Bernie Sanders is proposing raising the highest bracket of the federal income tax from 37% to 52%. This caused me to think once again about the taxes I pay.
I pay all of the usual personal taxes such as federal income tax, Social Security tax, Medicare tax, Maryland income tax, real estate taxes on my home, and the Maryland state sales tax. In addition, I am a small business owner. As a small business owner, I pay the following taxes:
Social Security (half for each employee)
Medicare (half for each employee)
Federal Unemployment
Maryland Unemployment
S Corporation Tax
Workman's Compensation Insurance (required by state)
Real Estate Property Tax
Personal Property Tax (laboratory equipment, supplies, computers, furniture, etc.)
Sales Tax
The sales taxes are too onerous to calculate, so I am going to leave those out of my calculation of the tax burden I carry as an individual and as an employer. I did this calculation for the year 2018.
Leaving sales taxes out of the calculation for both the company and at home, the other taxes I paid equal 99.0% of my income. Taking into account the sales taxes, that percentage goes well beyond 100%.
Now most of you are likely to argue that many of the taxes I paid are just a cost of doing business and it is not as though the various governments ganged up on me and took every penny I earned and more and left me to actually starve in the streets. But it is true that if these governments did not tax me, my personal income could have been about 60% more than what it was. Viewed from this perspective, I was likely only able to control the spending of about 35% of the income I could have had were it not for the many government taxes I pay both as an individual and as a small business owner. I am one hell of a taxpayer.
Is it any wonder in the modern era that so few people choose to be employers and so many prefer to be employees. This does not even consider the many risks involved in being an employer and a business owner. It does not include the paperwork burdens. It does not include the weight of the responsibility for your employees' welfare. It does not include the cost of complying with the many regulations imposed by governments, many of which have little regard for a cost-benefit ratio that is rational.
Reducing the costs and the many other burdens that governments put on employers has a truly dramatic effect on encouraging entrepreneurs, who are under extremely heavy burdens at present. The entrepreneurial spirit in America is being squelched. Let it flourish and the growth rate in our economy will skyrocket. Even small improvements in the growth rate have a tremendous impact on compounding the growth of the economy over the 40 year period that most people have yet to live.
Think about this when the Democrat Socialist Party politicians propose more taxes to partially cover the expenses of their many proposed new welfare programs. Not only are they not going to allow entrepreneurship to grow the economy more, but they are actually determined to further squelch it, to smother it, to brutally murder it. They simply view employers as the enemy, which is exactly what is to be expected of socialists.
More and more employers will go on strike -- they will shrug their shoulders and let all of these heavy burdens crash to the ground. Atlas will shrug. The many American employees will have far fewer jobs with far fewer people willing to bear the many burdens of being an employer. The number of employers has fallen dramatically over our history as governments have grown. This is not the only reason for this, but it has been an important reason for it.
Showing posts with label employer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label employer. Show all posts
17 October 2019
17 January 2017
Repealing ObamaCare Costs How Many People Coverage?
Those who advocate the retention of ObamaCare are claiming highly exaggerated losses of coverage due to its repeal. They assume that no new coverage will come into play upon its repeal. HHS Secretary Burwell cited a claim that 30 million Americans will lose their coverage. Many others are claiming that 20 million will lose their coverage. These exaggerations are exactly as I predicted here.
First, as I noted here, only 11.1 million people were covered for the year in 2016, though 12.7 million signed up for coverage on ObamaCare health insurance websites. They are very trusting people to sign up and to provide their social security numbers on those very incompetent exchanges. But I digress. The lower 11.1 million people number is found by adding up the monthly premium payments and dividing by 12. But you can be sure that the advocates of ObamaCare use the 12.7 million number and have no regard for the fact that the 6 million who lost coverage due to ObamaCare are now proportional to the population growth as 6.1 million who would have been happy to stay on their old plans, especially now that they will have to soon make more changes due to the many instabilities that ObamaCare has introduced. Subtract 6.1 million whose loss of insurance the ObamaCare advocates originally did not care about from 11.1 million and one has only 5.0 million on ObamaCare of new enrollees.
The ObamaCare insurance loss alarmists count all of the new enrollees on Medicaid compared to 2013 as being covered by ObamaCare as well. As I noted here, of the 17 million new enrollees into Medicaid in 2014, only 3.3 million were newly eligible for coverage as a result of state expansions of Medicaid benefits as a result of ObamaCare. It is clear that the claim that 30 million will lose their insurance comes from adding 17 million added people on Medicaid to 12.7 million who paid some portion of their premiums on ObamaCare purchased insurance in 2016. It is also clear that this is a very dishonest number.
A more honest number is that of adding the additional 5.0 million insured under ObamaCare exchanges from the fully paid premium equivalent number to the 3.3 million added due to the expansion of Medicaid coverage by states under the ObamaCare law. That gives us 8.3 million people. But even that is dishonest.
Why? One of the reasons this is dishonest because in 2014 alone employers dropped the health insurance coverage of 2 million people under their employer plans. Small businesses alone dropped coverage for 2.2 million people as a result of ObamaCare and some unknown degree of reduction due to the super-extended poor growth Obama economy, some of which is also due to ObamaCare. What is more, prior to ObamaCare, the number of people covered under employer plans had expanded year after year, so that growth in employer coverage was lost. So, conservatively, we subtract another 2 million from the number of people who will lose coverage due to the repeal of ObamaCare. We are now at 6.3 million people.
But in reality, these 6.3 million people will have the option to go without health insurance after the repeal, which may be wise if they are healthy or so rich that they can reasonably be self-insured. In 2017, the wealthy will not be able to afford to lose 2.5% of their income to ObamaCare penalties, so they will have to buy ObamaCare health insurance no matter how little they need it, unless it is repealed. Then ending ObamaCare will bring many employers back to offering insurance plans for their employees. Many more cost effective private plans will come into existence, once the ObamaCare straitjackets are removed. ObamaCare requires too many doctor visits and doctors offer much less treatment per visit since it was passed. This is the usual practice with government-controlled health care. It becomes very inconvenient, so people use it less and get less for the cost of the coverage. Without ObamaCare, there will be a return to competition in the medical insurance market as well. Most areas of the country now have only one or two insurers offering ObamaCare health insurance plans. This is not good for costs. High costs keep many from enrolling in health care insurance.
So, if the Republicans do nothing to replace ObamaCare, the net number of people losing health insurance will be fewer than lost it when ObamaCare was put in place. If 6 million people happy with their insurance then did not matter, how can the advocates of ObamaCare claim that the less than 6 million people dependent upon ObamaCare will matter now. In fact, the repeal of ObamaCare does not mean that those people added to Medicaid due to its expansion in some states will not continue to be covered by Medicaid in those states. That 3.3 million people were almost entirely the responsibility of the states after 3 years under ObamaCare in any case. 2016 was the third year. Federal subsidy payments were scheduled to plummet in 2017 anyway. This is why many states did not allow themselves to be hooked into expanding their Medicaid rolls. So, the repeal of ObamaCare will actually result in fewer than 3 million people losing their health care insurance relative to the before ObamaCare number.
Only Democrat Socialists can get away with pretending that fewer than 3 million people are 30 million people or sometimes only 20 million people. These are the same people who claimed that 47 million Americans were uninsured before ObamaCare and then in 2014 stopped counting the many millions of illegal immigrants as among those uninsured to make ObamaCare look as though it was much more effective in providing health insurance than it actually was. Tricky Dicks, these socialists. Too bad we do not have a free press willing to keep them honest.
First, as I noted here, only 11.1 million people were covered for the year in 2016, though 12.7 million signed up for coverage on ObamaCare health insurance websites. They are very trusting people to sign up and to provide their social security numbers on those very incompetent exchanges. But I digress. The lower 11.1 million people number is found by adding up the monthly premium payments and dividing by 12. But you can be sure that the advocates of ObamaCare use the 12.7 million number and have no regard for the fact that the 6 million who lost coverage due to ObamaCare are now proportional to the population growth as 6.1 million who would have been happy to stay on their old plans, especially now that they will have to soon make more changes due to the many instabilities that ObamaCare has introduced. Subtract 6.1 million whose loss of insurance the ObamaCare advocates originally did not care about from 11.1 million and one has only 5.0 million on ObamaCare of new enrollees.
The ObamaCare insurance loss alarmists count all of the new enrollees on Medicaid compared to 2013 as being covered by ObamaCare as well. As I noted here, of the 17 million new enrollees into Medicaid in 2014, only 3.3 million were newly eligible for coverage as a result of state expansions of Medicaid benefits as a result of ObamaCare. It is clear that the claim that 30 million will lose their insurance comes from adding 17 million added people on Medicaid to 12.7 million who paid some portion of their premiums on ObamaCare purchased insurance in 2016. It is also clear that this is a very dishonest number.
A more honest number is that of adding the additional 5.0 million insured under ObamaCare exchanges from the fully paid premium equivalent number to the 3.3 million added due to the expansion of Medicaid coverage by states under the ObamaCare law. That gives us 8.3 million people. But even that is dishonest.
Why? One of the reasons this is dishonest because in 2014 alone employers dropped the health insurance coverage of 2 million people under their employer plans. Small businesses alone dropped coverage for 2.2 million people as a result of ObamaCare and some unknown degree of reduction due to the super-extended poor growth Obama economy, some of which is also due to ObamaCare. What is more, prior to ObamaCare, the number of people covered under employer plans had expanded year after year, so that growth in employer coverage was lost. So, conservatively, we subtract another 2 million from the number of people who will lose coverage due to the repeal of ObamaCare. We are now at 6.3 million people.
But in reality, these 6.3 million people will have the option to go without health insurance after the repeal, which may be wise if they are healthy or so rich that they can reasonably be self-insured. In 2017, the wealthy will not be able to afford to lose 2.5% of their income to ObamaCare penalties, so they will have to buy ObamaCare health insurance no matter how little they need it, unless it is repealed. Then ending ObamaCare will bring many employers back to offering insurance plans for their employees. Many more cost effective private plans will come into existence, once the ObamaCare straitjackets are removed. ObamaCare requires too many doctor visits and doctors offer much less treatment per visit since it was passed. This is the usual practice with government-controlled health care. It becomes very inconvenient, so people use it less and get less for the cost of the coverage. Without ObamaCare, there will be a return to competition in the medical insurance market as well. Most areas of the country now have only one or two insurers offering ObamaCare health insurance plans. This is not good for costs. High costs keep many from enrolling in health care insurance.
So, if the Republicans do nothing to replace ObamaCare, the net number of people losing health insurance will be fewer than lost it when ObamaCare was put in place. If 6 million people happy with their insurance then did not matter, how can the advocates of ObamaCare claim that the less than 6 million people dependent upon ObamaCare will matter now. In fact, the repeal of ObamaCare does not mean that those people added to Medicaid due to its expansion in some states will not continue to be covered by Medicaid in those states. That 3.3 million people were almost entirely the responsibility of the states after 3 years under ObamaCare in any case. 2016 was the third year. Federal subsidy payments were scheduled to plummet in 2017 anyway. This is why many states did not allow themselves to be hooked into expanding their Medicaid rolls. So, the repeal of ObamaCare will actually result in fewer than 3 million people losing their health care insurance relative to the before ObamaCare number.
Only Democrat Socialists can get away with pretending that fewer than 3 million people are 30 million people or sometimes only 20 million people. These are the same people who claimed that 47 million Americans were uninsured before ObamaCare and then in 2014 stopped counting the many millions of illegal immigrants as among those uninsured to make ObamaCare look as though it was much more effective in providing health insurance than it actually was. Tricky Dicks, these socialists. Too bad we do not have a free press willing to keep them honest.
05 November 2012
Why Romney is Better for Small Businesses
Businesses that pay taxes at the individual income tax rate employ 54% of American workers. Obama wants to raise the marginal income tax rate of business owners making more than $200,000 a year, while Romney wants to lower this marginal tax rate by 20%. Obama will raise the marginal tax rate in the two highest income tax brackets from 35 to 39.6% and from 33 to 36%. He will add a 0.9% increase in Medicare taxes to people in these brackets and will increase the tax rate on dividends, interest, and capital gains by 3.8% beginning in January. He will reduce their deductions as well, which will make their marginal tax rate a real 44.8%.
As Obama says, these tax rates will not apply to 97% of small business owners, but they will apply to those who hire most of the new employees. In 2008, there were 27.28 million companies and only 18,469 had more than 500 employees. This means that about 27.26 million firms are small businesses or about 99.93% of all businesses are small businesses. 78.26% of all firms had no employees. Those with 4 or fewer employees accounted for 91.6% of all small businesses. The businesses that account for most of the new hiring employ from 20 to 499 employees and these are only about 2.3% of all businesses. Most of the high income business owners Obama wants to tax at 44.8% marginal rates are owners of such businesses. Such high marginal tax rates will serve as a strong disincentive to work so hard to grow a company.
Small businesses are the result of free associations of individuals in the private sector, not the government sector, or the falsely, but optimistically termed public sector. The owner(s) of the small business voluntarily formed the business to supply services or goods to others in voluntary trade. The owner(s) may hire employees, who voluntarily trade their labor for a wage or salary. The only necessary role of government is to prevent others from using force to interfere with these voluntary trades and associations. Small businesses are very much creatures of the private sector.
Large businesses are sometimes in a position to purchase politicians to bend the excessive powers of big government to provide them with special advantages, much as labor unions and trial lawyers do the same. Among the favorite tactic of such nefarious big businesses is the use of excessive regulations to reduce the ability of otherwise lean and determined smaller businesses to compete with them. The big business can readily hire several compliance lawyers and accountants, while hiring one of each is a huge expense for the competing small business. Of course, under Obama, the big business just has legislation passed that directly gives it an advantage, such as a mandate that people must use their product or service. The green energy companies and the Too-Big-To-Fail financial companies are the recipients of such advantages. So are ethanol producers. Almost any advantage an unethical big business gets with its political pull is harmful to most small businesses.
Small business owners tend to be more independent-minded and more individualistic than most people. They are willing to take on a greater amount of self-responsibility and the risks that manifestly come with trying to build a small business. They have to carefully identify their values and control their limited resources with wisdom and understanding. These are not the traits of people who wish to be dependents of government in its Nanny State guise. Small business owners tend to be willing to rise or fall based upon their own productivity.
Broadly speaking, the Democratic Party is more the champion of big government than is the Republican Party. In particular, it tends to be anti-economic rights in its viewpoint. Property rights, the right to earn a living, the right to hire employees exercising freedom of contract, the right to travel, the right to trade goods and services with others under the freedom of contract, and the right to create new ideas, goods, and services are all critical individual rights which small businesses require to flourish. It is the maximization of these freedoms, not special interest favors, that small businesses need most to have the opportunity to succeed.
That the greatest need of small businesses is economic freedom is seen empirically by studies that rank nations and states (here, here, and here) by their economic freedom and examine their economic growth. Generally, a small business does better when its customers are doing better, so targeted favors from government are of little use if your customer and suppliers are not doing equally well. Bigger and growing markets also tend to bring down the costs of its business inputs more as more innovation occurs and businesses can take more advantage of scale or find more niche markets adequate to their growth.
Independent-minded small businessmen should want this open field of a healthy and robust private sector to operate in. They are not equipped to field an army of lobbyists to protect themselves from politician's attempt to extort money from them. They are not able to come up with the campaign donation bribes to pay the game of seeking special interest legislation or regulations. The small business owner has his mind fully occupied by the business needs of his business and does not need a ton of government paperwork to do, hundreds of thousands of pages of government regulations to read and decipher, long discussions with politicians behind closed doors, and weeks of hearings and trials to attend. Neither does he want subsidies, credits, and deductions which are supposed to reward him for obeying the wishes of politicians. He is an independent businessman because he wants to do things his way, not as the manipulated serf of a politician.
Obama has been making the claim that he has lowered taxes for small businesses 18 times. Yes, he has manipulated small businesses with a number of small or short term tax breaks. My own small business has never benefited from any of these tax breaks. In the Obama economy, I have not been able to hire an additional employee, so I have not received the benefit of paying only 90% of the taxes owed on quarterly tax payments, with the rest to be made up at the end of the year. No, I have had no advantage from this also since my company pays payroll taxes every month in full. Small business owners are not allowed to deduct the cost of their health insurance premiums, but for one year (2010) Obama allowed relief from this nasty ill-treatment of business owners. In a couple of years, the amount of equipment one could deduct in the year of purchase was increased, but the usual lower amount is much more than most small businesses can purchase in a year anyway, so only a few small businesses can benefit from this tax break. Start-up costs of up to $10,000 for a new business can now be deducted instead of a paltry $5,000, but that is worth little unless the start-up business makes money quickly. And then it is still worth little.
Obama claims to have increased Small Business Administration loans. They come with incredible paperwork, long wait times, and are for relatively small amounts. It is easier to earn the money and pay for growth from earnings than to try to get money from the SBA. Or, many small businesses used to finance growth by taking money from the refinance of the owner's home, but the policies of big government that led to the sub-prime mortgage bubble have killed that option for capital seed money. Obama and the Democrats were especially prominent in support of the sub-prime loan bubble and its collapse. The SBA programs for which Obama increased funding are directed at sub-prime loans to small businesses. Many of them will fail when they cannot make their loan payments.
Obama's website for Small Business Owners claims that:
The SBA 7(a) Loan Program is ideal for businesses with less established credit histories looking to borrow up to $5,000,000. Great, but what responsible small businessman will borrow anything like $5 million when his business is not well-established enough that he can be sure to pay back so much money? I suppose the answer is a Democrat businessman, especially one who has bundled campaign contribution money for Obama.
The supposition of all of Obama's small business programs is that a small business wants to partner in some way with the government. Well, no, most of us just do not want government to view us as a source of income for wasteful government spending, such as on green energy subsidies. We do not want to pay higher taxes on our marginal income if we manage to generate a profit. We really just want government to stay off our backs and out of our way as we exercise the economic rights which legitimate government is supposed to protect, not violate.
As Obama says, these tax rates will not apply to 97% of small business owners, but they will apply to those who hire most of the new employees. In 2008, there were 27.28 million companies and only 18,469 had more than 500 employees. This means that about 27.26 million firms are small businesses or about 99.93% of all businesses are small businesses. 78.26% of all firms had no employees. Those with 4 or fewer employees accounted for 91.6% of all small businesses. The businesses that account for most of the new hiring employ from 20 to 499 employees and these are only about 2.3% of all businesses. Most of the high income business owners Obama wants to tax at 44.8% marginal rates are owners of such businesses. Such high marginal tax rates will serve as a strong disincentive to work so hard to grow a company.
Small businesses are the result of free associations of individuals in the private sector, not the government sector, or the falsely, but optimistically termed public sector. The owner(s) of the small business voluntarily formed the business to supply services or goods to others in voluntary trade. The owner(s) may hire employees, who voluntarily trade their labor for a wage or salary. The only necessary role of government is to prevent others from using force to interfere with these voluntary trades and associations. Small businesses are very much creatures of the private sector.
Large businesses are sometimes in a position to purchase politicians to bend the excessive powers of big government to provide them with special advantages, much as labor unions and trial lawyers do the same. Among the favorite tactic of such nefarious big businesses is the use of excessive regulations to reduce the ability of otherwise lean and determined smaller businesses to compete with them. The big business can readily hire several compliance lawyers and accountants, while hiring one of each is a huge expense for the competing small business. Of course, under Obama, the big business just has legislation passed that directly gives it an advantage, such as a mandate that people must use their product or service. The green energy companies and the Too-Big-To-Fail financial companies are the recipients of such advantages. So are ethanol producers. Almost any advantage an unethical big business gets with its political pull is harmful to most small businesses.
Small business owners tend to be more independent-minded and more individualistic than most people. They are willing to take on a greater amount of self-responsibility and the risks that manifestly come with trying to build a small business. They have to carefully identify their values and control their limited resources with wisdom and understanding. These are not the traits of people who wish to be dependents of government in its Nanny State guise. Small business owners tend to be willing to rise or fall based upon their own productivity.
Broadly speaking, the Democratic Party is more the champion of big government than is the Republican Party. In particular, it tends to be anti-economic rights in its viewpoint. Property rights, the right to earn a living, the right to hire employees exercising freedom of contract, the right to travel, the right to trade goods and services with others under the freedom of contract, and the right to create new ideas, goods, and services are all critical individual rights which small businesses require to flourish. It is the maximization of these freedoms, not special interest favors, that small businesses need most to have the opportunity to succeed.
That the greatest need of small businesses is economic freedom is seen empirically by studies that rank nations and states (here, here, and here) by their economic freedom and examine their economic growth. Generally, a small business does better when its customers are doing better, so targeted favors from government are of little use if your customer and suppliers are not doing equally well. Bigger and growing markets also tend to bring down the costs of its business inputs more as more innovation occurs and businesses can take more advantage of scale or find more niche markets adequate to their growth.
Independent-minded small businessmen should want this open field of a healthy and robust private sector to operate in. They are not equipped to field an army of lobbyists to protect themselves from politician's attempt to extort money from them. They are not able to come up with the campaign donation bribes to pay the game of seeking special interest legislation or regulations. The small business owner has his mind fully occupied by the business needs of his business and does not need a ton of government paperwork to do, hundreds of thousands of pages of government regulations to read and decipher, long discussions with politicians behind closed doors, and weeks of hearings and trials to attend. Neither does he want subsidies, credits, and deductions which are supposed to reward him for obeying the wishes of politicians. He is an independent businessman because he wants to do things his way, not as the manipulated serf of a politician.
Obama has been making the claim that he has lowered taxes for small businesses 18 times. Yes, he has manipulated small businesses with a number of small or short term tax breaks. My own small business has never benefited from any of these tax breaks. In the Obama economy, I have not been able to hire an additional employee, so I have not received the benefit of paying only 90% of the taxes owed on quarterly tax payments, with the rest to be made up at the end of the year. No, I have had no advantage from this also since my company pays payroll taxes every month in full. Small business owners are not allowed to deduct the cost of their health insurance premiums, but for one year (2010) Obama allowed relief from this nasty ill-treatment of business owners. In a couple of years, the amount of equipment one could deduct in the year of purchase was increased, but the usual lower amount is much more than most small businesses can purchase in a year anyway, so only a few small businesses can benefit from this tax break. Start-up costs of up to $10,000 for a new business can now be deducted instead of a paltry $5,000, but that is worth little unless the start-up business makes money quickly. And then it is still worth little.
Obama claims to have increased Small Business Administration loans. They come with incredible paperwork, long wait times, and are for relatively small amounts. It is easier to earn the money and pay for growth from earnings than to try to get money from the SBA. Or, many small businesses used to finance growth by taking money from the refinance of the owner's home, but the policies of big government that led to the sub-prime mortgage bubble have killed that option for capital seed money. Obama and the Democrats were especially prominent in support of the sub-prime loan bubble and its collapse. The SBA programs for which Obama increased funding are directed at sub-prime loans to small businesses. Many of them will fail when they cannot make their loan payments.
Obama's website for Small Business Owners claims that:
When President Obama took office, American small businesses were struggling under the devastating effects of the recession, runaway health care costs, and a credit freeze created by the Wall Street meltdown.How interesting. Small businesses, especially most of those serving mid- and large-size businesses are still feeling a recession due to the $2 trillion that these companies have been hording rather than using to buy the services of small businesses. Our healthcare costs have only increased due to ObamaCare, or the ObamaUncaringTax according the Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts. The quote on our healthcare plan for my business went up 20% this year. We had to drop the benefit as many other small and larger companies have also done. Thanks to the Obama FDIC, the Federal Reserve, and the Dodd-Frank so-called financial reform law, it is still very hard for a small business to get a loan. Of course, who wants a loan when the economy is so bad and so variable that one cannot be sure one can make the payments on it?
The SBA 7(a) Loan Program is ideal for businesses with less established credit histories looking to borrow up to $5,000,000. Great, but what responsible small businessman will borrow anything like $5 million when his business is not well-established enough that he can be sure to pay back so much money? I suppose the answer is a Democrat businessman, especially one who has bundled campaign contribution money for Obama.
The supposition of all of Obama's small business programs is that a small business wants to partner in some way with the government. Well, no, most of us just do not want government to view us as a source of income for wasteful government spending, such as on green energy subsidies. We do not want to pay higher taxes on our marginal income if we manage to generate a profit. We really just want government to stay off our backs and out of our way as we exercise the economic rights which legitimate government is supposed to protect, not violate.
17 May 2011
NLRB - From Unconstitutional to Wildly Unconstitutional
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ordered that people with objections to its actions taken against Boeing be quiet and not voice those objections. I am today asserting my constitutional right to think, to freedom of conscience, to freedom of speech, and to freedom of the press. The letter of intimidation came from the General Counsel of the NLRB, Lafe Solomon, who is an Obama appointee. Obama also stacked the NRLB with Craig Becker, the former associate general counsel for SEIU and the AFL-CIO, with a Congressional recess appointment. Having delivered little to the unions with legislation in Congress, Obama is trying to deliver the goodies through Executive Branch agencies even if it means the public has to be intimidated out of exercising their right to freedom of speech.
The NLRB has no legitimate power under our Constitution to violate employee-employer contracts and it certainly does not have the right to declare that a company must maintain all of its production activities in one state just because that suits a particular union. Yet, the NLRB has tried to force Boeing to build a third new production line for the 787 Dreamliner in Washington state, where it built its first production line. Boeing has nearly finished a second production line in South Carolina and it only needs two production lines. The International Association of Mechanics (IAM) and the union-owned NLRB are claiming that Boeing built the second production line in the right-to-work state of South Carolina in retaliation against the many strikes they have had in Washington state. In reality, the second production line is being built at an ex-Vought site bought by Boeing. The employees at the site were briefly members of the IAM, but decertified it as their representative when they decided that the IAM did not have their best interest at heart. The IAM and the NLRB are retaliating against that facility in South Carolina as a result.
The NRLB is embarrassed by the weakness of its case. Whenever the government has reason to be embarrassed and the public has or will likely catch on to that fact, the government either hides the facts and the data from the People or it tells them that they cannot talk about it. Big government always has many reasons to be embarrassed, so censorship and secrecy have always been a consequence of a big and intrusive government. After all, no one has ever heard of an effective central planner micromanaging the lives of hundreds of millions of complex and richly differentiated individuals. It does not happen in the real world.
The NLRB has no legitimate power under our Constitution to violate employee-employer contracts and it certainly does not have the right to declare that a company must maintain all of its production activities in one state just because that suits a particular union. Yet, the NLRB has tried to force Boeing to build a third new production line for the 787 Dreamliner in Washington state, where it built its first production line. Boeing has nearly finished a second production line in South Carolina and it only needs two production lines. The International Association of Mechanics (IAM) and the union-owned NLRB are claiming that Boeing built the second production line in the right-to-work state of South Carolina in retaliation against the many strikes they have had in Washington state. In reality, the second production line is being built at an ex-Vought site bought by Boeing. The employees at the site were briefly members of the IAM, but decertified it as their representative when they decided that the IAM did not have their best interest at heart. The IAM and the NLRB are retaliating against that facility in South Carolina as a result.
The NRLB is embarrassed by the weakness of its case. Whenever the government has reason to be embarrassed and the public has or will likely catch on to that fact, the government either hides the facts and the data from the People or it tells them that they cannot talk about it. Big government always has many reasons to be embarrassed, so censorship and secrecy have always been a consequence of a big and intrusive government. After all, no one has ever heard of an effective central planner micromanaging the lives of hundreds of millions of complex and richly differentiated individuals. It does not happen in the real world.
19 September 2009
The Obama Huge Health Care Insurance Tax
Let's calculate the tax that an employee will pay if his employer drops his health insurance coverage and pays the 8% payroll tax penalty instead. We will ignore in this calculation any other taxes that some people may pay due to taxes on very expensive health insurance plans or on sugary drinks, which are under discussion in the Democrat Congress. We are going to examine the new hidden tax, the tax which the politicians are pretending will be paid by companies.
A rational company pays an employee the sum of salary, benefit costs, and employer taxes which is justified in terms of the additional income the employee brings into the company. The employer taxes that are a real part of his compensation, despite the fact that they are of no use to the employee, are such things as the employer's contributions to social security, medicare, unemployment insurance, and worker's compensation insurance. If the cost of any of these taxes goes up, then the amount the employer pays the employee in salary and benefits should go down by an equal amount. These are all the costs of employing this individual and they are specific to this individual, unlike some other overhead costs such as for equipment, utilities, liability insurance, advertising, and many other overhead costs. They are also immediately changed upon hiring the individual or letting him go.
Let us suppose you are an employee who is being paid $100,000 per year. Your employer provides a family health insurance policy costing $13,500 a year and pays $10,500 of that cost, while you pay $3,000. After the deduction of your contribution of $3,000, you take home $97,000, ignoring the taxes that are also withheld. The company opts to stop providing health insurance and pays the 8% payroll penalty tax instead. The 8% tax is incurred because you are employed. I can tell you right now that you are going to wind up with 8% of $100,000 less compensation. You did not instantly start producing 8% more income for the company, but your employment is costing the company that amount.
Or, we can do some calculations based on that part of your compensation which is salary plus health care insurance benefit. Your salary plus paid health insurance benefit was $100,000 + $10,500 = $110,500. But now the company must pay $8,000 or 8% of your salary to keep you employed. But you are only worth $110,500 to the company, ignoring all other fixed benefits and taxes. So, the company is going to pay you $110,500 - $8,000 = $102,500. Whoopee! You have a salary increase of $2,500! Ah..... But now you get to pay for your insurance yourself. So, you pay $13,500 for your insurance. After paying for the insurance, you have $102,500 - $13,500 = $89,000 for other uses. Before your employer dropped insurance coverage, you had $97,000 for other purposes, so you lost $8,000. You might as well regard this $8,000 as a personal tax levied on you.
It is worse than this. You also have to pay your marginal income tax rate on the extra $2,500 you now have for your salary!
If you are a high-income employee or employer, Section 441 of HR 3200, the bill favored by Obama, imposes a further surcharge of 1% to 5.4% on you.
People making less money will not pay a full 8% net on their salary as you did. Depending on what their salary is, they will get a part of this back in a tax credit. But, whatever they do not get back is a tax they will be paying. Not your employer. If he does not instantly give you the extra $2,500 in salary, he may save some money for a short time. But, supply and demand in the labor market will cause him to give you your $2,500 salary increase in time.
Obama sure has designed a nice run around on his pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class or those with salaries below $250,000! He pretends he is taxing businesses, while he creates a giant increase in taxes on a great many Americans he claimed he would not tax more. He lied big time. The pretense is just too shallow for many Americans not to see through it.
On the other hand, many Americans actually do think that half the social security tax and half the Medicare tax is paid by the employer, not them. What dull poltroons they are! And they do not have a clue that their pay is reduced by the full amount of the unemployment tax and the cost of workmen's compensation insurance either. Yet, employers are mostly smart enough to take all of these costs of employment into account in setting pay and benefits packages. Those who are not, and there are some, are still driven to about the right compensation by labor market supply and demand and/or by their own company's ability to generate income.
Of course, understood this way, you and your employer should keep the company health insurance plan in place. As long as you both understand that if your company does not provide a plan, then your taxes are going up by 8% plus your marginal tax on $2,500, then he should keep the health insurance plan in place as a fully understood and valuable part of your compensation. If the plan is kept, you are making $8000 more than people with the same salary in companies without plans. They may have a salary $2,500 higher than yours, but you are in reality better compensated.
Aside from ignorance, the other big problem is that the government is going to be dictating the terms of acceptable health insurance plans in time. As it does that, the cost of such plans will increase due to the many things the government wants covered and the low deductible requirements. Preventive care, marriage counseling, mental health coverage, substance abuse, and many other requirements may add costs to the future qualifying plans. This will put more pressure on companies to drop their insurance plans. especially if their employees do not understand the consequences to them.
A rational company pays an employee the sum of salary, benefit costs, and employer taxes which is justified in terms of the additional income the employee brings into the company. The employer taxes that are a real part of his compensation, despite the fact that they are of no use to the employee, are such things as the employer's contributions to social security, medicare, unemployment insurance, and worker's compensation insurance. If the cost of any of these taxes goes up, then the amount the employer pays the employee in salary and benefits should go down by an equal amount. These are all the costs of employing this individual and they are specific to this individual, unlike some other overhead costs such as for equipment, utilities, liability insurance, advertising, and many other overhead costs. They are also immediately changed upon hiring the individual or letting him go.
Let us suppose you are an employee who is being paid $100,000 per year. Your employer provides a family health insurance policy costing $13,500 a year and pays $10,500 of that cost, while you pay $3,000. After the deduction of your contribution of $3,000, you take home $97,000, ignoring the taxes that are also withheld. The company opts to stop providing health insurance and pays the 8% payroll penalty tax instead. The 8% tax is incurred because you are employed. I can tell you right now that you are going to wind up with 8% of $100,000 less compensation. You did not instantly start producing 8% more income for the company, but your employment is costing the company that amount.
Or, we can do some calculations based on that part of your compensation which is salary plus health care insurance benefit. Your salary plus paid health insurance benefit was $100,000 + $10,500 = $110,500. But now the company must pay $8,000 or 8% of your salary to keep you employed. But you are only worth $110,500 to the company, ignoring all other fixed benefits and taxes. So, the company is going to pay you $110,500 - $8,000 = $102,500. Whoopee! You have a salary increase of $2,500! Ah..... But now you get to pay for your insurance yourself. So, you pay $13,500 for your insurance. After paying for the insurance, you have $102,500 - $13,500 = $89,000 for other uses. Before your employer dropped insurance coverage, you had $97,000 for other purposes, so you lost $8,000. You might as well regard this $8,000 as a personal tax levied on you.
It is worse than this. You also have to pay your marginal income tax rate on the extra $2,500 you now have for your salary!
If you are a high-income employee or employer, Section 441 of HR 3200, the bill favored by Obama, imposes a further surcharge of 1% to 5.4% on you.
People making less money will not pay a full 8% net on their salary as you did. Depending on what their salary is, they will get a part of this back in a tax credit. But, whatever they do not get back is a tax they will be paying. Not your employer. If he does not instantly give you the extra $2,500 in salary, he may save some money for a short time. But, supply and demand in the labor market will cause him to give you your $2,500 salary increase in time.
Obama sure has designed a nice run around on his pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class or those with salaries below $250,000! He pretends he is taxing businesses, while he creates a giant increase in taxes on a great many Americans he claimed he would not tax more. He lied big time. The pretense is just too shallow for many Americans not to see through it.
On the other hand, many Americans actually do think that half the social security tax and half the Medicare tax is paid by the employer, not them. What dull poltroons they are! And they do not have a clue that their pay is reduced by the full amount of the unemployment tax and the cost of workmen's compensation insurance either. Yet, employers are mostly smart enough to take all of these costs of employment into account in setting pay and benefits packages. Those who are not, and there are some, are still driven to about the right compensation by labor market supply and demand and/or by their own company's ability to generate income.
Of course, understood this way, you and your employer should keep the company health insurance plan in place. As long as you both understand that if your company does not provide a plan, then your taxes are going up by 8% plus your marginal tax on $2,500, then he should keep the health insurance plan in place as a fully understood and valuable part of your compensation. If the plan is kept, you are making $8000 more than people with the same salary in companies without plans. They may have a salary $2,500 higher than yours, but you are in reality better compensated.
Aside from ignorance, the other big problem is that the government is going to be dictating the terms of acceptable health insurance plans in time. As it does that, the cost of such plans will increase due to the many things the government wants covered and the low deductible requirements. Preventive care, marriage counseling, mental health coverage, substance abuse, and many other requirements may add costs to the future qualifying plans. This will put more pressure on companies to drop their insurance plans. especially if their employees do not understand the consequences to them.
16 March 2009
Taxing Employer-Provided Health Insurance
Having just examined the $787 billion stimulus bill and its expenditures and noting that that bill clearly signals a government takeover of the health care industry, it is appropriate to wonder where the money will come from to pay for all of this. This is not all, of course, since there are the on-going bailouts, a huge omnibus "regular" government spending bill full of pig ears, and future stimulus bills to consider as well. Is it possible to pay for all this by taxing the rich more heavily? Certainly not. Everyone but a few of the most envy- and hate-ridden socialist ideologists recognize this fact.
So, Max Baucus (D.-MT), chairman of the Senate tax-writing Finance Committee, has proposed that the health care insurance benefits that employees get from their companies should be taxed. President Bush and Sen. John McCain had earlier suggested this. Thirteen other Senators have signed on to this idea. Obama has earlier rejected this idea, but he now is said to be willing to go along if someone else does the proposing. Apparently, if the House and Senate were to pass a bill to tax employee health benefits, he would sign the measure.
The health insurance benefit has never been taxed since it was first offered during WWII on a large scale. This reduces taxable earnings by about $9,000 per year for family coverage. Clearly, taxing this income will move many people into higher tax brackets and will increase government tax revenues. It will also encourage companies to drop this benefit. Indeed, this benefit will make no sense at all if individuals will have access to group insurance plans such as Obama has proposed and will not have the tax benefit.
Actually, it is only fair that this benefit should be taxed like all other income. But, if it is to be taxed, it should happen as a part of a general tax decrease from which everyone will save some money from falling into the rapacious hands of the government. Given the government's hugely wasteful spending plans and given the great damage it has done to the economy resulting in lowered tax revenues, there is no way that such a general tax reduction can be accomplished, at least not without acknowledging that lowering tax rates may soon generate more tax revenues. This happens both because the economy responds with increased growth, but also because at reasonable tax rates, people will make many more taxable transactions. The tax revenue is a function of both the tax rate and the frequency of taxable transactions. It is also a function of the frequency of reported taxable transactions.
The socialists in charge will not provide a broad-based tax cut when they start taxing employer-provided health insurance benefits.
So, Max Baucus (D.-MT), chairman of the Senate tax-writing Finance Committee, has proposed that the health care insurance benefits that employees get from their companies should be taxed. President Bush and Sen. John McCain had earlier suggested this. Thirteen other Senators have signed on to this idea. Obama has earlier rejected this idea, but he now is said to be willing to go along if someone else does the proposing. Apparently, if the House and Senate were to pass a bill to tax employee health benefits, he would sign the measure.
The health insurance benefit has never been taxed since it was first offered during WWII on a large scale. This reduces taxable earnings by about $9,000 per year for family coverage. Clearly, taxing this income will move many people into higher tax brackets and will increase government tax revenues. It will also encourage companies to drop this benefit. Indeed, this benefit will make no sense at all if individuals will have access to group insurance plans such as Obama has proposed and will not have the tax benefit.
Actually, it is only fair that this benefit should be taxed like all other income. But, if it is to be taxed, it should happen as a part of a general tax decrease from which everyone will save some money from falling into the rapacious hands of the government. Given the government's hugely wasteful spending plans and given the great damage it has done to the economy resulting in lowered tax revenues, there is no way that such a general tax reduction can be accomplished, at least not without acknowledging that lowering tax rates may soon generate more tax revenues. This happens both because the economy responds with increased growth, but also because at reasonable tax rates, people will make many more taxable transactions. The tax revenue is a function of both the tax rate and the frequency of taxable transactions. It is also a function of the frequency of reported taxable transactions.
The socialists in charge will not provide a broad-based tax cut when they start taxing employer-provided health insurance benefits.
05 June 2008
The Right to Offer Employment Without Enslavement
As an adult with full possession of his senses, I have the right to choose to devote hours of my life to productive work. No one has the right to deny me that choice or to prevent me from doing productive work. Others have this same right. Furthermore, we have the right to work with one another to carry out tasks which we have agreed to perform together. No one has the right to deny us this cooperation. For them to do so is a significant violation of each of our individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of our happiness.
Now suppose that of the several people working cooperatively to accomplish the tasks they have chosen to work on have come to terms in this cooperation which take into account that one or more have invested many more previous hours of work and provided capital in order to make it possible for others of the group of cooperating individuals to have the job that they have chosen to take. Commonly the individual or group of individuals who invested prior hours of work and capital to make other jobs possible are the owners of a business. One would think that their efforts to create other jobs which did not require years of work with low income so that every possible penny could be re-invested in the business and who mortgaged their home and used a substantial part of their prior life savings to start a business and guide it through the first 5 to 10 years when most businesses fail, would be considered something of a good guy.
But no. Such a person is regarded with great suspicion by government. Governments at all levels are inclined to believe that this employer must be watched with an eagle eye and closely regulated. Regulation means that he will commonly be told that he must do this and he must do that or the full force of government wielded violence will fall upon his head. So, he must keep books which may require the investment of many, many more hours each year than the needs of his business actually require. He must collect payroll taxes from his employees and keep records on them and submit forms on the process to the governments. Each quarter of the year he may be required to submit state unemployment insurance fund payments with filled out forms to the state government, even in those quarters where virtually every worker has exceeded the $8500 limit on which the tax is collected. The time to fill out the form may be 30 or 40 minutes and the payment may be less than $10. The state government is not bothered by this in the least. After all, they did not have to pay the employer for his time. Indeed, the employer is never regarded as an actual individual having a finite number of hours in his life. This employer apparently has no right to believe that he has a right to these hours of his life at all. The state, local, and federal governments are all very sure that they can require an employer to turn over many tens of hours of his life every year to them.
Slavery has always been present throughout all of recorded history. Slavery is not just the case of putting chains on a man and then telling him that he must do this and that or you will whip him. In fact, the slave will do better work if the chains are not present. The slave master may find it more effective to tell the slave to do this and that and keep me happy or I will kill your wife and children. Or, in the modern age, he (or a large gang of slave masters) may instead say, you have invested years in earning a house and saving money or in building a business. How wonderful, because this means that we can force you to do our bidding with the threat that we will take your house away from you, we will take your savings, or we will take the capital of your business away. This has great advantages, because this gang of slave masters now does not have to look so brutal as they would standing there with the blood of your wife or children dripping from their hands. Now they have merely to take money and property, which is so much cleaner. But does not taking this money and property mean that they are taking the hours of the employers life used to make the money and acquire the property? Is this not a clear violation of his right to life and certainly of his right to pursue his happiness? Is this slightly higher level of abstraction really too much for most Americans and others to comprehend? Apparently it is. Or do they understand, but they really do not believe that a man has the right to life and the pursuit of happiness?
Once upon a time, Americans thought that the individual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was something every man had a right to fight for whenever anyone used force to deprive him of these rights. Americans fought King George III and the English Parliament in the name of this right, but apparently any American today who is an employer is especially deprived of these individual rights. Yes, everyone is substantially deprived of them and everyone is substantially enslaved by requirements imposed with the threat of force upon many of the hours of his life. But, no one is so heavily enslaved as the damned employers.
So, what is the most recent imposition upon my time? The 2007 Survey of Business Owners and Self-Employed Persons, which Title 13, United States Code, requires businesses and other organizations that receive this questionnaire to answer the questions and return the report to the U. S. Census Bureau. The form requires information on the business and on the four principal owners of the business.
So what information is so critical that the government feels justified in taking 30 minutes of my time? Is the business owned by another company, employee owned, is it a cooperative, owned by an estate or trust, an American Indian tribal entity, a non-profit, publically held, did any individual own 10% or more of it, is it jointly owned by a husband and wife, did two or more members of the same family own the majority of the business, how many owners are there, and give the % ownership by the top four owners.
Owner: How was ownership acquired? When was ownership acquired? What functions does owner perform? How many hours does owner work a week? [60 or more is regarded as an adequate upper limit! Government workers have no idea.] Was business the primary source of income? Prior to this business, was owner ever self-employed? [Yes, I cut lawns as a kid.] What was the highest education level? Is owner male or female? What age is owner? Was owner born in US? Is Owner Hispanic, if so what type? Is owner White, Black, American Indian, Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, other Asian, Native Hawaiian, Guamanian or Chamorro, Samoan, other Pacific Islander, or some other race? [Other, human.] Is he a veteran? Is he a disabled veteran?
Business: What year was the business established? What sources of capital were used to start the business? [No government grants, loans, or insured loans, that's for sure. I did not meet the racial and gender requirements.] What was the total amount of capital used to start the business? Did business operate from home? Operate as a franchise? Did franchiser own more than 50%? What sources were used to finance expansion and capital equipment in 2007? How much of sales was from export in 2007? Did business establish operations outside US in 2007? Did business outsource functions outside US? What languages was business conducted in? What types of workers were used? What benefits were supplied? Do you have a website? Have e-commerce sales? Make on-line purchases? What are business hours? Is business currently operating?
Congress does not even read the bills they pass. What are the chances that they will study this data to learn anything about business from it? Actually, the fixation on such issues as the race of the owners suggests that they have no interest in understanding business. They simply want to have justifications for continuing to discriminate against those businesses owned by white males. They also want information on the extent of outsourcing overseas so they can monkey with businesses on that prime issue for demagogues, read most politicians.
I really am tired of being a slave to governments. Is there something wrong with me because I feel that way? Don't be shy you lovers of government expansion. Justify my slavery. Tell me why I should embrace it as a rational man. Ease my pain by giving me understanding. If you cannot do so, then share my pain enough that you will start taking action to reduce my enslavement. Don't continue being a slave master yourself. Surely you do not believe in slavery? Surely you find yourself appalled at what you have wrought? Free the slaves!
Now suppose that of the several people working cooperatively to accomplish the tasks they have chosen to work on have come to terms in this cooperation which take into account that one or more have invested many more previous hours of work and provided capital in order to make it possible for others of the group of cooperating individuals to have the job that they have chosen to take. Commonly the individual or group of individuals who invested prior hours of work and capital to make other jobs possible are the owners of a business. One would think that their efforts to create other jobs which did not require years of work with low income so that every possible penny could be re-invested in the business and who mortgaged their home and used a substantial part of their prior life savings to start a business and guide it through the first 5 to 10 years when most businesses fail, would be considered something of a good guy.
But no. Such a person is regarded with great suspicion by government. Governments at all levels are inclined to believe that this employer must be watched with an eagle eye and closely regulated. Regulation means that he will commonly be told that he must do this and he must do that or the full force of government wielded violence will fall upon his head. So, he must keep books which may require the investment of many, many more hours each year than the needs of his business actually require. He must collect payroll taxes from his employees and keep records on them and submit forms on the process to the governments. Each quarter of the year he may be required to submit state unemployment insurance fund payments with filled out forms to the state government, even in those quarters where virtually every worker has exceeded the $8500 limit on which the tax is collected. The time to fill out the form may be 30 or 40 minutes and the payment may be less than $10. The state government is not bothered by this in the least. After all, they did not have to pay the employer for his time. Indeed, the employer is never regarded as an actual individual having a finite number of hours in his life. This employer apparently has no right to believe that he has a right to these hours of his life at all. The state, local, and federal governments are all very sure that they can require an employer to turn over many tens of hours of his life every year to them.
Slavery has always been present throughout all of recorded history. Slavery is not just the case of putting chains on a man and then telling him that he must do this and that or you will whip him. In fact, the slave will do better work if the chains are not present. The slave master may find it more effective to tell the slave to do this and that and keep me happy or I will kill your wife and children. Or, in the modern age, he (or a large gang of slave masters) may instead say, you have invested years in earning a house and saving money or in building a business. How wonderful, because this means that we can force you to do our bidding with the threat that we will take your house away from you, we will take your savings, or we will take the capital of your business away. This has great advantages, because this gang of slave masters now does not have to look so brutal as they would standing there with the blood of your wife or children dripping from their hands. Now they have merely to take money and property, which is so much cleaner. But does not taking this money and property mean that they are taking the hours of the employers life used to make the money and acquire the property? Is this not a clear violation of his right to life and certainly of his right to pursue his happiness? Is this slightly higher level of abstraction really too much for most Americans and others to comprehend? Apparently it is. Or do they understand, but they really do not believe that a man has the right to life and the pursuit of happiness?
Once upon a time, Americans thought that the individual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was something every man had a right to fight for whenever anyone used force to deprive him of these rights. Americans fought King George III and the English Parliament in the name of this right, but apparently any American today who is an employer is especially deprived of these individual rights. Yes, everyone is substantially deprived of them and everyone is substantially enslaved by requirements imposed with the threat of force upon many of the hours of his life. But, no one is so heavily enslaved as the damned employers.
So, what is the most recent imposition upon my time? The 2007 Survey of Business Owners and Self-Employed Persons, which Title 13, United States Code, requires businesses and other organizations that receive this questionnaire to answer the questions and return the report to the U. S. Census Bureau. The form requires information on the business and on the four principal owners of the business.
So what information is so critical that the government feels justified in taking 30 minutes of my time? Is the business owned by another company, employee owned, is it a cooperative, owned by an estate or trust, an American Indian tribal entity, a non-profit, publically held, did any individual own 10% or more of it, is it jointly owned by a husband and wife, did two or more members of the same family own the majority of the business, how many owners are there, and give the % ownership by the top four owners.
Owner: How was ownership acquired? When was ownership acquired? What functions does owner perform? How many hours does owner work a week? [60 or more is regarded as an adequate upper limit! Government workers have no idea.] Was business the primary source of income? Prior to this business, was owner ever self-employed? [Yes, I cut lawns as a kid.] What was the highest education level? Is owner male or female? What age is owner? Was owner born in US? Is Owner Hispanic, if so what type? Is owner White, Black, American Indian, Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, other Asian, Native Hawaiian, Guamanian or Chamorro, Samoan, other Pacific Islander, or some other race? [Other, human.] Is he a veteran? Is he a disabled veteran?
Business: What year was the business established? What sources of capital were used to start the business? [No government grants, loans, or insured loans, that's for sure. I did not meet the racial and gender requirements.] What was the total amount of capital used to start the business? Did business operate from home? Operate as a franchise? Did franchiser own more than 50%? What sources were used to finance expansion and capital equipment in 2007? How much of sales was from export in 2007? Did business establish operations outside US in 2007? Did business outsource functions outside US? What languages was business conducted in? What types of workers were used? What benefits were supplied? Do you have a website? Have e-commerce sales? Make on-line purchases? What are business hours? Is business currently operating?
Congress does not even read the bills they pass. What are the chances that they will study this data to learn anything about business from it? Actually, the fixation on such issues as the race of the owners suggests that they have no interest in understanding business. They simply want to have justifications for continuing to discriminate against those businesses owned by white males. They also want information on the extent of outsourcing overseas so they can monkey with businesses on that prime issue for demagogues, read most politicians.
I really am tired of being a slave to governments. Is there something wrong with me because I feel that way? Don't be shy you lovers of government expansion. Justify my slavery. Tell me why I should embrace it as a rational man. Ease my pain by giving me understanding. If you cannot do so, then share my pain enough that you will start taking action to reduce my enslavement. Don't continue being a slave master yourself. Surely you do not believe in slavery? Surely you find yourself appalled at what you have wrought? Free the slaves!
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