Take a look at this:

[M]ost of those 20 million nonemployers earn very little money, that 65% of them are home-based businesses "providing small incomes for mostly part-time owners." About half of sole proprietorships had less than $10,000 in receipts in 2005 and 81.8% had receipts of $50,000 or less.

Now, I pulled this snippet out of this week's article on small business financing research because I wanted to bring your attention to those low, low numbers.

A lot of economists would look at those numbers and say that these are marginal businesses that don't even need to be discussed in the context of the U.S. economy. Individually or collectively, they are simply to small to matter.

Some of them would even say that they are a drag on the economy and should be discouraged as an impediment to overall growth. These misguided folks should instead be encouraged to go out and find a ‘real' job.