Edd Tury, who's been doing this column for the past 10 months, got busy. As readers who have been following this column know, Edd manufactures solar-powered wind chimes for the gift and accessories market. With Christmas coming on, he got totally over-powered by re-orders.

Gift retailers do their Christmas buying in July. However ... if what they bought for Christmas, sells out well before Christmas, then they frantically try to replenish. That's what's happening to Edd. Everyone's re-ordering! Great for Edd. Bad for us because it means no new columns from him until probably after Christmas.

I'll fill in this month with a comment on a subject Edd broached back in September -- how government helps(?) small business.

Government does NOT help small business. Government -- through taxes and regulations -- does virtually everything in its power to discourage small business.

Why? Because big business has the money to buy politicians -- small business doesn't. Big business can hire PR firms to espouse their causes to the media -- small business is too busy trying to make a living to espouse anything. And government's business counsel is dominated by business school academia who, like Lester Thurow (see this month's Perusing The Pages column), former head of Harvard's Business School, see small business as a non-viable economic nuisance (in spite of the fact it's the only place new jobs are coming from).

One example -- one that anyone who's been through a startup will recognize (with painful remembrance):

Let's say you save up $1,000 and use it to make 100 gizmos, which you then sell for $2,000. You then take that $2,000 and use it to make 200 gizmos, which you then sell for $4,000. Next step, obviously, is to take that $4,000 and use it to make 400 gizmos to sell for $8,000.

Uh-uh! About this time government steps in and says, "You've made $3,000 and your owe us $1,500 in taxes."

You've already committed that $4,000 and have 400 gizmos in process? "Tough! Go find the money you owe us or we'll shut you down. And if we don't collect enough from liquidating you, we'll attach everything you own -- including your future earnings." They have (under law) first claim on those dollars -- and Gestapo powers to collect them.

Assuming you come up with the money owed, no longer do you have $4,000 to reinvest -- you have $2,500 -- which you use to make 25 gizmos -- despite the fact you could have sold all 40 if the government hadn't confiscated almost half your capital.

This is the REAL way goverment "helps" small business! If government must tax small business (and there are very valid arguments for not taxing it at all), at least tax on cash growth and not on imaginary "accounting" profits.