Let’s re-define ’success’ to include microbusiness

Posted on | November 6, 2008 | Comments Off

I just got a press release in my inbox, which screamed the following headline at me:

High Net Worth Individuals Move to Protect Assets Ahead of Obama Presidency

Tax expert reveals what individuals and small businesses need to do before Inauguration Day.

And so it begins.

So let’s get clear about one very important thing: most small businesses don’t need to do anything at all before Inauguration Day. Most small businesses will not see an increase in their tax burden because most of them will have less than $250,000 in taxable income (as opposed to gross business receipts).

But there was something else in this particular press release that really stuck in my craw.

“Moreover, the president-elect has discussed increasing payroll taxes which will also increase the cost of running successful businesses.”

“Successful businesses,” huh?

So, let’s see … does that mean that nonemployer businesses are, by definition, not “successful businesses?”

Tell that to Jim Fairchild.

You remember him, right? He’s the guy who runs Coggin & Fairchild Environmental Consultants, the first nonemployer firm to be named to the Inc. 500 (which happened back in April).

I could give you more examples but there’s no need to belabor the point.

This stuff drives me crazy! And I wonder how long they’re going to keep it up? You may think it’s no big deal, we all know what he meant. And that’s true enough but, you know, language is important. It reflects all sorts of things, implied and assumed as well as stated. Language is the building material of thought.

It would be an interesting exercise for a group of some sort to get together and re-examine the language as it is applied to small businesses and microbusinesses, and perhaps to redefine success based on what the people doing it think rather than on what the economists or the politicians or the people watching the people doing it think.

Of course, I don’t know what would need to happen to make such deliberate cultural manipulation take. I just wish folks would get themselves out of the mental habit of belittling microbusinesses in general and nonemployers in particular.

That’s kind of important right now. Because I believe that nonemployers will loom very large over the next few years.


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Category: In My Inbox, Rants and Ruminations
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