You’ve really got to see this. Each party has its blind spots created by culture, ideology and demography. But this is incredibly rich and riveting for what may seem to some of us – or rather I would assume, just about everyone – as something extremely, extremely obvious. The Republican House leadership has discovered that not everyone runs a small business and not everyone is hyper-focused on cutting regulations. And they have a new message for Republican members of Congress: Most people have (or try to have) jobs and work for others!
To be clear, I do not discount this perspective. I run a small business. And there’s clearly something characterological about for me since I’m almost 45 and I’ve only worked at a salaried job for just a little more than three years of my life. But it’s clearly both factually and just as importantly aspirationally only the life or desire of a small minority of people. And yet, this is from Byron York just out from The Washington Examiner …
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Cantor’s presentation was that it included a recognition that in the past Republicans have focused more on the nation’s employers than employees, have talked about small business owners and entrepreneurs to the exclusion of the far greater number of Americans who don’t own their own businesses.
“Ninety percent of Americans work for someone else,” Cantor said, according to a source in the room. “Most of them not only will never own their own business, for most of them that isn’t their dream. Their dream is to have a good job, with an income that will allow them to support their family.”
