A couple of years ago the new administration passed a law called the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. This newer law regulates the living daylights out of just about every product made for children in the United States.
Now, I am all for safety – I have six kids, I want them to be safe. If you ask my wife, she may tell you I have never learned the definition of safety, but I’m safe where it counts. Many of these regulations, all 3000 pages of them, are ridiculous. They are expensive for the manufacturers, sellers, and resellers. This of course, is going to make the product more expensive to purchase.
This type of government interference is going to tie the hands of manufactures and business owners. If you make everyone jump through expensive, unnecessary hoops before they can sell a product, the end result is going to be less money spent on product development or marketing or new employees. That money will have to go towards testing and retesting products, repackaging products, product warning labels and so on. To use the example given in the video below, do you, as a consumer, need to be told NOT to eat rocks, as they may contain lead? Or do you think you would probably avoid ingesting inorganic materials that won’t comfortably make it through your digestive system?
This administration so far has refused to change this law. Perhaps, if enough business owners and consumers start demanding a change, the incoming House of Representative can help effect some changes. Here’s hoping.
Now that the election is over, we have to start looking at what we can predict is going to happen as far as taxes, Cap&Trade, the Health Care Reform Bill and other aspects of our economy that have plagued business owners, and potentially, how the Web can help you stave off some of those expenses.
Two things seem to have happened with the unemployment rate in this country. The first thing is the years long, some 99+ months of unemployment payouts that have created a culture of people unwilling to work as long as they can rely on the government to pay their bills. The second thing that has happened is a fear, a worry by business owners as the new taxes loom in the near future. The end of the Bush tax cuts, the Health Care Reform Bill, and the potential (hopefully this worry is now null and void) of the Cap & Trade Bill. These new taxes are creating a train of thought among business owners who have no real idea what it is going to cost to hire someone. How much will it cost to provide a full time employee with health insurance? How much more in taxes will I have to pay if I grow my business and get hit with the end of the Bush tax cuts?
This might lead you to think that the safest bet is to play it slow and easy for a while, until you see how it all shakes out. But, you still have a need for skills, labor, whatever. So where are you going to turn? Freelance? Part time help? Overtime for current employees? Outsourcing jobs you used to handle in house? All of these are viable options, though I hate to be the one to encourage people not to hire. I tend to be optimistic and think it will all work out in the end, TKG has been hiring for over a year now, and I do think that the economy is making a slow turn-around. I really can’t say that I believe that will continue if some of the political atmosphere doesn’t change, but we have to go with what we know for now.
So, what can the Web do to help you fill in the holes in your workforce?
1. Utilize sites that provide legal forms, business administration forms and schedules, and just about any other paperwork you need to do. www.lectlaw.com/formb.htm http://www.entrepreneur.com/formnet/index.html
2. Use Freelance sites to help you find the temporary or long term extra help you need. www.freelancer.com/ www.freelanceswitch.com/
3. Use LinkedIn.com, job sites and Craigslist.com to find employees who might be willing to work part time until the economy becomes more secure and hiring becomes an options.
4. Outsource jobs that you might normally have handled in house, if there were someone around to do the work. You can have many jobs outsourced – I know that The Workshops in our area even takes small assembly jobs, packing and sorting, it’s worth checking into if you would prefer to wait to hire.
5. You had to know I was gonna get to this – the plug for TKG, but hey, it’s valid! Have a Web firm do some SEO, search marketing and social media marketing for you. We do copy, too. Not only will it save your marketing budget, but we might be able to help you squeeze through a time constraint or deadline when you really don’t have the resources available. Freeing up your in house marketing folks to concentrate on traditional marketing, or if you are a smaller biz, your assistant, to work on some of your more niche jobs might make your life a little easier and your business run a little smoother.
As for me, quite frankly, I am grateful for the way things turned out last Tuesday. I really hope this is the beginning of a turn away from so much government spending, enormous tax increases and a slippery slide into socialism. I hope that this resistance to hiring doesn’t last long, and that we all start to feel like we can relax, have faith in our economy and capitalism. To move forward we need to grow, hire, spend, and hopefully, not have all of our efforts go to China’s the government’s coffers.
The First Tuesday in November is coming up fast. If you are a business owner, work for a business or in anyway rely on business, I’m guessing you are paying close attention to the election coverage for the upcoming elections on Tuesday.Watching all the polls? I know they always say that each election is going to be historic, that they carry a great impact on policy making and legislation and whatnot, but for the coming elections on Tuesday, it’s gonna matter. It’s gonna have an impact. As a small business owner, some of the legislation that has passed this year will really be hitting us hard. Trying to provide benefits for the folks we work with is getting harder and harder. Making it affordable for them is getting harder, and the rates have gone up every single year. Now, with Obamacare, they are going to be taxed on these benefits. The Bush tax cuts, many of which impact small business and families, expire on January 1. Don’t even get me started on the possibility of Cap and Trade, or taxes on web usage.
Beyond all that, the direction this country is going in will be significantly impacted by who is in Congress. If you know me, you’ll probably be able to guess where my vote is going. I feel that folks should be able to control their own money, their own lives. Even more, I think people should be expected, encouraged and required to handle their own lives, not expect the government to take care of everything for them. I think the government is punishing those of us who have some ingenuity, some entrepreneurial spirit left, by taxing the living daylights out of us so that it gets harder and harder to improve equipment, do research and development, and invest in new employees.
I hope you are all planning to vote on Tuesday, I know I’ll be there bright and early. I hope the folks I work with are planning to vote, too (Guys? Are you listening? Is this thing on?), since their livelihoods will be impacted by this election as well. We need to get the economy moving again. I don’t think more stimulus, more borrowing, more entitlements are going to make that happen. We, the business owners, workers, and families of America are going to make that happen…if they let us.
Small business owners all over America are dreading the end of the Bush Tax Cuts when it takes effect on January 1. Last week Pres. Obama spent a little while in somebody’s back yard, and to his credit, apparently took some un-screened questions from attendees. I’m thinking he got a little more than he bargained for when he stood up to answer questions from David Greenspon, a small business owner who asked Obama to keep the Bush tax cuts. He made the statement that small businesses need the tax cuts kept in place and then went on to ask a question about China when Obama just cut him off. He then went on some spiel about how Greenspon was going on a tangent in left field, cutting him off and not answering the question.
This leads me, and I think many other small business owners, to feel that he doesn’t want to hear what we have to say. The president and congress passed a new small business initiative last week, creating additional loans for small businesses. Another mini-tarp. So, he’s going to loan us money to be able to pay his massive tax increases? Is that profitable for our economy in any way? Not to mention the fact that these loans from the government will come with all sorts of strings attached. I don’t know about anyone else, but I really don’t want the federal government making any sort of decision for my company. They haven’t figured out how to do their jobs, I certainly don’t want to trust them with mine.
Small businesses need help. We are what is holding up the US economy. In some ways, those of us in NE Ohio are fortunate, as we seem to have hit a pretty hard bottom, but have been rebounding for about 10 months or so now. I know many businesses are just beginning to hire again. Small strides are being made. What’s going to happen to all the progress in January? I really, really hope it’s not all wasted.
I really wanna urge you to review your choices for the election in November. We have to be fiscally responsible right now, I think we would all agree that America is at a crossroads. A big part of the election will be determining which road we want to go down. Do we want to continue down the road to bigger government, higher taxes and greater governmental interference in our lives and businesses? Or do we want to pull back, trim the government and their taxes and interferences?
So, the prez is coming to Cleveland this week. Apparently he has decided to make a last ditch effort to make sure his flunkies don’t flunk out in November, and wants to let all of Cleveland know about it. He has a plan, which sounds pretty good actually. The plan, as it has been laid out so far seems to entail letting businesses write off 100% of reinvestment through 2011. This would be astounding if not for all the new taxes he will be flinging at us starting January 1.
Reinvestment will mean any monies going toward plant and equipment. This tax credit, write off, however it shakes out will purportedly mean a loss of nearly $200 Billion in taxes in two short years.
While my gut wants to high five anyone standing nearby, my brain is a little more reticent. I tend to think this is just another grab for votes, rather than a real plan to stimulate business. Not only that, but there are what? Like, 56 days or something until elections? I really don’t see him getting such an unpopular plan through congress, even if it is to help them out, in such a short time frame. An extension of the Bush tax credits might not be popular with his cronies, but they might buy him a seat or two if he were to actually go through with it.
This weekend Fox News had a nice write up on the whole deal. What do you think – is this a grab for votes? Is the prez trying to grow the economy that is still floundering even though he has poured hundreds of millions down a deep dark well? If he does get it passed, is it going to be enough to save some dems seats, or are they over? You know what my vote on that is, with or without this tax write-off.
