Bloomberg BusinessWeek: Small Biz Gets Plenty of Love, but Where's the Action?

By Peter S. Green
Bloomberg BusinessWeek, September 13, 2012

In election years, Democrats and Republicans talk about small businesses as the epitome of America’s can-do spirit and the foundation of the nation’s economy. President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have seen no reason to deviate from the script. But while they profess to have entrepreneurs’ best interests at heart, flattery is no sure route to winning their votes. One reason is that small business owners are not a monolithic interest group. …

Many policies, including those covering taxes, banking, health care, trade, and the environment, favor big companies and leave Main Street stores and backstreet workshops struggling to compete, small business owners and their advocates argue. …

Small business groups take diverging positions on the federal minimum wage, an issue many of their members feel strongly about. Danner’s group, the NFIB, opposes moving off the $7.25 floor that’s been in place since 2009. Bob Keener, a spokesman for Business for Shared Prosperity… says raising the minimum wage is the No. 1 issue for his 4,000 members, many of them business owners and executives. He asks why labor costs shouldn’t go up when other business expenses, like gasoline, have. “Increasing the minimum wage benefits their businesses because their customers have more money to spend,” he says. ...

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Part 1: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-13/small-biz-gets-plenty-o…

Part 2: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-13/small-biz-gets-plenty-o…