One of Mitt Romney’s favorite lies these days is to label Barrack Obama as the enemy of small business. Obama’s response is to point to a long list of small business friendly executive orders. In fact he’s the first President since FDR to show them any real sympathy, but none of the things he’s been able to do really makes much of a difference at this point.
Traditionally, small businessmen have always voted Republican since they tended to either believe the nonsense Republicans told them, or they foolishly believed that someday they’d be the kind of big business that Republicans actually favor. It’s not like they’re a big voting block anymore,- the last 30 years of Republican policies have gotten rid of almost all of them.
Romney likes to point to Staples and Sports Authority as businesses that he started that have created lots of jobs. Both companies were created in the mid-1980s after Reagan de-criminalized the practices that had been forbidden since the 1880s when anti-trust laws were put into place. Neither of these companies created a single net job but simply overwhelmed and destroyed thousands of small businesses across the country. Actual employment is almost certainly less, wages definitely are.
Right wingers will blithely tell you that Big Box Stores are good for the masses because they are more efficient. “They have economies of scale and can sell good cheaper making life better for all Americans“. For a long time many Democrats would tell you the same thing. It seems like simple common sense, they would even cite this as real progress and equate the destroyed small business with the buggy whip maker.
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