From the Wall Street Journal:
…Employing Sally costs plenty too. My company has to write checks for $74,000 so Sally can receive her nominal $59,000 in base pay. Health insurance is a big, added cost: While Sally pays nearly $2,400 for coverage, my company pays the rest—$9,561 for employee/spouse medical and dental. We also provide company-paid life and other insurance premiums amounting to $153. Altogether, company-paid benefits add $9,714 to the cost of employing Sally.
Then the federal and state governments want a little something extra. They take $56 for federal unemployment coverage, $149 for disability insurance, $300 for workers’ comp and $505 for state unemployment insurance. Finally, the feds make me pay $856 for Sally’s Medicare and $3,661 for her Social Security.
When you add it all up, it costs $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally’s pocket and to give her $12,000 in benefits. Bottom line: Governments impose a 33% surtax on Sally’s job each year…
Government imposes huge costs on employment – the higher the cost of employment, the fewer employees businesses will hire. It is really just as simple as that. There are plenty of employees available – companies could go on a hiring bonanza, except that the costs don’t outweigh the benefits in a down economy.
Now, here’s the part liberals really don’t get – if you lower the cost of hiring people, then people will be hired. This is done by what liberals call “tax cuts for the wealthy”, but which are actually “cost cuts for employment”. Do you buy as much gas when its $4 a gallon as you do when its $2? Of course not – but liberals seem incapable of grasping this concept.
In order to get employment moving again at lot of things need to be done. We need to work on our regulatory system to open up more prospects of farming, mining and manufacturing – the basics of economic activity. We need to encourage savings and investment. We need to clear out the mass of illegals which clog both the lower end of employment (you guys seen the unemployment rate among teens these days?) as well as the welfare rolls. And, of course, we need to lower the cost of hiring people.
This isn’t rocket science. Liberals are trying to sell us on the notion that the “new normal” is structurally high unemployment. They are ok with this because the “new normal” leaves them in charge (and quite wealthy, it should be noted) – but the rest of us don’t have to put up with this liberal nonsense. All we need is a change of government and we can start to work.
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