On Monday, Colorado State Treasurer Dave Young kicked off ‘National Small Business Week’ in Colorado.
“We are fortunate to live in a State where we have a large number of employees working for a small business,” he said, “because this helps our economy continue to grow…
“This National Small Business Week, we’re showing gratitude for our local homegrown businesses…”
Small businesses are a good thing, or so he implies.
Colorado is home to over 653,000 small businesses. And from what I can tell, they’re getting smaller every day.
Take, for example, the Pagosa Daily Post. According to owner and publisher Bill Hudson, the Daily Post originally had a staff of eight people, all seriously underpaid. Now it has a staff of one underpaid editor, and a few part-time contributors who are also seriously underpaid. (I speak from personal experience.)
Personally, I don’t see the attraction of Small Business. Why not have Big Businesses? ‘Big’ seems like the direction we want to shoot for, if we’re red-blooded Americans.
I mean, how can anyone hope to make America “Great Again” if all our businesses are “Small”?
To me, and to a lot of other people, the adjective “Great” means not only “Something everyone approves of”… which is, of course, a good thing…
…”Great” also mean “Large”. Right?
From the Merriam Webster Dictionary:
great; adjective
1. notably large in size : huge
2. large in number or measure : numerous
3. remarkable in magnitude, degree, or effectiveness
4. a generalized term of approval
I think we all want a Great USA.
So we might find it unsettling to have our election Colorado State Treasurer promoting “Small Businesses”. As he notes, in a tone of smug satisfaction, we live in a State where we have a large number of employees (which means a “Great” number) working for a small business (that is, a “Not-Great” business.)
Or am I misunderstanding how the world works?
Certain things ought to be small, obviously. Cell phones, for example. When I was a kid in the 1970s, Motorola came out with a cell phone that weighed 4 pounds. (If that wasn’t bad enough, the phone performed only one function: phone calls.)
Thankfully, Motorola was a big business, and later came out with the pocket-sized flip phone in 1989, much to everyone’s relief.
Small businesses were beneficiaries of these small phones, but it just goes to prove that a really big company can make really small things.
Small cars are another thing I’d like to see more of. I find big cars, and big pickup trucks, to be irritating, mostly because I don’t own one.
But small cars will likely be manufactured by Big Businesses.
When will we start celebrating ‘National Big Business Week’?