vote for trump because they consider themselves "entrepreneurs"
One of the best ways someone can make a good living for themselves is to run their own business. Not that it's for everyone, but being in the driver's seat of your own income instead of depending on someone else for a wage is very much the definition of American individualism, even if an individual is simply contracting for a larger firm.
I don't think there's necessarily a shortage of workers, but I think there's a shortage of people willing to work for the peanuts these conglomerates are offering. Competition is severely hampered when large firms corner their respective markets and drive out smaller competitors, because now they are the ones in charge of the respective workforces and are calling the shots, including how much an individual is allowed to make. Smaller firms with lower overhead are able to disrupt them, as long as the playing field is level and the barriers aren't the Dover cliffs.
Why don’t we stop jerking off businesses with both hands and start helping workers?
Because workers don't have a strong outside organization to lobby officials for their benefit. You'd need some kind of... uh... I know there's a word for this. Big Worker Group. Like, a Wad of Workers, where they're all together making demands as a single bargaining unit. An amalgamation of people in a given office or sector of the economy.
We don't need more small businesses. We need less corporations, less ultra wealthy and more healthy middle class. This does not solve anything and a one time tax deduction doesn't make small businesses sustainable when they have to compete against corpos.
Having more small businesses is how you get less corporations and a healthier middle class… there’s a ton of great incentives for small businesses already, but the hardest part is the initialization and the first year. This makes that way easier. This is a good idea, you just have a bad view.
Having more small businesses is how you get less corporations and a healthier middle class
Except when the corporations just buy the small business. This is the big problem with breaking into an industry. If you do find a way to break in, then one of the larger guys will just buy you out or force you out. Facebook bought Insta for the sole reason to reduce competition. Meta bought them out at $1B, which was huge for a small business buyout. Post-Meta, Insta is now estimated to be worth $100B Literally a penny on the dollar for the buyout. Meta also bought out WhatsApp at $19B, currently estimated to be $109B worth today. Like things that are regular names at this point were once small businesses that were serious threats to larger companies. Meta's Messenger was under serious threat by WhatsApp prior to the buy out.
And sometimes the point is to just get rid of the business altogether. Microsoft bought out Wunderlist for the sole reason to kill off the app. Google bought out Waze and has constantly been keeping them just functioning, but in 2020 the FTC launched yet another investigation into Google over Waze.
Small businesses won't thrive without restricting some of the anti-competitive behavior of the larger corporations.
Thank you. I can't believe there are multiple comments in this thread hating on small businesses and somehow justifying that as them being anti-corpo/wealthy elite. We need less Walmart/Amazon/etc and more smaller, locally owned and run businesses.
You and @Rookwood@lemmy.world are both right.
On one side, helping small business get started is good.
The other side, breaking up monopolies and market manipulators is also needed.
Many small businesses fail in the first year due to taking on necessary costs before clients/ customers are well established. Getting through that period would make businesses more sustainable.
Well it sure beats getting your taxes raised just to give the rich another cut. This can actually help me out as I'm working to start a small shop here in Detroit. $50k is the cost of a good used CNC lathe.
Artificial price caps just disincentivize people from creating more of that good. They don't solve the underlying problem at all. You just replace people paying more with widespread shortages and people not having it at all.
The goal to reduce prices to increase supply—incentivize people to create more of those things cheaper somehow.