Living Through a Recession

How many could be comfortable broadcasting they are unemployed?  However, the lack of public focus or overt concern, by those who perhaps haven’t experienced unemployment in their family, is even more disconcerting.  The unemployed are pretty invisible.  Complaining or palpable frustration is off-putting. 

Adding insult to injury:  I was self-employed for 20 plus years. Now I’m not.  I am struck by the incredible lack of comprehension of the burdens and challenges of starting or running a small business.  The self-employed have little financial and institutional buffer from nitpicking regulations and market forces that don’t distinguish between the large and the nanoscopic enterprise. 

After closing my business…rather than reinvesting my way into bankruptcy…it soon enough became clear that I had aged out of the likelihood of getting any corporate, governmental or even not-for-profit positions.  Kicking and screaming, I reluctantly accept the prospect of trying to invent a new niche business, again…now I’m a consultant…without (m)any clients.  What I find most remarkable is the lack of understanding by self righteous politicians, pundits and “neighbors” that starting any business…creating a job…of any size requires financial resources that the average person is not likely to have available to reasonably risk. Why do they think bigger businesses are slow to create jobs?  Do they think those with little or no safety net should not factor about losing everything they still have?  Listening to many of our leaders you would think it is no big deal to borrow money and sit in a cushioned executive chair directing your troops.  That’s what they do, right?  And I think that is what many in the general public would prefer to believe, too.

Virtually every endeavor in New Jersey, save personal trainer or computer programmer, requires a registration, a permit or license and liability insurance, the cost of which far exceeds the gross profit of any single or even several contracts. It’s as if the expense of marketing and the availability of customers is not a relevant component of starting a business…creating a job.  Add to that an environment that generates comments like, “I thought you would be hungry enough to work at a discount, “ (which meant somewhere around minimum wage), or applying for building permit and having a Building Code Officer require construction specifications  that his staff inspector said made no sense.  Do you think the customer wants to pay for that unnecessary “upgrade”? Do you think there is any utility in questioning or challenging the ‘discretion’ of a local official?  Of course attorneys, accountants and insurance companies reduce their rates for the undercapitalized! 

Those who would like to help frequently know in their hearts they can and need to get it cheaper elsewhere and/or it can be dicey to disrupt other long-term competing relationships. 

For all the blahblahblah about the importance of jobs, economic opportunity and the American Dream, the real debate has focused on preserving the positions of those at the top of the food chain.   Public debate seems more inclined to worry about theoretical issues like national debt, protecting shareholder value, limiting medical coverage for those that don’t have it, worry about stifling the financial community (if you help those that were duped by the financial community), too high tax rates for the most successful and fortunate, etc.  And hallelujah, other distractions: we got Osama Bin Laden; floods and tornados; the Arab Spring and tension almost everywhere else.  Ugh, gasoline prices!

The old expression is that when your neighbor is out of work it’s a recession, when you are out of work it’s a depression.  So how bad can a recession be?