<story><title>40% of California&apos;s small businesses died in the last two years</title><url>https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1511454374165291009</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>eigenrick</author><text>&amp;gt; The fact of the matter is most small businesses are crap businesses.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; They also abuse their workers in ways big business can&amp;#x27;t get away with, both illegally and legally.&lt;p&gt;Really? You know this to be a fact?&lt;p&gt;It appears that the only thing you know about small business  comes from what you read on &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;antiwork&lt;p&gt;The fact of the matter is that 47% of Americans are employed by small businesses. That percentage keeps dropping, not because the owners are assholes, but because mega corporations keep getting larger and more monopolistic.&lt;p&gt;Most small businesses run on razor thin margins because they don&amp;#x27;t have the economies of scale that the larger corps enjoy.&lt;p&gt;My friend owns a cidery. The cost of his raw materials (juice concentrate and sugar) have gone up over 300% in the last 18 months, thanks to supply chain issues and worker shortages due to Covid. The prices are due to get even worse this year.&lt;p&gt;His total burdened cost for a case of goods has gone up 170%.
But he can&amp;#x27;t just mark his stuff up 170% now can he?  He has to settle for a 10% bump in price and hope his distributors don&amp;#x27;t freak out.&lt;p&gt;BTW, he has 8 employees and pays health insurance. Afaik, he didn&amp;#x27;t suffer any employee churn during Covid, cause he&amp;#x27;s not an asshole.&lt;p&gt;In most sectors except for maybe fast food, small businesses have suffered not from employee churn, but from the Covid policies over the last two years combined with ridiculous price increases.</text></item><item><author>xxpor</author><text>Except this is the opposite of the actual problem. There&amp;#x27;s plenty of cash floating around right now: it&amp;#x27;s why inflation is high. We&amp;#x27;re finally hitting real supply limits. It&amp;#x27;s the hottest job market in most people&amp;#x27;s lifetimes.&lt;p&gt;The fact of the matter is most small businesses are crap businesses. They also abuse their workers in ways big business can&amp;#x27;t get away with, both illegally and legally. If you work for an employer with &amp;lt;30 employees and they don&amp;#x27;t provide health insurance, why would you stick around right now?</text></item><item><author>russdpale</author><text>Not surprising, I see so many downtown areas still closed in the SJ area. It&amp;#x27;s tough to open a business when the people in the area don&amp;#x27;t have the money to buy your products.&lt;p&gt;When 2&amp;#x2F;3rd&amp;#x27;s of the nation are paycheck to paycheck, even in an affluent area like SJ, if your business is not providing something extremely essential, then you are effectively marketing to just 1&amp;#x2F;3rd of the population with money.&lt;p&gt;This tautology that has been spread through out our society that &amp;quot;rich people create jobs&amp;quot; is absurd, demand creates jobs, and decent paychecks create demand. So when paychecks have been stagnant for 40 years, what do people expect is going to happen?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ladyattis</author><text>As someone who&amp;#x27;s worked between big corporations and family owned businesses, I&amp;#x27;d say the family owned and small businesses are worse, especially in entry level jobs, than working for a big corporation. At least with a big corporation, they&amp;#x27;re more likely to leave your branch or location alone if you at least hit their targets for revenue. There&amp;#x27;s not much in the way of micro management in a job at the bottom rung with respect to big corporations whereas I&amp;#x27;ve had &amp;#x27;the owners&amp;#x27; of family owned businesses always pestering folks when most times they have no clue what they&amp;#x27;re doing, especially their kids who they think they can trust with running day-to-day operations.</text></comment>
<story><title>40% of California&apos;s small businesses died in the last two years</title><url>https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1511454374165291009</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>eigenrick</author><text>&amp;gt; The fact of the matter is most small businesses are crap businesses.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; They also abuse their workers in ways big business can&amp;#x27;t get away with, both illegally and legally.&lt;p&gt;Really? You know this to be a fact?&lt;p&gt;It appears that the only thing you know about small business  comes from what you read on &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;antiwork&lt;p&gt;The fact of the matter is that 47% of Americans are employed by small businesses. That percentage keeps dropping, not because the owners are assholes, but because mega corporations keep getting larger and more monopolistic.&lt;p&gt;Most small businesses run on razor thin margins because they don&amp;#x27;t have the economies of scale that the larger corps enjoy.&lt;p&gt;My friend owns a cidery. The cost of his raw materials (juice concentrate and sugar) have gone up over 300% in the last 18 months, thanks to supply chain issues and worker shortages due to Covid. The prices are due to get even worse this year.&lt;p&gt;His total burdened cost for a case of goods has gone up 170%.
But he can&amp;#x27;t just mark his stuff up 170% now can he?  He has to settle for a 10% bump in price and hope his distributors don&amp;#x27;t freak out.&lt;p&gt;BTW, he has 8 employees and pays health insurance. Afaik, he didn&amp;#x27;t suffer any employee churn during Covid, cause he&amp;#x27;s not an asshole.&lt;p&gt;In most sectors except for maybe fast food, small businesses have suffered not from employee churn, but from the Covid policies over the last two years combined with ridiculous price increases.</text></item><item><author>xxpor</author><text>Except this is the opposite of the actual problem. There&amp;#x27;s plenty of cash floating around right now: it&amp;#x27;s why inflation is high. We&amp;#x27;re finally hitting real supply limits. It&amp;#x27;s the hottest job market in most people&amp;#x27;s lifetimes.&lt;p&gt;The fact of the matter is most small businesses are crap businesses. They also abuse their workers in ways big business can&amp;#x27;t get away with, both illegally and legally. If you work for an employer with &amp;lt;30 employees and they don&amp;#x27;t provide health insurance, why would you stick around right now?</text></item><item><author>russdpale</author><text>Not surprising, I see so many downtown areas still closed in the SJ area. It&amp;#x27;s tough to open a business when the people in the area don&amp;#x27;t have the money to buy your products.&lt;p&gt;When 2&amp;#x2F;3rd&amp;#x27;s of the nation are paycheck to paycheck, even in an affluent area like SJ, if your business is not providing something extremely essential, then you are effectively marketing to just 1&amp;#x2F;3rd of the population with money.&lt;p&gt;This tautology that has been spread through out our society that &amp;quot;rich people create jobs&amp;quot; is absurd, demand creates jobs, and decent paychecks create demand. So when paychecks have been stagnant for 40 years, what do people expect is going to happen?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eek2121</author><text>Funny enough, I&amp;#x27;m in a position to be friends with many small business owners (I&amp;#x27;ve done work for them over the years, and it has involved into friendships)&lt;p&gt;The folks that are successful don&amp;#x27;t look at pennies. They produce or sell their products for a healthy price and focus on delivering a quality experience. I went to dinner with the owner of a small business last week that just closed on 30mm in revenue across 15 employees. The company has a profit-sharing plan that pays most of the profit into a pension. It has been in business for well over 15 years. They aren&amp;#x27;t the cheapest, but they have excellent customer service, sell great products, and ship those products to you in the fastest way possible.&lt;p&gt;If, as a small business owner, and your primary concern is undercutting the other guy, you are going to go out of business. That has been the rule since capitalism was basically invented. Very few businesses can make their money by undercutting the other guy. Notice the most successful companies such as Starbucks and Apple, and even nonprofit companies such as the YMCA (in the US) don&amp;#x27;t focus on the bottom dollar. Instead, they focus on standing out.&lt;p&gt;Even if you look at bottom dollar chains like McDonalds, companies have tried to do it cheaper. Shoot, you can STILL do it cheaper. The reason they don&amp;#x27;t exist anymore is because, at the end of the day, McDonalds did a better job of providing food of consistent (shit, erm, sorry, not a McDonald&amp;#x27;s fan) quality, quickly, and at an affordable price.</text></comment>