Small business policy that is good for microbusinesses is hard.

During a Microbusiness Conversation last month, when the issue of sound public policy to help microbusinesses came up, here is how they described the essential policy challenge:

“What do you need? And can somebody afford to give that sort of help and can somebody pay for it?”

Those insightful words fell from the lips of Dr. Zolten Acs, chief economist for the SBA Office of Advocacy, and he’s right. This is the essential policy challenge for microbusinesses.

It’s harder to answer these questions than you might think.

I don’t mean that you can have the same kind and quality of influence as the corporate giants who fill the campaign coffers of politicians, directly or indirectly.

I mean that you can have influence because of something it won’t take you a second to understand: relationships.

The relationships you develop with your elected representatives and their staff can accomplish a great deal, if you give them sufficient time and attention.

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.

Microbusinesses are too small to matter to whom?

Certainly, they are too small to matter to many of the academics who study the U.S. economy with a certain can’t-see-the-trees-for-the-forest flair.

On the other hand, microbusinesses matter quite a lot to the men and women who own and operate them — most of whom, incidentally, are also voters.

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.

The more time I spend talking to people about microbusinesses and their various incarnations, the more I am becoming convinced that policy makers really have no idea what’s going on out here. In a lot of ways, that’s not really their fault. I’ve said on more than one occasion that it’s difficult to keep your [...]