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What is needed is to bring executive compensation down to merely 500 times minimum wage from the 5-10,000 it currently is.

That is almost always the exception, rather than the rule. Half the workforce is in small businesses, and most of those owners/executives earn less than $100K. At every small business I started, I was NOT the highest paid person, and I was nowhere near 5X the lowest, let alone 5000.

Don't let the rare exception of a few hundred CEOs at massive multi-nationals (who typically make most of their compensation via stock grants) skew your thinking about what the actual executive typically makes - it's a lot less than you think. The reward comes when you sell the small business - not when you're running it.

The real problem is that in America you no longer make money by running successful companies. You make money by firing up a startup and waiting for a buyout or by buying up an existing, longstanding company and gutting it like a fish.

This is complete horseshit. You are cherry-picking one high-profile example of someone being a Trump-like dick in the aftermath of an enormous merger in the most turbulent sector in the entire world and painting the entire US economy with the same brush, which is just nonsense. There are 30.2 million small businesses in the US of tremendous diversity which employ 58.9 million people, or 47.5% of ALL workers in the US, and the median income for self-employed people working for an incorporated business was $50,347 in 2016 (certainly not "vulture capitalist"-class income). Looking at the report, these owners are NOT all "startups waiting for a buyout" and they're definitely NOT all people buying an "existing, longstanding company and gutting it like a fish" (source: US Small Business Profile, 2018). They're just the owners of plain old businesses (the kind you say don't exist anymore) in health care, food service, retail, manufacturing, tech, construction, waste management, you name it. Do you have ANY numbers to back up your ridiculous claims?

The US still innovates far better than any other country in the world, and this in turn provides ample opportunity for smart and hard-working people to build real, successful companies which provide truly valuable goods and services, with growth and long-term profitability in mind. These in turn create jobs and economic opportunity for the people they employ, as clearly documented in this report.

Is it easy? Absolutely not. But it never has been, and it's not supposed to be.

Most people (80%) are employed by small businesses. That's a statistical fact.

Are you just making up numbers? Just calling it a fact doesn't make it a fact. The Small Business Administration says that small businesses represent 49.2% of employment and 42.9% of payrolls. Do you have a source for your 80% number? It seems like the SBA would have pretty good statistics on something like that.

And then think of the windfall to California! California requires a minimum $800 for the right to sell within the State. Even if you have zero sales, and are an inactive (but not closed) entity, you MUST pay at least $800 per year. Now, suddenly every business shipping anything to the State of California will need to pay California that minimum amount. With around 28 million small businesses in the US, if just 10% of them have out-of-State sales, then California can expect to make around $2.4 billion per year, minimum...

I found a source confirming this:

https://www.sba.gov/starting-business/learn-about-business-laws/online-business-law/collecting-sales-tax-online

If your business has a physical presence in a state, such as a store, office or warehouse, you must collect applicable state and local sales tax from your customers. If you do not have a presence in a particular state, you are not required to collect sales taxes.

You're mistaking politics on AM radio for news about the business environment in California.

https://www.sba.gov/sites/defa...

Here is some data from the SBA about California:

Almost all firms with employees are small. They make up 99.2 percent of all employers in the state.Table 3 offers further industry detail on small firms.

Firms with fewer than 100 employees have the largest share of small business employment.

The three industries with the most small business employment were: accommodation & food services; health care & social assistance; and professional, scientific, & technical services.

In California, small businesses created 104,360 net new jobs in 2011. The biggest gain was in the smallest firm size category of 1-4 employees.

When you hear about California having a huge economy that would be a major country on its own, they're mostly talking about the small businesses. They have large businesses too, of course.

That would be the "SBA.gov". The statement is, "90% of all businesses fail in the first year because the public does not know the product exists. 90% of all businesses fail in the second year because the market does not know the business exists." My conclusion is that, "sure a person has a great product, but without getting the word out, well that person does not make any sales. No sales? Collapse occurs.

Can you please be more specific? Those phrases don't appear to exist on SBA.gov. You put them in quotes so obviously they are direct quotes from the site. The searches I tried were:

No results found for "90% of all businesses" site:sba.gov.
No results found for "fail in the first year" site:sba.gov.
No results found for "fail in the second year" site:sba.gov.

I did find this page that says "Shocking but true statistics: 20 percent of all small businesses survive the first year, 30 percent survive the second year, and half survive the first five years" but those numbers doesn't match up to your original statement (or your modified statement) and it only applies to small businesses, not all businesses like your original statement.

There is a problem with your logic and it is thus....what are you gonna do with all those billions you no longer need?

This is the old Socialist "Lump of Labor" fallacy that was in vogue back when bloodletting was considered a valid medical treatment. You should be ashamed for hanging onto such antiquated thinking.

90% of the population used to be involved in agriculture. Today that is about 2%. Last I checked, we do not have 88% unemployment. Why is that? Because those workers got jobs doing other things. Building farm machinery, cars, TVs, and other things as time went on.

You might be thinking, "Yes, but manufacturing is gone from the US." I would reply, "Only because we choose it to be gone." The reason manufacturing has left is because the US is not competitive anymore compared to the rest of the world. Several top reasons are that our tax code is an absolute nightmare and our economy is over-regulated to the point of absurdity.

Yes, yes, you'll be dismissive of assertion of "over-regulations". How about I quote some actual research on the subject.

https://www.sba.gov/sites/defa...

The annual cost of federal regulations in the United States increased to more than $1.75 trillion in 2008. Had every U.S. household paid an equal share of the federal regulatory burden, each would have owed $15,586 in 2008. By comparison, the federal regulatory burden exceeds by 50 percent private spending on health care, which equaled $10,500 per household in 2008. While all citizens and businesses pay some portion of these costs, the distribution of the burden of regulations is quite uneven. The portion of regulatory costs that falls initially on businesses was $8,086 per employee in 2008. Small businesses, defined as firms employing fewer than 20 employees, bear the largest burden of federal regulations. As of 2008, small businesses face an annual regulatory cost of $10,585 per employee, which is 36 percent higher than the regulatory cost facing large firms (defined as firms with 500 or more employees).

That's $8,000-$10,000 that YOU are paying ON TOP of any taxes you pay. You pay it indirectly and in a form you never normally see. Your employer sees it though and they have to pay it one way or another. The two most obvious ways are higher prices and lower wages. Since these regulations affect the entire economy, and they are enacted over time, the effects are gradual as the over growing rule-book of regulation pushes prices higher and higher and wages lower and lower. So low that many manufacturing companies had no choice but to leave.

Do you feel like you are getting $8,000-$10,000 worth of benefit from all these government rules?

As stated above, large companies pay a smaller burden than small companies, which is why large companies keep getting larger and larger the more regulation gets passed. Small companies can't compete with the government stacking the deck.

Now, this doesn't mean we go back to the days where you dumped untreated sewage into rivers. Government is like fire; little bit properly contained is a good thing to have. The fire in my furnace keeps me warm in the winter. Just because a little is good does not mean that more is better. My house being on fire is not a good and healthy thing.

The problem is too much government requiring too many things in too fine of detail. (On top of the whole debasing the currency shenanigans that the Fed is doing.) We have children's lemonade stands getting shut down and government fining people for their toilets being half an inch too low. On top of a tax code that not even the IRS understands. Nearly $2 trillion a year in regulations. How much more before people question their religious belief in government?

I can suggest some other mandatory certifications to allay consumers' fears and help them make political statements:

• "Grown in Vermont" — replace by your state or an even lesser locale as needed.
• "Fair Paid" — all of the workers involved were paid at least double the national minimum wage.
• "Minority Grown" — no Whites among the workers involved. Optional sub-certifications can be added to specify, which racial minority in particular was involved.
• "Grown by Whites" — no, scratch that, that's like sooo racist...
• "Femininely Grown" — for the fish without bicycles.
• "LGBT Farmed" — to help all those LGBT farmers in their struggle for acceptance.
• If you identify as some other Foo-American, I sincerely apologize for failing to mention Foo — it was outrageously exclusionary and harmful of me. As soon as the hurt from my unwittingly virtually punching you in the face subsides, feel free to add the "Foo Raised" or "Proudly made by Foo" at the top of this list and we shall all cheer.

The compliance with each label's statute shall be monitored and enforced by the Attorney General and penalties for violations shall be up to $1000 per day per person.

Now, of course, if we interpreted the Commerce Clause of the Constitution as broadly as we do the First Amendment, none of this would be possible... But, hey, what good is a Democracy, if the majority can not impose its will on an (unpopular) minority?

https://www.sba.gov/content/wo...

Employees have certain rights and protections that contractors do not have. This web page has some additional information that may interest you.

If the government was into "jobs for crime control" they'd be paying companies to open up businesses in these areas (not just tax incentives... cash).

Would the program look anything like SBA loans and grants or the several states' urban renewal programs?

Manufacturing businesses with fewer than 500 employees are officially categorized as "small businesses" in the US. For some other types of companies like say, computer services, the amount of revenue is used as a metric, with the cut-off being $21 million average receipts for the past three years. The amount varies by the type of business.

Typical government... making a simple thing as whether a company is "small" or not into such a complicated issue.

Wildly abused.

Seems like Houston has minimum parking requirements and minimum lot sizes, so no.

That's not zoning. You can still change your home into a business, if you wish.

Some ideas; Do check this link http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/0... Contribute to open source projects when you don't have work https://guides.github.com/acti... Freelance through the elance or other coder for hire type sites https://www.elance.com/ Start your own IT support company/freelance/contract/game development, whatever your strongest skills are https://www.sba.gov/ Get your company registered as a state/federal contractor and bid http://www.procure.ohio.gov/pr... http://www.gsa.gov/portal/cate...

It is a lie that the only viable form of business is as a limited-liability corporation. There are thriving businesses using many other forms, including sole proprietorships http://www.sba.gov/content/sole-proprietorship-0 where the business *is* the person and so personal liability is unlimited.

Now that's a reasonable condition for a business to be afforded all the legal rights of a natural person because in that case the business has no additional rights that are unavailable to natural persons.

The Hobby Lobby decision was just another instance of the Roberts court letting corporations have their cake sand eat it too.

So, Hobby Lobby should remain a sole proprietorship and somebody slips and falls and sues the Greens and they potentially lose their personal assets, too? What you are saying is that if you want to exercise your religious rights you are not permitted to form an LLC or S Corp? If Hobby Lobby were a public corporation, then what you say would be true. But, if you are proposing that people who want to exercise their constitutional rights, to religion or anything else, must give up other rights and privileges, well the SCOTUS disagrees with you.

It is a lie that the only viable form of business is as a limited-liability corporation. There are thriving businesses using many other forms, including sole proprietorships http://www.sba.gov/content/sole-proprietorship-0 where the business *is* the person and so personal liability is unlimited.

Now that's a reasonable condition for a business to be afforded all the legal rights of a natural person because in that case the business has no additional rights that are unavailable to natural persons.

The Hobby Lobby decision was just another instance of the Roberts court letting corporations have their cake sand eat it too.

An article published by the U.S. Small Business Administration claims that people are doing signatures on touch screens. Let me guess how it'd be exposed to JavaScript: A digitizer feeds a stream of (x, y) drag events to the script on the page. The page renders these drag events to a canvas. This would work with a standard Wacom tablet on a PC or with the touch screen in a smartphone or tablet.

in the US you can't even tell except by inspecting first names if businesses are owned by men or women, gender tagging business licenses just isn't done

Really? I could have sworn that the Small Business Administration (SBA) and many states as well issue special certifications to women-owned businesses. (The reason being, some government contracts are "set aside" for businesses that are certified as women-owned. The SBA provides advice as to how women-owned businesses can win "their share" of government business. I have two problems with this. 1) Having the SBA handle this belittles female entrepreneurs, sending the message that small business is their bailiwick, not large business. 2) Shouldn't a company's "share" of government contracts be determined by whether it delivers good value to taxpayers, not the topography of the owner's crotch? It's a classic case of Orwellian doublespeak that "the Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) Federal Contract Program provides a level playing field." Any time contracts are "set aside" for one group or another, there is by definition an unlevel playing field.)

Having said that, some event-planning companies are "pretend companies," while others are operated on a serious scale. I know I wrote a very large check to one of these companies when I got married.

in the US you can't even tell except by inspecting first names if businesses are owned by men or women, gender tagging business licenses just isn't done

Really? I could have sworn that the Small Business Administration (SBA) and many states as well issue special certifications to women-owned businesses. (The reason being, some government contracts are "set aside" for businesses that are certified as women-owned. The SBA provides advice as to how women-owned businesses can win "their share" of government business. I have two problems with this. 1) Having the SBA handle this belittles female entrepreneurs, sending the message that small business is their bailiwick, not large business. 2) Shouldn't a company's "share" of government contracts be determined by whether it delivers good value to taxpayers, not the topography of the owner's crotch? It's a classic case of Orwellian doublespeak that "the Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) Federal Contract Program provides a level playing field." Any time contracts are "set aside" for one group or another, there is by definition an unlevel playing field.)

Having said that, some event-planning companies are "pretend companies," while others are operated on a serious scale. I know I wrote a very large check to one of these companies when I got married.

99.7 percent of U.S. employer firms
64 percent of net new private-sector jobs
49.2 percent of private-sector employment
42.9 percent of private-sector payroll
46 percent of private-sector output
43 percent of high-tech employment
98 percent of firms exporting goods
and 33 percent of exporting value

In other words, small businesses are important to America and they are increasingly less dependent on MS.

Don't have the proper background to answer this, but google did have some boring stuff.
Search for
llc scorp
and see the comparisons bring. Don't now if your Business class referred to something else or this line in this result stating that "The plaintiff may be able to 'pierce the corporate veil' and go after your personal assets in a lawsuit" when referring to what is somewhat ambiguously the S-corp, so no options are perfect in a legally complex country with 300 million members.

Do you itemize your deductions? Have you ever altered your behavior over the course of a year in order to be eligible for a specific deduction at tax time? Declared your personal vehicle as being used for business purposes?

None of these things are immoral, all are legal, and none of them are required by law. At what point on the greyscale of "complex to implement" does tax avoidance become "shady"?

The "free" market where nothing can happen without government approval being described here is the US. Our Federal Trade Commission regulates what can and can't be sold, and heavily regulates advertising too. We also have money exchanges being monitored by the Internal Revenue Service to make sure it's being taxed fully, which helps prevent transactions that aren't regulated by the FTC from happening. Also, the minute you want to pay people to work for you, compliance with a giant list of Social Security and unemployment rules becomes mandatory, among others.

Start a company here and do any amount of business, and more government agencies will come looking for you every day, each with their own giant set of rules for what you can and can't do. There's a whole additional class of regulations for companies that can easily kill a small one, around obtaining financing for expansion, privacy rules, intellectual property, and the impact of your company on the environment. The Small Business Administration gives a good short picture of just how regulated even the smallest company is here in the US.

Describing the US using words like "capitalism" or "free market" is good for a big laugh from anyone who has started a business here.

In the US, it is completely illegal. The law is very clear about this.

o Advertising must be truthful and non-deceptive

o Advertisers must have evidence to back up their claims

o Advertisements cannot be unfair

Yeah. The only people who wouldn't like it are the ones not willing to work for it.

There are many reasons/factors for them not willing to work for it because each person comes from different part of the world plus the person's current status. If the person comes from one of the 3rd world countries and is an average to lower social class of the country, the person would have higher motivation to stay in the better social condition (in the U.S.). If the person comes from one of the 3rd world countries and is already high in the country social status, there is a better chance that the person would go back home. However, a person who comes from a developed country (1st world) would incline to go back for different reasons -- just want only some abroad experiences, tired of the current social/political environment, get a better offer from the home country, etc -- because he/she does not gain much in the U.S. compared to his/her own country.

Besides, it's so easily gamed that I expected many to game it in responses. Set up a dummy corporation and pay yourself $100,001 per year. You'd need $500,005 cash (plus living expenses) when moving here, but it would guarantee you sufficient pay to become permanent. No risk involved.

Your assumption of setting up a dummy corporation and pay yourself is silly. You would need way more than just $500k to start up a company, operate it, salaries, etc. http://www.sba.gov/community/blogs/community-blogs/business-law-advisor/starting-business-us-foreign-national That doesn't include time spent. Oh, and I am not even sure that a foreign company could sponsor you to become a permanent resident. However, an entrepreneur can apply for a green card which is a different green card program.

Besides, if one has that much money, why would one wants to spend it in the U.S. in order to get a green card; whereas, there are other options in other countries?

All in all, you should not include everyone who is not interested to stay here as "not willing to work for" because it sounds too arrogant.

Small & mid-size. You know, the types of businesses that don't have dedicated IT departments, or who have ...

If you're using "no dedicated IT department" as a criteria for defining what constitutes a "small business", then I'm afraid your definition is next to useless.

You can check out this link to help you better understand things.

For those following along at home: the term "small business" has a more defined meaning that what's used colloquially, especially when used (disingenuously) by politicians, pundits and, on occasion, unemployed plumbers, attemping to stoke populist rage.

I disagree regarding reusing search engines. A government agency can simply allow all search engines to scan their public files, and then anyone can choose any search engine they want to (and find what they need). There's no law that the government has to FORBID access to public data from search engines; that would be a stupid thing to do. In fact, it's usually a bad idea for the government to provide their own search engine. Governments should not pay for a special search engine for publicly-available documentation, unless they're providing some unique extra capability not provided by commercial search engines.

It's plausible that federal government sites aren't allowed to embed Google (or Bing), because they don't want to prefer a particular search engine. But if you think that they cannot, please quote the federal law or regulation, I'd like to know what that is. For example, the Small Business Administration uses Google site search, see: http://www.sba.gov/content/search-engine-0.

No, an LLC and an S-Corp are not the same thing.

If you incorporate, try to find a woman who is a military veteran and racial minority to take a 51% percent stake and act as the front. Then ride the politically correct white guilt contracts quota to the moon!

If you incorporate, try to find a woman who is a military veteran and racial minority to take a 51% percent stake and act as the front. Then ride the politically correct white guilt contracts quota to the moon!

If you incorporate, try to find a woman who is a military veteran and racial minority to take a 51% percent stake and act as the front. Then ride the politically correct white guilt contracts quota to the moon!

I would suggest starting at the U.S. Small Business Administration. There is a lot of useful online information.

Next locate a local office and see what free seminars you can attend to get instruction and answers from those who have already started businesses. They usually have classes on accounting, licensing, laws, etc.

I don't know anything about Kickstart but I personally would avoid any start up service companies and VCs until you at least have a better understanding of what your business needs entail.

I believe there are many opportunities to bring products to the market that leverage open source software. As far as the hardware I am unsure because my hardware experience is limited to off the shelf commodity equipment.

I would suggest starting at the U.S. Small Business Administration. There is a lot of useful online information.

Next locate a local office and see what free seminars you can attend to get instruction and answers from those who have already started businesses. They usually have classes on accounting, licensing, laws, etc.

I don't know anything about Kickstart but I personally would avoid any start up service companies and VCs until you at least have a better understanding of what your business needs entail.

I believe there are many opportunities to bring products to the market that leverage open source software. As far as the hardware I am unsure because my hardware experience is limited to off the shelf commodity equipment.

If we are talking "small business" 'HR' is likely the owner or one of his immediate subordinates checking his email in what is otherwise(from an IT setup) disturbingly like a home environment.

A common mistake is to assume that in tUSA, "small business" means "mom and pop." In fact, the Small Business Association (SBA) defines a business as small based on number of employees, and though it depends on industry, it typically is 500 (source).

It's true that, by sheer quantity, most businesses are small. There's only 500 Fortune 500 companies, but a zillion hot dog stands. In terms of number of employees or revenue or profits or any other number of factors, many small businesses aren't so small after all.

I think we're just arguing semantics at this point. What you're calling regulating capitalism, I'm calling keeping it from being perverted.

Buying laws and lawmakers, creating artificial monopolies, allowing natural monopolies to stand, engaging in protectionism, government bailouts, those aren't capitalism. Basically, anything that hinders the ability of competition to drive down prices and drive up quality goes directly against the primary tenets of capitalism.

Healthcare services (not drugs), for instance, are currently a natural monopoly and steps do need to be taken to fix that. The President's law, however, does nothing to dissolve that natural monopoly. Instead it forces the entire nation to buy insurance whether they want it or not. It's effectively a tax being paid to private corporations rather than to the government and that is deeply fucked up.

Drugs are another matter. They're an artificial monopoly created by the government; very anti-capitalism but easy to remedy. Simply disallow drug and drug related patents.

There's always somewhere else to work, but it's always like the place you were, or will be bought by them. There's not much that's truly "off the grid" that is still viable territory for human beings in large numbers.

Extremely false. Half of all employees in the nation are employed by small businesses. Small businesses create ~65% of all new jobs. Only two percent of small businesses are even franchise operations. citation

I won't disagree much on intellectual property except to say that small businesses get a whopping 13 times more patents than corporations and patent tanks put together. Personally, I think the IP laws of nearly every sort need a complete reboot. Throw them all out and start over with an eye for encouraging competition rather than inhibiting it. Software, business method, and drug patents in particular need to DIAF.

I think what a lot of people who're all "boo capitalism" don't get is what we currently have is only vaguely capitalistic anymore. For lack of an actual word, I'd call it corruptionism.

The "right wingers" want nothing of the sort. What we want is for the government to get the hell out of the way and stop taxing and regulating business to the point that makes it impossible to even run a business unless you're a huge corporation.

"Impossible" is hyperbole, kindly avoid that. The executive branch actually supports small business. There's arguably too much regulation, but that's part of the cost of doing business and it's not put in place for the sake of making things harder but in theory as a lesser evil. In this country small business is completely free to petition against these, just as corporations do, using their collective power to lobby for their interests. That they don't is their failure, not the politicians'.
As much as Republicans like to talk about the importance of small businesses, they're just as happy as democrats to be bought off by corporations for the purpose of increasing their power and limiting competition. Want small business to compete on a fair playing field? Get congress to stop giving large corporations legal loopholes. You're complaining about the wrong branch.

The Federal Small Business Administration website has lots of really useful information. You should also cruise over to your state government's websites. Many states have useful information for entrepreneurs.

http://tech-net.sba.gov/tech-net/public/dsp_search.cfm is the search engine. The Small Business Administration doesn't make SBIR or STTR awards, but Congress has charged the SBA with tracking them. Every year, all agencies that awarded SBIR or STTR awards in the previous Federal Fiscal Year are required to report those awards to the SBA, by March I think. The TECH-Net search engine allows you to capture search results in mail merge format for import into spreadsheets, for example. You can drill down to awards and even phases within an award. (As a result of Phase I, the abstract of Phase II could change, for example, and you can see both.) I see that its keyword search capability is finally back after a long hiatus.

This search engine has been on the Web for over 10 years.

There's a saying:

"No one retires from IT: Either they die or they change careers"

One of the things people claim is younger people are less set in their ways and have fresher ideas. Think "Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah" There's a "Messiah's Handbook" which has a lot of good advice: "Argue your limitations, and sure enough, they are yours."

Besides, I've never been to a "Blue Sky" meeting where the younger people (I'm 46) did not necessarily have some super power for tossing ideas on the table. It's generally because I have a thick skin and really don't think how funny someone else thinks it is.

Several years ago, I stumbled across a quote - from someone here should know & love:

"Some critics have amused their readers with the wildness of the schemes I have occasionally thrown out; and I myself have sometimes smiled along with them. But such sparks may kindle the energies of other minds more favorably circumstanced for pursuing the enquiries."

-Charles Babbage

You do have alternatives where neither require four years of paper, nor working for someone who worries about such things: yourself:

1) head out on your own - as a "software whore". Do good things and repeat business is eas(y,ier).

2) head out on your own and create a startup. And no one says you have to do this instead of a full-time job. People spend enough time at a keyboard during off-hours, why not apply it to an idea or two? If this is a moonlight project, don't quit your day job. And certainly don't interfere with your day job.

One of the things we have here in Indiana is a "21st Century Technology Fund".

Put together a business plan + ... + ... and make a pitch for money without the interference of someone you've signed your first-born to. You can pass the hat when you really need to. If you don't need a lot of bucks to get going, then do the obvious thing: start small.
Another source here are university/college schools who have competitions - not necessarily big schools - I graduated from a school with fewer than 2k students - surrounded by corn fields. It's one of the most popular because of how well put together & fun it is.

If you choose to go this way (startup) and your work will involve the general public, I recommend creating your own Knights of the Round Table. It doesn't require rounding up enough people who can fill a football stadium. Take them out to supper - or just meet over a couple of beers after work -- for the purpose of soliciting feedback. You want honest people: the ones who will tell you if you need to either brush your teeth or take a shower.

Oh, I thought of something else -- small business:
STTR: Small Business Technology Transfer Program / (SBIR) Small Business Innovation Research Program.

Gov't bodies submit a list of things they want and John Q. Public submits proposals. (If you end up with some patents, you own them. The only exception is the gov't. They get to use it/them royalty-free.)

If you find some things interesting and are are intimidated by the paperwork, there is a shortcut: there are groups who will help you get a proposal ready. If you win, they get 10% of it. If you don't, then you (and they) are out the spent time. I found out about SBIR/STTR when one of those 10% groups has passed through town - ca. $75 per seminar.

One project I watched a few years ago involved the amount of time it takes to reload pop machines on large, floating ships/boats. The goal was to provide a mechanism which would make it possible to leave stacks of cans where you could stick a can of soda in it and and cool it within ten seconds. Tell me this wouldn't be cool! (pun intended) Incredible testing with beer...

I would go here. Many of the links go to the irs website but there should be an SBA office near you where you can get more information.

I think it should be pointed out that the definition isn't that simple. Here's a table (PDF) of how the U.S. Government defines a "small business." It varies by sector and sub-sector (a 'small' peanut farm is defined differently from a 'small' aerospace parts manufacturer, since the latter is significantly more capital intensive than the former).

Most IT-related activities are at the higher end of the spectrum (see p.30 in the PDF) which tops out at $25 million/year ("services") or 150 employees ("value added reseller"), but there are some odd special cases in there. "Technical consulting," for instance, is $7M, and "Engineering services" is only $4.5M, but "Custom Computer Programming Services" is $25M. Makes you wonder who that was gerrymandered for...

• SCORE Business Counseling
• U.S. Small Business Administration

America's health care isn't bad, it's just expensive.

No, America's health care system is bad. There are too many people with no coverage at all. The system is inefficient. And it hurts our ability to compete in a world market on labor costs. If you believe press releases like this one from the SBA, a huge portion of our economy is represented by small businesses. But are you willing to leave your corporate job knowing that you might not be able to buy insurance and still be competitive?

In my opinion, all the health care 'plans' presented by candidates do not go far enough. We need to take the profiteering middlemen out of the equation.

http://www.angelcapitalassociation.org/
http://www.nolo.com/
http://www.sba.gov/smallbusinessplanner/index.html

The US Government considers most companies that have up to 500 employees as being a small company. Depending on what your company does, the limit may be 500, 1000, or even 1500 employees before you get out of the small company size. So unlike what you think, 250 workstations is most likely a small company.

Please see: http://www.sba.gov/services/contractingopportuniti es/sizestandardstopics/tableofsize/SERV_TABLE_HTML .html

It isn't, it's just that AC had nothing useful to contribute nor understand that your links could help someone contemplating this where you are.

In the US the Small Business Administration...
http://www.sba.gov/

And it's non-profit affiliate, SCORE:
http://www.score.org/ ..where retired business executives volunteer their help for small startups.

this is a fiction that has been created by the people who support these kind of laws to justify destroying small business

Considering the laws themselves say businesses under a certain size are exempt, I don't know how it can be a fiction. What motivation would people have for wanting to "destroy small business, anyways?

a company that had only 10 employees, that had to make hundreds of thousands of dollars of building changes to make the business handicap compliant, and it wasn't even a place of "public accommodation" like a store or hotel or such. It was a tiny office and warehouse. No exemptions for small business, no way, no how... total fantasy.

If the building was from before 1993, they only had to make changes that were affordable and practical for their financial resources, and they were eligible for tax credits for the cost of what they did (not just deductions -- CREDITS, as in 100% of the money you paid you just subtract from your taxes owed). And they only had to do that if they were a public accomodation.

If they built a building after 1993 and didn't comply with the law when they built it, well, then they or their architects or their constructions guys deserved the financial hit just the same as if they built something without following the fire codes or local zoning regulations.

The Small Business Administration has a helpful guide up here. If your old company couldn't afford hundreds of thousands of dollars in improvements, then someone suckered them, because nothing in the law requires that.

Most of these laws are pushed by trail lawyers, who especially love to sue small businesses, because they are the ones who have the least legal resources to fight a lawsuit... or to seek exemptions in the first place.

If your business is so poor it can't afford to put in wheelchair ramps, then it's too poor to be a target for a lawyer. Lawyers don't sue for fun, they sue for profit.