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While I agree his business is doing lousy and thats a huge reason why he cannot hire more, his point still rock solid. The government takes way to much for eac
by CoryMathews 16y ago
While I agree his business is doing lousy and thats a huge reason why he cannot hire more, his point still rock solid.
The government takes way to much for each employee hired. 33%! The author would realize this is a HUGE problem for employers, but I forget he is only a political blogger.
Thus when you hire 3 and a tax rate of 33% + 33% + 33%, you are really paying for 4 people and getting 3. That makes it hard to hire more employees.
Then comes the health care, which drives this 33% even higher. As the wsj author states
"Every year, we negotiate a renewal to our health coverage. This year, our provider demanded a 28% increase in premiums—for a lesser plan. This is in part a tax increase that the federal government has co-opted insurance providers to collect. We had never faced an increase anywhere near this large; in each of the last two years, the increase was under 10%."
28% is a HUGE increase..
Don't turn this into a political "I must defend/attack obama/bush" article. He stated everything with facts to defend why. 33% per employee and rising quickly in just a years time is a huge reason not to hire someone new.
- thetrumanshow 16y agoWait for it.. someone is going to again point out that taxes in the US are slightly lower than some other developed countries, and therefore they will imply that since everyone's taxes are high, we should assume that high taxes are perfectly sane.
- run4yourlives 16y agoSanity isn't the issue. The issue is that in no way do US taxes make you uncompetitive, and therefore, as portion of the total cost of employee retention the point is moot. It's irrelevant if my apples are 50 cents or a dollar. What's relevant is what everyone else is selling apples for.
- Tichy 16y agoWho else should pay the taxes in your opinion?
- CoryMathews 16y agoIts not who should pay them its why so many are needed. Are the programs they are paying for actually needed?
- Tichy 16y agoI agree that there is probably a lot of waste of tax payer money. But then I would like to read articles detailing the waste and what could be done about it. An article saying "I wish taxes were lower" contains no useful information at all.
- secretasiandan 16y agoCare to address that question?
- mikeryan 16y agoMaybe we should elect a "fiscal conservative" president for 8 years and let him cut the budget... oh wait. My biggest issue with your argument isn't that its wrong on its face - its that in the last ~20 years I've never seen a fiscal conservative in gov't both A. reduce taxes and B. reduce spending.
- ZachPruckowski 16y agoThe totality of compensation (benefits, taxes, salary) scales primarily with living standard, not with economic or political structure. If we moved those taxes off income into sales, then you'd have to pay your workers 25-33% more for them to be able to buy the same stuff. If we moved healthcare and other benefits onto the employee, you'd be paying that money as extra salary, or else they're getting effectively less compensation. If we went with a libertarian model, you'd just be paying higher wages so that your employees could buy their current stuff and also hire their own police and fire companies (and you'd need to pay for your business's protection). That's not to say you couldn't trim some fat with other methods, but the only real ways to eliminate paying that 33% involve cutting your employees' standards of living. I'm not saying it's your job to care about that, but let's call a spade a spade here. That money isn't dead weight loss, it's money that straight up improves the quality of life of your employees, and is therefore compensation.