People in government say, fairly frequently, that America loves its entrepreneurs. If you turn off the rhetoric for a few minutes and look at the actual environment in which we dreamers are expect to operate, however, the actions of those policy makers tells a different story. There are any number of ways in which our [...]

The National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE) is getting a little hot under the collar about proposals for health care reform. Or, to be more specific, they are perturbed by the lack of help for the self-employed to be found in those proposals. Although policy makers understand that small business stakeholders are deeply engaged here, [...]

The Home Office Tax Deduction Simplification and Improvement Act of 2009 was introduced last week in the House (H.R. 3056) by my old friend Charlie Gonzalez (D-TX), and in the Senate (S. 1349) by Senators Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME). In both chambers of Congress, the legislation has been referred to their respective [...]

Last week, the House Committee on Small Business held a hearing with the cleverly descriptive title “Common Ground: Finding Consensus on Health Reform, the Small Business Perspective.” Everybody else in Washington has been talking about health care reform lately, why not the House Small Business Committee? They even had a piece of proposed legislation to [...]

It’s looking pretty grim out there. A lot of microbusiness owners, watchers and advocates (myself included) were anticipating that microbusiness owners could cheerfully weather any credit crunch dealt by Wall Street, in light of the fact that microbusiness owners generally get by without access to credit under the best of circumstances. But as consumers pull [...]

I sometimes wonder why lawmakers don’t stop to ask themselves what people are doing when they start their nonemployer businesses.

Don’t they ever ask themselves what the owners of all those amazingly small businesses are trying to accomplish? Aren’t they even a little curious?

In many ways, nonemployer businesses don’t make economic sense. But starting them and running them is something that Americans are doing. In droves.

This week, I’m happy to report yet another bit of startling research on small businesses. Here’s the news: employer businesses are different from nonemployer businesses, according to a data analysis released last week by the SBA Office of Advocacy. On its surface, I’m sure that statement must seem so obvious that it shouldn’t even need [...]

If anything, technology has made it seem more possible for one person — a nonemployer business — to make a lot more money than they really need. But, making it more possible does not necessarily make it any more desirable.

All of which explains why nonemployer businesses remain in the dog house as far as almost everybody in the small business sphere is concerned.

The sign says “Beware of CHICKEN” and, yes, that really is a chicken. Welcome to upstate New York, home of nonemployer microbusiness Silver Top Graphics and its owners Dan Flanagan and Lisa Tait.