State:Florida
Year Started:1978
Number of Employees:1
I started my one-man engineering consultancy as a teenager, at a time when micro-controller and micro-processor chips were so new that I could compete for design wins because everyone in that arena was a "small fry". After college, I tried to work for someone else for a time, but returned to working for myself because it provided me with a better chance to design the products I thought were interesting and challenging. Fortunately, by this time the Reagan Revolution was in full swing and this helped me re-start my business in an environment friendly to entrepreneurs. Of course, that didn't mean that I didn't have to work lots of 80+ hour weeks -- like lots of small business people -- but it did mean that I didn't have to spend too many hours working to meet regulatory requirements or pay excessive taxes. I bank-rolled my start-up using nothing but my credit cards and (eventually) bank loans, and I BUILT IT myself, without government-backed loans or other programs.
Since then, I've worked through the ups and downs in the economy that affects me by affecting my prospective clients. However, I have never experienced a downturn in my clients' business prospects as grave as the one we are in how. At this point Government isn't helping BUILD, but is doing a bang up job on DEMOLISHING.
As just one example, Obamacare has recently made it MORE EXPENSIVE for me to provide health care for my wife and I through my business and thus more likely that we will be in jeopardy of losing our health insurance. How do I know the expense was from Obamacare and not normal price increases? Simple -- AND INCONTROVERTIBLE: since my wife and I can't have kids and I have never had any employees other than myself, I made sure years ago to select a health insurance policy that expressly excluded Maternity Care -- which can be quite expensive because of the nature (and litigiousness) of this area of medicine. Once Obamacare became law, however, my insurer informed me that my business could no longer "discriminate" by excluding Maternity Care and they could not legally offer me a policy without it! The Government, you see, thinks it knows better than I do what health care insurance I should buy. So, now I pay for Maternity Care coverage I can NEVER use, putting the lie to two promises of Obamacare: 1) I could NOT "keep the coverage" I wanted, and 2) I am now LESS likely to be able to afford insurance.
