Jeff R. below was asking what I thought about the following article:
I don't have any insight except to say, I'm not surprised.
For a generation or more, big business has turned their backs on their employees: shipping their jobs overseas, playing them against each other so they never have to raise wages, pawning off pension and retirement funds in a cynical attempt to dump the whole thing on their employee's shoulders, working their employees harder for less pay, bait and switching job benefits, making them take gig work or part-time so they don't have to pay benefits, asking for loyalty and showing none, and on and on.
All in service to ever higher CEO pay and stock dividends.
So when these employees didn't come rushing back to take their shitty jobs, big business (and to be fair, small businesses that were also paying minimum wages, overworking their employees, promising high wages for full-time jobs while only offering part-time jobs, and offering zero benefits) acted surprised.
To me, they've compounded their problems by playing a little game of advertising high wages, only to find out when applying that the wages they promised are for "later."
So yeah, what do people have to lose?
Well, a lot, but I'll get into that later.
Early on in my business career, I read something about how the stress for self-employed people was high, but it was a different kind of stress than the stress that came from working for someone else. Basically, because the stress was self-imposed and could be managed by their own decisions, the self-employed stress was healthier than the stress of having the same expectations by bosses but no power to change anything.
We've all been there.
So I think the time away from their shitty jobs gave a lot of people some perspective. Apparently, many decided to jump into small business.
That's great, right?
Yes, except I don't believe the majority of people are suited for small business. Not because they aren't smart or hardworking or whatever, but because it takes a certain independence that can't be taught.
The stats quoted in the article, that 20% of businesses fail in the first year, and 50% in the first five years are, if anything, understated. I think it probably leaves out the business that sell out and linger for a few more years. I bet if you stretched that timeline to seven years or so, it would be a whole lot higher.
I have the opposite reaction as the writer of the article about failed businesses. He's willing to entertain the notion that many of the so-called failures weren't failures because they person retired or went on to better things or...whatever.
Whereas I believe that more business fail than are acknowledged. I've yet to hear a small business owner say they closed because they failed. There is always some other reason. But...well, that business is gone...
So I'm of two minds. It's great that they are taking their own fates into their own hands. It's scary because many of them will lose their shirts.
Oh, America. Land of creative destruction.
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