vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
"Perhaps in a pendantic sense, it is useless. But likewise the number of people that work for them is irrelevant here as well.  What matters is the portion of GDP generated across company size, and the means by which some of that is recaptured by the people to (a) repay for the investment in the economic infrastructure that allowed the companies to make that money in the first place, and (b) invest in future infrastructure that is of benefit to companies, ultimately all of which is done for the purposes of betterment of the people of the country.  The relevance then is what portion of the GDP is generated by which while size category of business. If we just take large versus small and medium enterprise (SME), with the boundary being 500 employees or fewer, and we excluding farming (which the stats seem to universally do), U.S. GDP is generated by [50.7% non-farm SMEs](http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11f0027m/11f0027m2011070-eng.pdf) (compared to 54.7% in Canada). They also appear to employ more than 50% of all private workers.  Of additional importance is the dynamic effect. That is, if large companies can grow faster because of lower effective taxation, that means SMEs will tend to fall further and further behind not out of a fair and open marketplace, but because of unfair taxation.  Generally speaking, the reverse is preferred. Because diversity of competition brings huge value for innovation (the same as in crop breeding techniques), as well as the poor economic performance of monopolies and oligopolies, you want to hinder large companies from becoming too large and instead break them up in to many smaller components. Hence incentives should work the reverse of the above, meaning larger companies should be paying a higher percentage tax than the SMEs, not to mention the ""too big to fail"" problem, and all for the good of the people."
While there is no legal reason to have a minimum number of employees, there can be a practical reason.   They want to look like a good solid investment so that investors will give them money, which is what an IPO is, really.  Hiring lots of people is part of that. Once the investors are committed, they can cut expenses by firing people again. I have no idea how common this is, but it is a possibility.  However, if it were really common, investors wouldn't be fooled anymore. Also, they risk being sued for fraud over this. Even if your friend's worry is probably unfounded, you should be aware that working for a startup is always risky.  They very often go bankrupt even if they try their best.  They can misjudge their intended market. They can get higher expenses than expected. There can be another company with same idea being launched at the same time.  Other things can go wrong. Working for a startup is a risk, but it beats being unemployed, right?
If it were possible for every person in the world to run their own business at the same time maybe you'd have a point, but that's not how things work. As it stands now there inherently must be more employees than business owners and the nature of that relationship inherently favours the owner. A few laws in place to somewhat balance the scales is not a bad thing. At the end of the day, the employer was breaking the law and now they have to suffer the consequences.
From a business point of view, I agree.  From the customer's point of view, I don't because 1) some smaller businesses do care about BBB status even if it means nothing on a legal front and 2) it creates a digital paper trail if it comes up in small claims.  On point 2, it shows that you attempted to solve the problem before taking it up to the courts and it documents your complaint better since it was closer to the time of the conflict between you and the business.
I wasn't thinking about flipping, just knowing when to call it quits before you get yourself in too deep. Where I live, 4/5 new businesses fail in their first year. It's important to know the risks and to know how to land on your feet if and when it happens.  I've seen a lot of people lose their homes, their retirement funds, their everything...worse than that, I've seen people lose friends they've had since forever because of bad investment promises and so on.   I just think it's a good idea to have a strategy in case things go sour. It's a lifeboat thing. You don't have it because you want to abandon ship whenever you please. You have it because, even if you're about to lose the ship, you want those on-board to get out with minimal loses.
The key there is Large companies.  The vast majority of companies in the US are small businesses with little or no international presence, and are taxed at the full 35%.  Their very large competitors, however, have the ability to flout US corporate taxes, and therefore keep more of their profits - whether in terms of retained earnings or higher dividends to shareholders.
If someone had such a great idea that could convince a bank to give them money with no capital, no experience, and no assets then they wouldn't give it away on a public forum.   If you're talking about starting small... you're talking about getting a job, whether formal or gig-based.
"This is why I hate any article talking about luck and success.  It gives people an excuse as to why they aren't successful in life (I'm not lucky) and a way to shit on anyone that is successful (something Reddit loves).  ""See if you throw enough mud at a wall, eventually some of it will stick. And if 20,000 people start a business, then most will fail, but some will succeed, and some will go through the roof.""  This doesn't really work.  If you keep doing the same stupid things over and over, you most likely will not succeed.  However, if you fail, learn from the failure, and try again over and over, you most likely will succeed at some point.  This isn't because of luck.  I've worked with a lot of people in business and the reason most fail is because they give up or are just not experienced enough to know the correct path.  I suppose I should be glad that the majority of people are lazy..it just means less competition for me.  ""The business acumen of the directors is sometimes capable of making a business MORE successful than it otherwise would be, but mostly, it's down to luck.""  If it really was luck, anyone could sit there, do nothing, and success would come upon them.  This never happens.  Every decision in life that you make involves some sort of chance (or luck), but it's not nearly as much as what you would like us to believe."
Almost every bank has some kind of financial statement analysis to give a credit score to small companies asking for credit. Then the account manager will decide either to refuse because the credit score is too low or allow it and justify why he conceded credit
Well first problem is usually that you are trying to do too much, you end up micro managing, once a company becomes large enough this is impossible to keep doing at the same level. If you find that you don't have enough time maybe it's time to either hire someone new, or promote/transfer someone. You need to trust and give freedom to your employees to do their job in their own way which may or may not be better than yours. (Communicate with each at intervals.) A lot of business owners struggle with this because it costs them money, and that is wrong it's cost your company money which is a separate entity than you. A piece of property that makes you less money than the week before is still making you money you are not losing money. So get that out of your head, it's not your money until you take it out of the business until then that money including profits are the property of the business (this is how the law see it by the way.) Marginally an understaffed store will make a larger percentage of profits from revenue, a well staffed store will make more actual profits from more actual revenue because it can handle the business coming into the store better, which in turns should lead to more business. On a particular day you may see more money in profit from an understaffed store, someone calls out let's say, but trust me when I say that will not continue for very long. On of the biggest challenges new business owners face is they are fugal, as in they don't spend the money they need to. This means buying new equipment, and hiring and giving raises and promotions, so you can handle new business as well.
Probably because large chains can absorb the loss from fraud better than small stores do.  Thus, small stores want to ensure that the person holding the card is the same as the name on the card.
"&gt;Why do so many ventures fail? They are allegedly started by smart, capable people and funded by people with ""experience.""  Marketing. It sucks but it is true. You can start a company as an engineer and make the greatest piece of software since sliced bread, but unless you can sell it you're fucked. This is why I avoid investing in startups. Some of the greatest startups fail and some of the horrendous ones succeed; life is unfair."
Either way, letting these humongous institutions fail would have undoubtedly produced a worse result (best case scenario complete credit freeze, i.e no mre credit cards.  Worst case scenario, even the most financially sound banks fail as part of a financial domino effect and we're back to trading deer skin for beaver pelts).  The best way to prevent these kinds of situations is to never get in them in the first place.  Placing graduated capital constraints on larger and larger financial institutions (i.e.  the larger your balance sheet, the greater the percentage of capital you must retain to offset risk) is the best way to protect against financial collapse.  This way competitive market forces would remain intact, while simoutaneosly reducing risk.  Basel 3 addresses some of these issues, but I speculate more will need to be done to prevent another collapse from happening in  the future.
At the present time, businesses are facing serious threat from various sources. This is needless to say that, if there is a new brand wants to occupy a small space in market, it has to make an elusive effort while there are different brands have already taken their places.
"It's a problem from hell because all solutions have drawbacks/unintended consequences and because they are all pretty complex to implement in practice.  Breaking up the big banks so that no bank is enough to bring down the economy with it is the strongest move, but is riddled with problems when you start looking at it practically. How do you determine the ""maximum size"" a bank should have? Should it be based on assets? Systemic importance (i.e. interconnectedness with other banks)? How do you enforce it? Banks will find ways to offload assets, etc. into special purpose corporations to get around the laws somehow. How do you compensate for the fact that size does help financial efficiency in some ways?  Imposing higher capital requirements is the next solution. But that too is not so easy to implement with full success in practice. What should be classified as a low-risk asset? How much capital do you require against a CDO vs a Mexican government bond? How often do you need to revise these standards? At what point does the cost of higher capital requirements start to strangle lending and financial flows?  The weaker maneuvers are things like constant government-imposed stress tests, orderly resolution mechanisms, higher standards for internal risk management practices, etc. but those may not be adequate and also have their implementation problems."
"Yes, many hedge funds (for example) did not survive 2008-2009.  But hedge funds were failing both before and after that period, and other hedge funds thrived.  Those types of funds are particularly risky because they depend so much on leverage (i.e. on money that isn't actually theirs). More publically-visible funds (like those of the big-name index fund companies) tended not to close because they are not leveraged.  You say that ""a great many companies"" failed during the recession, but that's not actually true.  I can't think of more than a handful of publically-traded companies that went bankrupt.  So, since the vast majority of publically-traded companies stayed in business, their stocks kept some/most of their value, and the funds that owned those stocks stayed afloat. I personally did not see a single index fund that went out of business due to the recession."
"Typical for large companies.  My company isn't declaring bankruptcy but every year they ""run out"" of money for us to take legitimate business trips to support customers.  Meanwhile executives are constantly flying around so they can give speeches that say nothing to people who don't care.  Even if they just stopped spending so much when they traveled (international first class tickets are crazy expensive) we'd probably still have enough to go around."
If you look at that study, those companies have in the hundreds or thousands of employees.  That's the exact point.  Hundreds of people working together can make a multi billion dollar business.  Hundreds of sole proprietors will never come close.  The power of the many is greater than the power of the individual.
Yep. Look at Market Basket's current debacle as a prime example. On NPR someone's opinion was that it works (there's many family-owned/run companies), but there's family issues (power disputes, control, vision, etc.) which if aren't managed/sort well can bubble up, grow, and potentially harm the company.
"Lucky break, that is all. Not an inspirational story or ""hard work"".  There would be many many companies who get bogged down dealing with customers like ""bob"" leaving them unable to get out there and sell/grow the business."
Maybe someone can ELI5 for me: If Obama does happen to raise taxes on businesses, those increased taxes are only on profits, as the taxes were only on profit before. So if a small business loses a little more of its profit, why should it have to lay off people? It still meets its overhead and makes some profit right? Is some % of profit required for a company to keep it's current level of staff?
I'm not saying an election will bankrupt a company, but you really think there is zero relation between an election outcome and a company's bottom line? When the major issues of the election are the economy and taxes, I'm pretty sure one outcome will be better for business than the other.
&gt; But the businesses always go unscarred  Eh, I'd word that is the 'biggest, most politically tied businesses go unscathed'. Lots of small and medium businesses go under along with a lot of households. The big banks get to scoop up all their properties and hold them on the shadow market and make big bucks a decade down the road.
&gt; more people should die if it means companies can operate more efficiently.  I don't care about companies operating efficiently. I care about individuals operating effectively. Small business owners do it everyday, even using simple technology platforms to propel their business. They follow government safety guidelines, interact directly with their customers in a professional way, and no one dies. Placing all the liability on companies is ineffective and a sign of government doing too much.
It's all about the data A lot of modern social apps (and non social apps) do not generate any ad based revenue. They do however collect a lot of data that is valuable to them or other companies. Think about Microsoft buying Skype or Facebook buying Instagram. Having these services allows the purchasing company to have data that they can then use to build other targeted products. That's not to say that every start up has the same exit strategy (hoping to get bought out). Many startups have one or two founders who tend to get lucrative offers from industry to build similar or more tailored versions of the same product. Remember that for every startup you see get famous and turn in to a bigger entity, there are several others who had potential but never made it big (and those that invested in them lost out).
"I believe Tom Au answered your key question. Let me just add in response to, ""What if someone was just simply rich to buy > 50%, but does not know how to handle the company?"" This happens all the time. Bob Senior is a brilliant business man, he starts a company, it is wildly successful, then he dies and Bob Junior inherits the company. (If it's a privately owned company he may inherit it directly; if it's a corporation he inherits a controlling interest in the stock.) Bob Junior knows nothing about how to run a business. And so he mismanages the company, runs it into the ground, and eventually it goes bankrupt. Stock holders lose their investment, employees lose their jobs, and in general everyone is very unhappy. I suppose it also happens that someone gets rich doing thing A and then decides that he's going to buy a business that does thing B. He has no idea how to run a business doing thing B and he destroys the company. I can't think of any specific examples of this off the top of my head, but I've heard of it happening with people who make a ton of money as actors or professional athletes and then decide to start a business."
There aren't swarms of very profitable businesses waiting for a chance, if only less profitable businesses would get out of the way.  If they were more profitable, they would already be here.  The trade off is between businesses that don't pay as much as you would like and nothing at all.
Also, the city streets are not supposed to be a source of competition for their business.  17 states disagree with you. But they must have been simple-minded.  How can brick and mortar restaurants factor in any kind of unknown competition - such as another brick &amp; mortar, possibly a better or less expensive version of their own business? Should they be protected from anything they cannot factor into their initial decision to open a business? Where do you draw the line?  I think that businesses should be protected from much larger businesses, but I don't think it's appropriate to use government to protect businesses from smaller/more agile businesses, or completely different business models.  I think this entire argument is based on a logical fallacy: that mobile food is going to put restaurants out of business at a rate faster than they already do go out of business.
"You should see ""Restaurant Impossible"" on TV, shows exactly how you'll end up if you take this direction. Bottom line - yes, it is usually bad. There's a race condition there in the hiding: you either learn the ropes as you go, or you run out of money and go bankrupt, whichever comes first. My personal experience shows that things that seem simple from the outside may become very very complex once you're actually inside. As an engineer I know perfectly well that the devil is in the details. As an investor I know not to step into something I don't know how to step out of. If someone sells something - you should give a thought as to why they're selling. Is the restaurant making money? What's the cashflow? Are there underlying issues? What are the development plans in the neighborhood for the foreseeable future? What's the clientele, and what are the trends? What's with the competition? Can you answer these questions? If not - you're not in a position to enter the business."
"Not all of the reason to start an LLC is liability (although that is implicit). There are two main reasons as far as I have experienced it: I always recommend that people set things up properly from the beginning.  If you do start to grow, or if you need to cut your losses, it can be very difficult to separate yourself from the company if it isn't set up entirely apart from you. I was once told, ""Run your small company as you would wish it to be.""  Don't get into bad habits at the beginning.  They become bad habits in big companies later on."
"&gt; Thank you for the wealth of information! Sure, I hope my opinions are food for thought. &gt; 1) Does that basically translate to ""less tax on poor/wealthy...to promote entrepreneurship? No, your typical entrepreneur is a smart, disgruntled employee who thinks they have a better way to do a job. If you want more entrepreneurs, you should do things to help them succeed in a new company and minimize the risk. Some ways to do this: * Create a government agency that offers programs that help new companies. Guidance and funding are obvious candidates. Advertising for small local business would help too. One of the most important would be getting complementing talent together because a start-up needs the talents of at least four different people to have a good chance of succeeding. * Establish guaranteed health care. A 40-something with a wife and kids may have a great idea but can't risk to leave his family with no health insurance for the two years it would take to get his idea off the ground. * Better enforce anti-trust law. I believe small companies are stifled by big companies because the latter control too much of the market. If you want competitive markets you need to either break-up or handcuff and monitor the big players. * Create a better safety net. It is a lot easier to go on your own if you know at least you won't starve. &gt; 2) Rich using money to grow their own wealth. But wouldn't that mean as a byproduct, jobs will be made? In theory, yes, but I believe in practice the opposite happens. Big companies can make significantly more money hoarding their market share rather than branching into new markets. Here's a true story of my last company with names changed: Company A makes widgets. Company B makes bookkeeping software for tracking widgets and is very successful, controlling a majority of the market. Company A buys Company B at an inflated price. The government allows the sale on the condition that Company A does not use Company B's information on the widget market to gain an unfair advantage. Company A agrees and the buyout takes place.
I made the mistake going into business with a friend. I lost the business, a lot of money and that friend.  If you do it anyway, be prepared to lose it all, or set it up as one being the other's boss.
Absolutely. The overhead for a product based business like that is particularly high. Service based businesses tend to have much better profit margins. But if she was running a plant nursery she has to pay huge heating costs, renting the area she operates in, not to mention inventory and employees. That $300k vanishes pretty fast. This article talking about disappearing middle class is a bad argument. This sounds much more about how the recession hurts a small business. Assuming of course it is the recession. I know a coffee shop near me that isn't doing that great and says the economy is hurting them bad. They apparently don't realize that being blatantly rude to their customers drives them away. There are often other sides to the story besides the economy, whether the fault of the business owner or some other factor outside their control that may not be covered in these kinds of posts.
The most important thing to achieve success is to dream. And when you have a dream, the next challenge is how to achieve it. Loan Against Property helps you in fulfilling that dream. So go on, while you make your plans, allow to create certain they reach their heights
Small companies are competing with huge corporations with small comparable fixed costs, so they turn to temp agencies that, due to size, can offer a basket of benefits a small company cannot, but at the expense of the laborer, who is now competing with a much larger labor pool, keeping wages low.  Wages aren't increasing because the competition in the labor market is for better benefits, not for workers.