Is Thirty the new Fifty? (With ObamaCare in the wings, the 30 hour work week will be new normal)

American Thinker ^ | 11/20/2012 | Scott Mayer

[SeekAndFind]

With ObamaCare in the wings, the traditional forty- or fifty-hour work week will soon be replaced with a less than thirty-hour week for many American workers. To wit: many businesses, including ones that previously received ObamaCare waivers, are trying to avoid paying onerous fines for not providing employees with health coverage as mandated by the new law.

President Obama recently said that he won't allow the budget to be "balanced on the backs of the middle class." He sure did give the appearance of truly caring about these "folks," but he failed to disclose the fact that, even if taxed at 100%, there simply aren't enough rich people to pay for all of his big-government plans.

But as Thomas Sowell points out, even at a rate much lower than 100%, higher tax rates don't necessarily translate into higher tax revenues. So where will all this needed money come from? While Obama is targeting the group of Americans who already pay the most in taxes, the burden of his policies will ultimately break the backs of those he claims to be trying to protect.

The Obamacare mandate is just one example of how the middle class will be forced to shoulder a heaver burden, which flies in the face what Obama had promised to the American people. But in addition to this mandate (now officially a tax), a reduced work week will in essence have the same effect as a huge tax increase for those affected.

Take-home pay is what ultimately matters, and losing 25% of one's gross pay based upon a forty-hour week or about 45% based on a fifty-hour week when overtime is factored in represents an enormous hit.

[circlecity]

"With ObamaCare in the wings, the traditional forty- or fifty-hour work week will soon be replaced with a less than thirty-hour week for many American workers."

Or it will mean a 60 hour work week for two different employers.

[KarlInOhio]

The flip side of this is that there will be other workers who will have to jump from 40 to 60 because it will be cheaper to pay one worker 20 hours at time-and-a-half than to pay a for two workers' insurance.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

This is not new. Fifty one years ago, my high school civics teacher told us that in the future the average work week would be about 35 hours as there would be too many workers for each 40 hour job.

[MrB]

An idea occurred...

why couldn’t the same employee be hired twice as two entities...
and both entities could work 20 hours per week.

[Sooth2222]

Basic business accounting dictates that thirty will be the "new forty" for hourly employees. (But Obamacare should be a good thing for those 65+ in good health who still want to work part time because they have their health care covered by Medicare. Not so good for kids looking for their first jobs, though.)

BTW, didn't 24/7 become the other "new forty" when salaried employees became independent contractors -- and that was several economic cycles ago?

[rarestia]

Or it will mean a 60 hour work week for two different employers.

My thoughts exactly. I'll embrace this if it means I keep my job. I'll even embrace a lack of health insurance. The idea of "insurance" has become this bastardized monolith of money for the poor.

It used to be in the 1950s that insurance was used to keep the household from going bankrupt. It INSURED against loss. Nowadays people think they have to have insurance to just walk into a doctor's office. They think they'll DIE if they don't have health insurance. Well I can tell you, haven't been unemployed for a long period, doctor offices LOVE if you pay cash and are willing to cut the cost of a visit in half or even more if you pay in cash. In the future, I'd bet that doctors will go back to making housecalls to get paid under the table. It'll create what the government will call a "black market" for healthcare, but that's essentially what they're forcing us to do.

[jsanders2001]

Because the SSN identifies the employee for tax purposes to the IRS. 0 would still count it as a 40 hour work week.

[SomeCallMeTim]

In the future, I'd bet that doctors will go back to making housecalls to get paid under the table

Maybe, I could give my pig to my doctor? That is, if my wife can part with the pig. ;-)

TWO JOBS, 60 hours... and, SHITTY government health care. Hmmnnnn boy, the young uns are just gonna LOVE this!

[MrB]

OK, I got it.

I work for employer X for 20 hours, but I also “work for” my own LLC, which employer X contracts to complete the other 20 hours of work.

[rarestia]

They won’t care, Tim. They’ll be normalized to this sort of destitution during their formative years in public schools. That’s why we’re in the position we’re in now. Generations of children have been taught that capitalism is bad and socialism/communism is “fair,” and those children grew up and voted for The Won, porcine piss be upon him.

This is a highly retrograde system going into place where infant mortality rates will skyrocket and being placed in inpatient care at a hospital will become a death sentence due to poor health conditions. It’s already happening across Europe.

[jsanders2001]

I agree. A black market for healthcare is going to emerge and I’m willing to ber 0 has anticipated this and is going to try and put the screws down. He knows that many people, particularly Christians, won’t accept the RFID implant seeing it as the mark of the beast so he will issue healthcare cards at first and mobilize his propaganda forces and obamabots to scream until they wear the public down or denigrate them into accepting it.
It may take several years but I think this is one of real hidden agendas behind getting Obamacare implemented in addition to setting up a key ID for every citizen and linking their identification, medical, financial, and possibly location information (if tracking capabilities are added). It’s a tax with a hidden purpose and not really about the public getting healthcare even though thats it’s stated purpose.

[Lou L]

It'll create what the government will call a "black market" for healthcare, but that's essentially what they're forcing us to do

Let's just hope you don't need a prescription for some meds, following your visit. Everything going into and out of a pharmacist's office will likely be tracked via the "healthcare grid."

Pretty soon, some IRS agent comes knocking on the doctor's door..."Good day, doctor...we see you've been writing a lot of prescriptions, but your patient visits don't match up. Do you want to explain this discrepancy, or shall we use some rubber gloves and some MIL-SPEC lubricant?"

[rarestia]

They can mandate all they want, but if they ever make it a law to require that we are chipped, I’ll go down firing. Under no circumstances will I have anything put in or on my body that identifies me to authorities. That’s the end of the line, in my opinion, and I will DIE to defend my right to say “No” to it.

[rarestia]

I have to take thyroid medication daily for hypothyroidism, and I’m actually scared to death about how short my life is soon to become. When I run out of meds, if they’re no longer available or I’m forced to be marked or otherwise live a life under government yoke, I’ll be at risk for coma and/or eventual death without them. It’s a reality I’ve come to grips with and understand it could come sooner rather than later.

[Conservative4Ever]

Either way...W-2 or with an LLC a K-1 it is still attached to your SS#.

[KeyLargo]

One of my friends is a regional manager for a Midwest chain of restaurants and he attended a meeting this week where the new HR policy will be to hire more, but only part-time people to cover all of the shifts.

We will soon see MSM report that Obama claims that hiring is up!

[FrankR]

[Vaduz]

If taxed at 100%, there simply aren’t enough rich people to pay for all of his big-government plans.

Didn’t France tax the rich at 75%.Abd they are still in the hole.

[I am Richard Brandon]

A question and a question.

How long before 'They' sum the hours that you work at any endeavor in order to arrive at the 30 hours per week?

I keep hearing about "all the taxes" in ObamaCare. Has anyone made a quantified list?

[Vince Ferrer]

58 hours a week with two companies is only the beggining. Companies will automate as much as they can, or have self service to let their customers do the work. McDonald’s has already tried outsourcing their drive in window operators to India,expect that to come back in a big way. Jobs will dissapear over the next several years.

[Marcella]

In the early history of Ireland, a person paid his/her doctor a sum on a regular basis. If the person paying the sum, got sick and went to that doctor, he/she paid nothing more to the doctor until he/she was well again.

That’s a good incentive for good care - the doctor needed to make the patient well in order to start collecting that sum again.

[vette6387]

“The idea of “insurance” has become this bastardized monolith of money for the poor.”

This is the money quote of this post! We’re in our early 70’s now but we remember when our kids were being raised that a visit to the doctor ( the same ones we use today mostly) cost $9.00 out of pocket, no insurance. Insurance was for “unexpected medical stuff” and the doctor billed us and we submitted a claim to the insurance co. It kept the patient in the loop. The problems arose when they decided to decouple the patient from the payment process. Then the insurance companies just allowed the costs to skyrocket without the patient’s knowledge. The “concierge doctor” is coming for those who have the cash to pay for their own medical care ( which is how it should be anyway for anything but out of the ordinary medical expenses). There is something really wrong with a medical care system wherein a hospital visit for 24 hours is a $25,000 venture. Good hotels on the Cote d’Azure deliver more and cost a whole lot less.

[rarestia]

It’s obscene, in my opinion. Insurance should be reserved for catastrophe, not for regular visits. I gladly pay my doctors in cash and often walk out just $100 lighter in the wallet. Consider I only see them once a year, and I’m only “out” about $400 all tolled.

The idea of paying a “co-pay,” to me, is silly considering the amount of headache and extra staff the docs have to have to deal with the maze of insurance companies and regulations.

If I’m in a car accident, fall off a ladder while cleaning the gutters, cut off part of my finger while making dinner, get electrocuted fixing the pool pump, or break a finger while hammering up new fence panels, the ambulance ride and/or the fees charged for triage in an ER should be covered by insurance, I believe those are valid reasons to have insurance.

A welfare mother with 10 kids and on every form of public assistance going to the ER for a head cold is NOT a valid reason for use of insurance. Insurance is meant to INSURE against loss not PROVIDE indefinite care, regardless of severity.

[pieceofthepuzzle]

Part of me has felt, for a very long time now, that a sensible approach to this decades long mess will not come until the suffering is so deep and the retribution against what was once the status quo becomes so openly mean-spirited, demeaning, and incapable of being hid that the entrenched ‘guilt’ is overcome. Part of me thinks we won't change our thinking unless or until either we are enslaved for a significant period, we live like the USSR, or the equivalent of another Holocaust occurs.

We have been taught that to doubt the MSM and pop culture messages is to be ‘retro’, stupid, misinformed, bigoted, etc. etc. We have been taught that any questioning at all, in the slightest way, against ‘diversity’ and demographic shifts is RACIST and horrible. We have been taught that religion, and especially Christianity, is dumb. The only kinds of religion that are acceptable are those that are largely secular - which is what Judaism has become in so many ways. Although oxymoronic, ‘secular religion’ is the ‘acceptable’ ‘cool’ way to approach ‘faith’. It's basically secular humanism with a church, synagogue, or equivalent attached.

This mindset is so entrenched that we will not be able to fight it effectively without breaking the spell that has been cast by decades of cultural conditioning. We cannot and will not win back the culture without discrediting the message of ‘intellectualism’ of the left and showing it as the pseudo-intellectualism that it is. We will not have a serious shot at changing societal thinking until we are seen as the ‘smart’ ones, the intellectual ones, the ones who have thought it through and who have reasoned the most. I believe that the middle-right and conservatives, together, truly are those with the well-reasoned intellectual approach, but for many in society we are Archie Bunker or much, much worse. This absolutely has to change for anything else to change substantively.

[rarestia]

You’re completely right, FRiend. Sadly, even I, at 32, don’t believe that I will see a return to God in public in my lifetime. I believe the damage that has been done has cut so deep and destroyed so much that was considered fundamental just 50 years ago that turning back to where we were is impossible.

I was just discussing with my wife a few weeks ago about how I believe our yet-to-be-conceived children won’t know what it means to be a Boy Scout or Girl Scout. They won’t know what it means to celebrate the birth of Christ on Christmas. They won’t know what it means to celebrate the resurrection of Christ on Easter. These will all become passé and likely cease to exist. There’s already a war on Thanksgiving and even a call to ban Christmas. In 25-40 years, I believe the winter will be just that much colder as the idea of Christmas will be left to private celebration and not permitted in the public square.

I’m only 32, but I’m already convinced that I won’t live to see the age my grandfather (at 78) or even my mother (at 56) have seen today. I believe war is coming; a war of ideas, a war of spirituality, and a physical war against tyranny. The stakes of the entirety of humanity and the free world are on the line. It’s literally a juxtaposition of freedom and prosperity or slavery and poverty and will likely mean the future for generations of humanity.

[Rusty0604]

I used to make that decision if I calculated that the overtime was cheaper than benefits for another employee.

[hattend]

Welcome to France West.

Heck, even France has a 32 hour work week

[hattend]

Under no circumstances will I have anything put in or on my body that identifies me to authorities.

As corrupt as I believe the state has become and will become leads me to believe you'll be chipped during a doctor visit and you won't even know it.

That wasn't really a colonoscopy, that was a chip implantation. That wasn't really a flu shot, it was a chip implantation. That wasn't really a throat culture swab, that wasn't really a prostate exam, that wasn't a tonsilectomy... and on and on

[Little Ray]

Or you could fire them all and hire them back as independent contractors. Then you’d have a bunch of “small businesses” working for you. And, since they employ less than 100 people, they’re not subject to the (business) whims of ObamaCare.

[JediJones]

Yeah, pretty sure this is what the writers of Obamacare intended. The part-time employees will probably have incomes low enough to qualify for the government insurance plan. The point of this bill was to be a “step” towards single payer health care. The bill wants as many people to lose their private insurance as possible and get put on the government plan.

This helps make Obamacare impossible to overturn by getting the numbers of people taking from it high enough that they will vote against losing their freebies.