What would the United States look like if we lost half of our small businesses? The reason I ask that question is because approximately half of all small business owners in the entire country believe that they may soon be forced to close down for good. Not even during the Great Depression of the 1930s did we see anything like this. The big corporate giants with extremely deep pockets will be able to easily weather another round of lockdowns, but for countless small businesses this is literally a matter of life and death. Every day we are seeing new restrictions being implemented somewhere in the nation, and the politicians that are doing this are killing the hopes and dreams of countless small business owners. According to a recent Alignable survey, 48 percent of U.S. small business owners fear that they could be forced to “shut down permanently” in the very near future…
Based
on this week’s Alignable Q4 Revenue Poll of 9,201 small business owners, 48%
could shut down permanently before year’s end.
In fact, this number jumped
from 42% just two months ago, demonstrating how several factors have converged
to devastate small businesses: COVID resurgences, forced government reclosures,
elevated customer fears, and a surge in online shopping at Amazon and other
national ecommerce giants.
When a
small business with only a few employees closes down forever, it never makes
any national headlines.
But
the truth is that small businesses are the heart and soul of our economy, and
we are losing more of them with each passing day.
Here are some quotes from actual small business owners that took part
in the Alignable survey…
- “COVID has raised its ugly
head again. I’m a caterer and I’ve had no work in November and my clients
are cancelling for Dec. This is so sad. I have worked so hard to
build my business the last 14 years. My business has gone from half a million
to not even 200,000. This is devastating for any business.”
- “COVID closings are
killing this country! My business is on hold — no art walks or gallery
openings, and I can’t even open my studio. Everything’s online.”
- “Because therapeutic
massage is so ‘up close and personal,’ I have only come back to about 40%
of my previous clientele. I am afraid that the governor will shut us down
again, which will be the end of my business. I also believe the ‘ruling
elite’ does not care about small businesses.”
How
would you feel if you spent years putting everything you had into a small
business in order to make it successful, only to have the politicians come
along and completely destroy it?
And
every time a small business has to let workers go, it just makes the
unemployment crisis in this country even worse.
On Thursday, we learned that
another 853,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week…
First-time claims for
unemployment insurance totaled 853,000, an increase from the upwardly revised
716,000 total a week before, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists
surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting 730,000.
I have
been warning that the new lockdowns would make the numbers worse, and that is
precisely what is happening.
And one expert that was interviewed
by CNBC says that this is just the beginning…
“It looks like the
unemployment losses are starting to stack up for the economy. It’s not going to
be a good month,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union
Bank. “You’re starting the first week of the month on a bad note, and it’s
probably going to be all downhill from here. It feels like the lockdowns are
intensifying. It’s closer to reality for those forecasts that look for the
economy to go negative in the first quarter.”
It is
also important to remember that there are many Americans that have been
unemployed for so long that they are no longer eligible to receive benefits.
One of those long-term
unemployed workers is 35-year-old Sarah Groome…
For
six months, she received unemployment benefits from the government – but those
payments shrank as the programmes wound down this summer. Since October, she’s
received nothing.
“I
don’t know what I’m going to do financially,” she says. “I’m applying to jobs
and I’ve probably applied to over 100 at this point and I’ve had one
interview.”
“It’s scary,” she says. “I
don’t know what’s going to happen.”
What
do you say to someone in her position?
It’s
heartbreaking to hear stories like that, and more people are being laid off
with each passing day.
And as
our new economic depression gets progressively deeper, an increasing number of
Americans are becoming very desperate.
In fact, many have already
become so desperate that they are turning to shoplifting…
Shoplifting
is up markedly since the pandemic began in the spring and at higher levels than
in past economic downturns, according to interviews with more than a dozen
retailers, security experts and police departments across the country. But
what’s distinctive about this trend, experts say, is what’s being taken – more
staples like bread, pasta and baby formula.
“We’re seeing an increase in
low-impact crimes,” said Jeff Zisner, chief executive of workplace security
firm Aegis. “It’s not a whole lot of people going in, grabbing TVs and running
out the front door. It’s a very different kind of crime – it’s people stealing
consumables and items associated with children and babies.”
Everywhere we look, our
society is
starting to break down all around us. Americans have filed new
claims for unemployment benefits more than 70 million times this year, the
number of homeless in New York City has reached an
all-time record high, and civil unrest continues
to erupt all over America.
No
matter what happens politically, conditions are going to continue to
deteriorate as we head into 2021.
Of
course the mainstream media is boldly proclaiming that the new vaccines will
pull us out of this tailspin and that life in America will soon return to
normal.
You
can believe the mainstream media if you want, but in the end the “hope” that
they are promising will turn out to be a complete mirage.
***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost
Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the
Kindle on Amazon.***
About the Author: My
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Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book, I have
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