Main Streets or Mean Streets?…

Dark clouds have gathered over small business in the U.S.– and over the prospect that it can lead us out of our economic morass in the way that it has in the past.  Two charts from Calculated Risk tell the unfortunate story:

1) Job losses (from peak pre-recession employment levels) have been worse in this recession than in any since the Great Depression:

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2) Those job losses have come, in this recession, much more heavily from small business (45%) than in the last recession:

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… Which together suggest that there’s less chance than our recent experience might suggest that small business will lead a recovery.  As Dr. Melinda Pitts of the Atlanta Fed (the author of the second chart) suggests:

Looking ahead, it’s not clear whether small businesses will continue to play their traditional role in hiring staff and helping to fuel an employment recovery. However, if the above-mentioned financial constraints [contraction in available credit; see here] are a major contributor to the disproportionately large employment contractions for very small firms, then the post-recession employment boost these firms typically provide may be less robust than in previous recoveries.

The implications of this hit to small business for the pace of a recovery are obvious and discouraging.

But in many ways more concerning are the the implications for the shape of a recovery.  As our economy begins to move up and out of the trough in which it’s mired, big companies will be playing a relatively larger role in the economy– and will be getting bigger (both relatively and absolutely).

Case in point: this morning’s New York Times reports that “Support Builds for Tax Credit to Help Hiring.”  But while one of the aims of the bipartisan sponsors of such a move is “to encourage small-business development,” it’s questionable whether it can.  Those tax credits will be useful only to companies that can find the cash to invest in new jobs that can generate profits to shelter… and in the credit-constricted environment in which we currently sit, that means companies that have either lots of cash or the “too big to fail” credibility that gives them access to debt.  In the current environment it does not mean small business.

Per “Beware the Land of the Giants…,” this is a dangerous situation; all growth is not created equal.  We live in a dynamic global market, where a nation must innovate or fall behind.  And we live in a nation in which wealth and incomes have polarized, and middle- and lower-class real wages have steadily fallen for over a decade.  Leaving aside the powerful arguments for fairness, considering only the economic, we live in a nation in which the lives of most must improve if there’s to be enough consumption to support all.

Which is all to say that, in the situation we’re in, it is not sufficient for the U.S. simply to stabilize its economy; we must reinvigorate it.  And if we’re going to re-energize, that means that we have to find ways to encourage small business, from main street shops to start-ups that aspire to grow into mega-corporations.

And that means that we need to rethink the ways that our government is “helping.”  As noted before, the one thing that the TARP funds did not do is the one thing they were meant to– re-start the flow of credit.   Thus, the continued decline in employment.

So, when the second round of “The Stimulus” comes (and it surely will, whether it’s acknowledged as that or not), it’s critical that it come with enforcement that assures that it is put to its intended purposes.

Similarly, as Congress looks to take steps that will be perceived as responsive to the pain that Americans are ever more widely feeling, it’s critical that those steps– from tax incentives to regulations– actually are responsive.

It’s not so complicated; but it’s hard.  It’s hard because the extraordinary tide of funding flowing into Washington to shape Congressional action– lobbying monies, campaign contributions– is flowing primarily from large, entrenched interests: the big, who want to get bigger.  The change that we need will come despite those efforts, not because of them.

We can, and we should, do our best to keep our Congresspeople honest and on mission.  And, given our not-very-encouraging experience of that effort, we should lean into effort’s like Larry Lessig’s Change Congress.

We are for sure going to continue to pay for the excesses of the past few decades.  The only question is whether we can convert that heavy penalty into the price of renewal.