The American Nightmare

Brianna Jones

Brianna Jones is an actively competing equestrian when not writing for Infinity News Network. She is currently in the process of finishing a bachelor of Fine Arts in Interior Design at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. In her spare time she enjoys leisurely time with her horses and following her beloved Red Sox.

Starting a business seems relatively hard yet should be doable in the great country of America. I mean, that is what the country was supposedly founded on, the freedoms and the great, “American Dream.” Right?  Wrong. In the past few years America and much of the world has spiraled toward disastrous economic turmoil. If American’s can’t even afford to file for bankruptcy, how in the world can anyone expect to get their business off the ground?

 The Euro is failing almost all of Europe, Greece is in ruins with Italy and Spain not far behind, and America isn’t much better. Over the past ten years the value of the dollar has depreciated so much, that it takes me, $50 to fill up an 11 gallon gas tank, that’s roughly, $4.54 a gallon. And five years ago, when I started driving, I was paying, $1.63  for gas. Within a year of being on the road, gas jumped to $2.50 and has been steadily increasing ever since.

At my age, when you’re still learning to really appreciate the value of a dollar, it makes you lose all hope when you watch your mere minimum wage, full-time student, part-time worker check, literally get all shelled out for gas. It leaves no room for the imagination that you could be successful enough to start a business, ever.

Do you want to start a business? Sure, it’s the land of the free, no worries. But thanks in part to President Obama, you’re expected to pay a hefty tax on your beloved small business. At this rate, you’ll never get it off the ground. And lets not even get started with all the legal fees, copyrights, trademarks, registrations, insurance, and various other fees that just go into the initial start-up phase of your business. And continuing on from there, it’s a constant uphill battle, with never-ending taxes, tax hikes, fees here, fees there, this is broken, that needs to be insured, and so on. And yet, where’s the break? There are thousands of deductions you can find and finagle into your taxes for those mere deductions, and anything helps, right? President Obama and Congress claim to have cut taxes on small businesses, 16, no wait, 17 times. That means they’re totally rooting for the small businesses, and thinking about the Middle-Class Americans, right? Wrong again. Those 16 tax cuts have come in a wave of two sets of eight. The first eight simply included simplified deductions on certain miniscule things, and the depreciation of bonuses. The second wave of eight simply extended those provisions. How is that for tax cuts all you hard-working Americans trying to support your families?

With the bank bailouts still fresh in everyone’s mind and faulty loan after faulty loan, where do you start and who do you trust to give you the proper loan, to which, you’re not going to get hurt with later on? Where is the line drawn with banks trying to take advantage of people’s desperate need for the money to start their newest venture? Let’s face it, no one ever said starting a business would be easy, but no one ever said it would be damn near almost impossible either. The amount of hurdles and obstacles we have to jump through, just to get a name and face out there for the business, are turning away thousands of potential future businesses and opportunities. People are scared out of their minds to start a business and they don’t trust the very system that’s supposed to help them. The American government is in shambles and the dollar is failing. You might as well kiss that American Dream goodbye.


  • Patricekinney

    They call it the ‘American Dream’ because you have to be asleep to believe it.
    ~ George Carlin

  • TheMarque

    You have basically have to go into debt to start your own business. What kind of dream is that?!

  • Just a small business owner

    Having my own small business I have to agree with all your thoughts, the sad thing is they are not thoughts, they are reality

  • http://twitter.com/QuikHit Quik J Hit

    You don’t tell us what kind of business you would like to start.  What ever it is, I have no hope for your success as you did nothing but whine in your post.  Millions of people start their own businesses, despite the hurdles you describe.  

    You sound like someone with an employee mentality.  Do yourself a favor and go work for someone else, just not me.

    • Brianna Jones

      Actually I own my own successful business, because I work pretty much 24 hours a day. What I call whining is the people on food stamps and EBT in front of me at the super market whining because they can’t buy this with their EBT, they have to buy that brand instead. It’s bullshit, my hard earned tax dollars, which actually, I’m a 10-99 so I have to save all year long, just to fork over a large wad of cash to the tax man, so that the bitch in front of me who obviously doesn’t know the term BIRTH CONTROL, can whine because she has to buy this kind of milk versus the other kind of milk? I don’t think so.

  • Haymarket1886

    I’m not sure where your living, but five years ago gasoline was hitting record prices above three dollars. Sure, we’re a little higher today (though it was above four for awhile in 2008?… sometime around then), but its absolutely false to claim that gas was under two dollars. It was under two dollars for a brief period towards the end of 2009. Type in “Gas in 2007” and you’ll see numerous reports. This, however, was due to collapsing speculation bubbles; a similar phenomenon that occurred with the housing market in 2007-2008. While I’m not a fan of Barack Obama (perhaps he’s a little too conservative for me), he has advocated for and signed into law 17 small business tax cuts – then again, as you point out, maybe they are miniscule. I don’t pay enough of attention to these things; I’m more into political theory.

    I agree that small business taxes should be incredibly low and that big business taxes should be much higher, particularly for all the corporations which sit on mountains of surplus capital and refuse to invest it in anything “real.” Trickle-Down economics has never worked, but even if it had in the past, it isn’t working this time ’round. They’ve never had so much surplus capital. 

    Obama’s an easy target. He’s an individual – they are easy to pick on. I think if you researched the workings of economic structures, you would see that a singular person, especially a politician, isn’t all that responsible for the mess we’re in. Blaming Obama for this is like blaming Bush for the housing collapse. Its not realistic. Sure, both Obama and Bush could have done things to help these crises – like draining speculation bubbles before they burst (though many would probably freak out about “government interference” in the market), but they aren’t going to. Rather, they wait for the bubbles to burst and then bail-out the big betters (read: banks). Both the Republicans and Democrats too many friends in finance sector. I might be left-leaning, but I would have voted for Buddy Roemer (former Republican running as Reform, but recently dropped out) just for this reason. 

  • Boyoboy

    NOBODY FIGHTS TO WARS(war on 2 fronts);not even Hitler; AND SURVIVE,USA USES ITS WEALTH TO FIGHT A WAR JUST TO SHOW OFF,(superpower?)NOW SEE WHAT HAPPENED…