NFL and Trickle Down
Football, Trickle Down Economics and When is the Right Time To Sell Your Business?
It often times takes more than just reading “between the lines” to get to the truth.
We process information in order to make decisions. Having information, however, is not the same as having the facts or the truth. Here are two examples from recent news articles. First, the news media is replete with articles dealing with NFL player suicides. Those articles site “as fact” that the suicide rate of NFL players is 6 times the national average. That statistic, however, was derived from a totally unsupported and unfounded claim by “GamesOver.org,” a nonprofit started by a former NFL player. The news media picked up on the statistic and, from that point on, each new article relied on the veracity of the previous article or articles without further research. The only extensive medical research conducted in this area (by Grant Iverson, a Harvard medical school researcher) actually found that NFL players have 59% fewer incidents of suicide than found among the comparable surrounding male population.
The second recent example of misinformation comes from the mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio. Mayor de Blasio, a self confessed socialist, is demonizing capitalism and in particular has struck out at the “trickle-down theory.” The press dutifully picks up on his comments and uses the “trickle-down theory” as the evil that prevents society from achieving income equality and espousing the need for income redistribution. Not unlike the statistics dealing with NFL player suicides, there never has been an economic theory of “trickle-down economics.” It was a concept created by socialists out of whole cloth as a talisman in favor of creating class warfare. Note that when discussing this concept Mayor de Blasio uses the term “giving to the rich” which is the language used to invoke higher taxes. The assumption is that if you are rich then someone must have given that money to you and you did not earn it (and that the government can spend it more efficiently than you can). The fiction of trickle-down economics is often confused with supply side economics. Supply side economics, as initially championed by Arthur Laffer, provides that tax cuts can generate more tax revenue for the government because it changes people’s behavior, causing more economic activity to take place, leading to more taxable income, as well as a faster growing economy.
The information business owners use to determine when and how to sell their business may also not accurately represent the facts or the truth. Note that the statistics that often get cited regarding activity in the M&A market may have nothing to do with their particular business. Most business owners do not have the time or the resources to discern if that M&A activity is in the same industry, is the same type of business, represents comparably sized businesses, or if the value metrics are the same value metrics that would be used for their business. In addition, business owners are often times not fully apprised of the steps that should be taken to properly market and sell their business. Instead they may rely on bits and pieces of information from various friends and associates.
My goal with any business owner considering the sale of his business is twofold; first, to make sure that he has complete, accurate and truthful information upon which to base his decision to sell his business; and second, to make sure he understands the steps that should be taken to market and sell the business for the greatest value. The M&A Law Firm will make sure that the most important business transaction in a business owner’s life is based on the right information and conducted in the right way to achieve the best results.
