I love the UK. But I’m glad I’m running my small business in the US | Gene Marks

I'm in London this month, and energy costs and inflation are hitting business owners hard. I don't envy my UK counterparts

My wife and I visit London a few times a year to see her family and our friends from university. We're here again this time for the entire month of January living as Londoners, staying in a rented house, taking out the trash - sorry, rubbish - and buying our food at Waitrose. The stay has given me time to observe, talk to people and walk around, and here's what I've learned: I need to stop complaining about how difficult it is to run a small business in the US. It's much harder to run a small business in the UK. Particularly now.

Imagine running a business where inflation isn't 6.5%, as it is the US, but 10.5%. The cost of living here is pushing British consumers to buy less - so much so that, according to a recent poll, two-thirds of them are planning on cutting their spending in 2023. In a nation of shopkeepers this is not insignificant.