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November 14, 2012 · By Howard Rich · 3 Comments
In Barack Obama’s first term the U.S. labor force shrank to a 30-year low. Job growth lagged behind population growth as millions gave up their search for gainful employment. Income levels receded, productivity sputtered and deficits soared — all in the name of “recovery.”
So what does Obama have planned for an encore? How does he intend to further “stimulate” the economy during his second term?
In his victory speech, Obama pledged he would continue pursuing “the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued during the only crisis worse than this one.”
That’s a truly frightening thought. In fact if left unchecked, Obama’s “bold, persistent experimentation” could very well wind up making this crisis every bit as bad as that one.
For example, atop Obama’s second term “to do” list is the full implementation of his signature first term accomplishment: ObamaCare.
Having secured another four years in the White House, Obama can now block any effort to overturn his socialized medicine law — although states can (thankfully) still stop much of its new spending if they reject ObamaCare’s “exchanges” and refuse its Medicaid enrollment expansions. For the sake of our future deficits, let’s hope they do so en masse.
One provision of ObamaCare that can no longer be stopped, however, is its “employer mandate.” While nowhere near as infamous as the “individual mandate” compelling citizen participation in the health insurance market, ObamaCare’s requirement that companies provide coverage to all employees working more than 30 hours a week will be a job killer nonetheless.
Not only will this mandate prevent job growth among small businesses, it will also result in fewer hours and less income for workers at larger companies. These are people struggling to make ends meet on limited income — people who cannot afford to lose these hours.
Last month Darden Restaurants — which employs 185,000 people at nearly 2,000 Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse and Red Lobster restaurants — revealed that it was scaling back many of its employees’ workweeks to 28 hours. Ordinarily such a move would result in high turnover and an influx of less-competent employees — but not in Obama’s economy.
This month Kroger — the grocer that employs 350,000 people — announced that existing part-time workers and new hires would be limited to working 28 hours per week.
“Kroger is doing this to avoid paying for full-time health care for employees who currently only receive part-time benefits,” one employee explains. ”And (so) they will not get hit with the $3,000 penalty.”
Darden and Kroger won’t be the only employers limiting hours in anticipation of ObamaCare’s crippling new levies. Millions across the country are likely to be affected by the mandate — and the vast majority of these will be lower middle class people who desperately need that extra income to make ends meet.
In other words ObamaCare’s “employer mandate” will wind up hurting the very people Obama claims to be fighting for — reducing their take-home pay at a time when loose monetary policy is already whittling away at the value of every dollar they earn.
The impact of all this lost income on our consumer economy — and on our soaring taxpayer tab — isn’t hard to predict. When people make less money, they spend less money — slowing economic activity. They also become more dependent on government handouts — further inflating a welfare tab that exceeded $1 trillion during the last fiscal year.
What can be done to stop these terrible outcomes? That’s what’s so depressing: Absolutely nothing — at least not over the course of the next four years. In fact, this is just the beginning of the “bold, persistent experimentation” that Americans are going to see from Obama during his second term. Just ask him.
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What do you have when you have a theory that is contradicted by observed scientific law? For one thing, you don't have much in the way of a viable scientific law.
Those words written in the early years of the 19th century by Sir Walter Scott referred to his story of a love triangle with all of the intrigue that ensued. But it could equally represent the corruption and deception rife within the Obama Administration, within the State Department, in the IRS and among far too many of the personnel and bureaucrats existing in an ever growing BIG government. But the big question remains why the State Department and the White House have spun such a web of lies over Benghazi.
So, how long will this system of floating money, fiat currency, and systemic debt last? None of us gets to live in the world we grew up in because the world moves too fast. Things change. What was science fiction yesterday is your cell phone today. One thing we can know for sure is that it isn’t over till it’s over. Yet from a realistic evaluation of the deep hole we have spent ourselves into the future isn’t what it used to be and if the world were perfect it wouldn’t be.
States started with a sales tax. Then they added a use tax to collect revenue that escapes the sales tax. Now the Senate has passed the Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA) to force companies in other states to collect the tax. Few individuals comply with the use tax, and where everyone is guilty, no one is guilty.
The only thing this Obama White House seems to generate is scandal. Well, here’s yet another to add to the growing list. In addition to the Benghazi cover-up, IRS targeting of political dissenters and the illegal seizure of media phone records, whistleblowers within DOJ have contacted Liberty Counsel to express grave concerns over this administration’s latest attack on freedom. Our sources have provided Liberty Counsel an internal DOJ document titled: “LGBT Inclusion at Work: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Managers.”
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"We don't intend to turn the Republican Party over to the traitors in the battle just ended. We will have no more of those candidates who are pledged to the same goals as our opposition and who seek our support. Turning the party over to the so-called moderates wouldn't make any sense at all." - Ronald Reagan, Nov. 10, 1964 |
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