Rush’s Morning Update: The Cost!
August 12, 2010
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On Monday Michael Fleischer, president of a small New Jersey business that provides audio systems, published a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled, “Why I’m Not Hiring.”
Here’s why. One employee, Sally, earns $59,000 a year, on paper. But once she pays her share of healthcare benefits, state unemployment insurance, disability, Medicare, New Jersey income taxes, and federal withholdings,she actually earns $44,000, that’s what she takes home.Washington and New Jersey claim 22 percent of her income. If she lived in New York she’d earn even less.
Fleisher explains why it actually costs his company $74,000 to hire her. They contribute to her health plan, federal and state unemployment insurance, worker’s comp, disability, Medicare and Social Security. The bottom line, he says, government imposes a 33 percent surtax onher job each year.
To offset tax increases and rising insurance costs, the companyhas to grow,but Fleischer says that’s not going to happen. And passing rising costs to customers means they’ll lose sales. “Only governments can raise prices repeatedly and pretendthat there won’tbe anyconsequences,” he says. And now adding to the insanityis ObamaCare.
He concludes: “Every time I hire someone, my obligations to the government go up. From where I sit, the government’s message is unmistakable: Creating a new job carries a punishing price.” Mr. Fleischer if anybody in Obama’s Administration knew what it was like to meet a payroll they’d get it. But they don’t,and they never will.
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