... The Future of Business...

I fear that the future demise of small business and the widening gap of the have and have nots is increasing at an alarming pace. This is being perpetuated by the lack of funding to small businesses (Though SBA is showing very large increases is lending recently) and cheap money. The fed is continuing it's drive to push lower rates to spark demand in the market - However, those that are borrowing are the ones that can afford to. Moreover, those that can qualify. With that being said, the M&A activity that I spoke of in the past is making for larger businesses that will soon evolve into oligopolies in certain industries, and it will crowd out the smaller businesses because of pure pricing. There will always be a market for certain small businesses, but the larger businesses will continue to get larger and the cost of labor will be cheaper per capita. With that being said, you will see people working for lower pay, and thus increasing profit margins, or increasing the payouts to shareh0lders - i.e. the people who can afford to invest - i.e. the rich. So, essentially what is happening is the movement of money from the have's by increasing their stake in these huge companies to get bigger and the have nots by reducing their pay because of what we are seeing (layoffs, it's better to be employed for less than you're worth than unemployed, etc, etc). This will be ever perpetuated by the need for higher education to sustain a viable job, thus increasing individual debt loads. As those that incur the most debt for educational reasons, they will be the most burdened to be enslaved to these large corporations to pay for their education. We will continue to see a reduction in benefits and overall well being for employees and this will lead to a slave state, not too unlike China - Only if things aren't fixed legislatively.

This will come to a turning point when the have nots, which will be an overwhelming majority, will begin to rebel. As we are seeing in England with student fee hikes, France's retirement age increasing, etc. America will only take so much. We will see.