Small Business Saturday

I really don't want to work on my paper right now.  So here's another blog post.

Have you heard of Small Business Saturday? It's today!  This is an interesting initiative which hit the news because a number of Occupy people have been rooting for it.  The idea is that instead of mobbing Wall-mart on Black Friday and giving all your dollars to big business, to go do your shopping at small businesses.

To be clear, I'm not against big business.  I don't think that they're necessarily bad or corrupt or overly greedy or evil, though I'm sure some are.  I just like the idea of supporting small businesses.  This semester, you see I took a Venture Capital class with an excellent professor, Khalid Soufani.  In fact it is the final paper for this class that I'm putting off at this moment.  One interesting tidbit that I got from Dr. Soufani's class was about the importance of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).

Quick, what percentage of businesses are SMEs?  
a) 61-70%
b) 71-80%
c) 81-90%
d) 91-98%
e) 99% or more



If you said e you are right.
Fast facts:

• 27.5 million small businesses in the USA
• 2.4 million small businesses in Canada

Small and medium sized businesses make up over 99% of the businesses out there.
If each one could create half a job, think of how much that would change the employment situation in North America.  From a policy point of view it's more cost effective to put money into policies that promote SMEs than ones that help big corporations, if the main goal is to stimulate the economy.

So maybe for your shopping this year, consider trying to shop at a mom and pop shop for your mop and your top, and don't stop till you flop!