We live in America, fostered by the ideals of fairplay, honesty, and all things good, wholesome, apple-pied with a dollop of fresh white cream on the top. At least that’s the spin put on our country by politicians looking for your votes so they can stuff their pockets full of fancy little deals that enrich their families at the expense of yours. Let’s start with one subject, American Business-the Small Businessman.

When one thinks of a family business one usually envisions a mother and father slaving away trying to make ends meet with their children at their side learning the business as they grow, hopefully to take it over and prosper. The reality is that most “small businesses” are not really that small (exempting the restaurant business) and are capitalized by very wealthy people. Most do not provide benefits to their employees, many violate state and federal labor laws every day. How do I know this? Let’s just say I have “friends” as the commercial for tax preparation drones about, as if your “friends” have an illegal inside track to save you money underreporting your income-just like the big boys do-nudge nudge, know what I mean?

Take a look at a local harbor to see who owns those lovely yachts. There written off as an entertainment expense by “small” businesses. The automobile write-off was capped a few years back so anything over $50,000 can’t be taken as an expense for a car, but a million dollar Prevost luxury motorhome can still be amortized over 5 years in the companies’ name for entertaining. These are but a few of the ways the tax structure has brought this country down to its knees for the little guy. There are many more but let me move on to tackle the other side of this drama and get to my point without listing 50 ways to screw your country.

It is these same “small” businesses that force employees to work overtime without compensation, by use of fear or pressure tactics and enact pay periods that allow them to be paid only 48 weeks out of 52 by illegally setting the first and fifteenth of each month as paydays instead of floating the pay period to coincide with the real calendar where 4.2 weeks are equivalent to a month not 28 days. Larger corporations know that can’t get away with that, so they stay on the side of the law. The small-minded business owner and larger corporations do however browbeat and squeeze every nickel of labor they can and stand behind a corporate structure so that their front line employees have to deal with an underserviced, unsatisfied customer or client that is not being treated fairly because the money being raked in by the corporate owner is never enough, so he buys the cheapest parts, doesn’t pay contractors, lets his bills pile up until he is threatened with litigation, doesn’t trust anyone because he or she themselves are not trustworthy, and then hides behind any legal interpretation they can screw their employees and their customers. (I’m sure there are good people and great companies to work for here in America, but they are far and few between) Now that sounds harsh doesn’t it? Now multiply the intensity of that with a large corporation.

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Nick Oliva
Author, "Only Moments"
www.onlymomentsbook.com