Rebuilding the Economy Starts with You.
Hey everyone,
As I mentioned in this week’s podcast (episode 71), I’m tired of waiting on the government to fix the economy or create jobs. As far as I’m concerned, the Government doesn’t create jobs. In fact, I think they do more harm than good 90% of the time. I don’t believe it’s the government’s responsibility to create jobs. Businesses create jobs by finding a need, filling the need, and growing profits so they can reinvest in the community by hiring more people or building new businesses that fill new needs.
According to the Small Business Administration (SBA) website, small businesses:
- Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.
- Employ just over half of all private sector employees.
- Pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
- Have generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the past 15 years.
It seems to me, if we want to grow the economy, we need to focus on small businesses. Supporting small businesses creates jobs, and that doesn’t start with the government. It doesn’t start with making credit more available to businesses so they can go deeper into debt, either. It starts with you and me.
Economic Call to Action
How do we grow the economy? First, we stop worrying about THE economy and start focusing on our individual household economies. When we improve the micro economy for our households, and we do it en masse, the big economy will take care of itself.
Creating and stimulating our individual economies can take many different forms. For some families it means paying off some debts to free up cash flow. For some it means building an emergency fund so they have money to spend if we see a double dip. Some families may sell some stuff – that puts more money in their pocket and also provides goods to someone else at a discount. Some may teach other families how to budget better or save money or get out of debt. Some people may take extra jobs to increase their income and buying power. And some may even identify a need and fill that need by starting a new business.
I’m not worried about the method; I’m looking for results. What can you do this month, this week, this day to shore up your personal financial situation? When you make your personal financial situation better, you’ve just stimulated your personal economy. Stimulating your personal economy means you’re in a better position to support businesses, which in turn creates jobs. It’s a trickle-up effect.
Take the Challenge
So are you up to the challenge? All you need to do is take one step toward improving your personal economy and let us know what that step is. Leave a comment below this post or join the discussion forum to talk about it. Let’s rebuild this economy, one household at a time!