{"id":458,"date":"2014-06-02T09:02:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-02T09:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/06\/you-wouldnt-want-to-be-a-small-business-owner-edition.html"},"modified":"2014-06-02T09:02:00","modified_gmt":"2014-06-02T09:02:00","slug":"you-wouldnt-want-to-be-a-small-business-owner-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/06\/you-wouldnt-want-to-be-a-small-business-owner-edition.html","title":{"rendered":"“You wouldn’t want to be a . . .”, small-business owner edition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

For those of you who don\u2019t recognize the reference, that\u2019s a series of kids\u2019 books, e.g., \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t want to be a Roman Soldier,\u201d detailing all the gross and icky things about life in a given time or occupation. \u00a0There\u2019s another one about medical care \u2014 leeches, for instance.<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve kept our sailboat for many years (he also managed the repairs and ran a shop single-handedly) told my husband he\u2019s retiring \u2014 because now he\u2019s 62 and eligible for Social Security. \u00a0So far as we can tell, he\u2019s not selling the business to a new owner to live off the proceeds; the business was always marginal, as he\u2019s tried different locations and different product lines over the years, and I would suspect he wasn\u2019t able to build up a healthy nest egg over the years, either.<\/p>\n

Which means he\u2019s no different than my Uncle Soren, who owned one fast-food restaurant after the next, including one he called \u201cThe Subway\u201d before Subway became a national chain. \u00a0And he\u2019s no different than my mother\u2019s cousin Alex (is he my second cousin, or my second cousin once-removed?) and his dry cleaners business. <\/p>\n

I used to think it would be pretty great to go into business for myself, and my husband did, too. \u00a0I still find myeslf thinking, \u201cwe need an X in town\u201d \u2014 a gelateria, a boutique-type toy store, a bookstore (new or used) \u2014 but I\u2019ve 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. \u00a0Sure, there are some successes \u2014 entrepreneurs in a neighboring \u2018burb seem to be doing pretty well with their homemade ice cream business, Capannari\u2019s<\/a>. \u00a0But the new bike shop in town closed after a couple years \u2014 with the report that, no, they weren\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n

So anyway, all of which is lead up to a link from instapundit.com, on the economic effects <\/a>of raising the minimum wage to $15 in a Seattle suburb, and the plan to do so, in phases, in Seattle itself. \u00a0Too many people seem to think that small businesses are overflowing with riches and can easily pay their employees more. \u00a0Maybe it\u2019s a matter of reporting? \u2014 that people generally only hear about the successful businesses, not the failures. \u00a0Maybe it\u2019s because tech startups are so prominent, and the rules of the game seem to be different for them? \u00a0(Find a venture capitalist to back your plan, program an app, etc.)<\/p>\n

We in America pride ourselves on our entrepreneurial culture, and if blogging were my day-job (and I weren\u2019t overdue on getting a start on my actual job), I\u2019d dig out some statistics on this. \u00a0But instead I\u2019ll just say that it seems to me that burdens are increasingly being placed on small businesses due to the notion that they\u2019re better off than they are.<\/p>\n

What small businesses have you known?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those of you who don\u2019t recognize the reference, that\u2019s a series of kids\u2019 books, e.g., \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t want to be a Roman Soldier,\u201d detailing all the gross and icky things about life in a given time or occupation. \u00a0There\u2019s another one about medical care \u2014 leeches, for instance. And I was thinking about small […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"You wouldn't want to be a . . .", small-business owner edition<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"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\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/06\/you-wouldnt-want-to-be-a-small-business-owner-edition.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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