Hello Obamacare, Goodbye Full Time Job

A persistent theme

In a broader context, this is a strange facet of the conservative outlook.

To the one, conservatives tried during this cycle to make an argument that President Obama does not believe in “American exceptionalism”, yet he is apparently the only president on record to specifically endorse the idea.

But setting that part aside, what is it about American exceptionalism? We're exceptionally what?

Because to hear our Republican neighbors tell it, our private sector is a fragile thing that needs all sorts of coddling to survive.

Hell, I thought part of our exceptionalism was the idea that Americans can overcome any problem we face.

Sure, we have a serious debt problem, both public and private, but we're Americans, damn it! We can climb out of this hole.

Sure, we have serious ideological diversity that can often be fractious and even impairing, but we're Americans, damn it! We can find a solution.

And this? Obamacare? We're supposed to be leaders of industry and innovation, yet the model is built so that the basic necessities of human existence—food, shelter, medicine, electricity, &c.—must necessarily be denied some portion of our population, or else our “exceptional” system cannot function? We're Americans, damn it! Who here is seriously going to tell me we can't figure out how to make human dignity work from sea to shining sea?

Anyone? Anyone?

 

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That trend started when the private, competitive insurance market started raising premiums by double digit percentages every year or so.

Long before Obama's election. For more of the same, go back to Reagan, and see the tactics and justifications employed to bust or exclude unions. The term you are looking for is "class warfare".

And it didn't start in Massachusetts, where Romneycare (a far more accurate term, if the Heritage Foundation is to remain uncredited) was first established.

The other side of that coin, btw, is the equally serious trend of increase in required hours from employees, the required overtime rather than new hiring - the health insurance premiums normal for full time employees for seventy years now are fixed costs per capita, and have been burgeoning so fast and so hard that the inefficiencies and blowbacks from overworking people (back in the 60s the guys with the stop watches found that anything over 40 hours a week usually stops producing extra profit - any extra profit at all - after about two weeks) are covered by the large savings in benefits.

Or so management seems to think, in many US industries.

And you believe them?

You may be right, actually: another similar item in the news recently is rich people announcing they are going to reduce their incomes below 250k, thereby depriving us all of their valuable services, to avoid falling into the high marginal tax bracket Obama proposes.

As our long and continuing experience with Texas oil billionaires, pizza tycoons, Ayn Rand devotees heading hedge funds, Dilbert cartoons, and the like, has shown: these guys are in some ways quite startlingly stupid. Eisenhower was right about that.

 

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Right Wingers never want to talk about the role of business interests in the changing landscape of the economy. See no evil, etc.

Dead right. An arsenal of diversionary tactics, propaganda, sniping, and hit and runs.

(That they're going to lay off and cut back hours to pay insurance costs.) The nutty corollary to this is, if they could cut staff without reducing income, they would have already done so. Go figure.

I heard that. Horsefeathers. Let me see: I get to take $X dollars home if I earn $250K, I get to take home $X + $Y if I earn $260K, so I'll settle for the $X because . . . (what? they don't want to feed the kitty?). . . This is where the lies and propaganda will backfire. The drive to take home more money will prevail, and another myth will bust inside its own bubble.

BTW Obama had to explain this to them. It was like a first grade teacher talking to the class. He explained, "You pay the same rate on the $250k you earn as if you hadn't earn more. Then, for the amounts above $250K, you pay a little more." the need for him to even have to say this is explained by your remark:

Hah hah. I like that. Well, madanthony?? Kind of leaves you in the dust.

 

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In fact he embodies the idea himself, but thanks for mentioning it. It reminds me of yet another reason why I finally like a sitting President.

Hah hah! Pearls to swine, my friend, pearls to swine.

Don't mind us, we're just rolling on the floor. Gawd, you should write for Bill Maher.

On second thought, that last remark has a bite to it that kind of gets my hackles up. Yeah, what is the model? I mean, aside from the exceptional American, what the hell does a Right Winger regard as a human being at all? That's been the perennial burr in my saddle with those bums.

 

These captains of industry are quickly backing off their previous Obamacare comments and threats. According to Forbes, which is definitely not a liberal rag, estimates that John Schnatter, CEO Papa John’s, overestimated Obamcare costs some 3-5 fold. Forbes estimated Obamacare costs per pie to be 4 cents versus the 11 plus cents per pie Schnatter quoted. Additionally, my guess is that most Papa John’s franchisees are not required to provide healthcare insurance for their employees as small businesses have exemptions under Obamacare and qualify for federal premium assistance in obtaining healthcare insurance for their employees should they decide to provide insurance for their employees.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickung...e-and-give-health-insurance-to-all-employees/

 

joe: Schnatter whining about adding 11¢ to a $5 pizza -- in exchange for the health and welfare of the people that make him rich, is made even more absurd by noting that he already has a 44,000 sq ft home with a 22-car garage. What, one might ask, does such a man buy next, if not something that celebrates the real value of their hard work?

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It won't be hard for Obamacare to save money.
Americans have been royally ripped off by drug companies for decades.
You have been paying many times as much as the rest of the world for drugs.
Reason: Insurance companies are forced to buy them no matter what the cost.
In the UK, we can refuse to buy drugs until they are a fair price.
The drug companies play hard ball for a while then they give in.

 

Same here in Oz. Goes to show how the lies and fear mongering are costing everyone in US plenty. So much for the republicans caring about the people which go up to make that great republic! Hypocrites and crooks have no conscience. We have found that out in no uncertain way these last few years of elctioneering lies and fear mongering hypocrisy and cynicism from those treasonous sabotaging/obstructing repub/conserves/teaparty woeful excuses for human beings pretending they care about the truth or anyone else but themselves.

Ah, the internet. The great leveler and discoverer/communicator of political chicanery!

 

The latest casualties of Obamacare

Another example of Obamacare making life worse for those it is supposed to help:

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http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013...s-obamacare-for-cutting-back-employees-hours/

 

Fortunately only a few months remain before reality sets in and this kind of stuff will be exposed for what it really is. The fear mongering will end in a year with a big dose of reality.

 

Cool! Another bitter, angry republican who is willing to fire people to "prove" Obamacare is bad.

This just in! CNN lays off 100 people because of the Boehner's refusal to negotiate a debt deal. "It's simple finances," says station manage Tim Kasey. "With Boehner's failure to compromise, the future of the economy is in doubt, and we just can't afford to keep extra people on."

 

Awesome, I'm sure the employees will appreciate being screwed out of health care. Should do wonders for morale. I would be wary of eating there in the future, not as a political statement but because who knows what unhappy workers are doing to the food.

 

The Wendy's jobs weren't full time in the first place - pace the thread title, which was of course dishonest from the git go.

It is a bit strange how much trouble the wingnuts have simply retailing physical fact these days- dates, amounts, durations, sequences of events, who did what and when.

 

The real question is WHY aren't those employees out starting their own franchises? Or opening pizza parlors?

You say THEY made HIM rich. OK, that's one way to put it. That HE saved their arses by given them a job is yet another. He's paying to put their children through college. Or paying off their mortgages.

Thanks to our Prussian model of Government Schools he doesn't need them, there's plenty more low-skilled cogs where they came from. They OTOH need him or someone like him as their 12 years of Government School have let them bereft of the ability to start their own small pizza businesses, and has regulated them out of the unfree -market, and left then with only the barest ability to function as the lowest skilled labor in the government regulated market that has little competition in regards for the only thing they have left to sell; their labor.

Thank The GODS he's there giving them employment or thanks to Government they'd be left to starve on the street.

And you know what the funny thing is? HE is creating prosperity. Yeah, that's right. Each free trade from their labor to his customers buying pizza adds to the capital and prosperity of society. Imagine if medicine was the same, we'd have fMRI shops for cheap in every town and city.

 

Lack of adequate capital flow in the form of loans caused by the recent excesses of Wall Street caused by a Las Vegas money for nothing economy caused by, at it's root, the end of the age of cheap energy. The irony is that fast food is itself driving up the cost of health care.

 

Jobs that don't even provide basic health insurance aren't paying for anyone's mortgage or putting anyone's children through college. In the US, anyway.

So they can sell each other pizzas? Do you think there are enough opportunities for pizza franchises to provide one for every pizza shack employee in town?

Partly because guys like palace boy there have tied up all the capital and squeezed out the small competition, there aren't. They kept more than they earned, due to malfeasance on the part of the various governments involved, and now the rich guys's fellow citizens, neighborhoods, employees, and governments, are short of the wealth and money their efforts produced - these few got it all.

What could have been decent schools is 22 car garages, what could have been health care for employees is monstrous wastes of acreage. GDP is lower, living standards are lower, and guys like palace boy are not even enjoying themselves - they're all pissed off about even the suggestion they pay for this society that make them rich.

 

Agreed

 

Probably because those employees were not born the sons and daughters of successful business owners as was Schnatter. Not everyone has a parent who can send them to college. Not everyone has the ability or the inclination to own or manage a business. Is it your position that if people are not blessed with privileged birth or abilities that they should not have healthcare?

You obviously have not worked as a fast food worker making minimum wage. Schnatter is not paying to put his employees through college. He is paying them so he can get rich and richer still. Schnatter could not have accomplished what he has accomplished without his employees. One would think that he would have an interest in insuring that his employees and their families had access to adequate healthcare. Healthy workers are much more productive that ill workers. Happy workers are much more productive compared to unhappy workers.

Seriously? The market for unskilled labor is very competitive. That is why their wages are low. At that end of the labor spectrum there is a lot of competition for low wage jobs. I suggest you take a drive down any urban highway and count the number of restaurants. The restaurant industry is very competitive.

So let me get this right, on one hand you are complaining about the standard of living. And in the next breath you are defending the oligarchy that takes advantage of the lower classes. It sounds like hypocrisy to me.

And just what do you mean by prosperity? The man has certainly accumulated a great deal of wealth…not so much for his employees. And fortunately for the rest of us, we do not live in your idealized world in which we allow people to starve in our streets. We have a number of government run social programs to prevent that travesty. And we have made another values commitment in this country with the recent passage of Obamacare, people should not be denied healthcare because they are the working poor in this country.

Again I just find it so amazingly contradictory that in one post you are wailing about what you perceive to be a declining standard of living for the average Joe and Jane and in the next you are complaining about things getting better for the average Joe and Jane (e.g. universal healthcare) and getting better as a result of government intervention – the very government you hate so much.

 

you'll get no disagreement from me here. Which is why I argue for currency competition and no income tax. If each community had access to their own currency to trade in, free from government interference, then there'd never have been a so-called Great Recession soon-to-be-Mother of All Depressions.

 

This argument is similar in many respects to the NRA gun control arguement. If guns are used for mass murder, make sure everyone gets a gun. Deregulation caused the Great Recession so let's do more deregulation. The argument is just stupid, pure and simple. Further, it has been pointed out to you on numerous occassions that there is currency competiton today. It happens every day, currencies compete with each other across the world - just tune into any business channel.