Why both Obama and Romney are wrong on small tech business
alleyinteractive.com
Why both Obama and Romney are wrong on small tech business
1–10 of 23 posts
Re: Why both Obama and Romney are wrong on small tech business
#2> Why both Obama and Romney are wrong on small tech business
Obama and Romney are wrong on pretty much everything, but one of them will still get elected. So what's the point of rubbing it in?
Politics is the art of ameliorating numerous constituencies. In other words, discrete bribery. No "right answer" can come from that.
For the right answers, you need a leader, not a politician. We haven't had one of those in a very long time. They're not terribly electable.
Re: Why both Obama and Romney are wrong on small tech business
#31) Is a-sort-of strawman. Gov't regulations are required for all markets to function absent fraud & violence. So, obviously at that level of abstraction, yes its a truism. There would be no legal business entity period, for example, without a government law outlining the legality of a "legal business entity"...etc.
2) The avoidance of C-corps has to do with double taxation and high-marginal rates on the second level of taxation. So, again, this analysis is flawed. The absence of C-corps is evidence that the tax rate/s in fact makes them un-economic and thus illogical to bring into existence.
3) Small businesses are hurt by both excesses of credit (which lead to asset bubbles and COGS inflation) as well as localized shortages of credit. There is currently not an aggregate credit shortage (corporate balance sheets are stuffed with cash). Seperation of retail from investment banking would help with the localized issues around credit to small businesses (because it would eliminate cross-product subsidies, and more rational pricing structures for debt).
4) This would actually support a public heathcare system in its entirety. Which is legitimately, not an idea either side has addressed. But its also arguably a feedback loop on the tax issue: if it goes away somebody has to pay for it. This is likely to show-up in the tax bill if the service is nationalized, for example.
These are all good points to raise, but would just propose to have a little more background added for color. Politicians and voters are almost always out-informed on these issues by special interests. But because the latter elects the former, they only need to communicate at levels of "Mininimum Viable" product. Which is a great innefficiency :/
Re: Why both Obama and Romney are wrong on small tech business
#41) Is a-sort-of strawman. Gov't regulations are required for all markets to function absent fraud & violence. So, obviously at that level of abstraction, yes its a truism. There would be no legal business entity period, for example, without a government law outlining the legality of a "legal business entity"...etc. 2) The avoidance of C-corps has to do with double taxation and high-marginal rates on the second level…
Please, please suppress the urge to state that an argument is a strawman. All it does is make you sound like a high schooler practicing for the debate team. Just point out the flaws in the argument and move on.
Re: Why both Obama and Romney are wrong on small tech business
#5This doesn't apply to startups, which are always set up as C corporations.
Most businesses are set up as S corp or LLC to avoid our broken corporate tax system/double taxation. The high corporate tax rate obviously encourages entrepreneurs to pass profits through to themselves rather than keep it in the business and grow the company.
Re: Why both Obama and Romney are wrong on small tech business
#61) Is a-sort-of strawman. Gov't regulations are required for all markets to function absent fraud & violence. So, obviously at that level of abstraction, yes its a truism. There would be no legal business entity period, for example, without a government law outlining the legality of a "legal business entity"...etc. 2) The avoidance of C-corps has to do with double taxation and high-marginal rates on the second level…
Please, please suppress the urge to state that an argument is a strawman. All it does is make you sound like a high schooler practicing for the debate team. Just point out the flaws in the argument and move on.
I kind of agree, generally, but in this case I think its worth pointing out. Consider for example:
In general, there actually aren't a lot of federal regulations that affect small businesses.
Which is on its face a sort of bizarre comment. It is "in general" the job of Congress to regulate interstate commerce / communications / banking etc. So, positing that this is "in general" irrelevant is indicative of much more than a localized flaw in his argument, becaue all of a sudden his 2nd point is about taxes and legal structure, and his 3rd point is about credit (see above: congress set taxes and regulates banks).
A strawman shorthand for a specific type of fundamental mis-characterization: Asserting up a hopeless argument/position (that nobody believes) to reject it out of hand (for implausibility). Here, the initial flaw has cascading relevance to the next several points made, so its not just a pedantic or rhetorical gesture to highlight it.
Re: Why both Obama and Romney are wrong on small tech business
#7> Why both Obama and Romney are wrong on small tech business Obama and Romney are wrong on pretty much everything, but one of them will still get elected. So what's the point of rubbing it in? Politics is the art of ameliorating numerous constituencies. In other words, discrete bribery. No "right answer" can come from that. For the right answers, you need a leader, not a politician. We haven't had one of those in a v…
>Obama and Romney are wrong on pretty much everything
No, not really. Obama and Romney are both right on just about everything; most of those things we give no thought to because we settled them centuries ago. There is a small space of matters on which they disagree, and on most of those issues one of them is closer to right than the other. Then there is another small sliver of issues, more important than the other sliver, about which both are wrong and/or apathetic.
Re: Why both Obama and Romney are wrong on small tech business
#8This doesn't apply to startups, which are always set up as C corporations. Most businesses are set up as S corp or LLC to avoid our broken corporate tax system/double taxation. The high corporate tax rate obviously encourages entrepreneurs to pass profits through to themselves rather than keep it in the business and grow the company.
startups not always set up as C corporations--for instance, if you expect it to be several years before you reach any profitability (happens a lot in biotech), you set up as an LLC to flow losses through to investors for tax purposes. most of these convert to c-corps upon profitability or if there's going to be a major financing event.
Re: Why both Obama and Romney are wrong on small tech business
#9Omission 3: Address engineering and hard science education in the US. If we could double the number of kids leaving school with an engineering degree, we'd probably start to see some amazing stuff happening.
My out-there proposal for a way a president could actually effect change: interest-free federal student loans for graduates with ABET-accredited engineering and engineering-tech degrees (or even "negative interest" depending on how much you want to push it). Or, just pass the Fundamentals of Engineering exam to get your interest waived.
Someone could do the math to figure out if the additional tax income from higher-earning tech salaries would make up for the lost interest income, but I'm guessing it'd even out pretty soon.
Start encouraging students in all fields into tech-heavier majors. Want to work in the fashion industry? Industrial Engineering should be your start. Want to become a business executive? Get a Math or Systems Engineering degree before you head to B-school. Even future lawyers would be better served with a degree in Physics rather than cranking out another Political Science graduate.
Re: Why both Obama and Romney are wrong on small tech business
#10What a strange article. Clearly he's writing from the perspective of "small technology firms", so why extrapolate his perception of how regulation affects his industry with all industries?
Please, Matt, speak to someone trying to run a business in the "more conventional trades" and see how government regulations hurt them.
That is if you can find any such small businesses in the areas that federal government regulation have killed off. Just take banks for example: in the last 4 years, the federal government has basically made it impossible for any bank with less than $100,000,000 in deposits to exist. New regulations essentially require 40+ hours per week to keep up with the "minor nuisance paperwork." That's simply not doable if you're a small bank, which is why you're seeing all of them gobbled up or closing down.
Obviously, this has dramatic affects on the ancillary small businesses that made their living serving those small banks.
Just because the harm isn't visible to you doesn't mean it doesn't exist.