chamandy.org

economy, small business economy, education, small business, stimulus, tax cuts

I’ve been pondering how to resolve the mess we’ve made and I’ve come up with some ideas.  This is not a complete vision, but a plan that would get us on the right track.

Stop lending tax payer money to banks and use funds to help our economy.

Incentives for small businesses and young people to help the next generation have opportunities and education.

Regulate financial institutions so they cannot ever use leverage to manipulate the economy.

Use any stimulus packages to create jobs here in the US to make sure we have a strong future.

Focus on green energy / energy independence so we can stop exporting our wealth.  Invest in solar/wind/geothermal energy infrastructure and natural gas for transportation.

Reinvigorate our manufacturing of basic items to support the new infrastructure.  Revive the “rust belt” so many can regain their livelihood supporting America’s new economy.

Create other jobs by upgrading both schools and the Internet to increase the capacity and usability here and abroad. At the same time provide protection for the US Internet from attacks originating from foreign nations. Schools would benefit with a computer in every classroom that has direct access to limitless amounts of information (without the games, porn and other nonsense).

Clawback bonuses and other frivolous expenses from banks and/or bank executives that have received any tax payer money that then issued bonuses, stock options, vacations, etc. Cease projects such as Citi stadium and others that are essentially funded by tax payer funds and start bidding process to public interests (that are not being bailed out) to buy out projects.

Slowly withdraw troops from various active and inactive war zones (Iraq, Japan, Germany, UK, eastern Europe, etc). Shut down inactive bases. Reduce scale of missile program in Europe if not completely eliminate.  Stop all unnecessary offensive military spending.  Examine relationships between government agencies and contractors.

Create higher quality restrictions on imports and natively produced products such as food, clothing, electronics, etc. The quality would be defined as how harmless it is to both the consumer and the environment. Higher quality products would be subject to less tariffs or taxes. This would both reduce environmental burden of bad products by making them more expensive and provide incentive to companies to improve their manufacturing / farming / etc standards.

Stop the boom bust cycles by allowing open governance by markets or otherwise of interest rates rather than allowing them to be set by committees behind closed doors.

American ingenuity and common sense can get us out of this mess eventually, but if we keep using lemon socialism that rewards the corporations that succeed and robs the tax payers for the ones that don’t, we’ll be in a very long recession.

economy America, economy, future, plan

In these days of global economic crisis, small businesses and the self-employed may be poised to benefit if they can properly position themselves.  The advantage of being a small business in this environment is flexibility, low overhead and less reliance on credit for capital.  Large businesses tend to be rigid, have massive amounts of overhead compressing their margins and rely heavily on commercial paper and equity to raise capital.

Big opportunities for small businesses

Small businesses that utilize the above advantages while focusing on their customer relationships and working to quickly pick up the slack of other failing businesses may weather the storm and even may find the crisis has brought opportunities that otherwise would not have existed.  Sometimes this may require repositioning your strategy or adapting your business plan to suit the economic environment.

My opportunity

For example, I moved my company, Envescent more in to computer repair, data recovery and other consumer and small business services while moving away from web hosting and e-commerce during the start of this recession.

My reason for moving in to computer repair and data recovery is the strong local need for expertise from a small business that can offer good customer service.  Moving away from web hosting and e-commerce was logical as these sectors have been compressed to razor thin margins in very heavily saturated markets with a lot of room for demand reduction.

Surviving cycles

Knowing when to get in and out of sectors is very important to the survival of a business.  My opportunity was found knowing that this crisis would probably hurt the areas that rely off consumer spending on new items (web hosting because it’s mostly marketing and e-commerce because it is direct consumption) and instead I focused on what are necessary services for every consumer and small business.

I started Arlington Virginia Computer Repair in May of 2006 to put a brand name on Envescent’s computer computer repair and data recovery services.  This has been a very rewarding opportunity because I’ve been able to raise awareness with a new name that is easy to brand and built on the solid reputation of nearly 10 years of service.

Find your opportunity

You can use this crisis to find an opportunity as well.  Use what you understand about your area of expertise to see which sectors may be better or worse for your business to get in or out of.  Don’t panic just because others are.  Keep yourself composed and remember that there’s always a better day ahead.

small business crisis, economy, opportunity, small business