40% of California's small businesses died in the last two years • Hacker News Board

Re: 40% of California's small businesses died in the last two years

#91

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 2:11 PM UTC

joenathanone wrote: post #85

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the definition of "fail"? For example, I had a business that closed because profit dried up, but overall it earned pretty good coin for me, while it worked. I wouldn't say it was a "fail".

The whole profit drying up is the failure that is being referred to.

According to that definition every person is a failure, because everyone eventually dies.

Re: 40% of California's small businesses died in the last two years

#92

Post by Johnny555 » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 3:32 PM UTC

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #91

joenathanone wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole profit drying up is the failure that is being referred to.

According to that definition every person is a failure, because everyone eventually dies.

Then it's a good thing that a successful person is not defined only by their work output.

Re: 40% of California's small businesses died in the last two years

#93

Post by quags » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 3:53 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #28

ryandrake wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don’t like to hear this but a lot of small businesses (especially restaurants) are barely profitable and basically dead men walking. They can barely make payroll and can’t weather even a month of closure, let alone a pandemic. They are “shitty” businesses not because their owners are shitty or that they are doing shitty things, but simply because they just don’t make enough money consistently to be viable. War…

This is the biggest issue - many small businesses are small margin businesses. Force a shutdown for a month or two and you've wiped out profit for an entire year. Not surprising in the least that after two years of uncertainty, business owners just hung up their hat and decided to do something else.

That does ignore the PPP loads available to many small businesses. There was a forced shutdown, you could get funding during some of that shutdown with this and used correctly it did not need to be paid back. We can look back and say what should have been done, if restrictions went on too long but there wasn't a crystal ball - and there certainly were deaths happening due to covid. Business's with razor thin margins that couldn't operate during shutdowns certainly couldn't stay around once PPP went out. As far as cali and any of its excessive fees for business, that is a different story.