In case you’re wondering about my sudden focus on issues like poverty and the middle class squeeze, there are a couple of different reasons for that.

For one thing, given the current state of the economy, the relevant issues are going to be that much more important in the coming months because the impacts are going to be felt that much more broadly.

Then, too, as I watch the microbusiness landscape with an eye on the big picture, I’m seeing that it’s as much of a mistake to lump all micro ventures into a single, huge ’smaller small business’ category as it is to lump microbusinesses in with larger small businesses.

At the same time, those part-time single person businesses that economists and other observers seem to want to dismiss are a critical component of the consumer economy in their own right. They represent a new kind of job creation, and they represent a strategy that a lot of middle class families are using to make ends meet. Without even getting into things like contributions to GDP and Treasury revenues, that makes them important all by itself.

What the various sorts of microbusinesses need in the way of support, going forward, is worth thinking about right now, one week out from the end of this interminable election … don’t you think?

For more information

American Human Development Project
Suite Franchon Enterprises
Small Business Administration: Opportunities Exist to Build on Leadership’s Efforts to Improve Agency Performance and Employee Morale (GAO report: PDF)
National Retail Federation
The Conference Board

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