What is the REAL cost of doing business in the U.S.?

Answer: It’s pretty cheap when you are passing the “cost of doing business” on to the consumer* of your goods and services!

(*or perhaps an employee or “independent contract employee)

Here I am reading my “hard copy” newspaper, the Chicago Tribune®; actually, I get many of my blog posting ideas from reading the newspaper. Anyway, an article in the Friday, July 01, 2016, Business Section of the Trib is entitled “Grubhub delivery drivers sue over contractor status.” Several terms are used in the news article: gig economy, sharing economy and on-demand economy. Reading this article made me think of the Uber® lawsut, here’s a link to those details: Uber lawsuit.

I have written previously about “Killer Apps”, the software** used on smartphones in order to call, locate, hire, order, purchase, contact, WOW…I’m running out of active verbs!

**Google definition: What is mobile programming?

Mobile application development is a term used to denote the act or process by which application software is developed for handheld devices, such as personal digital assistants, enterprise digital assistants or mobile phones.

Anyway, it all boils down to JOBS! Another posting that I have written, Peripheral Stuff also addresses the “work world” in which we are now living. Working “temporary” in past decades was considered “temporary” most of the time. It evolved into “permanent” temporary work for many during the 1980s. Another concept, “the independent consultant” also evolved during the 1980s, and 1990s. After the dot-com crash in 2001 and that happened just before the “9-11” tragedy in September of 2001, thousands of people were working as “independent consultants.”

Every time a company wants me to accept a digital copy of a statement or invoice, it “grates me”. This is a “cost of doing business.” They “save” money by not having to generate, print, and mail a “hard copy” to me. So, OK, they email it to me. Guess what! I have to “print out” the statement or invoice. Company ABC just passed on their “cost of doing business” to me. I believe in having a “hard copy” for record purposes. Speaking of “temporary”, what’s temporary is literally everything that’s stored digitally! Lose electricity, have a magnet pass over stored data, break a CD (that happened to me) and, gee, your data is gone. That’s what “back-ups” are all about. So, mine are “hard copies.” (Here’s my “take” on digital currency, Bitcoin and the Perception of Value.)

Getting back to the theme of my post, “independent contractors” are rebelling. Business models are reliant on the use of “cheap labor,” low cost of labor, low operating margins and high profits. Guess I’m ranting about “capitalism” in general but the United States has been built on capitalism. So I’m not against “capitalism”, after all it “gave” me several jobs.  In another blog post, The Idea of a Resume is so passé, I have commented about the mechanics and “orchestrations” involved in successfully getting a job circa 2016.

As usual, I’m just pointing out the “yin” and the “yang” of issues. When is a job “a job” and not just a “side-job”? The IRS has a measurement for determining whether income reported, was generated from a ‘hobby” or from “taxable work.” This is for “expense” reporting purposes. In other words, can you deduct the gasoline, car repairs, office supplies, etc., from your income, and thus not pay income tax on the income generated by your work-related activity. Is the expense a legitimate deduction? A company expenses such items as a “cost of doing business.”

I have written a 6-part series on jobs, here’s a link to them: Signs of the Times #3: Thoughts on jobs and jobs training. By the way, I wish you luck and good fortune in your “PERMANENT” job hunts.
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Fifty