Who is to credit for building my business?
Government? Obama? Exactly who built whatever it is that I have?
I went to work for KPMG in the late 90s. I got the job there because my parents sent me to Baylor University after my lukewarm high school performance. I was a Sigma Nu at Baylor and there I met a friend named Jocelyn. She walked my resume in to KPMG and landed me the job after one 45 minute interview. I was trained in web technologies at Baylor, which ultimately got me hired at Scient, which I left KPMG for. My friend Chad called me from Scient and convinced me to leave KPMG. At Scient I learned the important stuff to all things internet and web.
So who's responsible so far? What's the score card?
Parents & friends: 100
Government: 0
The government increased interest rates 6 times in a short period time around 2000. That dried up lending and that caused venture capital to fall apart. That started the bust of the dot com bubble. Government's oversized intervention in economic success created failure there.
Being laid off in 2001, with thousands of web workers out of work, the jobs dried up too. What were my real options? Starting my own business was really the last option left. It's certainly not like I woke up one day and said, "I can't wait to start my own business. You know the government has made that so easy to do, that's what I should do."
To keep the list short, my wife Katie believes in me. My parents believe in me. If I told them I was going to go into the garage and build a space shuttle, they would say, "you can do it, I believe in you." If I succeed, I learn. If I fail, I learn more. Either way, I have the support of those who matter most. The encouragement from loved ones is hugely responsible.
So what's the score card now?
Parents & friends: 200
Government: -100
Incorporating costs money. The paper work to the state and federal government is absurd. Then every year I have to re-fill out a couple cubic tons of paper work to basically say, I'm still here, not dissolving, & still working. Rinse & repeat.
Government: -200
The government wants an increasing piece of the pie. The state wants theirs too. After making my first hire in 2008, the government penalizes me through all kinds of various taxes to the tune of thousands of dollars per year. Thank you for creating a job and keeping yourself off the streets, now pay up. More, over & again. Rinse, repeat.
Government: -300
As the business grows, the paper work gets deeper, the taxes get worse, and new penalties & taxes show up. The more you succeed, the more you are penalized, and I'm not even getting into healthcare.
Government: -500
Now, I can only speak for myself. I don't know what everyone else has experienced. But it seams painfully obvious to me that when government gets out of the way, businesses start working. When government intervenes, bad things start happening.
Laissez-faire - If only the government could put that in their pipe and smoke it.
So who's responsible for the building of my business? I think my family & friends are hugely responsible. You can credit me for the failures, and God for the successes. My best ideas have come to me in dreams in the middle of the night, which I appreciate because that means I can't take credit for them. I work hard (arguable I know) because I have a family and the cost of living keeps increasing. The gap between the rich and the poor keeps widening. Social Security is a joke (actually a government Ponzi scheme), so if & when I retire, that's on me.
Perhaps I'm biased (because I own my business), but I see government intervention like it's cancer of the economy. I'm just not seeing how the government helped me build anything. And you can't really argue that the government laid a foundation or put a framework in place that allowed me to succeed. Well, maybe you could, but whatever they did isn't all that special. I could move my business to dozens other countries and do just fine. There are so many places and people to give credit to, but none of them have anything to do with government.
Amen.