Early Sunday morning, I was driving down Santa Cruz Avenue, which is the main retail drag of Menlo Park, and it was so sad. Only a few months ago, this was one of the most affluent and ritzy retail strips in the Bay Area, and yet a dozen different places were utterly empty and abandoned with a For Lease sign on the front. It was like a ghost town, even though it is surrounded by thousands of millionaires.

All of us known small business owners who have been struck down by the shutdown, such as barbers, gym owners, party centers, restaurants, and so forth. In an effort to help, the government has thrown trillions of dollars at the problem, including a multi-hundred-billion dollar SBA “Paycheck Protection Program” designed to help employees keep their jobs while their employers are struggling.