That is why it is sometimes said, among us microbusiness advocate types, that a small business with 40 employees has a lot more in common with a “small business” that has 400 employees than it does with a small business that has 4 employees.

The 4-person business, the microbusiness, is just too small to even have the option of approximating something like a large business. So, it’s owner has two options: grow enough to “fit in” or thumb your nose at all that and figure out something else.

Over the last twenty years or so, increasing numbers of microbusinesses have chosen to explore what’s behind Door Number Two.

We all know that it is not rational to expect the economy to go straight from ‘ew’ to awe in less than a month. And, while it might make sense to assume that things will be better in December 2010 than they were in January 2010, it will still take some time to get there.

So, while you are listening to various folks with various sorts of axes to grind, bear in mind that things are neither uniformly wonderful nor frighteningly terrible. It isn’t necessary to find deep meaning or predictive value in any particular set of tea-leaf substitutes.

Right now, it is what it is.

In some ways, it’s probably a good thing that the government doesn’t seem to have noticed any of this yet. If they had, they would almost certainly have decided to regulate it in some way, under the mistaken notion that all those poor freelancers need to be protected … whether they want to be protected or not.

At the same time, this new labor market movement could use some support — especially in this economy.

Part of the reason why they don’t know what to do is because the economy is not behaving the way it used to and nobody has appeared before them to explain how it is behaving now because nobody really knows.

Besides the incentives provided by campaign donations, lawmakers like to tinker with big companies at times like this because the big companies haven’t changed. They remain familiar and the lawmakers understand them.

The things they are doing for small businesses are only helping a small number of them because only a small number of them are still doing business in 20th century ways. They don’t know how we operate anymore and there aren’t enough of them who do their own tweeting for us to explain it to them.

New Year’s Day is all about clean slates and fresh starts. No matter how gruesome the previous year was, once it’s over, it becomes easier to point your face toward tomorrow with a renewed sense of possibility.

Of course, if you think about that objectively, it doesn’t really make much sense, does it?

The economy was a mess throughout 2009 and I would bet that none of the macroeconomic indicators suddenly did an about-face on December 31st, such as would justify unbridled optimism now.

Whatever your party affiliation, I would like to think that most Americans were proud to witness a true Moment in U.S. history, when our first African-American president was sworn into office.

I don’t know about you but I never for an instant thought that would happen during my lifetime.

There are those who would say that it all went downhill from there. Some of them have problems with our new President on basics of political philosophy, while others were simply disappointed when they discovered that Mr. Obama really couldn’t part the Potomac with a wave of his hand.

From a practical point of view, I have grown increasingly encouraged as the year has progressed.

Small business managers nationwide are going to suddenly have to learn how to run microbusinesses. Some of them won’t; they’ll work hard to grow their firms back to non-micro small business size.

But some will discover that they like running micro lean outfits.

All of which reduces this: now that we are at the point at which we can no longer ignore the existence of microbusinesses, we will soon reach the point at which we can no longer ignore their public policy needs, either.

When everybody else was saying they were thankful for the food they ate or for their wonderful families or for their good health, I was longing to say something flippant.

“I am thankful for the mole under my right eyebrow. I think it makes me look interesting.”

(Yes, even at the tender age of ten I was already full of incipient snark.)

I find myself in much the same position right now.

Truth to tell, everybody set about health care reform in the wrong way. In a more just universe, small business owners would have had the earliest and most influential input as policy makers were making policy.

As a group, they were yelling for reform first and most consistently. A few years ago, those in the know were saying that health care reform was “essentially a small business issue.”

That was before the insurance industry lobbyists stepped in and started throwing their weight around.

Congress returns from its brief Veterans Day break this week and will leave town again next week for Thanksgiving. One of the things expected to happen during this particular flying visit to Capitol Hill between District Work Periods is a vote in the House on a fistful of small business related bills. Three of them [...]