Risky Business
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Small-Business Owners Shouldn't Wait For Employee Free Choice Act To Think About Unions And Strikes
Continue reading… 6 CommentsThe debate over the Employee Free Choice Act (read more here) has made many business owners think about the complicated issue of unionization. But what they are probably not thinking about are the numerous federal rules that govern labor relations for business owners regardless of whether or not their businesses are unionized.
"You non-union employers probably don't think about the National Labor Relations Act, because you don't think it applies to you. That's a myth," says Karen Harned, executive director of the Small Business Legal Center at the National Foundation of Independent Business. Today she hosted a webinar for small-business owners about labor laws, and I listened in.
The NLRA applies to any business that "affects commerce"--so pretty much any business, regardless of number of employees, can be construed to fall under the law. Any activites that would "intimidate," "coerce," or "discourage" an employee from forming or joining a union (or similarly coerce them into joining a union) are deemed "unfair labor practices" under the NLRA, according to Harned. An example of how an employer could intimidate his or her employees is through a broad "anti-loitering" rule that would seek to prevent workers from planning to organize. Anti-loitering rules can be done, but they must be narrowly tailored to avoid running into the NLRA. To continue this example, if you have anti-loitering rules in place at your business, they must only apply to the interior of the working areas, they must be clearly communicated, and must apply to all off-duty employees seeking access to the working area.
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Why Sarbanes-Oxley Is A Small Business Issue
Continue reading… 1 CommentYesterday Thomas Friedman mentioned the idea of revamping Sarbanes-Oxley to make it easier to start a small business. But what does a law aimed at requirements for public companies have to do with starting a small business? Read my post at Capital Commerce.
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Liquidators Get A Boost From The Recession
Continue reading… 10 CommentsLiquidations are back in the news again, with this AP story tracing where alleged Ponzi schemer R. Allen Stanford's furniture ended up. AMC Liquidators of Fort Lauderdale, Florida has been selling his stuff off:
Michael Grimme is the owner of AMC. His business specializes in emptying hotels, offices and stores of unwanted furnishings and then reselling them. Business is up in recent years due to bankruptcies and downsizing. AMC is among many companies that have flourished during the downturn because even the wealthy have fallen on hard times. Repossessors take back yachts, planes and luxury cars, and even pawn shops have seen a rise in rich folks selling items.
Related to this topic are going-out-of-business and liquidation sales, the latter of which are run by companies like AMC. Companies going out of business like Circuit City turned to liquidator companies when they were clearing out stores a few months ago. Consumers saw that there wasn't much reason to rush to these "deals." Check out my article on what consumers should know about these sales and similar ones.
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Topless Coffee Shop Burns Down In Suspected Case Of Arson
Continue reading… 3 CommentsPerhaps the strangest small business I've ever blogged about is no more. Yesterday morning, the small-town Maine coffee shop that made headlines for its revealing staff burned to the ground, CNN reports.
Authorities say it was an act of arson. There was no business insurance to cash in on. Was this the work of some crazed pyromaniac? Someone trying to make a political or moral statement? Both?
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Musings On The GM Takeover, And The Biggest Boom Industry
Continue reading… 1 CommentOver at Capital Commerce, check out how the federal government is driving jobs in U.S. cities, and some more thoughts on the GM takeover and the meaning of "socialist" policies.
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How Does The Credit Card Bill Affect Young People?
Continue reading… 4 CommentsOver at Capital Commerce, I muse about the credit card bill Obama just signed into law.
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Capital Commerce: Time For A New Industrial Policy?
Continue reading… 1 CommentPeople are calling the government takeover of GM an example of renewed industrial policy. Good thing or bad thing?
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Capital Commerce: A Libertarian Republican Party?
Continue reading… 0 CommentsSee my post over at Capital Commerce.
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Times Are A-Changin For The Risky Business Blog
Continue reading… 1 CommentJust when I began writing this post, I realized that it's been a little over a year since I started this blog. It's been a fun year covering the wild world of entrepreneurship and small business--the most exciting aspect of the U.S. economy, I think. But with the departure of my former Dear Leader James Pethokoukis from U.S. News., I've been given the task to fill his shoes at the Capital Commerce blog, which has been on hiatus for the past few weeks.
So this is NOT a farewell post. In fact, I fully expect to make many posts about the small business sector and entrepreneurship at Capital Commerce. It's impossible to adequately cover political economy without talking about them. I'll also still update Risky Business, but not as frequently.
So think of it more as a rebranding. Instead of focusing on entrepreneurship and small business exclusively, I'll be blogging about the whole range of economic policies and political debates that benefit or harm entrepreneurs.
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GM Bankruptcy: Where Both The Left And The Right Can Agree
Continue reading… 35 Comments(Note: consider this post a preview of the kind of posts I will be making at the blog I am taking over, Capital Commerce. More on that very soon.)
Robert Reich had an interesting op-ed on General Motors in the Financial Times yesterday. It's interesting because despite the fact that Reich is one of the country's best left-leaning pundits, some parts of the op-ed taken out of context would not read out of place on the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
The purpose cannot be to create a new, lean, debt-free company that might one day turn a profit. That is what the private sector is supposed to achieve on its own and what a reorganisation under bankruptcy would do.
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Did 'Craigslist Killer' Reaction Make Us Less Safe?
Continue reading… 8 CommentsThis Slate piece lays out some more interesting implications of the recent pseudo-crackdown on Craigslist by state attorney generals. (See previous post). I say "pseudo" because no law was actually passed. The mere threat of action was enough to make Craigslist agree to the AGs' demands.
Melissa Gira Grant argues that the ban on "erotic services" ads sought by the attorney generals has actually made harder their job of keeping the public safe:
The most significant difference between Craigslist and a brothel is that the former voluntarily opens its "black book" of clients to police. The records Craigslist maintains on its users played a critical role in apprehending the so-called Craigslist Killer. The Boston Police Department reported that "Craigslist was cooperative in identifying and locating" accused murderer Philip Markoff; Craigslist spokeswoman Susan Best notes that "a digital trail left by those breaking the law" allows Craigslist to support criminal investigations in a way, say, a newspaper cannot. In the case of Markoff, what could have become a series of murders was put to a quick halt once his inbox was examined. Boston cops said they relied on these "high-tech" solutions as much as "shoe-leather" investigation. The lesson here for those in law enforcement—and a lesson that Richard Blumenthal fails to understand—is that Craigslist is an ally, not a perp.
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Sonia Sotomayor: Where She Stands On Business
Continue reading… 7 CommentsHere's what seems to be the consensus opinion about whether or not Sonia Sotomayor will be good for business: Um, maybe?
When it comes to small businesses, law prof Richard Epstein points to one case that he says should have business owners shaking in their boots. It has to do with an entrepreneur who had bought land to build a CVS franchise, and then ran into trouble:
The case involved about as naked an abuse of government power as could be imagined. Bart Didden came up with an idea to build a pharmacy on land he owned in a redevelopment district in Port Chester over which the town of Port Chester had given Greg Wasser control. Wasser told Didden that he would approve the project only if Didden paid him $800,000 or gave him a partnership interest. The "or else" was that the land would be promptly condemned by the village, and Wasser would put up a pharmacy himself. Just that came to pass. But the Second Circuit panel on which Sotomayor sat did not raise an eyebrow. Its entire analysis reads as follows: "We agree with the district court that [Wasser's] voluntary attempt to resolve appellants' demands was neither an unconstitutional exaction in the form of extortion nor an equal protection violation."
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Twitter Still Not Sure How To Make Money
Continue reading… 5 CommentsAn overrated business idea: start a website that doesn't sell anything, and just hope to get tons of traffic. It's very difficult to get the kind of massive traffic needed to turn a profit.
But even if you get millions of views, there's no obvious answer about what to do next. Twitter is one of the most highly-viewed web ventures--from 1.6 million users last year to 32.1 million currently--but as an article in today's Journal examines, they're still trying to figure out a business model.
That's not to say that the uncertainty is because Twitter can't make money. It's clear that it can always sell itself off for an impressive sum:
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'Sweet Home Chicago' Not So Sweet For Entrepreneurs
Continue reading… 3 CommentsWe have some data on the best and worst states to start a business. But local and municipal laws are often more important than state laws. So what about the best and worst cities in which to start a business? I'm not aware of any studies that compare the various business regulations of cities across the board. But a recently released study from the Institute for Justice makes an interesting case that if there were such ranking, the city of Chicago would be at or near the bottom.
According to the study, "the overlapping rules of the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois create a matrix that is so confusing and nonsensical that it often seems designed to stop entrepreneurs in their tracks." What are some examples of these byzantine regulations?
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Small Business Blogging Gets A Boost
Continue reading… 1 CommentA release from marketing advisory firm Warrillow & Co. (not available online as far as I can tell):
While celebrities and the under 25-year-old population are flocking to Twitter, small business owners are just realizing the full potential of blogging. Use of blogs for specific business purposes more than doubled in the last 12 months, and 40% of small business owners now use this medium in their business.
The April 2009 survey that produced this finding was based on a survey 1210 U.S. small businesses with less than 100 employees.
Note that when they say "use," they don't mean actual blogging by small-business owners; they mean readership of blogs by small-business owners. But it's probably reasonable to think that more business owners reading blogs will lead to more tempted to write their own blogs.
But small businesses are overall still way behind the curve on Web 2.0--they still haven't mastered Web 1.0. Warrillow previously published a survey that found that only 41 percent have webpages. Read more here.
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E-Cigarette Update
Continue reading… 59 CommentsMy last post on the FDA and e-cigarettes promised an update. Well, I haven't seen any official statements from the FDA about any changes to their policy on e-cigarettes. But some reports show that the policy is and has effectively been a ban. For example, this:
A Florida company that imports and distributes so-called electronic cigarettes filed suit yesterday against the Food and Drug Administration, claiming the agency is illegally blocking imports of its product into the United States.
The suit, filed by Smoking Everywhere in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, argues that the FDA has overstepped its regulatory authority by banning shipments of the devices and insisting they need to go through the drug approval process.
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"Job Creation Through Entrepreneurship" Act: Nice Name, But Where's Substance?
Continue reading… 3 CommentsCongress today is considering the Job Creation Through Entrepreneurship Act of 2009. Check out the bill here.
I don't believe that "job creation through entrepreneurship" is something that can be legislated into existence. This bill does nothing to change that belief.
It mostly has unobjectionable provisions like more support for veteran-owned small businesses, and a greater SBA commitment to promoting Native American businesses. Then there's this:
Directs the Administrator to contract with third-party vendors for entrepreneurial distance learning content and the development of communications technology that can distribute such content to potential and existing entrepreneurs throughout the United States.
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Good News From Nouriel Roubini
Continue reading… 1 CommentIn the past year or so, it's been hard to read the name "Nouriel Roubini" without it being preceded by "economic doomsayer." So I thought it was interesting that at the end of this lengthy and interesting New Republic profile of Roubini there are some words of hope from the economist. He says the recession may have at least one positive side effect:
Given the right changes, perhaps the United States can develop with the productive long view in mind, and maybe its human talent can be spread more equitably. "When you have more financial engineers than computer engineers, you know that the brightest minds have gone into something where, probably, the margin was excessive," he had told me earlier. "Maybe some of these bright people are going to do something entrepreneurial, more creative, or go into government. I think that's actually a good change. The transition is painful, but the result may be good."
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Gay Marriage Is Anti-Small Business, Says Michael Steele
Continue reading… 50 CommentsI might be a little late here, but I just have to comment on this story.
GOP Chairman Michael Steele explained in a recent speech how his party should "recast" the gay marriage issue as not just a social issue, but a business issue:
"Now all of a sudden I've got someone who wasn't a spouse before, that I had no responsibility for, who is now getting claimed as a spouse that I now have financial responsibility for," Steele told Republicans at the state convention in traditionally conservative Georgia. "So how do I pay for that? Who pays for that? You just cost me money."
It's almost unfair to comment on this because it's so hard to figure out what Steele even means here. I guess he's saying that if a small-business owner has gay employees who suddenly are able to get married, that owner will have to pay higher benefit costs, such as higher health-care premiums to insure the spouse.
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Libertarians For Taxation
Continue reading… 2 CommentsDespite the fact that he writes for one of the best-known libertarian publications, Reason, Nick Gillespie isn't afraid to admit that some new taxes would be better than the status quo: legalize and tax drugs, prostituion, and gambling, he says in the New York Times. (See my post on California's still-pending proposal to legalize and tax marijuana).
But, as Gillespie points out, there are bigger economic reasons to legalize black markets than just new tax revenue.
In terms of economic stimulation and growth, legalization would end black markets that generate huge amounts of what economists call “deadweight losses,” or activity that doesn’t contribute to increased productivity. Rather than spending precious time and resources avoiding the law (or, same thing, paying the law off), producers and consumers could more easily get on with business and the huge benefits of working and playing in plain sight.
