I predict that in 4 years we will look back on this bluster and empty threats by these companies and laugh. Or that these companies will no longer exist, and their place will have been taken by companies who base their decisions on facts, and not on FoxNews fantasy.
Have you not learned your lesson OMG? You are being played. To quote David Frum,
They are** lying to you.** In order to keep you enraged. So they can make money.
It’s just that simple.
Cannibal gay (married, of course!) rape gangs will roam the wastelands that used to be America, violating and consuming all they chance upon! Legions of black Satanic Islamic atheists will enforce Obama’s brutal rule! Obama the Antichrist will announce his elevation to God-Emperor For Life of the World from the Dark Tower that has replaced the White House! Which will have a great big burning eye on top, oh yes.
Is HuffingtonPosta reliable source? This article focuses on a business owner adding an Obamacare surcharge. The lead cites “some business owners threaten to cut workers’ hours to avoid paying for their health care.”
That might be referring to this other HuffingtonPostreporting. “Tankel said he would not hire any more workers and was considering cutting the hours of current employees because of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.”
There have been other such reports in the news. (Cite, Cite, Cite, Cite, Cite, Cite) Those I have seen are largely, but not exclusively, in sectors of the economy that hire a lot of low skill workers. These are businesses that use a lot of part time workers and where many places do not offer health insurance (or the insurance they offer is a limited benefits policy that would not be qualifying coverage under the PPACA).
Whether layoffs or hours cutbacks would have happened in the absence of Obamacare is hard to say. Whether making such cuts will prove to be a wise business decision is yet to be seen. But clearly several companies have announced layoffs or hours cutbacks and cited Obamacare as a reason.
My in-four-years prediction is that more lower skilled workers will have to juggle multiple jobs due to hours cutbacks some employers will choose to implement to avoid PPACA requirements. That will be more poor workers spending more uncompensated time to travel to and from multiple jobs. That will place additional financial burdens on those persons with added transportation and childcare costs.
Or you can offer better hours and insurance coverage and suck up all of the better people in your chosen industry while leaving the less competent and less dependable ones to your competition who insist on only giving people 15-20 hours a week with no health insurance while they juggle increased scheduling costs (and nightmares) and increased hiring and training costs which cancel out any perceived costs savings by avoiding Obamacare.
People who think they can cut hours and refuse health coverage while being able to keep and retain the better quality employees are fooling themselves.
But that’s a whole 'nother discussion.
I predict that by 2016, wiser companies will have figured this out.
Apologies in advance for insulting the intelligence of most of you with the following Captain Obvious observation, but a few of you may have slept through Economics 101 or had a classmate whose physical attributes seemed more worthy of attention than the teacher. For those of you, if any, who actually need this pointed out: When one business cuts production for reasons other than reduction in aggregate demand, others will pick up the slack, and therefore will also pick up the corresponding need for personnel.
There’s a decent way to check in on this prediction before 2016: let’s see what the employment numbers are for the next two months. I say they will most likely show modest job growth, mostly in line with what we’ve seen the last few months. You seem to be arguing that businesses are already shedding jobs because of Obamacare, indicating that the job numbers will be substantially less than recent experience.
So, want to make a gentleman’s bet on which one of us will be proven right?
What’ incorrect is that your initial post was based on sweeping generalizations derived from cherry-picked anecdotes, not on data.
You know, exactly like your election predictions.
And that’s why the election predictions you believed are relevant. You ought to be considering WHY you made such off-base predictions. Who was making those arguments that you believed, and what was their motivation for making them?
Now those same folks are making arguments about how terribly the economy is tanking post-election, and you’re still listening to them. Has something changed such that you think they were lying to you before, but now they’re telling you the truth? Has something changed such that the ideologically-driven story-creation technique that failed so horribly in predicting the election has suddenly become an excellent way to predict the economy?
An equally relevant point is that eight or ten individual business owners (mostly small restaurant franchisees) does not much of a statement on the economy make, particularly when people are actively seeking such examples to make a political point. There are ALWAYS businesses laying people off–particularly in the restaurant industry. The fact that we’re seeing these in very small numbers pretty much implies there’s no story here. I agree with Ravenman – we need to look at next months numbers. If they’re right in line with the last few months, this is a non-issue.
The Supatomic Sympathy Symphony: available in any minor key.
As long as I get to be The Humungus, it’s precisely what I voted for.
Sadly, I’ll go out on a limb and say boring old society will still be churning on slightly better than it is now. So, codpieces won’t be work attire.
Have you ever considered that the people making these announcements are lying to get your attention?
Price increases - which reasonable CEOs probably agree don’t necessitate loud, politically slanted announcements - are a necessary, acceptable, and expected effect of companies not treating their employees like garbage. We could legalize sweatshops for cheaper USA-made watches and shoes - but as a society we’ve decided that kind of treatment isn’t acceptable.
Clever assholes will always find ways to be dicks to their workers, but as the competition adjusts to regulations and finds the new equilibrium, even Papa John’s will acquiesce.
gee, these kinds of threads are fun.
If your candidate lost…Gloom and doom awaits! Run for the hills!
If your candidate won…gloat,gloat,gloat and rub it in their faces! and then gloat some more.
Just for kicks, it’s worth remembering what happened in previous elections. Like when the dreaded Bush was re-elected.
Gloom and Doom galore! Michael Moore was right! The slippery slope had started, and it’s all downhill from here…
The nukes were going to fall on Iran tomorrow morning…
The end of our freedoms, the end of democracy…
Remember the Patriot Act? Guantanamo bay? The FBI attending mosques, looking at our library cards,etc , then locking us all up in secret prisons without trial?
Yeah, Obama’s America 2016 is going downhill like that, too.
** If you’re a sore loser.**
For the rest of us, I figure life will go on pretty much the same as now. The same economic problems, the same unemployment rate, but maybe with better health care.
Bad example, dude. The economy DID collapse under Bush! He DID institute torture. He DID institute secret prisons where people were locked up without trial (just not on US soil).
Was that supposed to be ironic?
One, you have a weird definition of ‘modest growth’. Two, it’s the holidays. You’re going to see an uptick in hiring, so that’s not a good bet to make. Three, I will bet you the hiring numbers for this year this time will be lower than last year. Hell, last week we saw a spike in jobless claims (don’t worry, it was blamed on Sandy, even though the areas with the biggest increase in claims were in unaffected regions). Not a good sign.
Considering your track record, I don’t think anyone is going to put too much stock into your good signs. Especially without citations.
One, you’re right - there hasn’t really been “modest growth” since the last couple of months have shown much better than modest growth (though I’d wager that’s not what you meant.)
The September jobs report was so robust, it caused Republicans to lose their minds and spin conspiracy theories to explain it away - that’s how good it was. Then in October, it added 171,000 jobs, which was far better than economists expected.
So yeah, far beyond modest. Just not in the direction you would like to spin it.
Two, as anyone who actually paid attention to the jobs reports knows,the BLS factors in seasonal adjustments in their reports.
Those adjustments mean that the hiring of temporary and/or part-time workers around the holidays don’t impact the data’s veracity as much as you seem to think it would.
Three, you’re showing that you’re not paying attention as this is a bet you might win since Hurricane Sandy’s impact might be felt:
I think that it’s safe to say that if you are unable to predict what will happen in a jobs report coming out in a few weeks even with this information at your fingertips that it’s not likely your 2016 predictions will be very good either. To say nothing if your inability to read two jobs reports that already happened…
Well, you have to look beneath the statisticals…
Ideally that would be the case. But not necessarily. I think that’s an important distinction to make, even though I can say with some certainty that it’s not a relevant one in this discussion. 
Lol… September saw a mind blowing increase in the household survey, which is why unemployment ticked down. Last month was a return to “normalcy”, as the unemployment rate ticked up and the household and establishment surveys were more in line with expectations. BTW, 155K’ish jobs per month on average isn’t modest growth. It’s barely enough, if it is at all, to keep up with population growth. If people stopped dropping out of the market, the unemployment rate would increase monthly.
Has nothing to do with my post.
Reading is not your strong suit. Look at hiring by month. October, November and December are generally the strongest months of the year due to seasonal hiring. Betting that hiring in the next two months will be higher than the previous few months is a dumb bet for me to take. They will be.
Lol… I just responded to this. The biggest increase in claims did not come from affected areas (in fact, some people in NY and NJ were unable to file claims due to the storm), but from elsewhere in the country. Hard to blame Sandy for that.
You think, do you? That’s good.