For those of you who don’t recognize the reference, that’s a series of kids’ books, e.g., “You wouldn’t want to be a Roman Soldier,” detailing all the gross and icky things about life in a given time or occupation. There’s another one about medical care — leeches, for instance.
And I was thinking about small businesses the other day, both because our usual ice cream shop has closed down, and the owner of the small marina where we’ve kept our sailboat for many years (he also managed the repairs and ran a shop single-handedly) told my husband he’s retiring — because now he’s 62 and eligible for Social Security. So far as we can tell, he’s not selling the business to a new owner to live off the proceeds; the business was always marginal, as he’s tried different locations and different product lines over the years, and I would suspect he wasn’t able to build up a healthy nest egg over the years, either.
Which means he’s no different than my Uncle Soren, who owned one fast-food restaurant after the next, including one he called “The Subway” before Subway became a national chain. And he’s no different than my mother’s cousin Alex (is he my second cousin, or my second cousin once-removed?) and his dry cleaners business.
I used to think it would be pretty great to go into business for myself, and my husband did, too. I still find myeslf thinking, “we need an X in town” — a gelateria, a boutique-type toy store, a bookstore (new or used) — but I’ve long ago acknowledged that I will not be the owner of that gelateria, toy store, or book store, because to be a small business owner takes a willingness to commit working hours far in excess of the norm, at inconvenient times (nights and weekends, if your target audience is something other than retirees and stay-at-home moms), and with a fair amount of risk that you lose your investment, and, a fair probability of earning, on an hourly basis, less than minimum wage. Sure, there are some successes — entrepreneurs in a neighboring ‘burb seem to be doing pretty well with their homemade ice cream business, Capannari’s. But the new bike shop in town closed after a couple years — with the report that, no, they weren’t going bankrupt, but they just discovered that if they went back to their old day jobs, they would have a lot more time available to enjoy their own bikes.
So anyway, all of which is lead up to a link from instapundit.com, on the economic effects of raising the minimum wage to $15 in a Seattle suburb, and the plan to do so, in phases, in Seattle itself. Too many people seem to think that small businesses are overflowing with riches and can easily pay their employees more. Maybe it’s a matter of reporting? — that people generally only hear about the successful businesses, not the failures. Maybe it’s because tech startups are so prominent, and the rules of the game seem to be different for them? (Find a venture capitalist to back your plan, program an app, etc.)
We in America pride ourselves on our entrepreneurial culture, and if blogging were my day-job (and I weren’t overdue on getting a start on my actual job), I’d dig out some statistics on this. But instead I’ll just say that it seems to me that burdens are increasingly being placed on small businesses due to the notion that they’re better off than they are.
What small businesses have you known?
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