In short, it takes brass to risk it all and run a business and those who do it are baddasses!!
So, now we have outside factors mostly related to state-imposed health regulations come to jump on top of an already large and growing list of restrictions on business owners. OSHA has directed that all companies with over 100 employees must mandate their workers to be injected with the covid - 19 vaccine(s) or face business-ending sanctions. If enacted, this mandate will do profound and lasting damage to just about every-single-aspect of the nations supply chain because it affects over 83 million workers (and their families). The dislocation that will happen cannot be over-stated.
Thankfully, we have organizations like the NFIB fighting at the Supreme Court along with many other plaintiffs including State Governments:
"Most importantly, NFIB opposes the mandate as it restricts the freedom of small business owners to decide how best to operate their businesses and it imposes unwarranted burdens on small businesses that will further threaten their fragile recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The mandate will result in unrecoverable compliance costs, lost profits, lost sales, and further exacerbate the labor shortage for small businesses."
The Supreme Court has the future of every business owner with 100 employees, millions of American workers and their families and the societies built around those workers in their hands. If they uphold the mandates this week OSHA has said they will move quickly to see them implemented. If they strike them down, businesses will breath a sigh of relief that, for now at least it's business as usual whatever that means anymore.
After listening to some of the oral arguments being made on Friday I was shocked by the astonishing lack of basic, readily available facts and knowledge about the pandemic by sitting Supreme Court Justices, even hardened court-observer journalists who are used to these hearing were stunned:
"What absolutely cannot happen in any free, civilized, and stable country is to have such fundamental questions of liberty and bodily autonomy adjudicated by a panel of lawyers who have limited curiosity in the science, a lack of knowledge of facts on the ground that are available to anyone who cares, and who get their basic facts about a pandemic from TV talk shows and a prevailing media ethos that has no basis in reality."
That is, the future of millions of workers and their employer small business owners will be waiting this week to learn if it's on or not. What is uncertain is, when does the next mandate, directive or whatever they plan on calling it come? It's no small thing! It wasn't like this up until recently.
In the recent past you could start a business with relative certainty about the regulatory landscape but not now!!
Ask any business owner who has now been involuntarily deputized by the state to police the inoculation status of their patrons who show up to their businesses. Ask any patron sitting outside enjoying a coffee how they feel about being interrupted by armed officers and having to show proper papers or face expulsion or worse. Add to the uncertainly the difference from state to state. Business travelers I meet from NYC here in Florida act like they're in a different country lol.
I pray common sense prevails but that last 2 years have prepared me for the worst. Right now the best policy is resiliency, don't lock into long term planning and keep plenty of cash reserves. Stick with fixed rate loans and use capital to lock in pricing and supplies since rates stay the same while prices are going up.