The Agenda

How small-business issues are shaping politics and policy.

Jared Bernstein, who was until May Vice President Joe Biden’s top economic adviser, published an article on the Op-Ed page of Monday’s Times that challenges much of the orthodoxy about small business in the United States. He argues that small businesses really don’t employ the majority of Americans, and that they don’t create the majority of new jobs.

For good measure, he accuses the National Federation of Independent Business — which he calls “the sector’s primary lobbying group” — of being “a purely partisan operation.” He notes that the organization “opposed the president’s jobs bill, even though independent analysts estimated it would significantly increase economic demand, and the federation’s own survey shows that ‘poor sales’ — a k a weak demand — is a much bigger problem for its members than taxes or regulations.” (The beef against the N.F.I.B. is not a new complaint — The Agenda has addressed it before, here and here).

No doubt some conservatives and libertarians will use Mr. Bernstein’s essay to buttress their claims that small businesses deserve no special policy considerations from the government. But Mr. Bernstein doesn’t agree. Though small companies are not, in his view, key to our economic recovery, they still employ a lot of people, and as Mr. Bernstein notes, have tighter margins, higher costs and less access to capital and export markets. And they are crucial to an understanding of who Americans are — evoking, as Mr. Bernstein says, “Steve Jobs planting a seed in his garage that grew into an amazing Apple orchard.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=573355706551b8dc5546d389b339bd50