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SMALL BUSINESS NATION
By Mark Naison | Fordham University
Wednesday, April 13, 2011.
Before
he moved away after a bitter divorce, I had many an interesting
conversation about politics with my Long Island neighbor John, a union
carpenter and life time “Bonacker” (resident of the East End of Long
Island). A tough navy veteran with a crew cut who still, in his mid
fifties, looked in fighting trim, John would stop by every time he saw
I was in and hold forth on all his pet peeves--which were many--while
we went through the beer in my refrigerator. Among his favorite targets
were politicians, the government, his wife’s relatives, rich people in
the Hamptons, and lawyers and insurance companies. John was still
raging that he had never collected any money from an accident he had
several when he fell off a roof during his home repair job, an accident
that had left him with chronic back pain.
Nevertheless,
John continued to do “side jobs” on the weekends, ranging from painting
houses to repairing fences, because his salary at the lumber yard
couldn’t pay for the “extras” in his life, ranging from fishing trips,
to family vacations, to his daughters acting and dance classes. He was
tired, angry, hard pressed, glad he had me he could vent with, a need
that became even greater when he discovered his wife was cheating on
him. Since he moved out just before the 2008 election, I never had
chance to explore his attitudes about the Obama Presidency, but I
wouldn’t be surprised if, like one of my other LI neighbors, a postal
worker, he became a supporter of the Tea Party.
A
glimpse at John’s life suggests why it is a perilous venture to look at
Tea Party affiliation strictly as an example of false consciousness, of
people voting against their own interests. While the Tea Party movement
was funded and has been supported by powerful corporate interests, its
popularity was not manufactured. It’s anti-government, anti-tax message
has struck a powerful chord with millions of white middle class and
working class people who feel embattled and pushed to the edge and
whose identify with business, rather than labor, because small scale
entrepreneurship is the only thing that stands between them and poverty.
To
understand this, you have to get to know people in small town and
suburban America and see how they patch together income. As real wages
have stagnated during the last thirty years, more and more people have
depended on performing “side jobs” as independent contractors to
maintain a middle class standard of living. They drive cabs, paint
houses, do child care, fix computers, teach golf, take people on
fishing trips, exploring whatever “niche” in the local economy allows
them to make extra income.
Some
jobs they take –bartending, waitressing- involve working for others,
but more and more people create their own one or two person businesses
to bring in needed income.
This
is the hidden side of the “Wal Martization” of America. We all know of
how people have used credit card debt and second mortgages on their
homes to finance middle class levels of consumption, but what is less
known is how many people have developed small “side businesses” to
supplement their main jobs. If John is any example, the stress and risk
associated with this can be pretty high and the margin for error quite
small.
Given
this, is it any surprise that people who run small individual
businesses see any tax increase as a threat to their livelihood, and
are deeply resentful of government workers who have job security,
pensions and an income that can support them, starting a business on
the side?
How
else do you explain the huge Republican votes in places like Wisconsin,
Michigan and Ohio, states whose economies once featured auto plants and
steel mills and now have more jobs in Wall Mart, Auto Zone and
McDonalds than factories. Small individual business, along with
consumer credit, have been the only ways working people have maintained
a decent standard of living, and they see government as more an enemy
than an aid in that effort.
Beneath
all the racism, and the voodoo economics in the Tea Party movement,
there is genuine desperation, and a cry for help. Until we address the
causes of economic insecurity in their lives, progressive politics in
America may be stalled for a generation.
***
With thanks to New Black Man.
Mark
Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at
Fordham University and Director of Fordham's Urban Studies Program. He
is the author of three books and over 100 articles on African-American
History, urban history, and the history of sports. His most recent book
White Boy: A Memoir, published in the Spring of 2002.
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