Now President Obama has done it twice. The first time was his "the private sector is doing fine" comment, and now his "“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that" statement. Never mind that both these comments were taken out of context - or even that it clearly wasn't what the President meant. None of that matters - for the tens of millions of small business and self employed in America, who try to defend him, this was worse than being kicked in the gut- it was like being stabbed in the heart.
The more I listen to the back and forth between Obama and Romney, the more I realize that neither are talking to me, or to many people I know, or to a vast and growing swath of America - the self employed and those who don’t have jobs with corporations or the government. As a result, they seem to be ignoring a fundamental reality of how our economy has changed, and are also missing a historic opportunity to really help America take on the future.
I have already written about how I believe there are far more small business owners than the government and most people think - and that in fact, there may be upwards of 40 or even 50 million of these "zero employee companies" http://goo.gl/.... More recently, some attention is finally being paid to the "shrinking workforce". Fewer Americans have jobs, and the reason for this, some people say, is because automation has helped large corporations operate more efficiently, and so they need fewer employees.
As a result, corporations can be extremely picky on who they hire, and they avoid hiring anyone who is too old - or too young or- or even, incredibly, is already unemployed. Corporations also take advantage of current employees - making them work longer hours or otherwise pressuring them for greater output. They get away with this because most of these employees do not have a great deal of job mobility right now. They know that if they are fired or laid off they may no longer be a part of what corporate America calls "the work force".
The unemployment rate right now is a little over 8 percent, but doesn't come close to telling the whole story. People are only counted as being unemployed if they are looking for employment, and there is now a record 88.4 million people who are considered to be "not in the labor force". Sometimes people in this category, which includes me, are described as "people who have given up looking for work". This is red meat for conservatives. Many of them sneer and imply that people in this category are lazy bums who should just get their ass in gear and work harder to get a job.
It is far more accurate, however, to say that these Americans have stopped looking for "traditional jobs" - because really there aren't any. At a certain point people are coming to the completely rational conclusion that looking for regular jobs in this economy is a waste of time. Corporations have made it clear they don't need us, and they don't want us. The national situation is summarized in Business Insider:
"The national unemployment rates gets lots of attention, and lately more attention has been paid to the workforce participation rate since more Americans have given up looking for a job, but we can also see that an astounding 100 million Americans don’t have jobs... According to the April jobs report, the number of jobless American stood at 100.9 million. That’s an all-time record and it’s an increase of 26.2 million over the last 12 years. It’s as if we absorbed the entire adult population of Canada and not a single person had a job. The numbers are staggering. The jobs-to-population ratio peaked 12 years ago. If we were to have the same ratio today, we would need 15.3 million more jobs, or 23.7 million fewer people." (ref: http://goo.gl/...)
That “100 million” number is so big that it boggles the mind - or should. It forces us to ask who and what we are as a society. Only about 140 million Americans have traditional jobs, and only about half of those are full time jobs. http://goo.gl/.... The means the number of working age adults who don’t have jobs is now nearly equal to those who do, and if you don’t count those who have part time jobs then the number of Americans without jobs now outnumbers those who do.
In spite of this, all the benefits our society has to offer are granted to those who have traditional jobs - health insurance,. unemployment insurance, vacation and medical leave and some kind of hope for retirement. Many of the rest of us don’t have any of that. If we have health insurance at all it is not subsidized like it is for those with corporate or government jobs, and we pay through the nose for it - if we can get it at all. If our business takes a downturn, we just starve - we don't get the 99 weeks (nearly two years) of unemployment benefits that those who lose their traditional jobs get. We are not represented by any union, and we really don't even get representation from Congress or from either political party.
There is a silver lining in this dark cloud. When the government classifies us as having "given up looking for work" it doesn't mean we have given up on life - only that we have given up looking for traditional jobs. Americans are starting new companies or businesses in droves. Some are extremely successful but many are struggling and just getting by and are getting close to zero help. For all intents and purposes, many of us are "out of the system". Yes, we use the road and bridges, but what humble successes we have had we have accomplished against extreme odds with our own hard work and initiative. While we may want to do much more, we are proud of these small victories.
The is why Obama's words, "If you've got a business, you didn't build that" were so hurtful - especially to those of us who support and defend him. I do believe the President when he explained that he was talking about "roads and bridges" but that isn't good enough. This was what the President himself would have called "a teachable moment" and he should have supported and defended us. He could have explained his current policies help us and how he wants to help us even more in the future. We need to know that he is the right guy to be looking after the interests of the 100 million Americans without traditional jobs.
The 100 million is a ridiculously huge demographic, and is ripe for the picking. It is almost unbelievable that no one is talking to us yet. Obama's only hope is that Romney seems to be even more clueless about small business and the self employed than he is. Romney doesn't even seem to think it is conceivable that a small business could make less than $250,000 per year, for example, and as a private equity executive we know he wouldn’t give us the time of day. Like many Republican politicians, he seems to have that idealized notion of a “small business” as being a manufacturing firm with 50 to 100 employees, or something like that.
It should have come as no surprise though, that Romney would run as "the business guy" and that he has now used the President's words to open up a national campaign alleging that President Obama is “attacking small business”. Romney also quickly jumped on the fact that Obama hasn't even met with his much heralded " Council on Jobs and Competitiveness " in the last six months, and to be honest, this seems like a fair attack. It is easy to guess why the President hasn’t met with his own jobs council. It has been completely captured by corporate interests just as that disastrous "Startup America" program was immediately captured by corporate interests http://goo.gl/...
Unfortunately, Romney and his corporate allies appears to be having success in "framing the debate" and it could be a disaster for America’s self employed. Nevermind that the interests of small business and large corporations are fundamentally different- it is in the interest of corporate America to blur this distinction. That’s why Romney is pretty much constantly talking about things like “free enterprise”, “free markets”, “individual initiative”, “opportunity” - Motherhood and apple pie. If this election becomes a debate between being “pro-government” versus “pro-business” than Obama loses, and with alarming frequency, the President has been playing into their hands.
Will Obama ever fight back? Will he ever fight for us? - or will he continue to enlist our help in securing better benefits and job security we for government workers and people with corporate jobs? - benefits that we don’t have. It is late in the game, and we very well may be losing. There is a better than even chance that Romney will recognize the rich, fertile ground that the 100 million represents, and find a message that resonates with us. We won’t know if it is sincere of course - we don’t know if anything he does is sincere. Romney and the Republican party is even more controlled and directed by corporate interests then Obama and the Democrats. Should he be elected President, there is a very real danger that we could be relegated to permanent status as second class citizens.
We desperately need to be inspired again again by the President, or at least know he is on our side. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman nailed it in a recent column, when he argued that Obama has to explain how his current policies have benefited us - in our case the self employed, but also how he needs to paint a bold vision of the future. This vision should be centered around small business and startups as he describes: :
“Obama should aspire to make America the launching pad where everyone everywhere should want to come to launch their own moon shot, their own start-up, their own social movement. We can’t stimulate or tax-cut our way to growth. We have to invent our way there. The majority of new jobs every year are created by start-ups. The days when Ford or G.E. came to town with 10,000 jobs are over. Their factories are much more automated today, and their products are made in global supply chains. Instead, we need 2,000 people in every town each starting something that employs five people”.
That is at least a good starting point for a vision, and America needs a "full court press" on this. It should be considered to be a national emergency - but a national opportunity as well. Find a way for us to succeed, and America succeeds. Americans are starting starting their own businesses - some because they are inspired and driven - others because they feel they have no other choice. We need to find a way to help these businesses grow - and then help them recombine and grow some more.
We need more opportunities for business, entrepreneurial and technical education - even for adults - in fact, especially for adults. Government on the Federal, State and local levels should actively find new ways to help small business and the self employed succeed - even if some of these are experiments that don’t work perfectly. Large corporations should be cutting small business contracts all over the place. So what if many of them might fail - the ones that succeed will pay them back in spades.
It could be that our fixation on “jobs” has blinded us to a larger and deeper reality. Maybe most “jobs” - as we have come to think of them, are an artifact of a bygone era. Maybe it really is “business” we should be looking at, and the ultimate source of all job creation - the individual entrepreneur. You see, no matter how you slice the data one fact is irrefutable. At one time, even the most monolithic corporation was just an idea that one or two guys were working on, and that is where private sector jobs come from.
America’s self employed and small business owners are are a resource, not a liability. We are actively working to make things happen every day - not passively sitting back as a “workforce” in waiting for America’s corporations who no longer want us. We are independent and innovative, with more street smarts than you can shake a stick at, but we have been abandoned by our political leaders and disenfranchised by our country. Right now, we need a real leader who understands us - and who considers us to be fellow Americans. It remains to be seen if that leader will emerge.
We are the 100 million.
Rob Gordon is a small business owner and self employed Project Manager living in San Diego California, and has several ventures related to business and social networking technologies. He is currently working on projects related to startup companies an microenterprise, including “American Startups” - a project that was inspired by, and later became a reaction to,the Obama administration “Startup America” program, and a more recently "World Startups" - currently being soft launched and open to all at World-Startups.com