I was talking to a 20-year-old I know the other day. She lives in a summer resort, where there are lots of summer jobs. However, she cannot get an employer to give her more than 29 hours a week, despite her willingness and motivation to work 40 hours or more.
Why not? Because of Obamacare, she’s being told. Many employers cannot afford to hire employees over a certain number of hours. If they do, they’re subjected to untold government mandates, requirements, fines and restrictions to ensure everyone has health insurance. I’m hearing this from more established employees as well, people whose bosses lay them off and then rehire them as private contractors, so they don’t have to meet Obama’s edicts from above.
So much for Obamacare helping the young people. And so much for Obamacare helping the economy.
This 20-year-old commented, ‘I don’t, for the life of me, understand how anyone can support Obamacare—or Obama, either.’ Is she a big, anti-abortion, anti-gay Republican? Not at all, she said. But she’s no Obama supporter, either.
She gets it. She understands what her supposed-to-be-heroes in Washington D.C. are able to understand, but choose to evade because of their incredible narcissism. It’s the # 1 principle of economics, understandable to any layperson: Government mandates on business are always passed on to the customer—and the employee.
It’s well and good for a politician to stand up and say, ‘Look at me. I just guaranteed you health insurance.’ But at what cost? That’s what they never tell you. You’re left to discover that on your own.
And when you find out, what are you told? ‘It’s the evil selfishness of your employers. They’re greedy profit-mongers, and we need to shake them down more.’ They have nicer-sounding phrases than ‘shaking down,’ but that’s really what it is ‘ legalized mob rule.
If this is the meaning of ‘the youth vote,’ the young lady with whom I was talking is not part of the trend. I have a hunch she’s not the only one.
Young people are among the hardest hit by mandates like Obamacare, business regulations, high taxes, and the like. Unlike more established people, who can usually afford these ten and fifteen percent hits from taxes, as well as the ‘hidden’ costs of mandates and regulations on business, they have no room to spare.
Not that these hits and taxes don’t hurt most of those who are middle-aged; but they can still get through the day. Not that the government has any right to shake anyone down in this way, young or old. But the majority of us let these political hacks and creeps do it.
The young people are the ones paying the price for the need of politicians like Obama to say, ‘Look at me. I’m a virtuous genius.’ (Insert applause here.)
Obamacare is the Mother of all Mandates. It not only heaps untold obligations on struggling businesses like restaurants (have you ever tried owning a restaurant, you Obama voters?) It hurts the staff as well, and many of them are younger people. And it’s just getting started.
On top of it all, Obamacare attempts to utilize the embattled IRS to make sure that every person in the country purchases, or at least takes part in some government-funded insurance collective. How well do you think that’s going to work out?
It’s one thing for a young person to be persuaded to vote for Obama because it’s ‘cool,’ and because his or her friends are doing it. Do you think most young people will take the time—or even have the time—to go through the government red tape that will be involved in joining these collectives? This will be interesting to watch.
Obamacare proponents brag that the law forces insurance companies to keep ‘children’ on their insurance plans until they’re 26. What kind of young person wants to be tied to his parents until he’s 26? In what world do these people live, if they think young people actually want this? How about opening up the marketplace? How about deregulating the entire insurance industry, and stop subsidizing it so people will have to shop in a competitive marketplace for insurance? We have yet to even give it a chance. If the marketplace is good enough for cars, groceries, haircuts, smart phones and iPods, then why not health care too?
Today’s 18 and 20-year-olds were taught the same philosophical claptrap the rest of us were taught: ‘We are all our brother’s keepers.’ The problem with this idea is that it’s always somebody else being forced to do the keeping. That somebody else supposedly has an endless supply of wealth and goodwill—extracted at gunpoint, by the government—so that they may keep us in the manner they wish us to be accustomed (i.e., as political supporters). But in actual practice, it does not and never will work out that way.
Perhaps, in the end, this is why the only thing the government really has to offer us in the ‘welfare’ department are food stamps, crappy government insurance and supplemental income in old age (paid for by huge premiums called payroll taxes, for those who work.) It really isn’t such a good deal, a fair deal, a new deal or any of the other ridiculous things it has been called over the decades.
Once more young people start to realize this, it will all really get very interesting.
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