I attended a lecture last night given by Bettina Greaves, an economist from the Austrian School, who studied under Ludwig von Mises. Ms. Greaves is a lovely lady who said she was happy to speak to young people (the lecture was at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and gave us her email address in case we had any follow-up questions.
The most interesting thing she said is so simple and yet amazing. Business owners and entrepreneurs are required to predict the future to stay in business. Yet, we don’t trust them to do that and instead employ politicians in Washington to make our business decisions for us. However, these politicians only know one thing: what’s happened in the past. They don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, and they don’t really care that much, as long as they can pass a popular law about it that will get them elected. The business owners, who must know what will happen in the future to actually stay in business, are not trusted by the people or by the politicos to make those proper decisions for themselves and it is felt that they must be regulated, taxed and assessed for the privilege of the bureaucrats deciding what is best for that person’s business. That is a big problem.
A friend of mine recently got a bill from New Jersey for an annual corporate tax he must pay for a business that was incorporated and didn’t get off the ground. The business didn’t make a cent of profit, but New Jersey takes $500 from these hardworking Americans because they hadn’t dissolved their non-starter of a business yet. What a way to kill the entrepreneurial spirit. They already paid initial fees, filing fees, name fees, and a few other fees (close to $1,000) when they initially incorporated.
A huge way to jump-start the American economy would be to get rid of these taxes on small businesses. Do we want people to make a living for themselves or not? To some people, paying $1500 in taxes and fees when they might not make a dime would be a huge disincentive to starting out on their own with a business.
[...] or owner that is greedy, unless they weigh other factors (price, policies, etc.) above that factor. The market is self-regulating, and the bottom line is that you must please the customer to stay in business, just as any [...]
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[...] fuels, and “clean” energy sources. Frankly, this is a disaster waiting to happen. The fat cats in Washington simply do not know more about what alternative energies will work and whi… The economist Bettina Greaves put it very simply: governments look to the past, while entrepreneurs [...]
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