S-Corp President Brian Reardon is out with an op-ed in the Washington Examiner taking a closer look at The Everywhere Millionaire, the new book highlighting America’s surprisingly large population of successful, self-made business owners. As he writes:
At its core, the book includes dozens of supportive profiles of people who built up great family businesses, often in the most unlikely of places and industries. Who knew you could start a billion-dollar business with a hot dog cart in a parking lot? The founder of the Chicago restaurant chain Portillo’s did that. Other fun profiles include Buc-ees, Outback Steakhouse, and Bass Pro Shops.
The founders of these businesses, meanwhile, come in all shapes and sizes — college graduates, dropouts, immigrants, Native Americans. Just about every class and color is represented. It’s a veritable melting pot of entrepreneurialism.
It helps that the profiles are free of the smug, “you didn’t build this” attitude of former President Barack Obama. These people clearly did build this, often overcoming tremendous odds to construct enterprises that form the very fabric of our economy.
There’s good data here, too. The authors observe: “For every member of the Forbes 400, more than four thousand private business owners each have at least $10 million in net worth. For every large public company CEO, more than one thousand private business owners each have at least $25 million in wealth.”
That observation underpins our premise that the strength of America lies in Main Street, where the massive financial weight of millions of large, debt-free enterprises offers both jobs and a mature counterbalance to the “which bubble should we invest in next” attitude so prevalent on the coasts.
The piece closes with a point that should be familiar to all S-Corp readers. If the goal is to help more Americans climb the economic ladder, successful Main Street businesses aren’t the problem, they are the solution.