Obama aids small businesses
Aid to small businesses is a step, potentially, though only a baby step, in the direction of a guaranteed basic income for all Americans.
A New York Times story about President Obama’s announcement is here and a 15-minute video is here.
A story in the Washington Post, here, includes the following paragraph:
“Small businesses are the heart of the American economy,” Obama said in announcing the measures. “They’re responsible for half of all private-sector jobs, and they created roughly 70 percent of all new jobs in the past decade.
That’s well known and documented. Our government should be helping small businesses, not big ones. Obama’s announcement made that point, though only indirectly, when he began his remarks by criticizing AIG and the harms and waste that have been caused recently by big companies and government support for big companies.
When each of us has a guaranteed basic income, lots of us will start small businesses. Starting a business, after all, being self-employed, is for many of us a core part of the American dream. If the Obama administration really wants to create jobs and promote economic growth, it will make it a lot easier for every would-be entrepreneur to start a small business. Basic income will do that.
The AIG bailout is a clear indicator of the underlying problem. Last September, when the financial system was freezing up, our government set out to save AIG, Citibank, Bank of America, and other big finance corporations. That reflected a knee-jerk assumption that big businesses are good, deserving respect and support. Big is good, many people seem to believe, and bigger much therefore be better. That’s wrong.
Suppose our government had not been afflicted by those assumptions, and not further biased by campaign contributions from the finance industry. (For evidence of the biases and assumptions, see Henry Paulson and Robert Rubin and so many other Wall Street officials in our government.) When the credit markets froze, instead of bailing out AIG, Citibank, Bank of America, et. al., our government could have loaned funds to community banks and credit unions arounds the country. Restore the credit and finance system from the ground up, rather than trying to do so from the top down.
Obama began his remarks by praising community banks. It would be great if he put those ideas more thoroughly into practice. Truly great if he goes even further and endorses the guaranteed basic income. One step at a time.
Steven Shafarman
Tags: bank crisis, Barack Obama, economic growth, financial crisis, ordinary Americans