An employer tells his employees what will happen to them if Barack Obama is re-elected.
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An employer tells his employees what will happen to them if Barack Obama is re-elected.
Comments are closed.
And 90% of the comments on that piece totally miss his point.
Heck, most of the accompanying text in the article missed the point.
Sounds like he’s threatening to go Galt if Obama wins. I doubt he’d be the only one.
I agree, he is going the John Galt approaches.
Those commenters make me wonder about America’s future.
Wow. What a powerful, moral statement. And what moral pip squeaks in the comments section…
John Galt, call your office!
We are looking to hire several Customer Service folks that would be able to work out of their home. We will wait until after the election to make that decision. If Obama wins, we will not be hiring. We will just slow down our operations
At least he’s telling his employees ahead of time.
Compare this to President Obama telling Lockheed Martin that they should not inform their workers of pending layoffs until after the election.
Thee CEO of Lacks Enterprises in Grand Rapids, MI was just a succinct: http://tinyurl.com/9m7kzvq
That guy is just a racist pig that just wants to be spiteful because he doesn’t care about the plight of women, children, minorities, the elderly, and gays, who are protected by the social safety net. He wants them at soup kitchens like Romney does.
OK, if this was supposed to be sarcastic, you failed. We really can’t figure out whether or not this was sarcasm, of ir you’re a left-wing moron troll.
It’s definitely sarcasm. The question is, was it intended to be?
Only a drooling idiot would think taxing companies more would result in higher pay for employees.
Funny … those soup kitchens and other private-sector charitable efforts are very often more efficient and effective in actually helping people, than the economic-crack-dealers of government assistance.
Perhaps we should be rendering less unto Caesar, and take care of these problems neighbor-to-neighbor instead of Caesar cutting checks on our behalf?
Today it came out that Darden Restaurants [ Bahama Breeze,The Capital Grille, Eddie V’s Prime Seafood, LongHorn Steakhouse, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Seasons 52] which numerically is in the top 30 employers in the country; is moving as many of its employees as it can from full time to part time. The new weekly schedule will be 29 hours. At 30 hours, mandatory Obamacare penalties will kick in next year. This also involves cancelling their health insurance program, which had partial coverage for part time employees.
Employees can thank Buraq Hussein Obama.
Subotai Bahadur
It’s also interesting as how the CEO of Darden Restaurants is a big Obama supporter. They also are supporters of Michelle’s anti-obesity campaign and was one of those who received a waiver from the ObamaCare program last year.
Dear Mr. Simberg:No, David Siegel is just Elizabeth Warren turned inside out. Don’t believe me? Warren said:
“”There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own – nobody. … You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless – keep a big hunk of it.”
How is that different from ol’ Dave’s self-pitying “I gave you all jobs so you could enjoy weekends while I couldn’t for 42 years, poor me.” No Dave. Businesses hire employees because they judge that the services/producing the employee turns out will equal the total cost of the employee, and even more. The bet doesn’t always pay, but it does often enough to make a free enterprise system work.
Is Dave going to shut down his business, burn all the assets, and turn all his employees onto the street, righteously saying “They’ll be sorry, but it’ll be too late.” I doubt it. At worst, Dave will sell his enterprise to someone else and cash in that way. The new owners may fire many of the employees, but I doubt if they will drive out all, howling “Begone, for the ingratitude you showed Dave!” No. I find it hard to understand how anyone could work for Dave for long. He has no respect for others, which may be why lost at trial a sexual harassment suit. He has the legal ownership, but he wouldn’t be where he is if many of his employees didn’t work hard for a company they had pride (and maybe some ownership interest—I can’t tell if Dave owns 100%) in. Whether Dave can admit it or not, he didn’t build his firm all by himself. Take him away, and the firm would not exist. But take everyone else away and it wouldn’t exist either. All his letter has done is provide GAWKER with ammunition to fire at Romney, and ground the old Marxist “Property is theft, class warfare is the answer,” shtick that is The Won’s creed more firmly. He didn’t even have the energy to write the letter on his own, but used a template. And what sort of man starts building a dream house while his children are still in school? One who thinks he can have it all? We see enough of those types on Wall Street, types who do more damage to the free enterprise system than most.
No. The Won must be canned at the polls come 6 November. Dave’s letter has harmed that goal.
Sincerely yours,
Gregory Koster
Businesses hire employees because they judge that the services/producing the employee turns out will equal the total cost of the employee, and even more.
Absolutely true and totally misses the point.
he didn’t build his firm all by himself
This is a strawman. Nobody, even those with the T-shirts, is saying he did. But what he did do demands acknowledgement. Absolutely demands it. Not to do so is the folly. All the resources that came together and became his business didn’t happen by some random darwinian evolution. That, he did.
Are you suggesting, like Liz Warren, that he didn’t earn his money? This regardless of any misguided ideas he may have (you and I, being human, have our own misguided ideas.) Is there some reason he can’t spend his money any foolish way he likes?
If so, that would equate you and Liz, rather than the businessman, and be one of the reasons her insidious argument gets any traction at all.
When you stitch little bits of truth together to try to falsify a bigger truth you are making yourself a disciple of the father of the lie. Liz’s argument is satanic and evil. You would support it?
Nice response, Ken!
How could they possibly argue this? If you don’t believe entrepreneurs earned their money, Reality proves you wrong! To insist otherwise is to invoke Marx, and not even Brad DeLong does that these days.
I think what they’re really trying to say is that entrepreneurs, people whose job it is to see opportunities others don’t, pull together resources others can’t all while paying payroll, taxes and utility bills are, as a class, so stupid that they don’t even know they need the infrastructure they’re paying for.
They can’t even claim they aren’t willing to pay for it by not wanting their taxes to go up — marginal federal spending goes straight into Big Bird’s pocket, not fixing chuck-holes — those are bond measures. The Fed’s can’t even pass a budget; no sane person would give them more money.
What guys like you can’t understand are the jobs that never get created in the first place. I’m self employed and could expand my operations such that I had to hire someone, but I will not do that because employees just plain have too much rights compared to their productivity. Employees have a right to sick pay, family leave pay, unemployment pay, etc, and if that’s not enough they can threaten to sue me and make me pay no matter how innocent I am. It is an incentive problem, a risk problem, a contingent liability problem, and most of all a problem that amounts to the fact that this sick society and the assholes in it do not deserve support.
It’s the typical shit. “I get more money because I work more hours.” Even if he worked 24/7 it wouldn’t explain earning 10x more let alone 100x or 1000x more than other employees. The reason he earns more is because he is closer to his clients money than most of his employees are. So the housing market imploded and he thinks Obama is the reason for him having less work to do. That is rich. Then he gets chaffed at those people who got in debt to buy a house but those people constitute most of his clients. If they didn’t he wouldn’t be facing a winding down in activity now.
I once read the story of a guy in a news site. He said he had made two fortunes and lost them both. He was in the process of making his third. He said both times he had the same run. He was in the construction business and both times when he was at the zenith of his wealth the housing market imploded and he got caught holding a lot of houses which he couldn’t sell anymore. Then he hit cash flow problems and lost everything. Twice. BTW I read this post around 5 years ago so I can guess what happened to him this third time.
Around every 20-30 years the housing market gets depressed. Before the 2008 financial crisis there was the S&L crisis. Heck there are financial theories about this like the so called Kuznets swings. Marx had already pointed out in the XIXth century that capitalist economies have boom and bust cycles. Depressions will always happen its the way the market self regulates. This guy got caught with his pants down when the bubble burst and is blaming Obama for not diversifying his holdings at the proper time.
It’s not his hours that get him more money than his employees, it’s that he’s built the something they work for. The hiours he worked explains why he was successful at building it when so many others were not, and the explanation is incomplete because most people don’t know why they have such an edge on their competion, and attribute it to familiar things. In all likelihood, it’s not that he workers harder, it’s that he works smarter, and he works smarter because of little insights he’s gained by working harder. Basically time on task and focus.
But that also gives him the insight to know how Obama’s policies will affect his business and thus his employees, who he pays. Based on all his hard-won experience, he’s warning his employee’s that Obama’s policies will result in less pay for them, which is both logical and backed up by every bit of data the government collects.
“So the housing market imploded and he thinks Obama is the reason for him having less work to do.”
He would be correct to connect the two since the housing market implosion was due to the mortgage practices put in place and protected by leftist social engineers like Obama.
Contrary to you I have little doubts than even without subsidized housing for low income citizens in depressed neighborhoods there would still have been a housing bubble and it would have still burst and we still would have had a depression. Interest rates are at historic low levels just like before the Great Depression. This induces all consumers to spend money they don’t have. All it takes is a tiny hiccup to send the whole system cascading down.
subsidized housing for low income citizens in depressed neighborhoods
What a phlegm-filled wheeze. How exactly do you characterize government-forced bank lending to people who can’t pay the money back a “subsidy”?
This induces all consumers to spend money they don’t have.
Well then, we clearly need a new government agency. The Consumer Spending Non-Inducement Department. Motto: Don’t Spend Money Unless You Have It. Funded by a tax on banks who make loans to people who can’t pay the money back. What could go wrong.
This induces all consumers to spend money they don’t have.
[turning down am radio]
You’re right, nobody can manage to have self control when there is an opportunity to spend money they don’t have!
[turns up Dave Ramsey]
Apparently lots of people. Like I have said here before I am debt free, don’t have a house (yet), and bought my car with cash. But I know not everyone is like that.
The reason to allow “markets” to function is not because “markets” always give us exactly what we want when we want it at a price we enjoy paying.
The purpose of the market is to display as much economic REALITY to the market participants as possible so that they don’t do exactly what the poor sap you mention does: make a lot of malinvestments because interest rates and the money supply are manipulated and NOT NOT NOT set by any friggin’ markets!!! If the value of the money is not set by the real market, then the entire economy evaluated in terms of the funny money will break down and ultimately crash when the division of labor is completely destroyed.
All economies have boom and bust periods, even socialist ones. I am not sure why this is always treated as some form of epiphany that should lead to the death of capitalism.
BTW, socialist economies are mostly bust.
Marx noticed capitalism had boom and bust cycles. He proposed his system as an alternative supposedly to prevent busts which he saw as a problem which caused needless human suffering. IMO the bust part of the cycle is a necessary trait to shake down poor performing entities and excess capacity. Without the bust the economic system will perform in a more inefficient fashion.
However the Soviet implementation of the system proposed by Marx was more successful than a lot of people give it credit for. In the early stages the Soviet Union had economic growth rates only equaled historically by Meiji Japan and Imperial Germany. This was achieved with a lot more strife and human suffering than in either of those earlier cases but still it must not be underestimated what a centrally planned economy can do especially in the case of developing countries where there is next to no infrastructure for a market to be able to perform in any reasonable fashion. This is also why China is performing so well economically. They did open up their economy to market forces substantially but the state reserved itself total control over energy, transportation, telecommunications, banking. I have little doubts they would have much worse growth rates without state control over those sectors and in my opinion were they not in control of banking their economy would have entered a deep recession already since the consumer markets they export to are depressed at the moment. Their government tried to ride out the 2008 recession by funding a construction binge (big mistake) and we are only starting to see the cracks on their economy now.
I’m a bottom up sort of guy so I still think market based approaches are superior to any centrally planned system in the long run. However top down centrally planned systems do have their uses and shouldn’t be discarded. In fact I suspect we will see a rise of such systems again all around the globe. It happened in the interbellum when a lot of countries tried to reduce their dependency on imports and when currencies collapsed to the point where many trade agreements were done via bartering. Even in China today there are people making a backlash towards the more insidious types of centralized planning to the point where it may trigger a societal collapse not too dissimilar to their horrible Cultural Revolution period.
My wife and I own a small business.
We were recently forced by the Department of Labor to convert all our private contractors into full employees. This would have put our business over the 50-employee limit beyond which we would have been legally obligated to provide them with Obamacare. The per-employee premium for health insurance would have bankrupted our company. This would also have driven our per-employee labor cost through the roof. We would have been obligated to triple our charges to our customers in order to make a profit, which would have put us out of business. (Our competitors operate illegally on a cash basis.)
Our response: we fired half our workforce. We had to, in order to stay in business.
What’s ironic is that most of our employees are black (and voted for You Know Who). Many of them are ex-cons and/or parolees. More than a few were homeless when we hired them. Their prospects are, shall we say, limited. We believe in giving people like these a second chance. That’s why we hire them. We gave them a job — and, which is more, self-respect.
Now they have no job. Now they’re on the streets.
So, thanks, Uncle Sam. Thanks, President Obama. Mission accomplished. You just put thirty more people on the dole. Progress!
From one American to another, thank you and your wife for doing what it takes to make America great. The demagogues would target you as evil to the great shame of those that voted them into office. We have got to get them out of office from the federal government, state government, local government, schools and media. They all need to die metaphorically. Die, every one. The lack of education in this country is going to kill us all.
Well said, B.
I guess I could follow that with some sarcastic snark handsomely-crafted to mimic the tone of our Usual Suspects about, say, what a horrible person you are for not providing everything they think employers should. Or maybe provide my own earnest story about why I’m not expanding despite profitability and projected market share?
But honestly, that all seems a tad “done” and frivolous at this point. It’s like a death that’s “too soon” to mock, where “soon” = “now” in real-time.
We would love to offer health insurance to our employees, and in fact attempted to do so at one point. Unfortunately, even the least-expensive per-employee premium we were able to locate would, when added to federal withholding of various kinds, push the cost of labor above the price we have to charge in order to realize even the slimmest profit.
For the record, my wife and I have no health insurance of any kind. We pay cash for all our health care. And since cash is in short supply these days…
As Catholics, we must make sure that our business practices conform to the teaching of the Church. Bearing this in mind, we have always made it our policy to pay our employees as much as the business could stand, not as little as we could legally get away with. The same goes for benefits. It’s not that we don’t want to offer benefits. We simply cannot. Our employees do unskilled, low-wage work and their labor simply does not generate enough value to allow it. And, as I mentioned before, our competitors operate by paying their employees in under-the-table cash. We are a legal business and operate legally — which is why the Department of Labor came after us and not our competitors.
Whenever the government places another burden on private employers, the load falls upon the lowest-paid and least-rehireable employees. This fact goes unrecognized by do-gooder liberals. My wife and I are enterprising people and will always find a way to survive and prosper no matter what the government does, but our employees depend upon wage-labor to survive.
Thanks to liberal do-gooderism, thirty of these vulnerable people are on the street with no income. Another victory for the Party That Loves the Poor.
The whole idea of offering “benefits” is a large part of the problem. Why can’t employees just be compensated with money, dammit? Why this bs about this particular nice thing or that one, as if people could never acquire these things without the employer holding their hand or the communist government mandate it?
Benefits provided by an employer are usually tax free, while if they were paid the same amount in cash, they’d be subject to income taxes.
Before WWII, few if any US employers paid for medical insurance or most of our current set of benefits. With the war, there were shortages of skilled labor. To prevent companies from competing on salary which would drive up the costs to government (especially on the common “cost-plus” contracts), the government mandated wage and price controls. To attract employees, employers began offering benefits including medical insurance. One of the big US employers at the time were the Kaiser shipyards. Today, Kaiser survives as part of the Kaiser-Permanente managed care firm. It’s more profitable than building ships and takes a lot fewer employees.
Hey B. Lewis,
“Only by abandoning black American culture and adopting European-American cultural values (or Confucian culture, or some other functional culture) can black Americans hope to see any improvement in their lot.”
Right?
Ah bob, still seeing racists whenever someone mentions business, yet Communism isn’t Marxism, right?
B. Lewis is a racist. Just ask him.
Therefore what?
Well, Leland suggested that I was seeing racists where there are none, so the answer to your question, Titus, is “Therefore, Leland is wrong to suggest that”. But that’s just my reply to Leland, it wasn’t why I originally commented.
I commented because B. Lewis was discussing his theory of how people can better themselves (and making himself out to be a pretty great guy), and since it all sounded so good, I wanted him to state his complete theory of how people can better themselves (and give us a full understanding of his character.)
Oh. I thought you were trying to make some kind of logical argument. Never mind.
Bob-1: “Only by abandoning black American culture and adopting European-American cultural values (or Confucian culture, or some other functional culture) can black Americans hope to see any improvement in their lot.”
Right?
Not just “right”. Damn right.
“Our competitors operate illegally on a cash basis.” I’ve started to wonder if this statement is really at the root of a whole host of problems. Obviously, government over-regulation and over-taxation drive many people to operate (illegally) on a cash basis. Illegal immigration would be much less of an issue (I’m not saying a non-issue), I think, if everybody was subject to the same level of taxation and regulation. Is it right that the fast-food worker has to get minimum wage (I think minimum wage laws reduce employment) and pay payroll taxes while the gang working on that roof over there is being paid cash and whatever rate the contractor can get away with and pay no taxes? And, oh yeah, those roof workers may well be collecting unemployment and food stamps as well. People don’t get married because they can’t ‘afford’ it, meaning one partner would lose government benefits. It’s crazy. Actually, it’s people acting in their rational self interest among crazy regulation, strange enforcement, and taxation. What we need is sane regulation, benefits, and taxation which encourages legal businesses and discourages illegal businesses, with good enforcement. (‘Good enforcement’ doesn’t mean that government regulators see themselves as the enemies of business, which seems to be the case in many places. It seems like legal businesses in a sane tax-and-regulation environment should have nothing to fear and in fact welcome and be glad of government enforcement against illegal competitors.) It should NOT be a disadvantage to conduct business legally, ideally because the burden of being legal is minimal. There should NOT be an incentive for customers to conduct business with illegal operations rather than legal ones. But the creep is always to add more and more regulation and taxes making it more and more attractive to operate outside those legal bounds altogether.
Paragraphs, man, paragraphs!
“It should NOT be a disadvantage to conduct business legally, ideally because the burden of being legal is minimal. There should NOT be an incentive for customers to conduct business with illegal operations rather than legal ones….” You need to realize that this not a bug in the liberal/communist program; it is a feature, and a prime goal for the Chicago Thug Communist Criminals that have done an amazing job destroying America from within with the support of most of the idiots who live here.
Part of the problem is just that people like making rules without a real appreciation for the power of simplicity. Instead of lawyers, perhaps physicists should write our laws. I’d like to say programmers instead of physicists but most are worse than lawyers.
Local conservative talk show* had this as a topic this morning. Main thing was asking if this guy was pressuring or informing his employees. I called in and said he had a right to send the letter, but his style was overblown and not credible. I suggested he should communicate with his employees rather than rant. I got cut off. My point that he was talking at, rather than to his employees probably didn’t get through.
We need to get message out with integrity or we give a moral foothold to the people we are arguing with
*Bud Hediger 540 AM Orlando
I got affected by this sort of thing about three years ago, in the UK. A little while before that, the downturn happened and I lost 25% of sales in a period of a week (around the beginning of November 2008, presumably when people realised they would have trouble paying for Christmas). About the beginning of October 2009 my local council decided to cause local chaos (very local, within 200 yards of my shop) with an unneeded road scheme that took 2 months instead of the week a competent drive-laying gang would have taken. So I decided that someone, maybe more than one, had to go. At the time, I had 5 staff, all part-time, one as temporary replacement for another one of the 5 who was on maternity leave. (Yes, I know…)
Now comes the problem. In the UK, downsizing of this nature takes at least 2 consultations at least 2 weeks apart with the entire staff to explain the problem and invite suggestions; and then when someone is let go the reason why it’s them has to be explained. Get any of this wrong and one is open to legal action. As it happens, one of them is married to a local council union organiser, so if there was any room for such action it would have been taken.
What happened in the end? Well, because I couldn’t take necessary action without the likelihood of being sued for everything I own, the situation deteriorated to the point where all of them became out of work – and not very long afterwards, so did I.
I now have enough debt that I’ll literally never be able to pay it off, no job (and no realistic prospect of one as I’m 54 and in poor health and have no employment track record), am being threatened with loss of my house. Socialism in action. And, of course, government inefficiency somewhere in there. 30 years of my life down the drain, and probably more.
Oh, and by the way, this mess has made absolutely sure of one thing. Should I (by some miracle) manage to sort this out, I will never under any circumstances employ any woman capable of becoming pregnant. NEVER.
The ironic thing Fletcher, is for old farts like us, hope and change are things we depend on. Leeches like Obama pray on that. Being 53 and in poor health can be very discouraging, but I try not to let it be because I know real change always happens. I have my struggle with hope as well, but I’ve been on the roller coaster long enough to know up and down happens. Well, I could use a bit more up. 😉 It will come if I do what I can and exercise patients. Others with try to stumble you, but what alternative do you have but to keep trying?
You’re not alone. We have to fight these things together when we can. So chin up. You’re one of the good guys. Just realize it will probably get worse for all of us so don’t let it come as a surprise (and if it gets better, hey… we can deal.) Fight on.
Sorry to hear about your misfortune Fletcher. It sounds like beating your head against the wall makes more sense then trying to run a small business in the UK.