American Politics during the Obama Presidency

I must have missed the part where I said something about predatory lending or made excuses for over-extended borrowers.

The availability of cheap and easy credit has been a fact of life for the last 30+ years and has enabled many people to have a higher material standard of living than in countries where credit was scarce and expensive. On the downside, when something bad happens like higher than expected unemployment, a sudden tightening or increase in the cost of credit, or an unexpected and dramatic loss in value of the assets securing the loan, a heavily leverage society is going to have more severe problems than a lightly leveraged society.

As a society, the USA made a choice (through elected government) to be highly leveraged and now we are dealing with the consequences. Not surprisingly, groups are trying to use the political process to minimize the consequences, (e. G. Higher taxes, foreclosures, bankruptcies, loss of political power, that specific groups will suffer. Is this a surprise to anyone?

But getting back to personal responsibility - this is something that I think is the key difference between the Right and the Left. It's a big reason why we get taxed so heavily, whether we want it or not. Health care, retirement (SocSec) welfare, etc. Meddling in schools to the point where we are now paying more for administration costs than where the money RIGHTLY belongs - in the teachers' pockets. And so on.

There was a time when there was no welfare. You worked and fed yourself or you had problems. There were thousands of societies and charities, funded by rich people and middle class people, out of the goodness of their hearts, to help people who did not have food to eat. People either saved for their retirement, or knew that their kids were going to help them out.

My folks and their families, both sides, were poor as hell. We're talking the '20s through the '50s. They were TOO FREAKING PROUD to accept a DIME from anyone else because they knew their own self-worth and they busted their asses doing whatever it took to make ends meet and provide for their family.

Now, if you don't have a job, or you don't have enough money, the government steps in and forces income redistribution. It takes away the person's individual responsibility to provide for himself. It takes away the heart-felt responsiblity to help those less fortunate that many rich would help with in the past - who the hell wants to contribute MORE to charities when the government is taking their money and redistributing it at gunpoint and giving it to people who have become professional at living off the government teat.

I too worked my way through college without any student loans. I worked offshore as a roustabout during two summers through an intern program at Tenneco, working twelve hours a day two weeks on and two weeks off in the middle of the Gulf Of Mexico. I also worked a job while in school, and when the summer job program at Tenneco got cut back and I couldn't do that any more, I worked three freaking jobs (busboy, game packager and car oil changer) during the school year to make enough money to live and go to school.

I barely made enough money to make ends meet. I remember when macaroni and cheese was 4 boxes for $1 (not Kraft - it was always the store brand) and a five pound bag of potatoes cost a dollar. I could eat for a week for about $4!

Now, I'm not nearly rich and have had some bad times recently due to the recession. But that doesn't stop me. Although I have paid unemployment taxes, I am too damned proud to take unemployment - I work harder than I have previously because I know THAT's the way to recover my losses, not accepting something from the government. I am not necessarily disparaging unemployment benefits 100% - but I was laid off in the past during a recession and NEVER had to take unemployment benefits for TWO FREAKING YEARS.

How many of those people who are unemployed and asking for benefits haven't taken the necessary steps to find something to get them by? Are they too proud to work at McDonalds or WalMart (or wherever) even if they need to work two jobs to make ends meet? Are they too proud to cut yards or offer some other services that could help make ends meet? After all, there is a limit on how much unemployment pays, no matter what your salary was. Most of the time, it doesn't really come close to covering your entire salary anyway and these people find ways to live off of unemployment. Why can't they get off their asses and find something to live off of while they recuperate?

The answer is because the US citizenry is becoming ignorantly spoiled and falsely proud.

There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that stops people from putting effort out to get what they want out of life. In the past, yes, there were big roadblocks for many, including minorities. But let's face it - no matter how much the NAACP wants to rail on about racial problems, legally the ability to discriminate doesn't exist any more and there are ways to fight it when it does happen. Minorities can work just as hard as I worked when I had no money, but they are so used to feeling sorry for themselves because the government (and those in power on the left, panhandling to those who put them in power) tells them that's their situation.

We are promised the right to a PURSUIT of happiness, not happiness itself. But people on the Left want to make sure that the government GIVES people happiness, not the right to pursue it.

Related to a recovery - those who believe it, just go ahead and keep listening to the current administration's outright lies about that and it will make you all feel better, I'm sure.

I run a business (that is just me, now!), and I can state without doubt that a recovery where it matters, in the private sector with small businesses providing services, and medium and large businesses who need those services, that THERE AIN'T NO RECOVERY happenning yet.

Almost no one is willing to spend money on services, to hire people to replace those they have laid off, etc. Credit is still extremely tight (or non-existent) and everyone is freaked out about the future. Obama and his folk are so freaking clueless about the real business community. They are much more concerned about saving union jobs than those jobs that are much more numeric - non-union. Even to the point where the deal with GM was so union-beneficial that it should make most people choke. The burden they are placing on those who will pay for these programs is tremendous and those who actually own or manage businesses don't know, literally, whether to piss or go broke.

Instead of giving tax cuts (which is so evil! We can't give those fat cats a break! Even though many [maybe most] of those "fat cats" are people like me! They are pumping money into government programs and keeping police and firemen and administrators who produce NO WEALTH and HIRE NO PEOPLE. Yeah, that makes sense.

Obama and the Democrats are suffering from personal pride and are NOT doing what is good for the country. He had in mind all of these things he was going to do for the people of the country when he ran for president, and yes, a recession hit and he had to take care of that. So instead of concentrating on what could help the country, he worries about health care and immigration reform and making sure that those who backed him are taken care of. He wants nothing more than to be able to step back and say "see, I made an impact on the country."

What he has done with placing stimulus money into the government (paying it to government employees and projects rather than providing tax cuts for those who would actually employ people) and worrying about everything EXCEPT getting the economy on track, is like me worrying about how I'm going to go out and buy a brand new sports car and keep the maid employed at the same time I'm filing bankruptcy.

[QUOTE=Easy Go]As a society, the USA made a choice (through elected government) to be highly leveraged and now we are dealing with the consequences. Not surprisingly, groups are trying to use the political process to minimize the consequences, (e. G. Higher taxes, foreclosures, bankruptcies, loss of political power, that specific groups will suffer. Is this a surprise to anyone?[/QUOTE]I understand some of what you're saying on this point. I think the point you're missing, though, is that although the elected officials that society put into place made it easier to get credit, and therefore to abuse it, the reality is the people still have the choice as to whether they want to overextend themselves.

The responsibility lies in the individual to NOT become overextended and seek credit only for what they can afford. That IS a societal condition brought about, at least in part, due to the example fo the government itself that can never seem to control its spending, no matter who is in power.

It's just that the left always abuses it more than the right, in my opinion. Obama is the worst ever, creating vastly expensive programs like health care, that are already costing WAY more than they anticipated (publicly at least - they're not stupid, they just lie real convincingly to people that are gullible)

People talka boutt he amount of money that Bush spent on the war over 6-7 years of his administration - but it's DWARFED by what Obama has done in the first year and a half of his presidency, at a time when our economy is weak and we absolutely cannot afford it.

Examples like those help show people the WRONG way to manage their finances. You can't spend your way out of debt and into successfullness.

I'm not missing any point. Many people are overly optimistic about their financial future so they make, in hindsight, a bad decision about credit. If lenders want to ignore that reality because they think they can charge a high enough risk premium or lay the risk off on somebody else, I don't have much sympathy for any of them on a macro basis. Borrowers and lenders have been making bad decisions about credit for thousands of years. Why is there suddenly because the US government runs deficits or because Obama is President?

Why does a solution that says all we need to do is embrace personal responsibility sound so ineffectual?

How do you propose to enforce personal responsibility on private parties entering into a private contract? Do we need increased government regulation to ensure everyone is acting responsibly? Or should we remove the government entirely from lending and hope it won't trigger a depression?

Why do you think it's somehow worse to spend a trillion dollars on things in the USA, aka stimulus program, rather than a trillion dollars fighting a futile war in Iraq?

It is what it is. Whining about the current bozo in charge is not going to change anything.

First, Bush never spent anywhere near the amount of money on the wars that Obama spent on stimulus or indebted us to in the future with his completely nutty plans at a time when we simply can't afford to be spending more. Also, I'm not happy with at least part of what Bush did and how he did it.

Second, I wouldn't have had a problem with a stimulus that actually stimulated something. Again, keeping government functioning at outrageous levels of spending via keeping state governments in cash and their employees with job DOES NOT in any way shape or form stimulate the economy. At best it keeps THOSE people employed, but it does not, in any fashion, CREATE jobs.

It's just like those idiots in the White house crowing over having created 400K jobs, when it turned out that yeah, the government did create those jobs, but to what effect? Those jobs were almost all census workers and when the census taking is done they will be out of work again!

Third, the government should not have butted its nose into things and made credit easier to get in the 90s and the 2000s, true, but the people or companies who went out and put themselves into debt, or the companies (around the world) who contributed to the debt crisis are the ones responsible! It is called personal responsibility - as corporations are considered an entity under most laws, corporations fall under that naming as well.

I have been one of those who over-extended credit in the past because it was so easy to get, and I learned my lesson the first time - apparently many can't do that, but that is THEIR PERSONAL RESPONSIBILTY. Had they not done so, they would be much, much better off now when there problems.

BTW - I knew a couple of people who were helping bring people in and writing unbelieveable loans for people who couldn't afford mortgages in the early 2000s. They lied and cheated to get people those loans. Why? Because Fannie May and Freddie Mac made it so easy to get a loan, practically on someone's say-so. It was real easy to cheat the system. Yeah, government screwed up to begin with, and it should not have butted in, but those people who committed fraud or could barely get loans to begin with are the ones responsible because they should never have extended themselves like that.

In a twist of irony, one of those I knew who was preapring those loans lost his house himself in 2004 because he couldn't afford it. Had he hung on a little longer, there would be no doubt he would have lost it in this crisis.

Fourth, when you have a government that is increasingly making decisions for people, and telling them that it's not their fault, but that they are victims of those fat cats that made the mess to begin with (such an over-simplification as well) you tend to get a society that has given up its rights to the government, to be fed like a bunch of little kids, completely without any personal responsibility.

Fifth, whining about the current bozo that is in charge is what everyone SHOULD be doing. Otherwise, they will become Argentinos, where everyone is a giant pussy waiting to get fucked.

It's real easy to sit back and say that it is the government's fault that everyone was so far in debt, including businesses. In reality, it was not the government's fault that others overextended theselves, had no cash on hand, had no means of weathering a bad economy. But those people who point to the government and say "you made this mess by making credit too easy" are not looking in the right direction, completely.

Of course, that's just another example of where government should butt the hell out. It helps prove the point of conservative fiscal policies, even if not everyone in the country can afford to buy their own house. That's a personal problem, not a governmental problem. Let them rent - I did for a decade before I saved up enough money to buy my first house.

And maybe it's the cart before the horse - maybe we DID elect people who not only made credit too easy, but also can't control their own spending. We have Democrats saying we have to spend our way out of debt, even now. For fuck's sake, the socialist-leaning countries of Europe had to tell our government ENOUGH SPENDING! We have to decrease spending!

The solution that says we have to take personal responsibility is the only one that will really work in the end. Otherwise, everyone will depend on the government to make decisions for them and make everything alright. Of course, to start that sentiment, the government actually has to control itself and do the right thing by the MAJORITY of the taxpayers, not a minority of taxpayers who live increasingly off the government teat and blame all their woes on "fat cats" who, in the myopic view of those said minority of people, have too much money.

Iraq and Afganistan have already gone over 1.05B in current spending. That doesn't include the hundreds of billions that are going to be paid for disability and health care costs over the next 50 years. We know how effective that's been.

The "stimulus" (which covers all kinds of things) put a trillion dollars of demand into the USA economy. AFAIK, the intent was never to create permanent jobs. It was to keep the economy sinking into depression. The depression didn't happen (or at least hasn't happened yet) but we will never know if the stimulus was the difference or not.

Any solution that is based on expecting a major change in human behavior is a pipe dream not a solution.

But this is pretty boring so I'm going to go back to reading the writings of TL. He's much more amusing.

[QUOTE=Easy Go]Iraq and Afganistan have already gone over 1.05B in current spending. That doesn't include the hundreds of billions that are going to be paid for disability and health care costs over the next 50 years. We know how effective that's been.[/QUOTE]As a Keynesian, you should be a proponent of this government spending. Most of the money spent on Iraq and Afgan (excluding direct foreign aid, which is a horse of a different color) goes to US soldiers, contractors and US manufacturers (for both products and ongoing maintenance) while a minority of it goes to non-US parties. Therefore, the Keynesian Multiplier, so beloved by this administration (and so thoroughly debunked by this continuing recession) should apply to those dollars staying in US hands or being spent by non-US groups on American goods and services.

[quote=]The "stimulus" (which covers all kinds of things) put a trillion dollars of demand into the USA economy. AFAIK, the intent was never to create permanent jobs. It was to keep the economy sinking into depression. The depression didn't happen (or at least hasn't happened yet) but we will never know if the stimulus was the difference or not.[/QUOTE]The stimulus was sold to the American publis as a permanent fix to what was ailing us. When the rare pundit would point out that it was primarily focused on temporary jobs, he / she would be shouted down. When more than $250 million of that stimulus money was targeted for ACORN, you get an idea of what it really was. It was $800B+ of political payoffs. All of the "stuff" that the congress (primarily the left because they were in charge) could not get through during the previous eight years. We do in fact know that the stimulus has failed, thus far.

[quote=]Any solution that is based on expecting a major change in human behavior is a pipe dream not a solution.[/QUOTE]That didn't stop the fascists in Europe or the Communists in Eastern Europe and Asia (some of whom still think that they can do it)

[quote=]But this is pretty boring so I'm going to go back to reading the writings of TL. He's much more amusing.[/QUOTE]Agreed

[QUOTE=El Queso]First, Bush never spent anywhere near the amount of money on the wars that Obama spent on stimulus.[/QUOTE]El Queso - how well did you do in math when you were in high school?

W's Afghanistan and Iraq great adventures will cost over $3 trillion including years of medical bills for wounded troops and interests cost on the money W borrowed from the Chinese to pay for the wars, according to independent economic analyses.

And $282 Billion (one third of the $789 billion Obama stimulus spending) went to giving US taxpayers the biggest tax cut in US history!

Aren't tax cuts what you and Wild W are all about?

But hey what do facts have to do with the debates on this site?

Precious little!

Boy Queso, the macaroni story takes me back, in the day Kraft was 19 Cents a box and with that and a loaf of bread, butter, garlic salt I was set for the week. A single box lasted 1 to 2 days. But enough of that.

1. Personal responsibility is the key, the Dem's deny it the Rep's expound on it, nuf said!

2. As far as Obama, they sold the American public the "Stimulus" package saying if we did nothing unemployment would reach 8.5% but with it unemployment would not go above 7% - Wow I think we should have just "done nothing" and stopped at 8.5% unemployment. FYI the Obama administration is now saying well 9.5% isn't so bad, high unemployment will be around for a while so just get use to it.

3. Remember the "Obama HealthCare Plan", he crowed about and the guy he appointed to run Medicare who worships the British plan as the do all and end all of "great healthcare for the masses" with the added bonus of income redistribution? Well check out the new British PM, he is admitting the system is a failure and is seeking to decentralize it and hand over decision making to the physicians and not the bureaucrats, many of whom will not lose their jobs. (sob)

4. What is this BS of paid unemployment for 2 YEARS! What a total disincentive to work, just lay back and collect a check from Uncle Obama, collect food stamps ect. Folks won't get serious about looking for any job until the bucks run out. I have known many over the years when I would ask why don't you get a job at McDonalds ect, answer was – why should I get a job making minimum wage where I have to show up and work when I can lay on my ass and get almost as much from unemployment? Wow what a work ethic!

5. If you want to fix the economy do away with all the unfunded mandates / sacred cows of Welfare and Medicaid, keep Social Security and Medicare since we have been paying taxes for these benefits our entire working lives and cut out all the BS giveaways from both programs and pare them down to only US citizens and only those who paid in. If you read the original docs that is the way it was written. Maybe raise the age to some to offset long life expectancies and the surge of baby boomers. Ever since the Dems pulled the SS fund into the general budget back in the 50's Social Security has developed into the greatest Ponzi scheme every dreamed of – dwarfing old Barny's pitiful attempt.

6. A recent study published in the Houston Chronicle which is a real lefty newspaper showed people making over $250K were paying over 70% of the taxes, "middle income" i.e. under $250 were paying 28% and the "low income" were paying less than 1%. If that isn't income redistribution what is and you have to consider the Chronicle cherry picked the best study they could find. Most studies show closer to upper 80% of taxes paid by the folks over $250K.

Obama and his crew don't have a clue, just a bunch of wild ideas that work in fantasy land not the real world. None have run a business, made a payroll or worried about debt or market share. All they know is the Fed can print all the money they need. Budgets – living within your means are for state governments who can't print money or the "little people", not for them.

End of rant today, got to get back to work so I can pay the bills.

Doppelganer

[QUOTE=Doppelganger]Boy Queso, the macaroni story takes me back, in the day Kraft was 19 Cents a box and with that and a loaf of bread, butter, garlic salt I was set for the week. A single box lasted 1 to 2 days[/QUOTE]When you could live it up and put some chopped up hot dog in the mac and cheese.

Naw - hot dogs were to pricy for me - those were reserved for the "fat cats"

[QUOTE=Doppelganger]Naw - hot dogs were to pricy for me - those were reserved for the "fat cats"[/QUOTE]That's why I said live it up, I wasn't a high-roller.

[QUOTE=Easy Go]Stan,

Can you talk a little about why your current benefit package includes health insurance? It's a hugely expensive benefit (a good plan for 2000 people can easily be $20M / year) so I assume you have some underlying business reason to offer it.

If you drop the benefit, what effect, if any, do you expect the change to have on your ability to recruit and retain employees?

Are there specific provisions in the reform package that will force you to drop it or is your current thinking based on a belief that the package as a whole will increase premiums to an unaffordable level?

If premium costs are the issue, what were you thinking about the future of your health benefit prior to the reform package? Most companies were already seeing 8-12% on-going annual increases in premiums so your costs were already tracking to double every 5-8 years. At what point were health care costs going to overwhelm you anyway?

If you drop employer health care insurance for your employees, what will you do with the savings? Fund a health reimbursement plan? Increase wages to partially offset the the cost that your employees will pay to get health insurance on the open market? Create or improve another benefit, e. G. 401K match? Take it to the bottom line? What about the following year when you could have expected premiums to increase by 8%? Will you start to factor health care inflation into raises?

It seems to me that if there was an effective market for individual health insurance, we would all be better off than under the current system where employees are limited to the options provided by their employer. I suspect at this point, most companies would prefer to be out of the health insurance benefit business but realize that it would leave their employees without a viable alternative and themselves at a serious disadvantage in attracting and retaining employees.[/QUOTE]Sorry for the delayed response on this. I've been traveling a bit. I was in Brazil last week and just got back to the States.

As for why we provided coverage in the first place, that's relatively straightforward. Contrary to popular belief from some sectors on this board, employers aren't simply vipers who want to utterly maximize every nickel they can wring out of their employees. We initially provided benefits when our company became large enough to be included as a "small group" employer, with enough theoretical participation that the rates were not exorbitant. It takes most employers some time to get there. We had always wanted to provide insurance to employees as a benefit but, until your business reaches a certain size, it is difficult or impossible to offer a group plan. (Individual plans can be much cheaper, but you have issues with testing and pre-existing conditions, and they're not all that practical. Qualifying for "small group" has become a bit easier in recent years, but it wasn't when we began looking at the issue.

We're now a much larger organization, but we're still considered "small group" by the insurance industry. That has a number of consequences. Among them, you don't get to see what health care events led to their rate increases, giving you no real insight into cost increases. It seems like the finish line for becoming "large group" gets moved a bit further away every year by the industry, so you never quite get there. Even for a company that was growing 50% a year (and 30% the past two years) we never quite got there.

Today, we offer health insurance as much out of a desire to provide this benefit as we do for competitive reasons. Simply put, if you're bidding on large contracts in the service sector, your prospective clients expect you to offer health insurance to your employees, at least in our line of work. Among other reasons, clients believe it is a good employee retention tool. They are right, to a certain extent. That's not why we did it originally, but it is one of the factors we would have considered if we thought about dropping coverage before ObamaCare.

As to why ObamaCare might prompt us to eventually drop health care coverage, you have to consider the same two issues: (a) we want employees to have the option to get subsidized health insurance; and (b) for competitive reasons, it was a good idea. Now, consider those two issues after ObamaCare goes into effect. If we drop coverage, employees will still have the option of getting coverage. We don't have to provide it. We can just pay the penalty. According to our esteemed members of Congress, our employees will still get the same, high-quality coverage whether we provide it or not.

So after ObamaCare, the issue really is one of cost. Whether we provide it or not, employees will get health insurance. At that point, it's a much easier analysis. If you believe it will be cheaper to provide employer-subsidized health care, then you do it. If not, then let the taxpayers pick up the tab and just pay the penalty. So, there's the rub: Do you believe that insurance company plans will be cheaper after ObamaCare than the penalty.

Here's one glimmer of what the big boys think: [url]http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/05/news/companies/dropping_benefits.fortune/index.htm[/url] Yep, you guessed it. The smart money thinks it might be cheaper just to pay the penalty. There is additional evidence that this already is true under RomneyCare, the precursor to ObamaCare, and companies in Massachussetts already are dumping their employees on the state tit.

But what hasn't been discussed yet is how the analysis plays out for small businesses. If big businesses -- who are either large group or self-insured -- are considering dropping coverage because it may be cheaper to pay the penalty, then there will be no question that this will be true for small businesses. As mentioned above, we're "small group." As such, we pay the highest premiums for group coverage out there. We have no leverage. If big companies with all the leverage are debating whether they can save money by paying the penalty -- and some of these companies have taken billions in charges already due to expected increases under ObamaCare -- then there is little doubt that this will be true for smaller companies.

As for what we'll do with the savings, I can't say at this point. It's all fairly theoretical. We already provide 100% dental. We already have a 401k. As a small employer, we pay through the nose for that, as well. (Again, no economies of scale, so we get fee'd to death and stuck with the annual audit tab. We already provide a 401k match and have continued to do so in these lean times. We don't have to do so for competitive reasons. Most of our competitors either don't have a 401k, or dropped their match two years ago. We continue to do so because we're making money and want to give back. I know that sounds silly. But, believe it or not, I'm hoping that just one former employee will remember me when he or she is retired at 70 years old and cashes that 401k check. That's really all that sort of thing comes down to.

But, the thing that galls any small business owner is the notion that "government provides" anything, or that government imposes anything where it has no business sticking its nose. So, truthfully, if the penalty cost is close to, or less than, our health care cost, we likely will dump coverage. There's no reason for us to provide it. Obama can provide it -- or at least claim to provide it after he picks our pockets.

At any rate, you asked so I thought I'd offer a response. I'm sure there are some who think that ObamaCare will actually reduce or rein in health care costs. I have absolutely no confidence in government to make this so, and in particular I have every confidence that this administration will actually make things far worse.

[QUOTE=Stan Da Man]Here's one glimmer of what the big boys think: [url]http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/05/news/companies/dropping_benefits.fortune/index.htm[/url] Yep, you guessed it. The smart money thinks it might be cheaper just to pay the penalty. [/QUOTE]This is not a mistake. It is to drive the entire nation onto the public option. If you make it a no-brainer for companies to drop coverage, then the idiots in the WH and Congress will say "See! It isn't working! The greedy employers and even greedier insurance companies aren't taking care of the people! We must take over 100%!"

Once a couple of big guys go (I. E. Drop coverage) look out below!

[quote=]But what hasn't been discussed yet is how the analysis plays out for small businesses.[/QUOTE]If you are a small business, there is a target painted on your forehead by this administration and congress. Small companies will be forced to either dump coverage, go broke or layoff employees. One move is to fire everyone and rehire as independent contractors. However, this would not be a safe move (considering the enforcement attitude in govt) unless you can structure it to really meet the independent contractor test (IRS guidelines) the alternative is to outsource you employees so that you have none (my goal)

[quote=]As for what we'll do with the savings, I can't say at this point. It's all fairly theoretical.[/quote] and on the federal level it is a fairy tale. Remember being told that we had to do this to save money? The GAO has already come out and said that Obamacare will be a net cost of at least $50B over the near-term and even more over the long-term.

[quote=]We already provide 100% dental. We already have a 401k. As a small employer, we pay through the nose for that, as well. (Again, no economies of scale, so we get fee'd to death and stuck with the annual audit tab. We already provide a 401k match and have continued to do so in these lean times. We don't have to do so for competitive reasons. Most of our competitors either don't have a 401k, or dropped their match two years ago. We continue to do so because we're making money and want to give back. I know that sounds silly. But, believe it or not, I'm hoping that just one former employee will remember me when he or she is retired at 70 years old and cashes that 401k check. That's really all that sort of thing comes down to.[/QUOTE]OK, what is wrong with this picture? Stan wants to do right by his people and the govt is stacking every possible obstacle in his way.

[quote=]But, the thing that galls any small business owner is the notion that "government provides" anything, or that government imposes anything where it has no business sticking its nose. So, truthfully, if the penalty cost is close to, or less than, our health care cost, we likely will dump coverage. There's no reason for us to provide it. Obama can provide it -- or at least claim to provide it after he picks our pockets.[/QUOTE]Yep. Govt is telling you to screw your workers. Your alternative is to screw yourself (which they will do as well) and go broke.

[quote=]I'm sure there are some who think that ObamaCare will actually reduce or rein in health care costs.[/QUOTE]I am sure there are some that believe in the tooth fairy and that the chica they just paid really is in love with them.

[quote=]I have absolutely no confidence in government to make this so, and in particular I have every confidence that this administration will actually make things far worse.[/QUOTE]Apparently, the GAO and and overwhelming majority of the populace agree. We'll see in November if they really do.