Small biz the life of this party
AS YOU WERE SAYING ...
As I was lying awake last night, I started thinking about the number of people, myself included, who vote election after election and this year find themselves unsure of what to do. Since this has been called an election unlike any other, I thought, could I be elected president?
I picked-up my iPhone, did some web searches, and here is my plan.
Clearly the economy and stagnant wage growth are key issues for the country. I appreciate the views expressed on the White House website, “President Obama is committed to creating an environment where America’s small businesses — our engines of job creation — can grow and prosper by supporting small business.” But honestly, it feels like the output of Washington has been more rules and regulations than support for growth. Maybe we need to take it from here. Thus I propose running as the Small Business Party, or SBP, candidate.
Forbes estimates there are 28 million small businesses in the U.S. I used 25 million to make the math easy. Assume the owners of these businesses vote for my new party. Add in spouses or significant others. Assume each business owner could get one other person, adult child, relative, friend or employee to vote for the party. That’s 75 million votes — 13 million more votes than President Obama got in 2012.
Now I have the votes, but I’ll need money. Since this is the Small Business Party, I’m going to have to go Bernie Sanders on this one. Sanders said his average donation was $27. Again to keep the math easy, let’s say each business sends in $25, that gets me to $625 million. Not quite the $1 billion the major parties raise, but a good start.
I find it sad that the parties divide the country into demographic slices to be pandered to. I submit that collectively, small business owners would be the most diverse coalition yet, with all ages, genders, races, religions, and sexual orientations represented.
Our party would pretty much not get involved in how people live their lives. We would have some simple guidelines, like treat others with respect. Truth is, we all know what that means, somehow we just don’t seem to be living it as a country.
A large percentage of the people in Washington, D.C., are bright, hard-working lawyers from very prestigious universities, such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton. Since the electorate is looking at outsiders, maybe the country is ready to try an engineer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Let’s pick a problem, again, the stagnant growth of the economy. Is there any evidence engineers can grow an economy? It is estimated if you took all the companies started by MIT graduates it would be the 10thlargest economy in the world — so it just might work.
From my back of-the- envelope analysis, it looks like I’ve got most of the bases covered, but it’s getting late and I have to get up at 5 a.m. to beat the morning rush and open the company. Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you agree, tweet #richpotash2020 and, if it trends, I’ll consider running.
I submit that, collectively, small business owners would be the most diverse coalition yet, with all ages, genders, races, religions and sexual orientations represented.