Small Businesses Are Still Struggling In This Economy

The top chart shows the Wells Fargo / Gallup Small Business Index. This index is figured by polling small businesses on how good their present situation is and what their future expectations are -- and then combining the two to get a business index number. This number gives us an idea of the health of small business in the United States.

As you can see from these charts, the state of American small businesses is not all that good. While the giant corporations rebounded quickly from the recession, and are posting record-breaking profits -- small businesses are still struggling (just like individuals on Main Street). Small businesses have shown some gains in recent years, but the small business index shows those gains are less than half of what these businesses were showing before the recession.

Why is this? Because the Republican "trickle-down" policies didn't just favor the rich over the rest of Americans -- but also favored the giant corporations over America's small businesses. And the Republicans have obstructed all efforts by President Obama (and other Democrats) to change those economic policies to a system that would be fairer -- both to most individual Americans and to the country's small businesses.

The Republicans want small business owners to believe that their policies favoring corporations are good for small businesses also -- but that has never been true, and it is not true now. The giant corporations can do well in our struggling economy (at least for a while), because they can export jobs and abuse workers in other countries with poverty wages. They can also make up for slow sales in this country by finding foreign markets. But small businesses can do neither. They need a healthy American economy to do well.

Unfortunately, the Republicans won't allow the economy to be fixed. It not only helps their true constituents (the rich and the giant corporation), but they think a poor economy will help them to seize more power in the elections.