According to the current chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernake, small businesses employ about half of all Americans. Small business is even more important in a recession, because small businesses tend to lead the way in recoveries by creating about 60% of new jobs. Even more important, new small businesses less than two years old—which employ less than 10% of all American workers—create about 25% of all new jobs.
So small businesses—especially start-ups—are really important to job-creation and the economy. We also know that taxes, regulations, rules, fees, mandates, demands of all sorts from government do an immense amount of damage. Not only are small businesses economically vulnerable to the endless requirements laid on them by all levels of government, it’s also clear that they—and the jobs they provide—can be destroyed by either a bad economy OR by excess government taxes and other requirements. Or both.
In fact, too much government probably does far more damage to job creation than we know. Think about it: If ongoing businesses can be killed off by excessive taxes, paperwork demands, fees, and other requirements—and we know they can, just ask some that have failed—then what do those "negative incentives" do to people only THINKING about starting a new business? How many businesses NEVER COME INTO EXISTENCE because of too much govenrment meddling? After all, why bust your rear-end opening a small business that’s most likely going to be driven into the ground by endless state and local government rules, regulations, taxes, fees, and other demands?
So why not "shift the scales" in favor of job-creation and small businesses? How? By passing a state constitutional amendment that defines starting, owning, and running a small business as a "Fundamental Right." That would mean that every legislator who wants to lay more burdens on small businesspeople—not to mention local and state bureaucrats seeking to justify their jobs by making life miserable for the job-creators—would have to justify their actions. Included would be the right to trial by a local jury where the jury could declare any government action against business-owners to be null and void as contrary to the fundamental right to run a business. At that point we’d have an empowered citizenry that could block any job killing rule, regulation, mandate, fee, or tax implemented by the political class. Also essential would be the right of a successful litigant to have his lawyers’ fees reimbursed from the budget of the losing government agency or department. That would be a "negative incentive" for the politicians and bureaucrats to consider before making demands on business that kill would jobs.
I like it. Since businesses is where jobs come from, it only makes sense to empower them at the expense of government legislators and bureaucrats. The watchwords will be "Jobs come first, government must follow." Good idea? What do YOU think?