O'Bummer, Jobs, Healthcare, and You

It's official: the US Chamber of Commerce issued a warning that small businesses are capping (stopping) their hiring before they get to 50 employees.

Why, you ask?

Because if their payroll reaches 50 employees, the company suddenly faces a $3,000 penalty PER YEAR, PER EMPLOYEE if they don't provide insurance coverage (the cost of which, by the way, has skyrocketed, and Prez O'Bummer didn't do a lick of anything to alleviate that). A modest company of 200 employees would then face $600,000 worth of penalties every single year. (And what for?)

THAT'S why.

That piece of information showed up on a Facebook group to which I belong, and I fired off the following comment in response:

Hehe, yep. We opened a new alternative medical practice and we probably could've been in the market for an office administrator by now, but because of all the expenses and red tape, decided not to. As a doctor, I'd rather work MY OWN front desk than have to jump through all the hoops and costs to hire someone else. That's something to think about.

Don't get me wrong, regulations and protections are necessary, but the government goes too far and ends up killing jobs. Withholding taxes (the other half of your Social Security/Medicare/FICA) are huge expenses themselves and end up being an incredible deterrent to hiring anyone. Then I would've had to post an OSHA poster (even for 1 employee) that I don't even have wall space for. Sounds petty, but we're that small of a business, and the smaller the business, the more cumbersome the regulations and the more difficult they are to meet, so the less likely we'll be offering any jobs.

Then so many people ask about benefits. Employers DO NOT have the money to just pay out tons of benefits right now, but the expectations are there (I posted a position for a licensed massage therapist, independent contract arrangement, and you would not believe some of the responses I got LOL).

And now this?? Damn right, businesses are going to stay under the threshold to avoid requirements. When a short-sighted public elects dumbass leadership, the businesses will (as a matter of survival) HAVE to learn how to adapt (i.e. find loopholes). But close the loopholes, permanently lose the job as the company moves overseas, as so many have already done. It's not our imagination that more people are clamoring for fewer jobs - the jobs are gone and they're NOT coming back, because people expect too much and companies have to get lean and mean.

So yeah, this means that jobs are going to get added back even MORE slowly, because companies will do what they can to survive, even if it means hiring fewer employees.

My gut hunch is that we'll end up like Spain, where no one's an employee anymore, but everyone's hired based on a series of short-term contracts, run end-to-end so that businesses can shave some expenses by not providing benefits, guaranteed hours, sick time, withholding expenses, or other employee-related regulations.

In the end, we as the American public, ultimately get what we collectively ask for.

So...how's that CHANGE working out for you?