Campaign season is in full swing, and a few notable things have occurred. Some good, some not so good.
On the bright side, 30th President Calvin Coolidge got some much deserved love when Florida governor Ron DeSantis picked him as his favorite president at a recent GOP presidential debate. Leaving Americans alone is massively underrated in today’s politics.
On the not-so bright side is a strain in the GOP that diminishes business success.
Small businesses are favorably viewed by a wide swath of Americans. Even the left exempts those with “fewer than X employees” from various regulations, tax rules, etc. The right has tended to be somewhat friendlier, unless apparently an incumbent faces a primary challenge from just such an entrepreneur.
For example, one of the supporters of the lone conservative on the Bexar County Commissioners’ Court, a former executive at a couple of Fortune 500 companies, dismissed the challenger (owner of a trucking company) as having done little else besides being a “successful business man.”
“Making money doesn’t always mean you’re right.”
In econ 101, students learn about the four factors of production: land, labor, capital and entrepreneurial ability. The last one is critical. Without it, the others would be poorly employed at best, and dormant at worst. Some wouldn’t even exist.
Entrepreneurs infuse the other factors with an idea. They might see a gaping hole in a market. Or, they see how different processes or business models could improve the delivery of existing goods and services.
After selling financial backers on their idea, oftentimes developed with their own scarce resources, they marshal the aforementioned factors and scale up. Job opportunities are created in the process, including those upstream and downstream as well. Wages rises, sticker prices drop.
It’s a virtuous cycle.
When did the right lose sight of this? When did the left lose respect (no supporters of shutdowns genuinely respect the businesses they shuttered)? When did we let them?
Instead, on the national level we get alleged conservatives who want to control what gets produced, picking winners and losers in the process, sometimes even by raising taxes. Still others raise input prices for domestic producers, and subsequently consumers, by throttling international trade.
Big Business can handle all this. Small businesses, not as much.
It’s not terribly surprising when someone is elected to Congress. They get pulled hundreds and thousands of miles away, into a different, detached culture. They’re more prone to forgetting where they came from.
But how to explain it on the local level, when you live amongst your constituents full-time?
Rising to upper management in corporate America doesn’t necessarily mean losing touch. The connections made along the way however, could prove to be a minefield of grifters who would try to cash in on any unscrupulous tendencies a newly-elected public official might have.
Appearing out of touch is the least of the bad looks when that official tries to divert taxpayer dollars to help out a former or current associate. Then he looks corruptible, too.
It certainly becomes easier to predict who will pop up on campaign contribution reports. These are the folks more likely to be “honoring” the politician at 4-figure fundraisers. Or “work” sessions, as some officeholders refer to them.
Twice this year candidates for public office here in the Alamo City have referred to fundraising as hard work. It’s particularly rich when these candidates tweak their opponents for being able to “self-fund” a campaign.
Ironically, a “successful small” businessman’s ability to do this is the result of real work.
One might expect officials to show more respect to these job-creating entrepreneurs. After all, they contribute large chunks of taxes that invariably, unfortunately finance spending hikes, including pay raises officials vote for themselves.
Instead, they raise taxes some more, while disingenuously telling voters otherwise.
When did conservative lawmakers start voting this way? Aren’t they supposed to believe in free enterprise? When did they start getting comfortable with higher taxes, higher spending, and bailing out cronies?
Primary season is the first chance to sort out the real defenders of the people from opportunistic pretenders
