By Kim Lavine

Can $1,200 change the world? Can $1,200 start a revolution? A revolution of entrepreneurship? Can it provide a kick-start in America’s fat consumer butt, telling us to get off our couch and invest in dreams instead of big screen TV’s? Is a simple call to action all we need? Are words really enough to inspire optimism and sweeping change across America and even the world? Can moms actually be the leaders, generals and soldiers in this revolution, without firing a shot, threatening only with tough love? You’d better believe it!

Congress approved an economic stimulus package this year, designed to kick-start the economy by giving Americans tax rebates of anywhere from $600 per individual to $1200 per family. The hope was that we’d run to Best Buy and the mall—where we’d make discretionary purchases that power a consumer economy—instead of using it to pay for gas and groceries. The question is, where will this money really go?

Will it really benefit the economy in the long run, or will it just produce the sugar-rush equivalent to feeding kids chocolate doughnuts for dinner, resulting in a spike of energy followed by a hangover as we wake up to confront America’s mounting credit card debt and the loss of jobs in an increasingly global economy.

Let’s face it, almost everything they’re hoping we’ll buy with that money, including TV’s, toys and apparel, is made in China. In 2007, the trade deficit with China jumped by 10.2 percent to $256.3 billion. This was the largest gap ever recorded with a single country, despite all our complaints and threats about those endless recalls of lead-tainted toys.

Sure, we all have an opportunity to share in corporate profits by owning stock in Best Buy or Mattel, but as an entrepreneur, I’m too busy putting every dollar I have into my business, to create tomorrow’s wealth and employment opportunities today.

So I ask again: who is benefiting from a consumer economy, where the government is willing to add to the $9.2 trillion federal deficit by giving us money they’re hoping we’ll spend on consumer items, mostly being made in China? That money is going to go through our system faster than prune juice through a baby!

While the stimulus package also includes business tax breaks in the form of 50% deductions on any capital equipment or software purchases in 2008, is the average small business owner really in the position to make these purchases in the first place? It also allows for increased deductions of expenses—up to $800,000 a year—but as my CPA once flatly put it to me, “you gotta have income to take deductions.”

What does this mean for women-owned businesses—or 40% of all business in America—which only 3% have annual revenues of a million dollars or more?

Most of us are on the frontlines of the recession, feeling the hurt faster and deeper than any major corporations do, which have assets stored away for such contingencies. With 11 million women entrepreneurs in this country, and women starting businesses today at two times the rate of men, how is this policy exactly helping us?

What if, instead, we did something really revolutionary, as suggested to me by a multi-tasking mom named Katherine in Minnesota, who is just as concerned about fostering entrepreneurialism over consumerism as she is with starting her own business and taking care of her sick daughter home from kindergarten with a fever? What if we took a leadership stand and encouraged investment in entrepreneurship instead of consumerism? What if we used these $1,200 checks to provide micro-loans or grants to start-up businesses, in exchange for tax-deductions.

Or maybe we do something really revolutionary and allow average individuals the opportunity to invest in $1,200 increments in start-ups, giving them the same equity and tax advantages that private equity investors like Angels and venture capitalists enjoy, making an average 30% return on their investments!

Heck, we’re not above Angel investors.

What if we took the $20 billion a year available through them for business start-up, and created a national program modeled on a new one put together by the State of Wisconsin, which gives them immediate tax breaks of 12.5% a year for two years on all money they invest in start-ups?

Then maybe we can create all these companies that create jobs and wealth opportunities through investment opportunities that America is dreaming about, before their fabulous success and sheer economy of scale takes their manufacturing to China, or wherever the next developing manufacturing stage is.

Or maybe, just maybe, Americans, when confronted with the wealth and diversity of new products available in a marketplace stimulated by a renaissance of American entrepreneurship, with new platforms to deliver them to consumers, will embrace this new revolutionary culture of expression, rejecting once and for all the boring commodity of product coming out of China.

Now that’s a revolution!

Are you with me?

Your Friend in the Business™

Kim Lavine

Watch Kim's Media Highlights http://tinyurl.com/mommymillionairemediahighlight

Kim is the bestselling author of MOMMY MILLIONAIRE, President of Mommy Millionaire Media—a multi-media company focused on developing traditional and new media opportunities in publishing, TV, radio, social networking, and digital formats—and of Green Daisy—a lifestyle brand focused on balancing life with love™. Identified as America’s expert on inspirational business advice, Kim has appeared on The Today Show, Rachel Ray, NBC & ABC news, CNN,CNBC, NPR, Oprah & Friends Radio Network, LifetimeTV.com, and featured in USA Today, Country Living, Guideposts, Women's World, and American Babyto name a few. Kim is on a mission to empower people to follow their dreams, inspiring them with hope, honesty and faith.

"Everything begins with a search for something better--a dream, an idea, the
courage to face a challenge, and the passion to get it done.
You can do it.
Believe in yourself.
Change the rules.
Join the revolution."
From MOMMY MILLIONAIRE, by Kim Lavine