COMMENTARY: Donald Trump must create conditions that foster small-business growth

The economy is a disaster.

Forget what the media is telling you. Forget the stock market — it no longer has anything to do with reality. Stock prices are currently based only on the government gaming the system to make stocks go up. Forget anything the Obama Kool-Aid drinkers (aka Democrats) tell you. Don’t listen to government employees or anyone who has a safe job with a guaranteed paycheck.

Virtually every job in America is created by entrepreneurs. I’m talking about small businessmen and women — like me. And not just any small-business owner. Small business startups create almost 100 percent of the new jobs. These are not opinions, these are facts.

The news on that front is a bloody disaster.

Just as I’ve warned for eight long years of Obama, small business is dying. We just found out that in 60 percent of U.S. metro areas, more businesses close each day than open.

The rate of business failures under Obama was awful. But the real problem is the total collapse of new business creation. We are witnessing the worst disaster in the history of entrepreneurship. New business creation is half of what it was in the 1970s. And we had a terrible economy in the ’70s.

Small-business startups have always produced prosperity, opportunity, mobility and wage growth that made America great.

But the numbers today are depressing. In Ronald Reagan’s recovery, America added nearly 500,000 new small-business startups from 1983-87. In Obama’s recovery from 2010 to 2014 we added 100,000. Among young people just leaving college, the numbers are even worse. In the Reagan years, about 10 percent of college grads started their own business. Now it’s 2 percent.

The few lucky Americans who do have jobs are trapped in giant, aging corporations. As recently as 1992, 23 percent of Americans worked in firms at least 16 years old. Today it’s 74 percent. In other words, no one is starting new companies. Most American workers are trapped working for giant faceless bureaucracies that have been around forever, where you get a crappy paycheck and no chance to move up.

Worse, all the jobs and profits are concentrated in the hands of a few corporate giants — in every industry. This is why we have income inequality.

Small business startups not only create virtually 100 percent of net job growth, but also produce intense competition and therefore wage growth for middle-class Americans.

The job for President Donald Trump is to produce an environment in which small businesses start up and thrive. These aren’t jobs at big corporations. These aren’t government jobs. These aren’t Harry Reid’s green-energy jobs, funded by $500 million in government “investment.” These are new mom-and-pop startups.

The kind I’ve started my entire life.

These are the kind of one- to 20-person firms that fill Vegas office buildings. These are store-front businesses that fill Vegas streets and strip malls. These are independent contractors who work for commission.

This is where all GDP growth and job growth comes from.

I am the expert here. Economists, politicians, corporate CEOs and government bureaucrats haven’t a clue. The answers are simple: cut personal income taxes dramatically; cut regulations dramatically; kill Obamacare; kill Dodd Frank (so small businesses can raise money again); make sure America is a “right-to-work” economy; and get the IRS off the back of small business.

Oh, and a note to Gov. Brian Sandoval and Nevada legislators: I have no money for a property tax increase. Every small-business owner I know is barely hanging on. In what world do politicians in Carson City live? Do you understand the statistics above?

Nevada taxpayers and small business owners have no more money for you. Period. End of story.

Wayne Allyn Root (Wayne@ROOTforAmerica.com) is a best-selling author and host of “WAR Now: The Wayne Allyn Root Show” from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. daily at 790 Talk Now. His R-J columns run Thursday and Sunday.