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Comment by mauflows | Hacker News Reader

Or you know Congress could spend some money as the fed chairman has called for

Where is that money going to come from, if we've destroyed the engine of the economy? Small business is the engine of the economy, and since they can't afford FAANG's Irish Double Dutch sandwich tax dodges, they actually pay most of the taxes. With small businesses and their employees gone and not paying taxes, there is quite simply no money to spend. History shows that you can only print your way out of such a situation for a very short time...

Yet the printing press has had no problem running to keep interest rates low and the wall street casino bubblin'. We're getting the worst of both worlds. Many small businesses wouldn't be going bankrupt if there weren't a debt black hole expecting to consume much of their surplus via rent.

> Small business is the engine of the economy

For context, from the SBA’s advocacy page (2019):

“ U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) is the market value of the goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States. Across the 16 years from 1998 to 2014, the small business share of GDP has fallen from 48.0 percent to 43.5 percent. Over the same period, the amount of small business GDP has grown by about 25 percent in real terms, or 1.4 percent annually. However, real GDP for large businesses has grown faster, at 2.5 percent annually.”

I have not critically considered whether or not these statistics are the best indicator of the most effective contribution to the economy (or society).

https://advocacy.sba.gov/2019/01/30/small-businesses-generat...

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