A Main Street Platform

By The Main Street Alliance Policy team

As voters prepare to evaluate their policy priorities, small business owners should consider what platforms will truly support them and their needs.

There are more than 30 million small businesses in the United States, representing over 99 percent of all U.S. businesses. The owners of these businesses employ almost half of the country’s workforce.

Like their neighbors, small business owners know what it’s like to struggle to make ends meet. The median income for a self-employed person with an incorporated business was $50,347 in 2016, or $23,060 for those whose businesses were not incorporated.

They also vote. In fact, small business owners are significantly more likely than the public as a whole to be registered, to vote and to be civically engaged.

Main Street small businesses aren’t like big businesses. To prosper, they need thriving communities and policies that support quality jobs. They’re rooted in their communities. They can’t and won’t simply leave to seek higher profits, bigger tax breaks, cheaper labor, or to avoid responsibility for environmental waste.

They reject the idea that the U.S. will be safer or more prosperous by closing our communities to immigrants, or mistreating people based on gender, sexual identity or religion.

Instead, small businesses–including the members of Main Street Alliance–know their bottom line depends on a strong social fabric with respect for all the people who make up this country. This election season, small business owners are thinking about these values and policy priorities.

For small businesses, family and loved ones are part of the bottom line. That means that Main Street small business owners want a support system that allows them and their employees to balance work and family life and care for themselves and their loved ones in times of need. They want high-quality, universal health care so they can rest assured that they, their employees and everyone can get the health care they need.

Small businesses want economic rules that, rather than prioritizing the profits of large corporations, recognize the vitality and importance of Main Street, and invest in the people who make our Main Streets hum. Finally, small business owners know they thrive best in a country that values and respects all people who call the United States home. They want policies that welcome and protect all residents, including immigrants, refugees, Muslims, LGBTQ people and more.

With these priorities in mind, Main Street Business support a platform that accomplishes the following:

• A strong paid family and medical leave that covers all businesses and employees, spreads the costs and makes it affordable for workers to care for their new babies, their loved ones and themselves.
• Increased public investment to make high-quality, stable child care affordable for families, and make work life more manageable for parents, grandparents and other adults responsible for children.
• A universal health care program that provides the high-quality care small business owners, their employees and their families need, regardless of pre-existing conditions, how much money they have, where they were born or their gender identity.
• Creating the conditions for a small business economy built on investment in people and communities, racial and gender equity, fair availability of capital and a thriving small business sector, including having big corporations pay their fair share.
• Promoting welcoming communities and supporting welcoming business by protecting the rights of LGBTQ people, immigrants, Muslims and members of other communities that have come under attack.

Are you a small business owner who also welcomes these policy priorities? Add your voice to this growing network.

This post is the first in our new Small Business Action Series — follow us on Medium for more details on the policies you care about, or check out one of our other Series posts like our Small Business Voices.