(Community Matters) from Playbook
THE BIG IDEA – “Rethinking the Boosterism About Small Business: Politicians may love to extol the virtues of small business, but big companies are still the key to growth,” by Charles Kenny, a fellow at the Center for Global Development and the New America Foundation: “If you’re looking for a lot of good-paying, stable jobs, you’d better hope there are some big companies around that want to hire. … Kansas City Federal Reserve economist Kelly D. Edmiston … found that … [h]ourly wages at the largest companies, those with more than 2,500 employees, average around $27, compared with $16 in companies with payrolls of fewer than 100. … Although politically unpopular, attracting more large companies from China and India to set up shop in the U.S. could be a better use of resources than providing yet more tax breaks and loan guarantees for small business. … Given how many ‘small employers’ are doctors, lawyers, money managers, and other ready sources of campaign finance, there is a good probability they will continue to be pampered by politicians.” http://buswk.co/oQMMJ4
Community Matters 
When it comes to employer size I’m not sure we have a choice. Employee headcounts seem to be in decline – outsourcing, virtual integration, etc. The internet – where so much of our attention and entrepreneurial energy is these days – is the playground of smaller companies. Wikipedia, Craigslist, Facebook – they are all small companies that count on user-generated content. (Facebook has maybe 2000 employees? GM has 200,000.)
It was interesting to watch the pitches of business plans during Austin Startup Week. None of the entrepreneurs I saw was even thinking about creating a big company. Even if their most optimistic projections came true they were talking about having maybe 10 to 20 employees. It isn’t that most of these businesses will fail but one might turn into the next Dell, employing thousands. They don’t even aspire to be the next Dell, or even the next HomeAway. They’re just trying for a 10-20 person company.