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Who's Getting An Obama Tax Increase?
Tweet Share on Facebook April 27, 2009 Comment (1)Not many entrepreneurs will see their taxes go up under Obama's changes, but the ones who do might be the most important to the greater economy. (See my previous post.)
The Washington Post has an interesting look today at exactly who these people are and some of the businesses they run. One of those is Gail Johnson, who runs a chain of preschools and after-school programs. The profit from that business is declared on her personal tax returns, and that pushes her income into the bracket on which Obama plans to increase taxes. Those increases could endanger the workers at her nine campuses, each with 75 employees:
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Small-Business Confidence At Highest Level In Two Years, Survey Finds
Tweet Share on Facebook April 27, 2009 CommentBetter-than-expected economic news as of late might be lifting the spirits of U.S. small businesses. This month's Discover Small Business Watch survey has the highest number of small-business owners expressing confidence about the economy its had in 14 months.
That number doubled over the course of just one month, from 16 percent to 32 percent. The survey's index of overall conditions also increased, up to its highest level since February 2008.
But despite the mostly good news, the survey also saw a slight increase in the number of business owners who rate the economy as fair or poor, up to 91 percent.
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Baconnaise Is The New Entrepreneurial Success Story?
Tweet Share on Facebook April 24, 2009 Comment (4)On a Daily Show segment this week, correspondent Wyatt Cenac had a message for an arrogant Swedish bureaucrat: any country that could have discovered baconnaise--a sandwich spread that combines two of America's favorite fatty foods--can't be all bad.
It's not just the fake news that is excited about baconaise. ABC dubbed the spread's creators, Justin Esch and Dave Lefkow, "bacontrepreneurs," for creating a $1.4 million business in just a year.
I wouldn't so far to say they're "reinventing" entrepreneurship as ABC does, but they're definitely showing that social media might be the fastest way for a startup to reach high profits today. Their bacon products exploded on Twitter.
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In Great Business Move, Apple Apologizes for "Baby Shaker" Game
Tweet Share on Facebook April 24, 2009 CommentWow. Next time you see a commercial about how savvy and with-the-times Apple is (or hear one of their many fans say as much), remember this:
Baby Shaker appeared on the App Store Monday, and was pulled Wednesday after a media frenzy grew following the discovery of the application by the founder of a shaken baby syndrome foundation.
Apple's statement follows in its entirety:
"This application was deeply offensive and should not have been approved for distribution on the App Store. When we learned of this mistake, the app was removed immediately. We sincerely apologize for this mistake and thank our customers for bringing this to our attention."
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Supreme Court May Hear Fifth Amendment Case Involving Small-Business Development
Tweet Share on Facebook April 23, 2009 Comment (2)Call it a tax by another name. Daniel and Andrea McClung wanted to develop some property they owned into business space--including a Subway shop--but they ran into some problems with the city government in their town of Sumner, Washington. The city had to make some infrastructure improvements to the drainage system--but decided those improvements would be made on the backs of developers, even if that means paying for improvements that do not benefit their properties. Ilya Shapiro at Cato has the details:
Unwilling to pay for these costly upgrades, the city enacted an ordinance that placed a condition on new development: Anyone who applied for a permit would have to pay fees for the improvements to the drainage system—even if the proposed development did not have any impact on the existing infrastructure. When the McClungs applied for this permit, the city informed them that it would be granted only if they paid for the improvements, which cost $50,000.
The city ignored the McClungs’ protests that their fees would go towards improving infrastructure not on their property, so their development would have no impact on the drainage system—let alone one worth $50,000. The city did not care; the McClungs were a captive source of revenue.
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Happy Earth Day: Businesses Cut Out Going Green
Tweet Share on Facebook April 22, 2009 CommentEnvironmentalists often argue that "greening" one's business not only helps save the Earth, but also can make a business more efficient, thus saving money. But according to a new Wells Fargo/Gallup poll, many business owners are finding environentally-friendly reforms to be expendable when cutting back.
One-third of the small-business owners surveyed said that the economy has affected their plans to become more environmentally friendly. What's the main reason? Seventy percent of the business owners cited the perception that customers will not want to pay more for environmentally-friendly products--up from 37 percent in 2007.
But there is some good news for the green movement. Over two-thirds of the owners have said that they have started to use more energy-efficient products like green light bulbs in the last year.
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Newspaper Bailouts Criticized On The Hill
Tweet Share on Facebook April 22, 2009 Comment (2)Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the decline of the newspaper industry. As Dana Millbank reports in the Washington Post, the attitude of some of the congresspeople regarding the potential death of newspapers was one of slightly restrained glee. Why bail out an industry that has failed to do its job of objective journalism, some asked?
But even some defenders of the industry were uneasy with the idea of a government bailout. Ben Scott, policy director of media nonprofit Free Press, testified at the hearing and said that the death of newspapers will lead to less professional journalism, which in turn leads to "severe problems for a democratic society." But it doesn't follow from that, Scott argued, that we need bailouts.
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Some Good News Amidst The Recession: U.S. Manufacturing Is Strong
Tweet Share on Facebook April 21, 2009 CommentThe popular wisdom is that the U.S. manufacturing sector is being hollowed out, and there's some truth to that. It follows from that popular belief that in a recession, manufacturing is taking an especially hard beating. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
Don Boudreaux points me toward this BusinessWeek article that breaks down all the positive trends that are surviving the recession:
In fact, even in the midst of a global recession, the U.S. exported an estimated $1.377 trillion worth of goods last year, according to the authoritative CIA World Factbook. Nearly half of the exports were capital goods: aircraft, computers, electric power machinery, office machines, telecommunications equipment, and the like. Industrial supplies, such as organic chemicals, accounted for another nearly 27 percent. And consumer goods, including pharmaceuticals, and agricultural products accounted for 15 percent and 9 percent, respectively.
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Eating Out Is Top Luxury Americans Are Willing To Give Up
Tweet Share on Facebook April 21, 2009 Comment (1)If you're an entrepreneur thinking about opening a new restaurant, right now is one of the worst times for that business. As I wrote in my list of overrated businesses, restaurants are always tough, but that's especially true in a recession. Here's some evidence about just how bad it is: Forbes just published a list of the top things Americans are willing to give up. It's based on a consumer survey by GfK Custom Research.
Here's the top luxury that Americans are willing to cut back their spending on, by an overwhelming amount:
For instance, an overwhelming 82% said that dining out would be easy to abandon. While the National Restaurant Association in Washington, D.C., forecasts that Americans will spend $566 billion eating out in 2009, a 2.5% increase over 2008, discounted menus at mid- to high-end restaurants suggest otherwise.
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Baby Mammoth: More On Relics From the Ice Age
Tweet Share on Facebook April 21, 2009 CommentThe discovery of a well-preserved baby mammoth from the Ice Age is has stirred up the scientific community, and a National Geographic documentary about the blast from the past has brought new attention to the case.
But the next Ice Age relic to be rediscovered might be early man. See my previous post here.
