Loading ...I remember when that trend started, a long time ago. People were quitting their jobs and started buying and selling used cars. Dodge Darts, Plymouth Dusters, Chevy Novas’ etc. You were allowed to do I think 5 cars a year without a dealers license. They flipped a lot more than 5 cars too. Nobody was counting.
They would park them in shopping center parking lots with for sale signs on them. Later on the licensed dealers complained, because they had overhead, and cops started ticketing them. Same thing happened with small part time gun dealers. The big dealers complained (protectionism) and they pulled all the licenses for at home car and gun dealers. You now had to rent a separate place of business.
Many others went into other types of tax free cash self employment. It didn’t pay to have a job unless of course you had a union or government job. The private sector small business jobs were worthless. The owners didn’t make that much profit themselves with all the overhead and taxes so were very stingy with pay raises.