Stacey Lawson2013-06-20T02:16:03-04:00Stacey Lawsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=stacey-lawsonCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Stacey LawsonGood old fashioned elbow grease.Creating Conditions for Small Businesses to Thrivetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15412172012-05-29T13:08:14-04:002012-07-29T05:12:04-04:00Stacey Lawsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacey-lawson/
Small businesses are the bedrock of the American economy. During the 2001 economic crisis, small businesses lost fewer jobs and recovered faster than large firms. From 1993 to 2009, "small firms accounted for 9.8 million of the 15 million net new private sector jobs," or "nearly two out of every three of the period's net new jobs," according to the Small Business Association Office of Advocacy in the 2011 Economic Report of the President. During periods of normal economic growth, small businesses create enough new jobs to compensate for job losses created when new companies fail.
And it shouldn't be lost on us that these new and expanding small businesses create one of the most direct paths to middle-class security. That's the path my family took. My father saved enough money to buy a dump truck that he drove himself, and then eventually grew a small trucking company -- the kind of small business that helped him buy a home and send his kids to college.
By investing in our small businesses, we invest in job growth. One of the best ways to help small businesses lift more Americans into the middle class is to remove the economic barriers that are holding small businesses back. Here's what we need to do:
1. Improve access to capital
Restoring our overall economic vitality requires expanding the credit available to small businesses to ensure that they have the resources necessary to weather economically challenging times and to invest in growth.
Small business owners have historically drawn upon home equity and credit cards, in addition to bank loans, to support their companies financially. With the collapse of the housing bubble, home equity extraction is no longer available to small business owners in the same way. In addition, nearly 80 percent of small business owners have reported that their credit card terms have changed for the worse since the economic recession -- 63 percent reported an increase in their interest rate and 41 percent reported a reduction in their credit limit. And of course, banks have become hesitant to lend to small businesses, especially at the rate they were previously.
Since the passage and implementation of the 2009 Recovery Act, lenders are starting to make loans to small businesses again, but we can do more -- starting with increasing the cap for small business loans to allow small business owners to move forward with their businesses and gain access much-needed financial resources. The government should continue to incentivize lending to small businesses and responsibly expand the lending limits to give small businesses a chance to breathe in these tough economic times.
2. Leverage government purchasing power
The federal government should leverage the trillions of dollars already being spent to create hundreds of thousands more jobs by increasing federal purchases from small businesses, particularly those with sustainable environmental and social practices.
At this point, only 23 percent of federal government contracts are required to be awarded to small businesses. With the credit crunch and a contraction in consumer demand, small businesses are seeing a double squeeze. According to a project co-sponsored by the Brookings Institution and the Small Business Administration, if the federal government increased its percentage of spending with American small businesses from 23 percent to 30 percent, the result would be an additional $100 billion investment into the American economy annually -- helping to spur an increase in job growth and solidify the economic sustainability for American businesses.
3. Cultivate regional economic clusters
Across the country, we have seen the evolution of regional economic clusters like Silicon Valley. Geographic centering of research and development has been proven to increase the quality and quantity of the developments produced.
The Brookings Institution has documented this phenomenon:
"It is now broadly affirmed that strong clusters foster innovation through dense knowledge flows and spillovers, strengthen entrepreneurship by boosting new enterprise formation and start-up survival, enhance productivity, income levels, and employment growth in industries, and positively influence regional economic performance."
Regions like the North Coast have domain expertise in areas such as sustainable agriculture, food production, and natural resource utilization (e.g. forest restoration, rainwater catchment, stream rehabilitation, biomass and biofuels, to name a few). Those strengths should be used to position the region advantageously so that the resources and skills there are harnessed.
4. Foster small business workshops
One of the greatest problems for many small business owners today is the lack of guidance and support on how to weather the current period of contraction and loss.
Small business proponents have recommended the government foster programs to bring small businesses together either in a collaborative way or through workshops to provide them with information on how to navigate the rougher times. Providing information to and educating small business owners on the resources available to them can go a long way to helping to alleviate the burden of the current economic downturn. Breaking down the bureaucratic barriers in our system and bringing the information to the people can help to prevent unnecessary losses in our small business sector.
5. Address health care costs to help small businesses thrive
When a small manufacturer in Humboldt competes in the global marketplace, she is creating jobs here at home. But she has a burden many of her competitors don't carry: she must pay the ever-rising cost of health care, which makes locally made goods and services more expensive.
Recent surveys sponsored by the Small Business Majority showed just how acute the health care challenge remains. About 67 percent of small business owners surveyed in 17 states said reforming health care was urgently needed to fix the U.S. economy. Repeal of health care reform would mean an end to the measures saving billions in Medicare waste, fraud and abuse. This would result in higher taxes for employers and employees to fund Medicare, and higher taxes mean fewer jobs.
Without reform, "small businesses would pay nearly $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years in health care costs for their workers; 178,000 small business jobs, $834 billion in small business wages, and $52.1 billion in profits would be lost due to these costs."
These hard data illustrate how interconnected our economy is -- and why it is one thing to just talk about creating jobs and another thing altogether to actually create them. That's why we need leaders who actually know how to create jobs and are willing to work with both sides to implement sound economic policies for a thriving small business landscape and middle-class jobs.
From expanding the lending limits to small businesses to supporting local markets, educating small business owners and reforming health care, sponsoring efforts that help bolster this fundamental part of our economy can put America back on track.
To learn more about Stacey Lawson and our campaign for middle-class jobs, please visit www.StaceyLawson.com. ]]>Making More in America: Creating Jobs and Rebuilding Our Middle Classtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14511102012-04-27T18:30:29-04:002012-06-27T05:12:02-04:00Stacey Lawsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacey-lawson/
We need to make the American dream a reality again by restoring the high-wage jobs that are the foundation of a sustainable economic recovery. Jobs that allow parents to send their kids to college and provide a secure retirement. Jobs that will come from a revitalized American manufacturing economy.
Since 2000, America has lost nearly one-third of its manufacturing jobs -- a loss directly related to our shrinking middle class. But this is only part of a larger trend. In 1970, manufacturing jobs represented 27 percent of America's workforce. Today they represent only 10 percent.
Manufacturing is one of the few sources of steady and secure jobs for those who do not graduate from four-year colleges. A fair and just economy means creating opportunity for everyone, not only those with college degrees or, increasingly, advanced degrees. Spurring manufacturing is one of the ways we can reverse the rapidly growing equality gap in our country that has seen the rich get dramatically richer and virtually everyone else fall behind.
The average wage for manufacturing work is 20 percent higher than the national average, and beyond this, each manufacturing job creates up to four downstream jobs. And for every dollar spent in the manufacturing sector creates $1.43 in other sectors. These are the kind of high-wage jobs that are the foundation of a sustainable economic recovery and will revive Main Streets up and down my beautiful district and throughout America.
While the American economy is tough, there is hope, as indicated by the slow but steady decline in the unemployment rates in California. There are also positive indicators that the manufacturing sector is slowly coming back to life.
The significant upside to bringing these jobs home can be calculated. By returning manufacturing employment rates to the level of the late 1970s we would create 12 million new jobs, with an additional 30 million jobs just in support of this expanded high-value manufacturing sector.
We've all heard the politicians talking about creating jobs and stimulating the economy -- but there's a problem. Most of them do not have experience in the fundamentals of creating high-wage jobs and restoring economic balance. Many of them are beholden to the corporate interests that fund their campaigns, and others have spent their careers in political office - a noble calling -- but one that often focuses on quick fixes and sound bites over the economic fundamentals necessary to restore the middle class and create economic fairness in the long term.
That's what got me interested in serving in Congress. For years, I thought
I could help the most people by being directly involved in the economy -- creating new jobs, starting companies, building new technologies and starting education institutions like the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at UC Berkeley. But right now, we need people in Washington with real-world experience.
I want to bring my over 20 years of experience creating jobs and helping American manufacturers succeed, and my experience as an educator working to promote innovation and technology to Congress. That's why I've proposed a detailed plan designed to restore the manufacturing jobs that sustain the middle class called "Making More in America." It lays out seven major priorities to get us there:
1. Creating conditions for small businesses to thrive
2. Promoting insourcing and local, niche manufacturing
3. Making our own energy again
4. Retooling our workforce for the 21st century
5. Growing our lead in science and technology
6. Modernizing our infrastructure and equipping the workforce with working infrastructure
7. Middle-class buying power, accelerating the demand for "made in America"
We need more than promises -- we need a robust plan to rebuild the middle class, starting with the jobs that sustain the middle class.
Stacey Lawson is a Congressional candidate in California's newly drawn 2nd district. She is an educator and small business owner living in San Rafael, CA. To learn more visit www.StaceyLawson.com. ]]>Making More In America: How Restoring America's Manufacturing Strength Can Help Rebuild the Middle Classtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.12565552012-02-08T16:12:09-05:002012-04-09T05:12:01-04:00Stacey Lawsonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacey-lawson/
Why? Because the kinds of jobs that send kids to college and provide a secure retirement are not found behind a counter. Creating high-wage jobs, middle-class jobs and steady year-round jobs will take revitalizing the American manufacturing economy.
The average wage for manufacturing work in America is 20 percent higher than the overall average wage -- a premium that reflects the tremendous value added to our economy from the manufacturing sector. Each manufacturing job produces up to four other jobs and, according to recent report, each $1 spent in manufacturing creates $1.43 in other sectors. That's a "multiplier effect" nearly twice that of other parts of our economy.
When we make things, we keep vital skills in this country. We keep our balance of trade healthy -- so we have control of our economic future. We keep the high-wage manufacturing industries that fund research and development, so our economy doesn't fall behind.
And manufacturing isn't just big factories anymore. The "buy local" and "maker" movements have shown the tremendous economic and creative energies released, and the environmental benefits gained, when we stay local.
Manufacturing is also one of the few sources of steady and secure jobs for those who do not graduate from four-year colleges -- and that helps build a just economy that creates opportunity for everyone.
Of course, we are not going to bring every manufacturing job back. And we might not want to invest our national efforts in the very lowest wage manufacturing jobs. But we can target the kinds of jobs that will help create a path for American families to the middle class.
That's exactly the path my own family followed. When I was young, we lived in a trailer in a logging town on the coast of Washington state. I watched my dad start a small trucking business with a single truck he drove himself. Through his hard work, I was able to go on to college, earn a degree in chemical engineering and then an advanced degree -- and use my education to start a company that created technology to help U.S. manufacturers compete in the global market place.
Later, I co-founded the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at UC Berkeley -- and today, I teach bright young engineers and entrepreneurs the skills they need to maintain America's lead in technology.
All of my experience creating jobs and sparking innovation has led me to one simple conclusion. We can't outsource our way to prosperity. We need to do more than just design, and then consume, products. We need to make things again.
Consider this math: if we could return to the level of the late 1970s when about 20 percent of jobs were in the manufacturing sector -- we would create 12 million new jobs directly and the potential to create another 30 million new jobs in services to support this expanded high-value manufacturing sector.
Why is that number so important? Because that's just about the number of jobs we need to create over the next ten years to get back to full employment in the U.S.
As tough as the American economy is right now, there is reason for hope when it comes to making more in america again. Over the past two years, the economy has added 334,000 manufacturing jobs -- the strongest two‐year period of manufacturing job growth since the late 1990s. Manufacturing production grew 5.7 percent on an annualized basis since its low in June of 2009, the fastest pace of growth of production in a decade. But we still have a long way to go to recover from the more than two million manufacturing jobs lost in the recession.
That's why I've published a detailed plan at StaceyLawson.com designed to restore the manufacturing jobs that sustain the middle class. It's called "Making More In America," and it lays out seven major priorities to get us there.
Restoring our manufacturing economy won't be easy, and it isn't the only thing we need to do -- it is just a start. But if we care about restoring the middle class and creating the kinds of jobs that pay decent living wages -- wages that help buy houses, pay college tuitions, fund decent retirements -- this is exactly where we should start. So let's get going.
Stacey Lawson is a Congressional candidate in California's newly drawn Second District. She is an educator and small business owner living in San Rafael, CA. ]]>