Dear government,
Please don’t forget small business (i.e.: me), but pay attention to big business.
Yours truly,
Alan
This is a counter-intuitive statement, but it is true.
If government is trying to spur entrepreneurship and create employment, it should spend more time helping big businesses.
Why?
- Big business is the target market for most small to medium sized businesses. The better big business is doing, the more they can support the ecosystem of small businesses that supply it. Even small retail operations benefit. Many of the customers of local shops work for big businesses. The more successful those employers, the greater the spend by these employees with their local shops. Success for big business means success for small business.
- Believe it or not, all big businesses used to be small businesses, so they have institutional empathy for the challenges of small business. (Or at least they have more empathy than the public sector. How do you help someone if you have no idea what his or her life is like? Big business and government have a shared understanding of politics and bureaucracy).
- Big business pays the taxes. The vast majority of both corporate and payroll tax is paid by big companies. Why? Because they have the most to lose by evading taxes, and because they can’t hide from the taxman. The government should support the guys who pay the taxes. It is perfectly harmonious: the more government helps big business, the more profits it will make, the more tax it will pay.
The only caveat to my argument is that big business (and human beings in general) will use any and all means at its disposal to win. Even if it means unfair and unethical behaviour.
The government’s job is to keep the playing fields level, and to wield a hefty stick against companies that abuse their position of dominance within the system.
Without a successful echelon of big companies, there will be no small companies, no taxes, and no country.