Associated Press and FoxNews.com reports:
Medical supply giant Stryker is the latest company to announce job cuts in anticipation of coming costs associated with Obamacare, even though the man who inherited a fortune from the company’s founder is a fan.
The company will cut 1,170 jobs, or five percent of its worldwide workforce, despite the fact that the founder’s grandson was one of the largest contributors to President Obama’s re-election campaign. Medical tech scion Jon Stryker, whose net worth is currently estimated at $1.2 billion, contributed $2 million to the Priorities USA Action super PAC and has given $66,000 in contributions to Obama and the Democratic Party. Stryker does not run the company.
And so it begins. The bigger the government tax and the more redistributive the scheme, the bigger the bite out of the private economy. Government devours the hand that feeds it.
Again and again, we’re told that socialist democratic policies are good for the middle class. Repeatedly, it’s claimed that what’s bad for the billionaires is good for everyone else.
And yet, every time government attempts to redistribute in favor of the “little guy,” the victims of the redistribution fight back. They have to. Why? Because that’s why private businesses exist: To make a profit, and survive.
Keep in mind that if Stryker didn’t respond to the new costs created by the Obamacare tax, everyone who benefits from the company would suffer. Yes, the stockholders and CEOs would suffer, but the employees — right down to the lowest paid janitor — would suffer even more. In short, the company would completely go out of business rather than still manage to survive with the additional costs imposed by Obama’s social welfare schemes and mandates.
The incredible thing is that the people responsible for passing these taxes and other impositions on private entities will never be held responsible. They are widely applauded for “caring” enough to pass these laws, to supposedly ensure that everyone is covered. Altogether ignored is the fact that somebody has to pay for them. Sure, big businesses must pay for them. But big businesses, for their very survival, will simply pass those costs along.
Every time government passes a tax or a regulation, this is what happens. It’s the nature of reality. Every action must lead to a reaction of some kind. The more costs government imposes on businesses, the more consequences there will be to those who depend on the business in some way. CEOs and stockholders get less income, but it’s more than that. Employees get less income, or lose their jobs. With fewer salaried people in the world, and more people living off the bare minimum dole of government unemployment or early Social Security, the fewer products and services are bought elsewhere in the economy. Economic growth, in turn, goes down and unemployment goes up.
Yet the more we see negative outcomes from government taxes and impositions, the more we blame not the ones doing the imposing — the government — but rather its primary victim: The private sector.
It’s a pretty nifty game these politicians have, in our socialist democracy. The more a problem exists (usually one created by government), the more they impose on the private sector. The more the private sector responds in self-protection, the more the private sector gets blamed for being “evil” and “selfish.” This sets the stage for still more government taxation and regulation — until eventually, at the end of the road, you’re like Communist Cuba, North Korea or Soviet Russia, and there’s nothing left to tax or regulate.
The “niftiness” of this game depends on the ignorance and evasiveness of the population in a socialist democracy (which the United States now is), and their corresponding willingness to put up with it. The verdict of the most recent election speaks for itself. The majority are still free, in two or four years, to replace this government with one who will massively reverse course — and end most of government spending and taxation as we now know it.
It’s not likely, of course, because human beings have a way of being lulled into a passive state of helplessness, the worse things get. And everywhere they turn — to religion, to government, to academia, to the media — this depraved and depressed way of looking at things is all they’ll get. American culture shows every indication, at present, of going the way of past great civilizations. Obama and his ilk are fully prepared to lead the “American sheeple” off the cliff.
It’s deeper than politics. It’s about mind, reality and ethics. Government does not have the power to make wishes come true. What government does have the power to do is to blame those who are successful, and who have money — and coerce them into making the wishes of magical thinking (free health care, free everything) come into existence. But magic always has its price. For details, witness the layoffs, the continuing stagnation and additional downturns coming as America completes its downward spiral into full socialist democracy.
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