Ever since Joe Plumber's Lonely Hearts Club Band came out this week, thepundits have popped hamstrings to sprint out and remind us that "small businesses are the backbone of this country!!!" And, much like when we're told the same thing about small towns, we reflexively nod our heads and think "Yes, how American."AAAAAAAAAAAAnd here we are, with someone else finally catching up to me:
But, if this is true, if small businesses really ARE the "backbone of this country", does that mean it's necessarily a good thing? Didn't our economy seem to have it's shit together a lot better back when we were a country of LARGE companies...pumping out cars in Detroit, IBM, huge manufacturing companies employing thousands of people etc etc, before we shipped them all overseas? Aren't we actually better off when we're a country of large companies?
I have no idea if this is right or wrong; I'm sure two experts could chime in with two different point of views and be right. Or maybe I'm just flat-out wrong (always possible.) But I don't think we do ourselves any favors by knee-jerkingly accepting such views of small business and small towns being the backbone of the country without wondering if the opposite may be true.
A 2010 National Bureau of Economic Research paper by University of Maryland economist John Haltiwanger and researchers at the U.S. Census Bureau found there was no consistent link between net job growth rates and the size of a business. Instead, the researchers found that firms younger than 10 years, particularly startups, are the real sources of job growth.
Sigh. You people are fucking exhausting.
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