The last survey of small business optimism, released just days after the presidential election didn’t really give business owners much time to comprehend what the outcome meant for them. Tuesday’s survey showed that small business owners, a month after, were fully factoring in another four years of the Obama administration. The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index dropped the most ever for a monthly reading. The index reached its tenth lowest point ever, of 377 surveys since 1973 (chart 1).
The summary of the index results placed the blame squarely on the election results. “What is quite clear from the data is that the election was the primary cause of the decline in owner optimism.”
Small businesses are scared about the future, especially about what Obamacare means to them. The law will have a disproportionate effect on small businesses with employees.
Some things are more certain, the healthcare law will not be repealed as advertised. The “war” on success is now public policy as the President insists on higher tax rates for the “rich,” those making $250,000 or more. He continues to obfuscate by claiming that only 3 percent of small business owners will be impacted, as if even those are not a concern. But the disingenuousness of that statistic masks the fact that the denominator in his fraction is “30 million small businesses.” But, there are, according to Census, only 6 million employer firms, so an accurate assessment of the percentage of employer firms impacted is more like 15 percent.