Wealth & Money Quote by Peter Orszag

Orszag’s line reads like technocratic common sense, but it’s also a strategic reframing of what “helping small business” is supposed to mean. He’s pushing back on the familiar political ritual of treating small firms as fragile houseplants that need individualized perks: tax tweaks, compliance rollbacks, credit programs. Instead, he insists the decisive variable is brutally simple: customers. If demand collapses, no amount of boutique relief keeps the lights on.

The repetition of “back on its feet” matters. It’s recovery language, evoking an economy as a body that’s been knocked down - suggesting urgency, triage, and a moral logic for big intervention. Coming from an economist steeped in macro policy, the intent is to legitimize broad stimulus over targeted small-business carveouts. It’s also a subtle critique of sentimental entrepreneurship rhetoric. Orszag is saying: stop fetishizing the producer and look at the purchaser.

The subtext is political as much as analytical. In recession debates, “small business” often functions as a rhetorical shield for ideological preferences: tax cuts for the affluent, deregulation, hostility to public spending. Orszag tries to disarm that by defining the problem in Keynesian terms: aggregate demand drives hiring, investment, and survival. The blunt closer - “far more important than other factors” - is a line in the sand. It’s not that taxes or credit don’t matter; it’s that they’re second-order when the market itself has gone quiet.

Contextually, this fits a post-crisis argument: recovery policy isn’t charity for shopkeepers, it’s a bid to restart circulation - money moving, people buying, businesses producing.