The American Spectator

Where’s the job recovery? Private businessman Michael Fleischer, owner of Bogen Communications in New Jersey, explains in the Wall Street Journal why he’s not adding personnel by citing the example of one of his long-time employees, “Sally:”

Because my company has been conscripted by the government and forced to serve as a tax collector, we have lost control of a big chunk of our cost structure. Tax increases, whether cloaked as changes in unemployment or disability insurance, Medicare increases or in any other form can dramatically alter our financial situation. With government spending and deficits growing as fast as they have been, you know that more tax increases are coming—for my company, and even for Sally too.

Companies have also been pressed into serving as providers of health insurance. In a saner world, health insurance would be something that individuals buy for themselves and their families, just as they do with auto insurance. Now, adding to the insanity, there is ObamaCare.

Every year, we negotiate a renewal to our health coverage. This year, our provider demanded a 28 percent 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 percent.

Fleischer doesn’t understand that he needs to wise up, figure out a way to call each new hire a “green job,” and make nice with someone tight with the Obama administration (or in it). Then everything he’s complaining about will be subsidized — maybe for a whole year! Otherwise the unemployed “Sallys” of the world are out of luck.